tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63654345199609284822024-02-18T22:35:25.124-05:00uzumachinadeconstruction permit approvedLeo F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17505602903349656466noreply@blogger.comBlogger94125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365434519960928482.post-77476195158280649342012-12-28T20:29:00.000-05:002012-12-28T20:29:01.710-05:00in the same exact outfitthe way the neglect of your<br />
intrusion is<br />
fondly recalled<br />
lost<br />
bartered for<br />
offers rescinded is<br />
almost why<br />
<br />
i remember you fucking my hand in<br />
the cab and lips parted and the<br />
stretch of gauzy blocks at<br />
dusk and a smile beneath another<br />
smile emerging in the smoke of<br />
your hesitation<br />
<br />
and promises loosely shaken from<br />
provisions and cinnamon hued<br />
skin and freckled and<br />
pink and<br />
lost<br />
tentative defied ultimatums<br />
and this<br />
is almost why<br />
<br />
stray on my canvas painting shook out<br />
lines<br />
argued as profound<br />
travelling always at nights and in<br />
them and at<br />
them bulletproof or<br />
isolated and as them walking<br />
me into my own chapped mouth<br />
rubbed smooth on you and<br />
<br />
abandoning medicinal escapes at<br />
the brink of<br />
exhaustion is almost<br />
why<br />
now<br />
three nights of dreams of you wake<br />
me and<br />
puncture my lungs<br />
<br />
<br />
stopping each<br />
other pausing<br />
me quietly and<br />
<br />
your interruptions don't<br />
resonate any longer and<br />
your doubled smile doesn't<br />
fit in my hands anymore and cuts<br />
them deep and your curvature doesn't mean<br />
shit<br />
again and the city isn't colored<br />
green or<br />
brown or dark brown or dark brown<br />
reflecting anymore<br />
<br />
<br />
missing the nothingness<br />
the rank dissolving occurrences<br />
where i<br />
found you and<br />
you and you and at<br />
times i am creased<br />
disheveled (and you)<br />
bold and<br />
denied<br />
proud and suspicious<br />
yammering heartfelt in the ears of<br />
cynical associates or cynical at<br />
stunned gazes never<br />
quite<br />
fucking<br />
right is<br />
almost the reason we continue<br />
to meetLeo F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17505602903349656466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365434519960928482.post-47871155297313290552012-12-25T17:19:00.001-05:002012-12-25T17:19:30.766-05:00fiona appleand it's not money<br />
set on repeat<br />
echo<br />
nonchalant in t-shirts years old<br />
<br />
jeans don't fit and<br />
collect the spills and torn barely<br />
bond to frame<br />
<br />
tonight its fucking freezing and<br />
quiet and you drink yourselfself calmly into the<br />
dullest most sympathetic stupor and you<br />
<br />
hold the moon outside between distant<br />
hands and she smiles whenever i<br />
close my eyes we always<br />
had that<br />
<br />
it's the admitting part that's the killer<br />
it's watching long fluffy curls of delicate<br />
advice fan out in strands around<br />
it's the rustle that remains in the bed you<br />
don't sleep in anymore or<br />
that's missing from the one in which<br />
you do<br />
<br />
it's listening to music without words so<br />
nothing muddles these toxins<br />
so when you find yourself singing or<br />
spitting out blood in the sink or<br />
scratching the back of your neck to<br />
find an old wound you don't<br />
lose it when her voice bellows<br />
<br />
instead<br />
you listen to drums and humming<br />
equipment<br />
you are able to stay (did i<br />
already smoke<br />
that cig<br />
yet? no)<br />
<br />Leo F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17505602903349656466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365434519960928482.post-11135983173269311112012-12-24T22:32:00.000-05:002012-12-24T22:32:04.818-05:00burial - truant + rough sleeperi don't know what it is about burial.<br />
<br />
burial is a british musician from the UK who makes music i can't even begin to understand. and no, it's not a result of having just pricked my skin on his bizarrely beautiful anti-music. i've listened to every one of his songs hundreds of times and i understand them and i don't fucking understand them at all.<br />
