“Whenever a man sees a beautiful woman it’s an occasion for poetry—compensating beauty with beauty.”
III
We might have coupled
In the bed-ridden monopoly of a moment
Or broken flesh with one another
At the profane communion table
Where wine is spill’d on promiscuous lips
We might have given birth to a butterfly
With the daily news
Printed in blood on its wings
* * *
VI
I know the Wire-Puller intimately
And if it were not for the people
On whom you keep one eye
You could look straight at me
And Time would be set back
* * *
IX
When we lifted
Our eye-lids on Love
A cosmos
Of coloured voices
And laughing honey
And spermatazoa
At the core of Nothing
In the milk of the Moon
X
Shuttle-cock and battle-door
A little pink-love
And feathers are strewn
* * *
XV
Seldom Trying for Love
Fantasy dealt them out as gods
Two or three men looked only human
But you alone
Superhuman apparently
I had to be caught in the weak eddy
Of your drivelling humanity
To love you most
* * *
XXIII
The prig of passion – – – –
To your professional paucity
Proto-plasm was raving mad
Evolving us – – – –
XXXIV
Love – – – the preeminent litterateur
—Mina Loy, from “Songs to Joannes” (1915-1917)
FEMA revises preliminary flood insurance map for Jefferson Parish →
The latest revision to FEMA’s preliminary flood insurance rate maps for Jefferson Parish has been posted online for public comment. Changes to the draft that was posted in November affect northeast Kenner and northwest Metairie and revise an error due to…
Her Lips Are Copper Wire
whisper of yellow globes
gleaming on lamp-posts that sway
like bootleg licker drinkers in the fog
and let your breath be moist against me
like bright beads on yellow globes
telephone the power-house
that the main wires are insulate
(her words play softly up and down
dewy corridors of billboards)
then with your tongue remove the tape
and press your lips to mine
till they are incandescent
—Jean Toomer, from Cane (1923)
STOP LISTENING
here’s an idea
i want to go outside
and smoke a cigarette
while petting a cat
because i got drunk
and can’t be sexually satisfied
except by a cat
“Her dress was of some fine, costly stuff. I suggested the park, and then added that the grass might stain her skirt. Let it get stained, she said, for where it came from there are others.”
Cousins, Far Removed: Terry Eagleton Takes a Snide Turn, Picks a Fight with America →
There is a sketch in the ‘90s BBC comedy series A Bit of Fry & Laurie in which Hugh Laurie––primarily familiar to us uneducated Americans as the titular character of Fox’s House, M.D.––sits at a piano. He’s decked out in a flannel shirt, jeans and a headband to rein in his mullet, evoking, principally, that …
Oh hey, look, I wrote this thing.
library day
This is my new favorite song by my new favorite band. I bet they get huuuuge.
More where this came from, soonish. For older compositions, visit http://andypants.bandcamp.com/.
i am writing you a love letter
I am writing you a love letter
from the lobby of the bad motel
as i wait for a call for my car to be fixed or not be fixed
and m––– is gchatting me about her boyfriend
who wrote her an e-mail––that may or may not be manipulative,
but we think it’s not, an e-mail that references the “winter
when he was watching too much basketball”
The Cat and the Saxophone (2 a.m.)
EVERYBODY
Half-pint,––
Gin?
No, make it
LOVES MY BABY
corn. You like
liquor,
don’t you, honey?
BUT MY BABY
Sure. Kiss me,
DON’T LOVE NOBODY
daddy.
BUT ME.
Say!
EVERYBODY
Yes?
WANTS MY BABY
I’m your
BUT MY BABY
sweetie, ain’t I?
DON’T WANT NOBODY
Sure.
BUT
Then let’s
ME,
do it!
SWEET ME.
Charleston,
mamma!
!
––Langston Hughes (1926)
OK NOW I’M GOING TO BED STUPIDFACE
No special greeting, special greeting for today
No Happy Easter, no Merry Christmas
Only how are you today
Make it a good day anyway
Where I spend my days.
“The school teacher tried to bring home to the mind of the boy some conception of the difficulties he would have to face as a writer. ‘You will have to know life,’ she declared, and her voice trembled with earnestness. She took hold of George Willard’s shoulders and turned him about so that she could look into his eyes. A passer-by might have thought them about to embrace. ‘If you are to become a writer you’ll have to stop fooling with words,’ she explained. ‘It would be better to give up the notion of writing until you are better prepared. Now it’s time to be living. I don’t want to frighten you, but I would like to make you understand the import of what you think of attempting. You must not become a mere peddler of words. The thing to learn is to know what people are thinking about, not what they say.’”
“I would rather have sex with someone because they thought I was someone else than not have sex with someone because they thought I was me.”
I would join a cult if Ray Wise was the leader.
Having a Coke with You
is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles
and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them
I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully
as the horse
it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I am telling you about it
—Frank O’Hara
A Room of One’s Own 2
My Suggested First Line For My Friend Seth's "History Of The Beatles" Final Paper, Which Will Be Graded By An Obvious Tom Waits Fetishist
I first “got” the Beatles in the middle of my fourth line of blow, three-quarters of the way through a bottle of four-dollar Shiraz, as a whore named Rosemary danced around our motel room naked, flailing her bruised arms to the sitar twangs of “Norwegian Wood.”