To produce that failure
To represent the pain
Of others the living carcass
In a trial of innocence

Meat begets meat, fish fly-up,
Spill your guts in the air,
Strapped into the air
Like some Odysseus to his mast

What siren songs did you not hear
In your practice to profess
That failure to register the pain
No image will tell

What remains encases
Breath begets breath
But no one saves face
Since no one will be saved

Activity synchs these traces
The newspaper on any
Particular day
Becoming a withdrawal of day

Substituting hours for praise
To produce that failure
The world we would want inversely
Mourning becomes our joy

Affliction becomes a flight
From being afraid, presence escapes,
Tombs become archive-like
In the present

Deriving from these lips bounty praise,
Since nothing, since no
One will be saved
I take the world to be breath.

December and January at SEGUE

I am getting excited about the start of my third season co-curating SEGUE, which begins next Saturday (December 4th) at 4PM at the Bowery Poetry Club. I have posted the names of readers and the dates of their readings below. For bios you can go to SEGUE's website.

DECEMBER 4: THALIA FIELD & ALLEN FISHER

DECEMBER 11: BONNIE JONES & ANNE WALDMAN

DECEMBER 18: ERIKA STAITI & ANDREA BRADY

JANUARY 8: CECILIA CORRIGAN & MAC WELLMAN

JANUARY 15: SHONNI ENELOW & RENEE GLADMAN

JANUARY 22: CA CONRAD & NORMA COLE

JANUARY 29: DOUGLAS KEARNEY & YEDDA MORRISON

While you were perimeterizing
I was off being nowhere
Shimmering with neglect
Like this backlit praise

That other light
Must represent despair
Which raises us up by what powers
What powers, what powers

To which we will not grow
Feeling stops to form a focus
Stunned by our shapelessness
Need turns to broken song.

Glenn Beck Redux

“The more an affect is known to us, then, the more it is in our power, and the less the Mind is acted on by it.”
--Baruch Spinoza

Nicky Tiso took me up on my proposal to recompose the histrionic gestures of Glenn Beck, the footage of which is posted at Tiso's blog, Grand Hotel Abyss.