<br />
a rigged patchwork composite of recorded sound effects, overwhelming vinyl crackle, rainsounds, whispers, clipped slipshod drums, videogame bits, mashed strings and jagged murmuring vocal samples and lullaby bassline meshes. all this seemingly disparate matter composed into soundscapes that echo condemned buildings, sneakers sticking to wet concrete, lost souls dancing against streetlights like moths, neon lights spelling out your truths, passing cars, humble banshee girls next door, your mistakes, your redemption. your secret favorite thing. the shitty stupid thing you said to her, what she looked like when you said it and how she looked at you. and, later, his music has that fucking indescribably impossible, anachronistic, chemical component: it says "it's ok".<br />
<br />
i've listened to burial since i first started listening to him. there's a reason his ramshackle tunes have persistently remained in the unforgiving eye of the culturati. an anti-persona, an anti-musician, he paints a weird welcome and we all flock to it. he really doesn't give a shit, except he totally does, he bleeds into these minutes released in their always-too-slow trickle. longing for an era he missed by making music out of time, music that doesn't exist anymore, except he's making it, so it does, fucking up the spacetime continuum.<br />
<br />
time travel. wet concrete. factories churning out smoke in the distance, away from us (doesn't really matter...right?). there's a sound that comes off four houses down as we walk, it's a bark, a dog-sound, it's the dog we grew up with as a kid who died. there he is, four houses down. we walk past. we're not crying, right? no. we're adults now and we don't cry about that shit.<br />
<br />
but there he is in the headphones. scratching away at that shit. soon our steps are catching his stepless rhythm, we find it, or find its lack of rhythm. and then we are walking, walking. and feeling miserable but alive. there's the diner we like, tonight we don't go in, but it's there, it exists and things are OK. we walk past the graffiti that's still there from last week, we appraise it again, amused and inspired by it, until it is in our peripheral, curling around our right arm with just the lightest tug. we'll see it tomorrow.<br />
<br />
and oh god there's the elevated train. like an angel on ragged wings, ragged tracks, shaking the very earth, and it splits through the headphones until I am listening to "Stolen Dog" behind its casually beautiful carnage.<br />
<br />
there is very, VERY little music these days that stirs a conversation within me. 2012 was a fantastic year for music and there was plenty bubbling in my little humble android player companion. i would talk your ear off about it if humbly permitted. but the truth is that very little of it communicates with me, back and forth and back again, aside from burial. i listen to great records and I marvel at their greatness, their decisions, their failures and immense accomplishments. their impressive fidelity, their curing properties, their escape. and i listen to burial and i speak with it, and i walk with it, and it grounds me, sadly, pleasantly. and i know it even though i would disagree with every choice, every badly placed beat, every tricky fucked up gritty missed trigger. if i knew him i'd be like why the fuck, and who the fuck do you think you are, and come on clean that shit up, and come on come on. and there at the 13:04 mark on "Rough Sleeper" is that fucking bizarre synthy bit that starts up, it comes on twice, twice before the end, because that's all that was there, because that's all that was needed.<br />
<br />
it's always exactly right, shabby and worn and stubbornly confident. it plays coy, and plays serious, and fucks with you, tricking your ears, painting something forgotten. at night it joins me on walks home from work, or walks home from walks. it's background music, except it's a feature film made entirely out of background pieces. it's the video from Infinite Jest. it's about the only characters you care about, but you've forgotten their names or wondered if they ever had any. or if that matters.<br />
<br />
burial released his last bit recently. it stops and starts, it shrugs and straightens its tie. it doesn't know if it's interesting, or if you'd care about it. but everything within it is indiscreet, and its emotions shoot true.<br />
