Football Poetry by Derek Edward Mix

Derek's most recent work of poetry is a jubilant celebration of the state of things NFL-wise (but is necessarily not without a hint of desperation.) A note for the uninitiated: "Shrim" is Derek's pet tapir.

XXXIX

A Look at the NFC

Look at this mess
It's anybody's guess
What the difference
Between the worst and best?
And who the hell is even going to win the West?

Will it finally be the year
To end the Philly tears
When the McNabbs
Decide to take a stab
At getting in the big game?
I don't think so,
Without T.O.
Who's gonna make
The Eagles offense go?

And don't tell me Vick
The notion makes me sick
Dome teams always fall like a brick

It could be the Pack
With a sneak attack
If Favre puts the whole team on his back
Speaking of Favre, we sure like him
And the Pack in the Bowl would sure please Shrim

Panther fever, back from the dead?
The defending conference champs with a price on their head?
The Seahawks, naw they're massive flakes,
And the Rams and Saints are patsy cakes
The Vikings are the biggest duds
I wouldn't trust them to chew their own cud

So what do we know, who won't it be?
The Gmen, Skins and San Fran C
The Boyz - nope
The Cards, yeah right
The Bucs hardly put up a fight
The Bears sucked
The Lions did their thing
These teams can regroup next spring

So it's a wide open race
In 04-05
Who the hell do you think will survive?

The Durge Report

Today is Sybil Durgin's birthday! HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THE DURGE! HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THE DURGE! HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR THE DURGE! HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THE DURGE!

And many more...

Brooklyn Ocean's 112

Merry Christmas from deep in the Brooklyn Ocean!

Fishes,

Come see a staged reading of Rachel Shukert's new play. I'll be playing several roles. That'll take place at 10 PM on Thursday and Friday at "Here" performance space on 6th Ave and Spring St.

Also, help Maureen celebrate the release of her book "Novelty Act." Info here.

Finally, come by the Frequency on Sunday to help celebrate the upcoming inaugural issue of The Tiny, a new magazine edited by Gina Myers and Gabrielle Torres. For the first time since I took over as curator of theFrequency, I will be reading. You won't want to miss me introducing myself. More info here.

xo,
Shafer

The Durge Report

At Sybil Durgin's Christmas party last Saturday night, she kissed Chattanooga Choo Choo star Broadway Joe Namath under the mistletoe.

Ahem

that'll be MIRANDA, John, and Matvei at Frequency on Sunday, not the aforementioned Maureen.

"Words are so crucial you ought to be willing to take a good beating for them."

So I was just fucking around inside my own blog, sort of wishing that it was more like Josh Corey's, and I dejectedly clicked on the thought-to-be-defunct link to my favorite website, Eyeshot, only to discover that it is BACK IN ACTION!

So I've got some catching up to do.

The subject header for this post is from this very funny thing.

Joshua Corey

may or may not have a few copies of the Aubergine collection left. It'll have poems by Maureen, Shanna, myself, and a handful of other poetical he-spies and she-spies. Swing by his blog and fire off an email to try to reserve your copy. While you're there you can read delightful poetry like this, from his poem Alice, or Awkward:

A game girl-shape came glimmering through the dusk,
clattering goth gestures with her spine, hair, and hands.

Lately

I've been waking up very early in the morning, writing poems like this one, and then going back to bed to dream about leaving the apartment.

Counting Our Christmas Blessings

The way that wheat sits inside some people
like a demon in Native American popcorn
makes them so hospitalized, their pious intestines
so confounded, so angry.

Food allergies are so precious.
People keep them their whole lives.

I’ll never be allergic to food -- I’m not
so generous, but my pine needle nose
can never make it through Christmas
without sneezing. It’s such a
selfish way to make my own holiday.

Hellooo Poetry Readings!

This Sunday afternoon at 1 PM (promptly) I'll be reading with tons of nice folks at the Good Foot Issue 5 magazine release party. There will be ten very short readings by ten very good poets, so if (like me) you need high-powered drugs to pay attention to things, this would be a good reading for you. If (like Maureen) you're just really good at paying attention to stuff, then congratulations and you'll like this reading too. It's at the Bowery Poetry Club and the full info is below.

Immediately after the reading, I'll be dashing over to the Face for cocktails and The Frequency, which will be a really kickass reading from Maureen, Matvei, and John. That'll bring the Total Number of Poets Heard on Sunday (TNPHS) to lucky number 13, and we can spend the rest of the day watching our favorite football teams lose horribly. If you need any info on the Four Faced Liar or the Frequency Series, just let me know.

So thats

Good Foot Celebrates Issue 5!

Please join us for a celebration & reading!
Sunday, December 12 promptly at 1pm
Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery in NYC

Event is free with the purchase of Issue 5! ($8)

Readers will include:
Bob Holman
Hal Sirowitz
Rosanne Wasserman
Fred Yannantuono
Susan Maurer
Bill Kushner
Shafer Hall
Tim Suermondt
Anyssa Kim
Jeffrey Jullich

Want more info or directions to the Bowery Poetry Club?
Visit: www.bowerypoetry.com or call 212.614.0505

A Non-Frequency Posting.

I'm going to try to put up at least one non-Frequency posting between every Frequency posting from now on, lest this become the What's Up With Frequency Blog.

Here's a brand new (pretty funny) poem by myself and Jennifer L. Knox.


Sunrise over Circus Circus with Only the Lighter Fluid Left Unspent

This is the morning of our conversation, with
purple answers suddenly flushing pink;

I'll defy you to ask those dangerous
questions smoldering in your perm:

Why you aced me, clubbed me;
why you balked over one discarded heart?

Spotting suits is like bird watching or
choreographing elaborately faggotty

military attacks on the stupid ones. We'll be
dressed all in green, and not in a leafy way,

flipping over cards (War) while ignoring the
insufferable dipshits trying to pinpoint how

this piss/rug smelling hair disguises
a love of close shaves: to

get categorically kicked out of
all clubs--kings and queens--

your face faced yourself
playing the dumb-dumb card

but you were WARNED, with
a woodpecker of a woman

sounding a high-pitched, purposeful
cry about your razor burn but

wait'll you smell how it smells
when I set it all on fire.

Karaoke + Poetry + Frequency = Fun

Frequency this week will host the Daniel Nester's Karaoke Plus Poetry Equals Fun. This is going to be a riot and major fun. Full info at the KPF site and below:

Saturday, December 4
at Four-Faced Liar
as part of the Frequency Series
165 West 4th Street
Greenwich Village
3:00pm - 6:00pm

Readers/singers confirmed so far:

Samantha Hunt Sarah Manguso Christian Hawkey Shappy Shafer Hall Gregory Pardlo Jim Behrle Joshua Beckman Jennifer L. Knox Ada Limón

Plus: an opening set from the editors of Ubiquitous,the literary magazine of the Pratt Institute

The Durge Report

Sybil Durgin was busted firing roman candles at her neighbors' dog and was last seen "headed South."

More Frequency!

Frequency this Sunday will feature Heather Christle
and Sam Amadon. Heather is a veteran of the now-
infamous Pete's Big Salmon open mic. Sam writes
scary/hilarious poems about Hartford, Connecticut.

Funny story about Sam - at some Columbia party
last Saturday night, "someone" poured Sambuca
all over Sam's stomach and crotch and set him on
fire. He didn't scream or nothin'.

That'll be Sunday the 21st at 2:30PM at 165 W. 4th
St. (Four-Faced Liar).

Saturday Frequency

We are very particularly excited this weekend to welcome our beloved Maureen Thorson, Maggie Nelson, and the all-the-way-from-out-of-town Heidi Lynn Staples (nee Peppermint) to the Frequency.

That'll be SATURDAY afternoon at 2:30 PM at the Four Faced Liar at 165 W. 4th St.

Forty Tigers!

Tiger #40 comes from long-lost Brian Benitez! For the curious: Brian is married to the lovely Tiffany and has a son, Devin. His band 15% performs around San Antonio, and he has a masters degree in behavioral psyche. His right big toe is slightly longer than his left.

Build up Your Cub

So he came home early.
His dogs each had its own
excruciating heartbeat.

He hung his stripes on the striperack (striperack?).
There had been reports of others
being mauled by a pack of roving magicians,
so we'll call tonight a hermit session.

On his way to the feeding pile, he came across
A huge blood spill on the floor,
(Probably left over from one of the '97 All-Nighters).
He opted to examine his red reverse. There he was.
Standing on two legs in the afternoon.

Zach Schomburg's

Lovely Arc!

This sadistic challenge

was posed to John & I by Adam Golaski. We're still looking for more.

The form:

rule 1.
11 lines per stanza, 3 stanzas, 11 syllables per stanza.

rule 2.
The line "an engine boils afternoon air above &" must appear in the poem.

rule 3.
The word engine must be used at least 3 times (this includes the line that must be in the poem).

rule 4.
at least 4 other automotive parts must appear in the poem.

rule 5.
The word "and" is always to be written as an ampersand (&).

The title:
"The Afternoon Slant"

Reading Report (Mr. Nester's Opus)

Daniel M. Nester read last night at Barb's (or Barbay's; I donno how to make accent marks).

I've seen a handful of Daniel's readings for Part II of his God Save My Queen opus, and the reading last night was the best to date.

Dan does a better job in God Save My Queen II, I think, of fusing the Queen stuff with the personal stuff, and last night's reading reflected that cohesion. Sometimes it's hard for me to understand the emotional complexity of, say, Freddie Mercury's solo work (other times, of course, it smacks us in the face, like with Freddie's death. Now that I know Dan, thinking about Freddie's death chokes me up. Didn't before.)