<br />
the thing with burial is that he doesn't have any "tricks" you're not aware of; it's all true. he's a terrific liar, for sure. he hides in plain sight, a scribe for a history half-experienced, a guide to the only city he knows, the city that's not your own. but it's all true.Leo F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17505602903349656466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365434519960928482.post-22000650570859526202012-12-14T19:23:00.003-05:002012-12-14T19:23:28.431-05:00my body has a shitty tomcat insidemy body has a shitty tomcat inside and<br />
he leaks poison out the corner of<br />
his ragged permanent smile making<br />
dainty repulsed hustles through<br />
street filth texture aching limbs<br />
philosophizing old haunts<br />
remembered vivid aching<br />
<br />
at times there are distant noises<br />
and he looks very seriously at the<br />
noises as if they were things come<br />
unraveled but displacing the air<br />
until he is hungry again<br />
<br />
then when he swivels around<br />
the scene renders to primary<br />
colors and tension lines<br />
<br />
i don't know how to speak to the<br />
things that don't know my animal<br />
they regard me with congealed<br />
confusion lazily knowing me<br />
<br />
they ignore him<br />
which makes him rub their legs rudely<br />
he finds a corner to play with a<br />piece of stray trash very briefly then<br />
sleeps deep<br />
<br />
and every introduction is a fiasco of<br />
insecure learning and<br />
paws catch on the clothing of strangers so<br />
we stare at each other awkwardly as i<br />
disengage<br />
<br />
my tomcat is lazy yet emptied of<br />
homelands he<br />
barely holds his own recent scenes down and<br />
when he shrieks and<br />
coos into the wet bread of night he is<br />
throwing his own precious energy away and<br />
couldn't tell me why<br />
<br />
the parklands and gaunt alleys and other<br />
nightmares of nowheres are<br />
where we divide<br />
he into the dreaming and<br />
i into the dreamingLeo F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17505602903349656466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365434519960928482.post-80933128692862168602012-11-18T16:58:00.000-05:002012-11-18T16:58:32.573-05:00repeat<div>
might be the will to reopen<br />
joining with the wind<br />
night appears before me like its joking<br />
centers the longing to reappear here<br />
what two hands do to disarm this<br />
patience<br />
these thrills are beyond this<br />
patiently i reach beyond this<br />alarmed by the symbolic and<br />
the last song spinning around the<br />last song spinning around the<br />
last song around<br />
summers<br />
out there<br />
like a tonic for the wounded<br />
emptied of its tears<br />
whole in the june light<br />
what do two hands do to disarm this<br />
patiently these thrills are beyond this and<br />
i reach beyond the summer skin for<br />
the thrill<br />
lost in these years<br />
and the last song spinning around<br />
the last song spinning around the<br />
last song</div>
Leo F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17505602903349656466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365434519960928482.post-50680465319888096172012-11-12T20:26:00.003-05:002012-11-12T20:28:03.171-05:00after and beforesunday light<br />
drunken mirages below<br />
14th and she is corralled in her<br />
own streets<br />
<br />
misbehaves<br />
like a vaulted hellion before the city<br />
meets a hurricane again<br />
<br />
tonight there will be rain in these<br />
streets and<br />
she runs her tongue against the<br />
smooth aluminum rind of a beercan<br />
<br />
she doesn't know me enough to<br />
keep me anywhere in mind<br />
the thought of my name summons<br />
jingles and loops<br />
i imagine her so defended against<br />
the barest approach of my humble<br />
memory i could be an allergic mishap or the<br />
weather eighteen days ago<br />
<br />
summaries of this night and others exist<br />
somewhere<br />
scrawled in a two word note<br />
tumbled in pocket with keys and disinterested<br />
nicorette and 54 cents wrapped<br />
tight in a pointless receipt like a<br />
lover on the<br />
next to last<br />
dayLeo F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17505602903349656466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365434519960928482.post-80795144791421167512012-10-13T00:11:00.000-04:002012-11-17T16:52:39.019-05:00delete / gentlyand he crosses paths and makes a funny stumble like<br />
this is not deeply felt<br />
it narrows closely<br />
like a thickly drawn line of words<br />
<br />
adolescence is permanent markers and<br />
songs of crass nullified defiance and<br />
cigarettes proud and elongated chained<br />
repeated and remixed into<br />
conversations with strangers to flow<br />
over them like blankets punched with breath<br />
and more words<br />
<br />
these are more words<br />
keep coming<br />
scatter my eager entrance into<br />
pocked regret<br />
<br />
find my wrecked reflection in metrocards and<br />
underneath beer glasses in the packed bar<br />
residing in my handled relics<br />
transfer meaning and submerged eloquence to the<br />
objects touched in travel<br />
<br />
i seek definition in privately held things<br />
<br />
finding it<br />
wretchedly disappointed in it<br />
<br />
color each segment of the sidewalk with<br />
thoughtless steps to somebody else thinking<br />
i<br />
can't<br />
be<br />
here<br />
<br />
for long not long i snaked a careful finger on your smile<br />
touching your mouth before it parted before<br />
rediscovering its shade<br />
<br />
no shadow hides me and<br />
i would erase this<br />
becoming the cul-de-sac of a bruise<br />
<br />
hands of strangers welcome me rudely<br />
expectantly<br />
erroneously<br />
<br />
i drink two beers that say<br />
fuck you<br />
and leave<br />
<br />
if i am young and recast as traitor to<br />
all these careless mishaps<br />
<br />
then fuck you is a smile that welcomes and enervates me<br />
that walks me towards your wall<br />
<br />
yet i pick these moments gently<br />
<br />
if i am old and crushed by fuckups old and young i<br />
cruise with it<br />
<br />
i lift it from its odd angle<br />
<br />
i put it down<br />
<br />Leo F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17505602903349656466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365434519960928482.post-7978939536916586632012-09-26T20:02:00.000-04:002012-09-26T20:02:01.812-04:00monthsmaybe it was the sound of you that<br />
i used to miss<br />
earlier when i was walking in the<br />
panicked nightwalk later before<br />
what was early to rattle me just<br />
the nonchalance of your silence<br />
<br />
i am waiting very patiently and appropriately sullen i<br />
curve steps that fake boldness at our doorways and<br />
other things which<br />
jointly owned<br />
claim our elements<br />
<br />
this stops being nostalgic<br />
becomes the affected gait of<br />
smells that mix into the furniture<br />
books weave into each other like<br />
spidered legs encounter the breath that shared<br />
becomes less than the<br />
breath that's<br />
there<br />
<br />
where i sit<br />
<br />
dangling<br />
<br />
feet held hover above the ground<br />
<br />
and nothing<br />
gathers here<br />
<br />
we are a grand emptiness<br />
the background music cheery and resonantly<br />
echoes beyond the patina of dusty<br />
memories where we painted this<br />
<br />
all you did<br />
agrees<br />
i shake hands with it<br />
and<br />
<br />
all i did<br />
drifts aimlessly<br />
<br />
she finds it carefully<br />
pushes aside petals like a surgeon<br />
<br />
further days cough when they<br />
inhale this powder<br />
<br />
summer is a firearm<br />
<br />
i play with it carelessly worn<br />
<br />
your clothing muttering like a bomb<br />
<br />
take it away to<br />
where your will withdraws<br />
<br />
it's ok<br />
smelling like a headfucked vice<br />
<br />
it's not here at all<br />
<br />
it's where you wereLeo F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17505602903349656466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365434519960928482.post-79541389912966666252012-09-22T16:14:00.001-04:002012-09-22T16:14:34.559-04:00old stupid text to dead lovenothing is well. not speaking with you like an ocd kid dodging sidewalk cracks. like a lost flavor looking for closed restaurants. like the words of a favorite novel written into a dirty joke on a bathroom stall. like dead flowers garnishing the wrong grave.><br />