Last night, though, Dan's deeply personal relationship with Queen was transmitted to the audience with startling clarity. I found myself alternately laughing from funny stuff and exhaling breath from emotional gut punches in places where I might've drifted off a bit during previous readings.

I was, of course, trying to remember a lot of very specific examples and, of course, I forgot most of them. "One Vision" was juxtaposed with some of the anecdotal stuff in a way that made it seem like a musical composition itself. The reading as a whole seemed composed (in a good way), it was smooth very easy to follow. There was one poem ("Don't Try So Hard") that I particularly liked, and at dinner later Dan said he thought of it as a Shafer sort of poem. Totally clickin'!

And Ben Murphy kicked the show off, playing "Lap of the Gods" and "I'm in Love with My Car" solo and acoustic. He was standing up and not wearing a hat, and he rocked. I hadn't heard "Lap of the Gods" before, and I think that Ben might've added something to it that might not've been there before. "I'm in Love with My Car" is not the sort of song you'd expect to hear solo-ly and acoustically, but Ben banged it out; he made it rock.

My apologies to the other readers. I had to go watch Game 7 of the NLCS. And that's all I'm going to say about the goddamned Astros. Wish I'd stayed at the reading...

Tyger Number Thirty Nine

From Poetry Gameshow Host Douglas Rothschild. He exchanged words between Blake and Keats mad-lib style to create this hybrid tyger:

Begin with Fire
by William Blake

Shoulder of night and immortal frame,
Deadly brain-fire of the burning stars:
Clasping in thee what to make and dare
With fire the wings of what dread-eyes seize;
To beat with anvil the night chain-twists,
And fire the forests with symmetry to the brain;
To throw the hammer, and make the hearts sinews
With the immortal night; to see burning down,
And throwing down, dread furnace of the brain,
When he threw bright deeps could deadly clasp,
Of stars were in-chained their distant grasp.

Who could see thee down in his smile?
when he who smiles down could frame
Thee seeing deadly on the furnace frame,
his hand burnt-night in the winging work;
Or on the dread-shouldered fire distant art,
Chained with the fires of heaven, when his hand
Siezed the bright symmetry and its dread fears:
Or when with the grasper he did make
Deadly thy fearful heart in the brain;
Or with the chain-sinews, with dread smile,
He works the distant hammering hand in heart.

What are the skies of Tygers? And, what is he?
Aspire to thee, he was thy night when, --
down beaten dread dares the distant-burning deep,
And twists the star-spears with fearful hand;
What of immortal art the burnt heart made
In the night’s symmetry beaten down
Or smiling in the bright work smiles or dares;
And distant-immortal lambs could aspire in bright brain;
heart-chains sieze; or when with terror dread
The bright-art watered in the hammer-clasp;
And burning Tygers twisting in the sky.

Further Cause for Further Celebration

is the first Shafer Hall/Maureen Thorson collaboration:

Red Velvet Sweatsuit

The lowbrow lowdown, waitress in a cowboy hat
demands orders from demanding customers demanding eggs.

Queen of the Rodeo, swirling with enamel overlay
in the display case. Painted Indian princess too.

"I'm not responsible," mutters a man in a bolo tie
to his bolo tie. "You've got me in a bind."

Sale rack swings in the wind: red velvet a dollar
a hand a yard sale selling used sweatsuits/boots.

"Nothing to see here," the waitress says, off her shift at last.
Coyotes are howling on the moonlight prairie for more coffee.

Cause For Celebration

After three hours of Hotmail spelunking, I am down to 100 unread messages in my inbox. I think I'll take a break. The good news is that I've found some lost tigers so please stay tuned.

The Durge Report

Sybil Durgin says that a good karaoke adlib (a la Mike Sammons' "Eye of the Wiener" or yours truly's "I'm So Vain") is elusive. Any suggestions will be carefully considered for her next performance.

The Delightful Deborah Ager

of 32 Poems has a blog here. You can find out more about 32 Poems (who will be publishing my poem about Gertrude Ederle in their Fall issue) here.

!

Andy Friedman surprised Frequency-goers today with his (unnanounced: my fault) no-nonsense approach to poetry. Mind you -- you can see a full show at Galapagos at 8PM on Monday night. Depending on the condition of the hand of the girl who's opening for him, I may or may not be opening the show. I'll be in the audience either way. Lookout!

Frequency!

Join us on Saturday, October 16th at 5PM for readings by David Ohle and Brian Evenson, and again on Sunday, October 17th at 2:30 PM for Caroline Knox and Timothy Donnelly. Both readings at our beloved Four Faced Liar, 165 W. 4th.

Pete's Humongous Salmon

Loved Ones,

I will be giving a Big Important Reading in the shallow end of the Brooklyn Ocean on Monday night (the 11th) at 7:30 PM. It'll be at Pete's Candy Store which is on 709 Lorimer in Williamsburg. More specific directions canbe discovered here: http://www.petesbigsalmon.com

I'll be reading with the amazingly phenomenal Jeni Olin and Adam Something-or-Nother. And of course our dearly beloved Ada and Jen will be hosting the show. For those who haven't seen Ada and Jen host an event, it's sort of like the Smothers Brothers, only scarier.

Much love,
Shafer

Frequency!

A special SATURDAY Frequency this week will feature Cynthia Cruz, Tracy McTague, and Chad Davidson, so it will be not to be missed. That's October 9th at 2:30 PM at the FourFaced Liar at 165 W. 4th St.

Brooklyn Ocean to the Manhattan Sea to the Gulf of Queens -- it's all the same team. Hurrah!

John & I

are working on a new set of collaborations. We've been asking friends to give us titles and forms for which we will write poems. For example, Jeff Paris gave us the title "It's Not Lucky To Be Berd." and the form "prose poem" and out came the poem below.

Please note that the form does not have to be a form defined in the Poetry Dictionary. You can declare your own form. Just give us specific rules and a name for your new form.

Here's the first one. We'll field all challenges here declared.

xo,
Shafer and John

I. It's Not Lucky To Be Berd.

There's only one hard season, but it could be a different season for anyone. I went to return Berd's wallet, but got caught up and you know how when you're on a street, and it is snowing or raining or really hot or the leaves are falling -- these are things you have to share. We each carry our own chest of drawers down the stairs. Drawers are good places to keep wallets so you don't lose them. I carry Berd around now and I don't know where he's moved to.

Happy 38th to O:T

Our thirty-eighth Tiger Poem is from new friend Elaine Bleakney.

Tiger Show

Where we would be loose and yawning,
a high and well-fed party
leaning into each other, drifting around the
tree, watching the kids, sort of
irritated—the way we get
when nothing is clenched or was
for too long, muscled into a stupor, slow as the tree.
And the paired-off ones and the lone ones
paired-off and alone,
nothing awful or too dear. For awhile
there is nothing to say.

Laurel

wants to tell the world that her website has moved to http://jewishyirishy.com

Tiger 37

Helen C. "Nana" Hall sends us our 37th Tiger. Nana says "I'm sure I'll end my days being known as "that crazy old cat lady," but I don't care. I really love cats. The following is just something that has been on my mind."

And we love her.

Montecore

lifeguard or savage beast?

Enraptured audience
suddenly mute.

Powerful jaws gripping
fragile neck.

Lights out,
show's over.

Only words spoken
for many months.

"Please don't hurt the cat."

Frequency!

Frequency this week will feature Quinn Latimer and Anselm Berrigan. Wow!

The Four Faced Liar
Sunday, 9/26, 2:30 PM
165 W. 4th St. & 6th Ave.

Swim on over!

Some Confusion

about the post below: when I say I've posted all the tiger poems, I mean all the ones that were backlogged. I still want tiger poems from everybody in the entire world; keep them coming.

Corrections

The below poems credited to Cindy Skylar are actually by Cynthia Cruz.

&

The tiger in Deb Stein's poem IS still with us, by the power of Deb's love.

I think I think I hope

that all of the tiger poems are up now. If you haven't seen yours, it's not because I don't love you. It's because my email inbox is like a demilitarized zone. No military in there whatsoever. If you're missing, please send me a gentle reminder and I will go Hotmail-spelunking to locate it and post immediately.

Tiger Poem #36

is a collaboration by Daniel Morrow and Nick Johnson. We like collaborations.

Small print to preserve formatting.

Tiger Aspects

The fourth hunter disposed his bullet and through
the pampous grass, pompously asked "am i killing myself with this gun?
for where will all the tigers be when the last hunt is done
and won,
gritzag uld jaun*?"

The tiger growled and flashed its eyes,
"don't worry little man** this is the guise of nature with her
ticklish thighs, she will by nature precure a prize and practise it's
prey on your demise"

* wise old tiger
**the tiger is being ironic

Number 34 and 35 Tiger Poems!

From Cynthia Cruz:

Praying

Sometimes a thrasher
Enters the maelstrom.

Sometimes I remember
My brother

Before the accident.
Hiding mother's bottles in the cold blue snow.

In the distance, the house is
Fracturing. In the bedroom, the walls are

Red with racing tigers and the door is
Always locked.

Inside the ice storm, my brother
Made the sky small, again.

*

Siberia

Already, the dream tigers have arrived.
Striped and enormous, as always.

When you vanish in the maze of silver cypress,
Let the mallow-white

Ink take the quiet
Of your mind.

Let the river
Kill the blossom.

He who hurt you once,
Shall now be put to rest.

I will find him, I will
Waste him in my own sweet way.

If I can, I will

Tiger 33

from Catherine Ramsden. Of crawling-around-on-the-floor-like-a-tiger-at-the-Boston-Poetry-Massacre fame. Rowr.

Fit to be Tigered

orange ruff
feral pulses
in a hip-hop jungle
off-beat bodies contour
stronging stripes in silhouette

kodachrome cages
capture
punish
pretense,
prowling kitties

32 Tiger

from Deb Stein. The tiger in question is no longer with us, I'm afraid.