somewhere in between the insecure permutations of a ghost, drifting through a cage of patterns and memories (calling it a home) and the defiant experiments of a mad composer, painting surprise improvisations where none would sound appropriate. humming favorite songs on poisoned avenues. sitting on a friend's stoop, knowing that there is no one in 100 miles who cares what Lost Highway is about.><br />
but it's essentially ok and smoothly consumed. he promised himself long ago that the streets looked like this: drawn out, wavering and unsteady. every step led to something lost, and whenever he held things he was practicing. they were a rehearsal.>Leo F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17505602903349656466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365434519960928482.post-61060549955939236562012-09-22T16:08:00.000-04:002012-09-22T16:08:43.026-04:00somnambulancewe barter in swirls of nostalgia<br />
precise<br />
we take milligrams of<br />
<div>
what we used to be and what we wished we were</div>
<div>
back when an alarm ringing clear out of a dead road</div>
<div>
reached us now and found</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
signal in words no one will see or hear</div>
<div>
me redistributed into chemicals</div>
<div>
the years repeated tunes come on slow</div>
<div>
when it's right it stuns me flat between the eyes but</div>
<div>
when it's wrong it's below me</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
above me it's soaring past</div>
<div>
like hair through fingers dry<br />
on dry on<br />
skin responsive to anything</div>
<div>
<br />
i like to meet calm skies with half a<br />
smirk to hide the dry residue of what arrived here<br />
to be here without assistance<br />
free and fucked<br />
fleeing through streets to points known by<br />
a disregard of the known<br />
shrugging off reductions<br />
meeting my carelessness and<br />
wiping the hair from her face<br />
another beer at a gathering<br />
we connect<br />
separate<br />
<br />
don't walk signs rattle<br />
become lapsed torches demarcating<br />
impossibly elongated streets<br />
exchange themselves with others<br />
<br />
my emotions and growing concerns melt down my legs<br />
blown around bus exhaust fumes and partially<br />
eaten takeout drunkenly draped on fire hydrants<br />
<br />
gathered in and consumed<br />
selfish when i want my own window<br />
take it with me for later<br />
name it for me and guard it<br />
ventilated in my conjured gusts<br />
<br />
none of this is real<br />
reassure<br />
steeped in my shadow material<br />
ego decommissioned<br />
in array and out of time<br />
<br />
never<br />
ending<br />
the<br />
day<br />
after</div>
Leo F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17505602903349656466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365434519960928482.post-3505009689106284182012-09-09T10:27:00.000-04:002012-09-09T10:27:18.456-04:00the color of duskher skin her skin. these were repetitions, as words rather than images as he always thought to himself in language her skin. prone to droning, he returned to the vision. dark brown, like smoothed soil, or the beginning of the morning. he liked to smell it through the perfume she didn't need. when he walked to the gym at 4:45AM the ground was always wet from some lost rain he hadn't been around for, her skin her skin. sometimes she was naked and sometimes she wasn't. sometimes she was angry or upset but most often silent. he sung with recordings of damaged men at night, along with whiskey her skin. crooning like a lovesick cat; the comparison cooled him, so he became abruptly silent. that was somehow worse. that was somehow worse her skin her skin.Leo F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17505602903349656466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365434519960928482.post-89555203522056896122012-09-06T22:21:00.000-04:002012-09-06T22:21:10.905-04:00nowherei step out in a long city cluster<br />
manhattan after work<br />
prickly and exhausted before my<br />
first beer and you inexhaustible<br />
<br />
afterwards and among ten<br />
minutes and much later in the<br />
solipsistic venue<br />
collecting brief faces and their<br />
voices and private cantankerous pleasantries<br />
the girl from sarah lawrence insists<br />
that she is not a lesbian well she<br />
was kinda but she's not a lesbian at<br />
this moment she is not a lesbian<br />
she has a boyish charm to match<br />
her haircut and an easy laugh<br />
<br />
the bartop populated by tech<br />
industry social misfits and men in<br />
suits for no reason<br />
we slur speech stunned in the<br />
amber light<br />
weathered wood facing off against<br />
the securities of this intoxicated<br />
band of roomed elephants<br />
<br />
i get obnoxiously loud on more<br />
than one occasion and i'm not<br />
exactly sure why<br />
i celebrate nothing but my own<br />
casual harm and shitty moves<br />
skulduggery gambles in search<br />
for your scratchy profane timber folded<br />
into the communal noise like wings<br />
<br />
they move air by me and at me and<br />
everything in motion only further<br />
hides you when you leave<br />
<br />
i remain there remain remain<br />
remain joining<br />
jagged pockets of conversation being<br />
shifted into others sometimes<br />
browsing bored aroused<br />
inspired drunken spreading the<br />
honey of my failures on men<br />
who i touch behind the shoulder in some<br />
kind of fraternal gesture that only exhibits after<br />
3 whiskeys<br />
i avenge petty smiling arguments<br />
remember most names bandied<br />
about and smokechat strangers far<br />
more elegant than i<br />
think i catch my doppelganger in the bathroom<br />
talking himself up out of a severe liquor rush<br />
my feet firmly planted on the sticky floor in<br />
fakeass zen<br />
<br />
it will be three hours later still<br />
a friend and i<br />
sit on the sidewalk and eat nuclear waste pizza and<br />
she cries and we talk about old cracked loves and<br />
it is the quietest part of the evening<br />
<br />
i think about auburn hair except<br />
i don't think i know her hair<br />
it only reflects barlights and ozone meshed stars<br />
i only know her hair through hazes<br />
<br />
i call her and she misses it and i leave her a voicemail<br />
she calls me and i miss it and she leaves me a voicemailLeo F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17505602903349656466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365434519960928482.post-40486792592164390142012-08-30T20:01:00.000-04:002012-08-30T20:01:12.770-04:00making my escape<br />
the opening of the day is golden <br />
crimson burning through and i <br />
taste private metered segments of <br />
it collected through previous hours <br />
and on the remembered texture of a <br />
new tongue in brooklyn <br />
i'm the bottom bit of the last beer of the night <br />
spun in my mouth before <br />
licking handwriting into you and <br />
down your neck <br />
or not <br />
maybe didn't happen <br />
<br />
hours of the day colored and <br />
repurposed by disintegrating spurs <br />
of the moment meet me here <br />
along the long dark street where i <br />
once lived and rarely visit <br />
always recalled in nighttime as if <br />
daylight never weighed it down as <br />
now it hovers heavy and sacred <br />
always in bronze twilight <br />
always hollowed out and wet with <br />
summer air <br />
always the same bar <br />
<br />
with the same space in the back <br />
i'm late to find you and your one <br />
drink grin mellifluous and easy <br />
when i sit down we are away from <br />
those next to us <br />
later on i am thinking that we are <br />
farther away <br />
we waver stray <br />
<br />
abandoning laconic clues to me <br />
where the fabric is softer and <br />
warmer underneath it your <br />
voice raspy and leading <br />
<br />
farther away i don't meet you <br />
or never have <br />
or have <br />
or never thought to come <br />
not really looking for anything <br />
nothing really found or surrendered beyond <br />
roundabout glances and the feel of <br />
old streets pivoting near <br />
hair pushes away softly and<br />
gives <br />
walking through the shameless <br />
laughter of late night basketball skirmish <br />
pausing and giving ourselves to <br />
calm <br />
until the breeze is too close to you <br />
as now it hovers heavy <br />
i could walk endlessly like this <br />
dreaming and not sure and <br />
next to you and afar <br />