For Lucky Tiger (CHP Kitten, Not Long for This World)

Little lucky tiger ain't so lucky as it turns out.
He's slow like the rest of us, and
like the rest of us can barely move but
in spastic little circles.

None of us tigers, as it turns out,
were very lucky either.
For months we circled the spastic spaz until
when we moved too close to the sides and
fell off the edge
a giant cardboard house caved in on us,
on our heads,
on our lame legs,
on our loved ones and on other lucky tigers.

That was really hard for some of us tigers—
when the last edge of the last lick
of cardboard set ablaze burnt down
the house, poor tigers who can't run at all!

But some tigers just kept right on keepin' on
keeping themselves toasty warm
in the hothot tiger wreckage,
skipping a beat and then not at all.

Dan Nester Is Reading Tonight!

At a brewery no less! In Williamsburg, no less!

He says:

"This will be my last reading in New York for some time, and the last of my "GSMQII launch events." I hope you can come! Your presence will be appreciated."

Thursday, September 16 2004
7:00pm - 9:00pm

Joint Soft Skull/Akashic Bonanza at the Brooklyn Brewery with Derek McCormack, Daniel Nester and Joe Meno!

Brooklyn Brewery
Brewers Row
79 N. 11th St. (b/t Berry & Wythe )
Brooklyn NY, 11211
tel: 718-486-7422

Frequency

on Saturday at 2:30 will feature Michael Schiavo, Aaron Kiely, and Chris Martin. That'll be 2:30PM at 165 W. 4th.

A Saturday night show at Pete's Candy Store will feature the music of Sharron and Ben Murphy and readings by myself and special guests. If you're a special guest, please note it in my comments field. I don't know who's confirmed and who ain't.

Much love,
Shafer

Next Tiger Poem

is from Taryn's Granny Fort. (That isn't code for anything.) It is untitled.

He was a paper tiger
knighted along the way.
Ere his innards turned around
the buzzards swarmed his soul.
A serial adulterer his secret passageways
could tell the sins of Godless men.
The pious forgave him on that fateful day...
He commandeered and sucked the precious air of others....
While marching among the real ones
worthy of their smoke-filled gear...
Then onward to Londontown he rode to take his place
Among the reams of papier mache. Mottled.
The mask he chose to wear!

Famous Persons Circa 16

Loosely Culted Around John of Kronstadt

Community knitted like a quilt
out of the comfort of personality

or something like worldwide fame
in a small world, John of Kronstadt
could've been anyone, anyone

with a good face for iconography
and powerful devotion

to the comfortable sacraments,
confession and communion
and repeat if necessary:

John Kronstadt, Kronstadt John,
John John, Krondstadt, John

Fer God's Sake...

Won't you come to the release party for Daniel Murlin Nester's God Save My Queen II tonight?

It's at the Four Face Liar at nine p.m.-ish. That's 165 W. 4th St.

Dan will (winking furiously) make it worth your while.

By "make it worth your while" I mean "feed you and play Queen songs for you."

Come back to the blog soon for a tiger poem by Taryn's grandmother! Ain't life grand?

Frequency

kicks off on Sunday with Gina Myers, Edmund Berrigan, and special friends.

Please come to the Four-Faced Liar on Sunday the Fifth at 2:30 PM. It's at 165 W. 4th and 6th Ave.

Much love,

The Number Thirty Tiger Poem

was brazenly stolen from Jim Behrle's The Jim Side.

Marijuana Girl

I wrote it in your pussy book

as a way of apologizing

good luck with Gandalf

things must be working out

because of the shaved snazz

it's an after school special

scratches on film and on moon

any purchase deserves trust

can I have the key to get laid?

the tiger by the tail is no more

I enjoy diet coke

while the FBI is hassling my mom

poppy seeds to foil my urine

we don't go to the red states but

come on over so I can knock you up

I've got such a hard-on and

the reg owes Amy $10

The Durge Report

The last we heard, Sybil Durgin had a fella. We've been trying not to think about it.

On the Subject of Immortality: Modjadji the Rain Queen

On immortality, high
and all of your mighty
tricky ways to make it
rain. Poor old queen
began again, had to
begin again.
I’m so
tired, but all of this
spinal crocodile
soup keeps me awake,
eyes made of ceiling.
It’ll always be what
amazes me, what queens do.

We've been saving Rob's

XXGood tiger poem. This'll be the first, last, or middle one in the book. It's untitled. Hook up with Rob via the link to the right.


Crazy jig up in Harlem
Kept a tiger in his crib
Shifty eyes, head on a swivel. Crept
Dirty streets to C-Town
Then secreted back again
Mounds of midnight meat
Smuggled
To keep that big cat fed

Done pacing, growling, roaring
Now gnawing his own flesh.
Draped over pissy couch. Tongue
Licked his diseased chops
Eyed that little man
Fell into fitful sleep
Dreamed
Jungle kingdom tree-branch bed

Feeding time up in Harlem
Meat tossed from behind TV-stand
Throwing, ducking. Biting, Gulping. Eyes
Trained on that little man
Inhaled the last rump roast
Reached and ripped jig’s ribs right out
Satisfied
Fierce prowling his own land

Our friend Lesley

has made it clear to me that we need to discuss Rousseau, who loved tigers and football. Acccording to the worldwide web, he took sarcastic remarks literally. Real smart, Rousseau!

#27 and #28 Gina Myers Tiger Poems

Lament

O tiger, O sorrow

Gina Myers and Julia

have made for an almost flawless segue between tiger season and National Football Season. But, OH! Don't let that stop you from sending us your tiger poems. We'll be accepting them for a little while longer.

BUT MOSTLY, here is Gina's tiger poem. You can hear her read at Frequency on September 5th, with Ed Berrigan. You can read more of her work by following links to the right, or by typing "Gina Myers" into a search engine.

Tigers

Tigers burn bright.
Tigers party all night.
Tigers play baseball—
they’re all right.
Tigers ain’t 'fraid to fight.

Their tiger stripes
are out of sight.
Tigers are big & bad.
You’re not a tiger?
Oh so sad.

*

Lordy. We LOVE Gina Myers.

#26 Tiger Poem

From Julia in Houston:

TIGERRRRS!

tiger tiger -pretty sweet
tigers munch on wild boar meat
tiger tiger -fight fight fight
when tigers mate they bite bite bite
tiger tiger -sleep all day
and then at night they hunt for prey
tiger tiger -so unique
i hope you never become extinct.

Pre-Season Frequency Part II

What do you say we meet at the Liar on Sunday afternoon to read brand spanking new poems about the Olympics? If you are out of town and still want to contribute, leave an Olympic poem in the comments field and I or some other semi-competent poet will read it for you.

25 Tiger

From Steve. See also the comment section of my Sanford and Son posting for Steve's translation of the Mr. Ed theme into Indonesian.

*Steve, I wasn't sure if the formatting was skewed by the comments code. If you want this thing broken differently, just let me know.

Yet Another Tiger Poem:
Golf is Flog Spelled Backwards

I play my pestilential game
Without a single speck of shame.

I hack my way around the course
With absolutely no remorse.

The fairways, I have rarely seen —
I struggle once I’m on the green.

My drives will hook, or maybe slice.
They do not follow my advice.

My shots all seek the woods and water.
They do not travel where they orter.

O, I’d forgo all worldly goods
If I could play like Tiger Woods

For just one game. ’Tis not to be;
I guess I’ll have to play like me.

Tidy Tigermint

O:T #24 is from the very-easy-to-be-devoted-to Heidi Lynn Staples:

(Had to make it very small to preserve formatting. Even so, the last "tiger" in the poem should actually be at the end of line 12. Note it! Note it now!)

TIGER PANTS

A Tiger is still a tiger,
Even if he can't tiger it tiger anymore;
Or at least that's what tigers like to tiger themselves.
Me, I'm of two tigers about it.

Even if a tiger can't tiger it tiger anymore,
He can still tiger other things. Really nice sexy things too.
Or at least that's what tigers like to tiger themselves.
Tigeriously, what's most important is that two people truly tiger each tiger.

Even an ol' tigered out tiger can still tiger other things. Really nice sexy things too.
Like take a gong haughty tiger together after a harp's doo-whop at tiger. Plenty to do!
Tigeriously, what's most important is that two people tiger each other. Not
O woe is tiger, I thought he was sharp, and then I realized he was not a he, but a tiger.

But before I go to bed, and to prevent any confusion...

...here's the Sanford and Son theme (which I always confuse with the Simon and Simon theme in my scattered memory) also rendered in meows:

Me-me-meow-meow,
me-me-meow-meow-meow-meow-meow,
me-me-meow-meow,
me-me-meow-meow-meow-meow-meow,
me-me-meow-meow-meow-meow-meow-meow-meow!

Simon and Simon will be right back...

...we will?

Here's the theme song to the 80s family private detective show rendered in meows:

Me-meow-me-meow,
me-meow-me-meow,
me-meow-me-meow-meow,
meow-me-meow-meow.

Me-meow-me-meow,
me-meow-me-meow,
me-moew-me-meow-meow,
meow-meow-meow-meow!

I should probably go to bed now.

#23 Tiger Poem

Comes all the way from Austin, Texas, where Benjamin Westney is studying to get his License to Kill with the Cello.

Tiger?

Tiger, Tiper, Tiple, Taple.
Saple, Sapple, Scapple, Scrapple.

Would we giggle if we heard
that Scrapple Woods just needs this ‘bird’
to win the U.S. Open Major Title?

Would little girls read "Scrapple Beat"
to gaze at glossy pics replete
with hunky studs from teenie-bopper movies?

And what of movies on the screen?
Would "Crouching Scrapple…" still be seen
by everybody five times in the theater?

Would Siegfried still have prayed for Roy
when he became a scrapple toy?
I tell you, friends, it doesn’t really matter.

For scrapples are a fearsome bunch,
who’d just as soon have us for lunch
than ponder on the meaning of their label.

It’s best for us to do the same,
and worry not about the name
of nature’s stalking, killing, striped creatures!

#15 Famous Persons

Harry Houdini Still Has Things To Say

All of you tricky hats, all bunnies
and eccentric wand taps,
all Chinese torture boxes, all
shackles, all foxy girls
wrapped up in snakes, all out,
all the way in, all tricks picked up
all around the world
and when you’re all tired out,
all your sleight of hand
won’t help. All that dirt,
all the magic at the end.

The Dark Hole

in my heart left by the demise of Monday Poetry Report has been filled by No Tell Motel! A new poet every week featuring a new poem every day! YES! That's, like, a million poems a year! Look for Shanna Compton and Heidi Lynn Staples (nee Peppermint) upcoming, and go there right now for Anthony Robinson. (Pop champagne bottle, pour on Reb's head.)

Pre-Season Pre-Frequency Pre-Report

Fun reading yesterday at the Liar. Adam Golaski was in from Montana, and I made him an Olympic Cocktail, which I found in my 1956 Old Mr. Boston bartender's guide. It's scotch, curacao, and OJ. We started the reading with an open mike -- I read a poem by Jeni Olin from the new Hanging Loose, which also features John Cotter. Then Maureen read the climactic poem from her Calamity, and John read a hilarious poem written by Adam's 4th grade students. John sometimes writes poems about a character named "E," and Adam had his students do the same. With hilarious results. Then Adam read, and he began with a poem written by one of his students, whose name I've forgotten. I think it went

Skeleton

Skeleton in my closet,
quit rattling your bones!

But I could be way off. He also read some prose -- one about an island of boys was my favorite of the day, prose or poetry. He read a poem for John, and he read his alcohol and cigarettes poem, which first appeared on this blog somewheres. I went home right after my shift because I was shagged out, but from the voice mails I received this morning, Adam, John, and Jeff continued to swerve into the night. I assume that they are all in jail this morning.

FREQUENCY!!!

I'll be posting a schedule for the Fall season of Frequency here sometime this week, but in the meantime, please come to a pre-season Frequency reading this Sunday. My friend Adam Golaski will be in from Montana to read from his accomplished body of work. We're going to have an open reading prior to his reading, and since he's from Montana (by way of Boston), I thought that we could all write poems about the wild, wild West. I think that Maureen and Jen might have some of those. Remember -- Jersey's west of here, and it's pretty wild over there sometimes. All I'm saying is that the reading's theme can be loosely interpreted. For instance, Niki Whiteman will be writing a poem about the National League's Western Division, and Ada Limon will provide us with a poem about Nick and Nora Charles, who lived in California.

Also featured will be the beautiful Ms. Jaime Corbacho and the spirited Mr. John Cotter.

So that'll be Sunday afternoon at 2:30PM at the Four-Faced Liar at 165 W. 4th St. and Sixth Ave., Greenwich Village, Manhattan, NYC, USA. Uh rock on!

Sorry

that I've been Bad Blogger lately, y'all. See below for Lesley's tiger haiku, and keep an eye out for upcoming O:T installments from Ben Westney and the mighty Hombre Blanco!

Tiger Twenty Two

New friend Lesley haiks about her favorite tiger:

Tawny toon tiger
Hobbes taught us the value of
Sun and tummy rubs.

Who knew?

That poetry could be so goddamn sexy?

Tiger Poem #21

From kickboxing queen Erica Kaufman:

the kickboxing tigress

she deems attacks unusual.
like tiger to human. here no
dummies needed. only platform.
a little combat readiness. but
outside how is there time
for choreography? i know
how tiger brains. are used.
know this body’s weaponry.
she’s concerned about lower.
back. this normal range
of flexion. on all fours. it’s
about arching. and she makes feline
all. her own. i practice. mount
position. keep whiskers close.

#19 Tiger Poem from my little sister, Gracie!

Terrific
Is
Gato's
Exclamatory
Rarrghhhhh!!!!!!


And coming soon are Tom Hopkins, Gina Myers, and many more!

Famous Persons 14

Someone’s in the Kitchen with Judith Jamison

When I cook, I like to do it
with one thousand dead professional chefs
all around me, guiding my hand
and gently moving my blade
this way and that
so that I don’t cut my thumb
when I’m doing the slippery red peppers.

And when the pot starts to boil
I can almost see them in the steam
or perhaps they are the steam.

It’s that kind of magic.

When I cook it’s a lot like, well,
it’s a lot like dancing.

From “The Golden Child” novelization by George C. Chesbro, Chapter 21, first paragraph:

Chandler was halfway to the cage when the crucified chanter on the wall to his right exploded in a ball of black flame. The flame instantly spread across the wall, dissolving it. Beyond the black flame, from somewhere across space and time, Chandler heard a chorus of agonized screams which seemed to resonate with the howling of his own soul as Sardo Numspa -- his gray suit, cape, and boots untouched by the flame -- stepped out of the holocaust.

Naked Idiot

Daniel Fine and his Naked Idiot have a new website! To hear the Naked Idiot, click on music (duh).

Tiger Poem One Thousand Two Hundred and Sixty-Three

Jaime Corbacho's Chihuahua-About-Town COSTELLO contributes our next tiger poem. Wow!

Costello -- If you talk to Sybil Durgin, tell her to email me some info for a new Durge Report. Mmwah!

Why Tigers RULE:

Tigers are awesome because their mouths can fit entire heads in them.
Sometimes, even more.
Tigers also rule because they can totally kick your ass.
Or bite it.
For serious.
Tigers don’t take no shit.
Except for those ones that live in casinos.
Like, totally, if I were Montecore,
I would have bit Roy Horn’s ass a long long time ago.
But, he’s learning.
So watch out, cause I rule.
And Tigers are even more rulinger than you think.

Stack this, bitch.

Please note that this was written by a Chihuahua.

Famous Persons #13

is for Amanda Burnham, who is nowhere to be found! Where are you, Amanda, and how would you qualify or quantify your crush on the mighty Thome? Your public wants to know.


Jim Thome Played Basketball In College

and underneath those hot Illinois nights
he used to dream of being black.

Now Jim Thome is married to Andrea
and he is married to the virtue of charity.

They call him a good guy, Jim
“Good Guy” Thome because of his work

to help the unfortunate, but God called him
Jim Thome; he has the smoothest swing.

Noah Eli Gordon's #17 Tiger Poem!

Ladies and Gentleman, Noah Eli Gordon!

TIGER, TIGER

This is what I recall about snow

inside a very small tiger, about snow

in the shape of a very small tiger, about

the expansive relics, the symbols

sewn into silk, the story they told

& those who listened, who listening

were circled, enclosed in the weave,

assuming the miniscule stitch

causing the eye of a very small tiger

to appear as habitually open, the habits

with which one accords a very small tiger

the grace of brittle legs & ardent longing

& the habitat a very small tiger treks

collectively assist those who take

full responsibility & those who

assail one another gregariously, untigerlike,

in translating the outlandish texts,

weather stations & amplitude with which

one unmaking a very small tiger

transmits unrelated data into something

analogous to the microscopic computations

evolving the paradox of an exact replica

of a very small tiger into its opposite,

both non-very & un-small, lacking

striation, emblematic of a suppressed

emotion, of the movement a very small tiger

makes when protecting its young

or padding itself with snow

so as to appear larger, or succinctly,

a swallowing of the landscape in order

to avoid the inverse, the extinction

of a very small tiger & those

who claim thinking machines inevitably

revoke the omniscience one grants

the act of taking a very small tiger

by the tail, of superfluous yearning

for non-flesh-eating mammals & iridescent

oil slicks in the shape of a very small tiger,

upon which the snow falls gratuitously,

evoking the experience of physical action

as the architecture a very small tiger

emanates from, as the ink expended

therein & also the yarn, lion-envy

& the rusting of numerous weathervanes.

Tiger 16!

The All Mighty Taryn Fort weighs in with TWO untitled Tiger Poems! Taryn was a tiger when she was young, but now she is a sexy Wildcat!

#1

Orange inflammatory terrain provides government
betwixt the blackened ribbons.
Some colonies are smeared larger than others.
Wealth over poverty? No deep sink here;
survival drifts aloft waves of coat.
The head of the apple-consuming Snow White
provided more congressional mass for decision-making-
perhaps indicative of the lure toward no resistance flourish.
Distinguishing between two is a camouflage of old.

Lazy vigilante ventilates the creature.
This is no novice Yankee;
but striped couture of an archetype in the great cycle.
Crayon-colored slivers messily steer to its noggin.
Knowledge stockpile.
Great cyclical accounts of hunting drag through generations.
The felt-tip masks its face,
catalyzes death for those genetically-challenged.
Natural selection presides-
a Darwinian capability to keep up with the Jones'
of responsibility to change.

Fright fails the oiled ability of its observation methods.
Many lose. Scribble down law. Pass it along. Nobody messes with us.

Brand me tiger.

#2

Tiger meat is good to eat when you are almost dead.
It's tougher than chicken and fervid devil red.

Cursive circles of black intertwine pumpkin
for orphans well-fed.

Blaze on my arms and cut open my head.
He will eat off my tongue and inclinations rarely well said.

Perhaps he will prefer a sapphire nail bed. Ions lost steam
and vents openly bled.

Carousing is no longer a book to be read.
Flee of your mind, the claws in cushy skin bread.

I feel it all now. Upon my hide he will tread.

Blankety-boo, sugar-filled cubes of me fester blue.
Turn it around. The human fell through.

Famous Persons Number Something-or-'Nother

Leon Trotsky at His Own Leisure

Clattering around the Vermont pad
where he and his family were vacationing one morning,
Leon trotted out the hot chocolate and the warm jumpsuits
and the skis, for this was a time of leisure,
many years of existing at both warm and cold temperatures
at the same time. Both later and before, he reflected,
a bit of blood could teach the same lesson.

Come congratulate Mark yourself

on his newfound poetry success at the Four-Faced Liar, where he will appear next Saturday the 14th. He will drink a lot of Guinness and be available to "whup your ass" (in Maureen's words) at Trivial Pursuit.

Tiger 15!

From Mark Hoofnagle, whom some may better know as Maureen Thorson's man.


To Kill a Tiger, starring the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission

Ever think it would be cool to kill a tiger?
I hear Tarzan has one.
Hardly sporting,
past his prime.
Which one?

It's coming right for us!
(Bobo is dead, Tarzan is pissed)

Ada Limon

kinda rhymes with "tiger poem." Which is just one of the many thousands of reasons that I love her. Welcome to Operation: Tiger number, um, 14?


The Circus Folk Find Fault in Their Own Humanness

The circus of us
is constantly leaving,
the elephants down the midway,
my little bone baby, my tented
world of un-machines.

Yes, we’ve killed most everything:
the caspian tiger,
the javan
and, it’s true,
the bali are all gone.

Still, our finest failure,
our human parts uncovered and
raw like a tiger wound
we cannot find a reason to touch one another
without a gasping audience in the room.

Maureen

guest bartended at the Liar last night! Needless to say, she was the belle of that crazy ball.

More administrative stuff.

Please note that I've corrected the spelling of Reb's name in my sidebar. Oh yeah. Mad props. Ada Limon's tiger poem will appear here in a matter of minutes.

By no means a blogger of Darwinian proportions...

Tom's link works now. It didn't before.

There's no such thing

as a bad tiger poem. If yours isn't up, it's because I've been trying to parse them out so's every tiger gets his or her time in the sun. Or maybe it's 'cause I'm getting ass-hammered in a South Brooklyn jail. Whatever the reason, it ain't 'cause your tiger poem's bad. No such thing.

I've got fifty bones rollin'

with my man Tom Hopkins in the race to cure breast cancer. In return, he will be providing us with a few thoughts on tigers. You, too, can roll for the cure vicariously through Tom at this web site!

The Durge Report

Sybil Durgin was wearing Ann Taylor on Monday. We think that Ann Taylor is kinky as fuck!

Roommate Brogan...

...is now checking I'll Show You Mine to see what other roommates are up to! Roommate Danielle is in Honduras with her mom, roommate Lucas is in bed getting some well-earned sleep, and roommate Shafer is, um, blogging. No roommates to date have written any poems for Operation: Tiger. Ouch!

Operation: Tiger continues to storm across the countryside

with a first class prose piece from Nicole Hefner...and it's in aubergine!


It’s not that I was afraid of the tiger. As a girl, I followed my father from one dusty carnival to another and earned my keep by clipping the thick nails of the striped beasts. Those tigers were silent, sad even, as if I were taking something that was not mine. This tiger spoke: You do not belong here, he said, you are too close to the edge; turn west; go back to the home you left. Shut up, I told the tiger, but only because I was lonely. The sky turned deep eggplant; the wind wound itself around the gnarled roots of the sea. Since you have stayed, the tiger said, you must love me, and if you love me, you will walk on this water. I, who have always been deeply ashamed of my large feet, my boats, my two blue boats, finally understood the reason for my misfortune.

Operation: Tiger (Special Edition)

A weird new installment of Operation: Tiger. On the back porch of John Mulrooney's Satuday night after-party for the Massacre, I traded my polar bear underwear for Jim Behrle's Tony the Tiger underwear. Wow!

Also, I just read on Jim's blog that he specifically requested that no poets thank him during their reading. I'm pretty sure that I thanked him. Possibly multiple times.

Also Massacre/Tiger related: during my reading I read Maureen Thorson's and Katey Nicosia's O:T contributions. They were both very well-received.

Watch for Nicole Hefner's O:T contribution here in the next few hours.

OT!

Many thanks

to Lucas and Sybil for the below guest blog entries live from Boston where we watched and read a lot of poetry. Many, many thanks to Jim Behrle for a weekend that I will remember my whole life, I think. More specifics will be forthcoming.

saturday morning coming down...

shanna drives well, shafter navigates well, shawn and i passenger well.

costello, the dog, has a rubber crab in his mouth and is showing it off.

nestled in shafer's crotch (flower-print boxers; not good), costello looks like
a texan's furry, eight-inch penis.

sybil has a good stomach. good definition and an attractive belly button.

we're in boston. i don't like guest blogging.

Keep Loose.

Live from Boston.
Shafer almost, but didn't, get arrested.
Shafer may, or may not, have pissed himself.
John Cotter is missing.
Costello is psyched.

-sybil

Lookout Boston!

Shanna and Shawn are on their way to pick up the rental car.  We're getting very excited about seeing the ones we love.  Like John, Jaime, Sybil Durgin, and Mr. Jim, old papa bear up in his Wordsworth attic.  We only hope Dan can make it.

 

The Durge Report

Straight from the Durge's mouth: Sybil Durgin expresses concern about our travel arrangements to the Poetry Massacre.

"New Yorkers aren't supposed to DRIVE CARS!!!!"

Famous Persons Eleven

Small format again to preserve long lines.
 
*
 
Teddy Roosevelt Still Hunts the Halls of the Menger Hotel

Teddy Roosevelt still hunts the halls of the Menger Hotel
for tigers and other big bears of men to haul themselves on horses
in wild borderlands where ever one will lick criminals with big bounties
on their heads and pack real close through bottle neck canyons
so even the buzzards can smell ya. Teddy will tell them
about the glory of the brushfire life, where meals are cooked
over open flame, because if you don’t eat you will surely die.
The Menger Hotel still cooks meat in the old ways using heat
like they did in the days when Teddy wasn’t invisible.

From Philadelphia Weekly:

If you're in or around Philly on Monday night, go hang out with my patron saint Marion Wrenn:

*

PBQ Pimps You Out

Mon., Aug. 2, 8pm. Free. Khyber, 56 S. Second St. 215.238.5888. www.thekhyber.com

Philadelphia has always had a thriving poetry scene--from writers with national reputations who live here, to readings that bring in such writers from other corners of the country. (Poet Gerald Stern, for instance, did a reading at little ol' Molly's Bookstore in the Italian Market a couple weeks ago--and he's won everything from the National Book Award to numerous NEA grants.) Painted Bride Quarterly contributes to the region's literary excellence by publishing poetry, fiction, essays and photographs. Now the publication brings its quirky programming to the Khyber. The first part of the evening includes readings by three authors--Kathy Graber; Michele Kotler, founder of the Community~Word Project and a performative poet from New York; and Aaron Balkan, along with acoustic music by Michael Bryson and others. Then comes Poetry-Improv Meets Post-Modernism (PIMP), which is like Whose Line Is It Anyway for creative types and intellectuals. Past PBQ events have proven bawdy and fun, so you shouldn't feel intimidated by the subject matter. (Liz Spikol)

Ah the sweet dreams...

Of the night shifter.  Been having very apocalyptic ones lately.

Shanna and I...

...were talking this morning about seeing more non-poet poets contribute to Operation: Tiger.  We're still waiting on a lot of contributions, not in the least of which are Ada, Jaime, John, and Paul, but I'd love to hear from EVERYBODY.  Poetry has all the populism of rock 'n roll, and I love Dan.

The Frequency Reading Series...

...will be thoroughly booked when we get back from the Poetry Massacre, we promise!  But now is a good time to let us know if you haven't heard from us proper-like.  Email us at shaferhall at gmail dot com.  XO!

Good times, good times.

Just looking through the archives at Lee Klein's Eyeshot.  My favorite Eyeshot story ever is On the Jitney by Ginny Wray.

#11 Tiger Poem

From Anthony Robinson comes our ELEVENTH (!) tiger poem.  I had to use a very, very small font so that the lines wouldn't be broken up.  I hope that you can read it:


Self-Conscious Menagerie: Tiger

In the bulging hammock of the universe, a tiger holds court.
a tiger in a hammock means business                  we love business.

today star says: libra take what you want              don’t think you can’t have
Johnny go-getter pins Sally to the canvas like a hollow butterfly

beautifully. Alice Toklas makes eggs with two sticks of butter.
my cookbooks stand in as fish stand in.   you know, poems.

lacking the photos the too big seething hat.       language tw-
itching in my groin.                    Michael Palmer of the moment.

who goes where               I’ve made your French things dirty
the laundry of your wan Bastille, your panties on the sill

a tiger in a laundry room washes more efficiently.         than antelope.
your hard surface burning bright.            your symmetry, jawbone, lack.

calves too thin. frock too thin. face too thin. hungry tiger makes
the strongest drinks. hanging from a tree, I picked a juicy cherry.

working through the twelve-year old’s catalog of vice. managed
cigarettes, cursing.        next up, masturbation.              I’ll be quite good.

in the bulging ladle of the backyard, Twemlow’s cat holds court.
he is not a tiger.                                             he is not of that tribe.

I am striped today.       lick milk from thin fingers, too thin.      nails
holes in my hands & heart. holes in my distance from.

tigers blow things up.     like balloons and bombs.     like ungraceful
people.                 stood up.          looked out.             saw the most lovely

the tooth of the French tiger.     & the Spanish tiger.       the girl
falling over her dress.                   we’ve made a mess, li’l tiger.

Adam Golaski

contributes to the Alcohol & Cigarettes from all the way in Montana with the below untitled number:


Remove the cellophane stop
Gold plastic strip stop to
smell the cigarettes Stop
remove aluminum foil
stop to smell the cigarettes
Tobacco but grapes Smell
grapes/tobacco stop
the dry cigarette between
dry lips no moisture
cellophane the foil
book of matches a shirt
breast pocket stop

~

Imagine you’re HIV postive whom
must you tell anyone at’ll
You’re snoring You’re
toying the hair on a woman’s vagina
You’ve opened outside, "c’mon"
Imagine a train not a subway a train
A dry cigarette unlit You can
hear your own snoring who’ve
you infected Your future strain
a pattern You’re snoring again

#10 Tiger Poem

My lovely Frequency co-host & cohort Rachael Rakes contributes the following untitled
tiger poem. 

 
the home depot resume formatting office tiger
considered
as something else to hurt in the box for hurting
that requires thinking of a globe
and then zeroing in somewhere
the home depot resume formatting office tiger
presents a problem
does more than that
is a chard on a sphere of a problem
bigger than weeks
has to do with men in tiger suits

#9 Tiger Poem

Reb contributes our Number Ninth Tiger Poem here!

The Durge Report

Sybil Durgin is working on some tiger prose for us.  She's looking forward to the weekend!

Our beloved

Four Faced Liar! 

Pedro's Rising

Special Guest LOUIS at Happy Hour tonight at theFour Faced Liar.  Hang on to your...hats.

Contribute to

Operation: Tiger, or I'll give you a wedgie, and you'll be forever deemed uncool.  Remember high school, y'all poets?  Me neither.  Except for the good parts.

#8 Tiger Poem

Laurel's delightful contribution to Operation: Tiger is here.

Oh Yeah!

In addition to poetry, interpretive dance by Marion, and general sodomy, Sunday will also feature Thomas Hopkins singing showtunes with Kermit the Frog.  Wow!

Slovenia? I hardly know ya!

I believe that the correct spelling is Pepe LePew.  I don't know about accents.

Here's a nice line from Paul Killebrew's poem Entropy Missteps.

Hi, breakfast, my name is Paul,
and my house is full of water.

Paul's writing poems in Slovenia.  And dancing.  We hope he'll be back soon.

The World by Storm

Check out Katey's new poems on Failbetter.

My #9 Famous Persons Poem

The Daughter of Frankenstein Hopes Her New Lover Doesn’t Discover Her Bolts
 
Crossing thick fingers in a charming
show of humanity and faith for someone
so…so created, she squeezes her eyelids
shut and wonders if she should pray.

This new lover, he doesn’t seem
to be the sort who’d try to turn them
lefty-loosey (guys have tried this before;
it is excruciatingly painful.) Oh well,

she thinks, as she strokes his “natural”
hair, if he’s like all the rest, I can just
crush his head like a cantaloupe. I’ve
got no fear of torches anymore

and Dad could probably use some company
up there in that dark tower.

Self-Styled European Chanteuses

This Sunday at the Four-Faced Liar we will be saying goodbye to our good friend Rachel Shukert with another open reading.  Our theme this week (how not?) will be "Divas."  Marion Wrenn will be doing an interpretive dance, so you won't want to miss that, and I expect that we can expect more obscene haiku by Tom and Amanda. 

So that'll be this Sunday at 3pm at 165 W. 4th St.  Yeeha!

&

I've got a great tiger poem from Anthony Robinson, which I will get up once I've taught myself a few more things about blogging.

While we're on the subject, has anyone had trouble making links since they changed the dashboard interface?

Tiger Poem #7

Scott McDonald has contributed a bitchin' tiger poem via his www.twopeanuts.com.  Here's the direct link.

http://www.twopeanuts.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=212&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

 

#6 Tiger Poem!

Shanna Compton tells it like it must be...
 
What Tigers Will Be Wearing This Fall

Lots of plums and purples, ladies,
with glamorous retro details.
The males will opt for sporty plaids,
and corduroy or moleskin fabrics.
For most the barefoot look is in,
but expect the chic in boots.
Their overcoats will wrap around
and tie below their middles.
The younger set gets kitten heels
in leather soft and supple.
Headgear takes the simple tack
(so's not to cover ears)
perhaps a feather or a jewel,
but nothing remotely fancy.

What you won’t see this fall
........................................is a tiger in stripes.
 
They’ve loaned them to the girls downstairs
for their wildlife lingerie.

Tiger Poem #5

Daniel Nester weighs in.  And tigers weigh ALOT!
 
 
what’s he like? the man himself?

the second hand chumps in Godly
Play—I mean, phooey—! My first hand
in three rings for an out in the open act—
can’t you see I talk here to interrupt—
a third—well no, a stringed-out stop
cos we all don’t get much breakfast no more
round here for nowadays—just eggs easied up
for workaholics for the scholars who
chomp up tiger-bits of a certain curtains—
make out in the bug house all you want but folks
mean what you make, make what you mean
cos it’s just as easy to bake up the cry,
on a porch or simply lament alot—
and believe me now, partners, believe me
serve speech only when it growls
when it growls—you understand?
what’s he like? the man himself?
oh me I grew up in alot of spaces
I just space everything out

Tiger #4

From Jennifer L. Knox comes a poem that is both Tiger and Famous Person poem:
 
 
Enter the Tiger of the Wu Tang Clan
 
Oh tiger, you’re too much
shiny teeth in a million dollar
bag of fur, claws and blood
(your own), and you say that
shit ain’t nothing to fuck with.
Oh tiger, the pains you take
in taking down anything that even
blinks like a tiger, like on a box
of Frosted Flakes: the little striped
strip behind Tony’s red bandana?
Lord, tiger knows it’s got to go.
All that shit’s got to go if it takes
all night and all day and it will.
But, oh no, tiger – the kittens, too?
You don’t even know where
or if they live.

Famous Persons: Special Edition

The many-talented artist Charlie Orr wrote this very special Famous Persons poem, which he read yesterday at the Alcohol & Cigarettes FFL reading.
 
 
Daniel Nester is afraid of bats 
   
Daniel Nester is afraid of bats
Not cats, he has two
He may be afraid also of rats,
which look like giant mice
Which bats resemble
Which Daniel is afraid of
 
Bruce Wayne took on the guise of a bat because
“criminals are a cowardly, superstitious lot”
therefore Daniel Nester, who is afraid of bats
is a criminal
 
Hydrophobia is another name for rabies
Which is something some bats carry
So Daniel may have a point
His point being “I’m afraid of bats”

The Durge Report: Special Edition

In this special edition of the Durge Report, Sybil Durgin reports on John Cotter and Adam Golaski's reading in Missoula, Montana, without ever leaving the coziness of her Cambridge, MA pad: 
 
Ah, Missoula, Montana.  Who new it would be so hot?  And by hot I mean John Cotter and Adam Golaski.  Arriving late to QuarterMoon Books, I was expecting a typical reading.  To my surprise, the room was darkened and a small stage was set in the front.  Dim lighting showcased a small brass bed, a loveseat and a wet bar.  R. Kelly was playing through the sound system and the lights went off completely.  Suddenly, on the downbeat, the stage lights were thrown back on and John Cotter appeared on the loveseat and lit a candle.  Adam soon appeared on the brass bed.  Wearing naught but a sheet and doing nasty things with a down pillow, Adam let the poetry of the moment speak for itself.  This was probably the best reading I have ever been too.  I mean, for serious, they had coordinated dance moves and were wearing thongs.  Also, John poured hot wax from the candle onto his chest.  So, dear readers, think what you will about western Montana, but I will never think of the cold, barren winters that last well into April.  It’s the hot nearly naked poets gyrating to the sounds of Top 40 radio that will forever bring me back to this lovely city nestled in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.

Famous Persons #8

Rick Rubin Produces Something that Isn’t a Record
 
 
Like an afternoon
at the supermarket,
when you’ve got
a hangover.  You
can’t stand a lot
of light, but you
can’t turn any
lights off any
way.  You’re not
the producer of
this supermarket
on this Saturday.
 
Rick Rubin
disguised himself
by taking off his
sunglasses, snuck
off to the left
of the fish counter,
and threw a bunch
of switches, and
the supermarket
plunged into
soothing darkness.

Operation: Tiger #3

We love Katey!  Welcome to our #3 Tiger Poem, by Katey Nicosia...
 
A Tiger is Still a Tiger

A paper tiger, a tiger in the wind.
A leaning tiger, on the verge of tiger.

A lily. A tiger one.
A bunch of tigers in the water.

A hungry tiger, a mouth of tigers.
Timber tiger taxidermy.

Stop saying tiger.
Stop coughing.

The tiger project:
touch it, touch the tiger.

That is a tiger.

A man, a tiger in bed.
The headboard, the headboard.

A wooden tiger, a tiger on the mantle,
a still tiger is still a tiger.  A tiger.

Guest Blogger Amanda Says....

Early Superbowl prediction:
 
Philadelphia Eagles     16
 
Miami Dolphins     24
 
 
But the Texans will make it to the AFC championship game.  I promise.  If only because Shafer can rock red hot pants and a matching University of Houston titty shirt like no one else can.
 
 

Guest Blogger Dave Says...

I haven't been to Friday since the last time I was in Madison, Wisoconsin.
 
Friday asked me if I needed to get drunk off my ass, and have sex with his daughter on the isthimus.
 
Lock black on the half-shell, can't eat my bike-rail right underneath my nuts. I keep riding, riding, riding...i need to keep riding until i figure out if I understand why all those little towns keep getting in the way way of my my friends that keep dying in lock step and smoke step of all my past next steps.
 
I miss them all.

Tiger Poem #2

From Michael Schiavo...

Blue Hay

Experts are puzzled by the farmer's wife --
At least that's what they want you to believe.

Instead of sleeping, they're wide awake, ourselves like
Ghost ships risen from the sea, aimed directly

At the bewildered muskateers
With their grotesque wit, sloppy from one arcade

To another, nothing too abstract, spelling
It all out lest they embarrass themselves

Or the tribe. Not that social organizations are overly
Important -- broad, old, glittering, they have their dignity

Under the sun, but to us are as beastly mice, exemplifying
What we most abhor. It's not just the land, either,

The water too is difficult to understand. And even
A house, which would seem to be a comprehensible

Structure, has given us tizzy to spew and break
Its untraceable windows and burn linen

In the same kettle we accidentally cooked
The parakeet when we meant the tiger.
 

Update

I've updated my tiger posting becuase it, um, didn't make very much sense.  I was, um, tired last night when I posted it.

Tiger Poem #1

From Maureen:
 
All Bets Are Off

The plastic monkeys thrilled 'em
And the origami tigers'
Tiger striping killed 'em
When the tiger/monkey opera
Was playing in New York.

But monkeys stiffen, dancing
And the tigers' jungle wagers
Stranded them in Lansing
With no money and no days left
Of sick leave off from work.

The opera torn asunder
And the monkeys all in rehab,
Hoping someday to recover
From their muscular afflictions
Enough to use a fork,

The tigers hocked their whiskers
And the bookies shut their windows.
Now, in Lansing, ladies whisper,
Laughing past the alleyways where
The loser tigers lurk.

Nothing Scares a Tiger Like a Tiger

Join me in writing one thousand poems about tigers.  Work backwards or forwards from my last lines or titles, or make your own.
 
All will be posted here.
 
Titles:
 
A Burn, A Tiger, But Not So Bright
 
A Tiger Is Still A Tiger
 
I Out-Tigered Myself
 
Last Lines:
 
a cough (I cheated) and out-tigered the tiger.
 
tigers lust too.
 
I thought he was sharp, and then I realized he was not a he, but a tiger.
 
that tiger somehow seemed to know how to think like a tiger.
 

Only the Dead Know Brooklyn...

…but we the living can do our best. So c’mon out to Ft. Greene Friday night after the last performance of Neal Medlyn’s Chelsea Clinton of Comedic Arts (which will also be one of the last performances ever at the Lower East Side location of Collective Unconscious) and we’ll see what shakes down. So that’ll be Collective Unconscious at 8pm, then our Horse Badorties Fort Greene Pad at 9:30. Try not to do anything that my mom wouldn’t want you to do.
xo,
Shafer

Famous Persons #7

Bruce Springsteen in Exile 
   
All the atmosphere over here
always surprises me.  I’m always
 
surprised to learn that I can still
feel things outside of New Jersey.
 
There’s plenty of “ouch” out here,
and big drums, and hip swivel.
 
And love, too, of course.  Who
doesn’t feel that?  I can still
 
be tongue-in-my-cheeky about
some kinds of love, some anthems.

Even out here, I can orbit Asbury.

America is a better place

now that Sean McNally has a blog.

No one needs to save you now.

Famous Persons #6

On a challenge from Tony.

Paul Simon and Sherman Alexei Have a Pig Roast

And it was heavenly, with a pert
New England apple in its mouth
and such a stern, indigenous look
on its face as it spun slowly, as if

to some sort of South American
rhythm (that had been slowed down),
and there was no fighting, both
being such gentlemen celebrities,

and it was such a big spit,
but neither bragged about it,

and both removed the skin
before they decided to dig in.

Famous Persons Poem #5

The Bush Twins Are Just Like Any Other Twins

as in, weird as all fuck. They’ve got powers
i.e. they can talk to each other with their brains,
I know they can. Their brains make sentences
out of words, and they’ve got some means of

exchanging thought, probably via the conductive
air that surrounds them. That’s how the news
that the weird protester-chick who’s always
in front of the White House got a sex change

traveled so quickly. They’ve mastered things
like speech, and they are very powerful. But
I still worry about them all the time, you know,
I can’t help it, because they’re just kids.

Eelin' in the Years

This is a hilarious thing.

Neil Young: The Chelsea Clinton of Performance Art

Important Update! Neal Medlyn’s The Paris Hilton of Performance Art will not be performed next weekend, as Collective Unconscious will be moving at that time. So if you were hoping to see it, tonight (Thursday) at 10PM and tomorrow (Friday) at 8PM will be your last chances. Collective Unconscious is on Ludlow next to Barramundi. And if you haven't already heard, Neal's rad.

No Taypee or Lala Left Behind

I wouldn’t normally talk about a dream here, because they tend to be pretty boring, but Ada and Jen implied last night that they feel a bit underrepresented on the old I’ll Show You Mine, and I must’ve been feeling guilty about that when I went to sleep, because in my dreams I snorted a ton of cocaine with Snoop. That wasn’t the guilty part, though. The reason that I was in Hollywood, and therefore in a position to hang with the Doggfather, was I was supposed to star in two short films, one directed by Jen and one directed by Ada. They were both sequels to this weird period Italian art film, and they had a lot of very stilted language, and I hadn’t studied my lines, and I had spent all afternoon binging with old Long & Skinny, and so I was screwing things up terribly. Ada was very verbally angry, and Jen was quiet, which at first I took to mean that she was being understanding, but it turned out that she was just really, really angry, like twice as angry as Ada. And oh, how I longed to be back in the Dogg’s stretch SUV. It was a very upsetting dream.

Roommate Update

Danielle and I just found mutual inspiration in one anothers' lack of inspiration. Lucas and Brogan are nowhere to be found! But I think Brogan may just be asleep.

Famous Persons Poem #4

What’s In a Name, Wink Martindale?


“It’s all all-or-nothing,” Wink said
out of the corners of his eyes. (His
mouth was too busy talking to say
anything so poetic.) Wink said

that the secret to self-promotion
is right in front of you: it’s good.
But once again, he didn’t say it
with words, he said it with with

Wink, there’s no such thing
as a bedtime story. It’s all
sunrises and when you get to
the end it just starts again.

The Fanatical Ravings of Sir Walter Scott: Derek Mix's Neo-Etymology vol. 3

The word wizard is one of the most commonly misunderstood of all neo-etymologies. Proper research reveals the necessity of casting off our fixation on bearded and robed conjurers bedazing their patrons with bubbling potions and nine-, or even thirteen-, sided dice. Such medievalist delusions, portraying the origin de nom of glorified Arthurian medicine men as deriving from "someone who is wise" are directly attributable to the fanatical rantings of Sir Walter Scott, whose opium-fuelled depictions of an idealized Saxon England are forever imprinted in the modern brain. Scott was undoubtedly familiar with the ancient Slavic legend of the spa at Wyzg, generally held to be somewhere in what is today southern Ukraine, near the trans-Dniester Republic, having travelled in the region during his youth. Appearing in texts as early as the 10th century, the waters of the spa were believed to possess powerful restorative qualities, drawing pilgrims from as far away as Novgorod and Bucharest. Throughout the centuries, the monastic order of the Wyzgar acted as both attendants and guards of the spa, providing herbal remedies and treatments, ritual purification through oak branch flogging, a the traditional meal of roasted vachuk, a large rodent (similar to nutria) held to be the literal body of the Host in the original Moldovan church, which the Wyzgar slew with long birch spears. It was the name and character of these revered healers that Scott transmogrified into the Dumbledores and Gandalfs of today, as he brought to life his vision of a world filled with wizards, warriors, and thieves, dwarves, elves, orcs and demi-men who thrive on mana and hit points, acheiving various levels of beast-riding skill based on a complicated system or rules, the world we all, at least those of us who went to public schools, know and love.

Today in Self-Published Chapbook News

Contact Los Angeles poet Jamison Driskill at smallestduck at hotmail dot com to receive your copy of his Smallest Possible Duck. Featuring such classics as:

A Pal.

A pal, a brother.
Chump. Chump of the month.
Bought a lemon in the candy store, pal.
Buddy.

Straight Outta Missoula...

John Cotter and Adam Golaski will be reading their poetry in Missoula, Montana at QuarterMoon Books on Thursday at 7PM.

If anyone out there should chance to attend this reading, send me your reflections and I will post them here. I think that Montana is on the other side of New Jersey somewhere. North of Texas.

Three Poems by Rachel Shukert

Gentlewoman and European-style Chanteuse Rachel Shukert's chapbook Kitschmenschen will soon be available to thirsty scholars. I volunteered to write a blurb (nay, it was my pleasure.) Here's the first draft:

"To those sophisicated enough to know the pleasure of pulling one's own toenails out with pliers, Ms. Shukert offers this garland of pain and love."

Eh?

Here's a little taste:

War

The enemy has invaded my city
Stormed my citadel
Tempts my pure and pious subjects
To heresy.
I’d better start a T-shirt campaign
To throw her out.

Old Friends

Why can’t we just be friends?
You speak with the voice of a bitten lip.
It would be much easier.
Why can’t we just be gay?
I reply.
Why can’t we just be black?
Why do you ask stupid questions?
Then I go back to blowing you.
We ARE friends.

Advice #2

If a girl that’s prettier than you
Tells you how pretty you are
She’s probably lying.

If that same girl
Tells you how cute a couple
You make
She probably wants to do your boyfriend.

"real and thriving and just as tacky as in the movies"

My friend Rob (of Rob and Niki and dog Mazie from the Four Faced Liar fame, among other fames and infamies) has this very compelling blog mostly about his experiences teaching at a public school in the Bronx. His teaching memoirs are fascinating, but there are also some hilarious digressions, like "Come, We Drink" (June 18th) about going to a Russian mafia joint in Sheepshead Bay, only to find that some of the "tough guys" were more pink than red.

A nice opportunity

to get your hands on some good literature and help support Parkinson's research:

Don't Abuse the Muse

Famous Persons #3

The Human Touch of Fiorello H. Laguardia

Once, during a newspaper strike,
Firoello read the comics aloud
on the radio to the people of New York.

And never had they made such
perfect sense to us, as they tickled
from the fat man and across the airwaves.

*

But it’s so hard to understand color;
it disappears so easily from the pages
of our dictionaries. They are just words
that once we made with our mouths.

There’s this thing in New York
called local color, and unless you believe
in it, there’s no way that you’ll ever
close your eyes and still see black ink.

Neo-Etymology vol. 2

Another triumph of neo-etymology from the hard-thinkin' Derek:

"The neo-etymology of schooner is clear. To understand it, we must delve into both Old Middle German and a fascinating episode of Hanseatic history. It was in 1557 that Prince Jåren of Heisling, in what is today western Denmark, banned fermentation of wheat in his realms, as his subjects had become besotten, often struding about drunkenly, raiding their neighbors and each other. This immediately set into motion a rivalry between a number of seafaring factions in Bremen town to control the Heisling beer smuggling market. Competition quickly led to refinement of ship design, striving for ease of sailing operation (OMG schonen: to spare resources), speed, and beauty (OMG schön: beautiful). The Bremeners came to call these swift vessels "schöne schonende Schiffe" (beautiful ship that is sparing of resources), or schon-schons. This nickname carried over in the western Danish dialects as skoon-skoon (commonly called skoon-skoon-skoonies in the taverns), shortened to schooner in order to deceive the prince's agents. The performance of the schooner is commonly credited with forcing Jåren's successor Prince Dagmar to repeal the beer ban in 1596. Incidentally, our second definition of the word schooner derives from the practice of toasting a vessel's successful arrival, sampling the cargo with with a large, wide glass, often 22 oz. in size. In time, the glass came to be known by the same name as the ship that brought its contents."

Coffee Cans + String

Another famous person chapbook poem...

Ernest and Julio Gallo’s Respective Hangovers

And that’s why there’s so many
job opportunities listed for EJ Gallo
on CareerBuilder.com, I think,
because these guys can’t get out of bed.

There’s just such a high turnover
because they’re whining to each other
always over a two-coffee-cans-and-string
intercom system. So tired; eyes burning.

And at night all of California is kept awake
by the fever screams from their fever dreams
of the search for the perfect grape.

The Durge Report vol. III

This just in from Sybil Durgin's roommate, Jaime:

Monday 7:00-11:00 PM

Sybil came home from work and immediately rocked a Corey Feldman shirt and sweat pants. She made herself a bowl of tomatoes and cucumbers for dinner, which explains why she weighs like 90 pounds. She played some solitaire on her laptop and there was much debate about the reciprocation of oral sex (you should) and the hotness of Jake Gyllenhall (hot). Three units of Law and Order.

Over the weekend, in New Hampshire, a bunch of old dudes accused her of not wearing any underwear.

I can't stop giggling...

So I've been worrying about this thing lately: http://ww2.olntv.com/cyclysm/jump.html

and I sent the below note to my friend Derek, who is an expert on these matters:

shafer hall 07/13/04 10:29AM
"It's just the most bizarre thing that I've ever seen...what does Cyclysm even mean, anyway?! I see these signs all over town and my brain just starts hurting."

And Derek responded with the below explanation:

From: "Derek" Tue, 13 Jul 2004 10:46:04 -0400

According to the dictionary, "A blend of the words cycling and cataclysm, most often used to denote upheaval, or a meeting of great forces, in the world of bicycle racing. The word appears in ancient Greek and Macedonian texts to describe recurring disasters (cataclysms of a cyclical nature). From Herodotus: The sun ring foretold the imminent arrival of the cyclism, portending the beasts would re-visit Phillipila with renewed strength and the vigor of a thousand bulls. The word was first adopted into its modern usage by bicycle promoter T. v. Meerloos to describe the 1898 Antwerp to Bruge race, featuring the first showdown between Johnny Miles and Hans-Dietrich Thieroux."

Famous People Chap

I took a chapbook idea from the generous Maureen and modified it slightly. I'll be writing poems with famous peoples' names in their titles. I think that most of them will probably have two famous peoples' names, a la "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven" or "Rene and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After the War." This is not an example of one of those:

Captain Jean Lafitte at Home

Castle my home, protect me
from the bad tasting people.

Let the buckling swamp be
alone only for me, tideless

and rolling waveless and such
a comfortable place to kill

the overdressed for cash prizes.
Oh, poem my castle, let

my home be all around me,
my wallpaper always match.

John + Shafer = Haiku

her teeth this era
are always wide as meadows
her lashes burning

The Strength of Numbers

Enough folks have responded positively to the Alcohol & Cigarettes reading that we've decided to go ahead with it. Sooo...Sunday, July 18th at 3PM at the Four-Faced Liar we will gather to read freshly-minted poems about Alcohol and/or Cigarettes. I'm going to read one about menthol cigarettes, which won't just be freshly-minted, it'll also be minty-fresh. You should bring a few extra poems along, because if your first poem is good, your drunken audience might demand that you read more. I'm going to put some chicken wire up around the reader's area to protect readers from flying beer bottles. I'd encourage all of you, even those who are not poets, to go ahead and write a poem. We'll give the best non-poet poem a free glass of Liberty Punch. We'll give the best poet poem one too.

If you're uninitiated, the Four-Faced Liar is an intimate and friendly bar in the Village, at 165 W. 4th St. just West of 6th Ave. If you have any further questions just drop me an email. See y'all there!

Ada's Kelly Ripa Poem...

...and six more have been posted at Unpleasant Event Schedule. I want to marry her Kelly Ripa poem. Her M Train poem is a real beauty too.

The Durge Report vol. II

Sybil Durgin had a few (a lot of) martinis on Friday night, and made a few phone calls. Guess who she didn't call? Ouch! She says that she prefers rhinoceroses to hoppopotamuses, because she's heard that hippopitamuses are scary! They certainly will be if they here the sorts of things that she's saying about them! Shh...

Roommate Lucas...

...is still nowhere to be found!

Dick or Ball? Part II is up at Unpleasant Event...

here.

DURGE!

Look for a new installment of the Durge Report tomorrow. If anyone has any up-to-the minute information on Sybil Durgin's activities, or if anyone has any public interest stories that involve the Durge, please let me know, and I will include them in the Report.

A Hoppopotamus for Christmas

I'm currently downloading Groucho Marx songs to make a CD for the Four-Faced Liar. I have a very epic image in my head of the whole brood gettin' tipsy and singing "I Want A Hippopotamus for Christmas" at the top of their lungs. Good times, good times.

Alcohol & Cigarettes

What do you guys think about having an open reading at the Liar on Sunday at which everyone will read new poems about alcohol and cigarettes? (Except Maureen. Maureen can write a poem about the fancy fruit cocktails that make her squeal with joy.)

It'd be on Sunday the 18th. Somewhere around 3pm. Let me know what you think, and if there's a good enough response we will tell all of the world. Yeeha!

Rampant Self-Promoter

I think that John and I have made up. I called him a pretentious peacock, and he called me a rampant self-promoter. Not to be confused with rampant fistf*cker, which I've also been called. But we've continued to work, as we do through all of our little spats. I just added a second line to what should be a really neat haiku. I'll put it up here when it's done. And in the meantime...

Congratulations to John for having a short story solicited by a Texas (!) short story magazine! They read "Scarecar" and just had to have a John C. short story for their very own.

Scarecar was published by Samsara Quarterly. I wanted to put a link to it here, but when I tried to get into the Samsara archive they said I was "forbidden." Ouch! They're at www.samsaraquarterly.net, and I think that John's in issue 10. You may have better luck than I.

The Durge Report

According to information collected on:

07/09/04

Sybil Durgin parties, and chances are she, um, gets down. Other than that, not much is going on.

And what else do I have to tell you?

I can already tell that this is going to be a huge problem. This blog.

Because the thing of it is, is that if there was a remotely finite number of things to say, then poets would have used them all up, like, two and a half millennia ago AT THE VERY LATEST. Jesus.

You people better email me at work tomorrow. Because I'm going to be tired, tired, tired.

So I always said

that when I had a blog, I was only going to blog other peoples lives. So roommate Brogan has a crick in his neck, roommate Danielle has smokies from back home, and roommate Lucas is nowhere to be found!

And I have solid reason to believe that collaborator John is pissed at me again.

Brand New Poem...

...because this is what it's all about.

On the Phone/At the Office

That low all-of-us murmur
sharpens into sense and we’ll
be off, then, I guess, because
there’s only so much talking
to ourselves that we can do
with everyone else in the room.

Speak correctly we will bawl
to ourselves, because we’re
picky about that shit; we’ve
got an education, and we’re
worried and anyway we think
it sounds nice and all alike.

But as long as I keep talking
I’ll less likely have to rub my
temples and say to myself
over and over again: it’s so
quiet, it’s so quiet, it’s so
quiet, it’s so quiet, it’s so.

And who doesn't get loopy at the end of the day? Now SHOW ME YOURS! Damn your eyes!

I'll Show You Mine

I promise.

Hubris, Even

The other day I was at the Four Faced Liar, and this kid was telling me that he was a poet but he didn’t write because he was waiting until he had something to say. I tried to explain to him that there is always something to say, and he was vaguely but stubbornly arguing with me, and I was very drunk, and I realized that I was about one breath away from actually saying the words “do you know who I am?” It was very embarrassing. Sinful, even.

You show me yours.

Hi, I'm Shafer Hall. I'm lovably arrogant, loyal to a fault, and I like poetry. So show me yours.