the proximity of you and the old <br />
neighborhood and my own <br />
footsteps cascade reassuring <br />
echoes as the season dies slow <br />
<br />
headlight eyes scurry and scare the <br />
shadows down the avenue <br />
i find myself in step with them and <br />
join their <br />
road <br />
to <br />
leave <br />
Leo F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17505602903349656466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365434519960928482.post-42515500879007725332012-08-14T18:49:00.001-04:002012-08-14T18:49:35.038-04:00graffiti and old carsevery thing alive and dead becomes<br />
due for the next life<br />
we wear them in colored hair<br />
in gym minutes<br />
in long draws on a craft beer<br />
momentary lapses of reasons are<br />
countries under flaked wheels<br />
destroyed by this illusion this<br />
destroys and leaves all pieces real and<br />
handled by those arrived<br />
before we arrived to destroy<br />
<br />
it could be any stolen morning<br />
destroy destroy<br />
laughter heard through<br />
headphones jockeys for space and<br />
attention to<br />
take the requisite steps to<br />
approach her (though longing<br />
for new nighttimes she inhales<br />
through her nose fiercely and<br />
repurposes my weaponry almost<br />
absentmindedly as a car<br />
almost devastatingly in her<br />
refusal to speak even once destroys and<br />
it could be any lost conversation with<br />
her until<br />
gutted eternity) though longing though<br />
only occurring in the friction of<br />
strangled time and never<br />
approaching her only<br />
in this destroy<br />
destroy destroy<br />
<br />
speaking with an old friend though<br />
longing she<br />
knows what i loved of her<br />
most definitively is the same strength she<br />
nimbly produces in my idiotic wake<br />
and the silence is more articulate<br />
than my jagged aching destroys<br />
me though longing like<br />
<br />
the old faded paint of the<br />
neighborhood's names hallucinate their<br />
former colors and summon themselves<br />
to form in the sunlight<br />
remembering their own radiance when<br />
the nighttime still encounters them<br />
peeled of splendor though longing<br />
<br />
i could be that hungry image<br />
finding her elements in the cast<br />
shadows of cars destroys<br />
i run around the neighborhood<br />
painting and signifying the recollected<br />
variations as much as i<br />
speak to her or reach<br />
conclusions built of parts fresh<br />
from the factory and<br />
unknown by any touch<br />
<br />
everything is new and<br />
nothing<br />
repairs my<br />
machinery image in the<br />
darkened<br />
glass<br />
swaysLeo F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17505602903349656466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365434519960928482.post-90236976476298621432012-08-12T14:26:00.001-04:002012-09-20T07:53:52.869-04:00riverit is that rare night which finds me<br />
limber-smiled<br />
brokentooth bold<br />
distracted hands open to the sincere<br />
wordbuzzed and calmhearted<br />
<br />
encounters at the other end of friday<br />
unspooling smalltalk and bon mots at strangers<br />
at the bartop a gorgeous blonde in formfitting fabric<br />
positions<br />
her hand up for a hifive and i meet it with no<br />
small grace<br />
she chitterchatters<br />
we muse mockingly on the bartender as another is tapping my<br />
shoulder with a nervous joke i gratefully<br />
consume with my first sip of beer when<br />
<br />
my drink arrives i am not lingering with them but<br />
returning to my table and other faces<br />
her tattooed arms are young but somewhat masculine<br />
wearing bakery years on her small rocknroll frame with<br />
virginia hair pushed back and sunburned and<br />
<br />
in her eyes maybe a cool river of forgiveness that isn't really hers<br />
and<br />
as if gathered on the shores of interlocked strangers<br />
where the essences of decommissioned loves circle in the salted wind it<br />
pours forth unhindered by the self-conscious airs i employ<br />
<br />
and at times the bar becomes isolated in its noise<br />
and we find pockets in it which are<br />
like blooms<br />
or intimate theaters and<br />
<br />
i find that i am less conversing with her than<br />
with other lost women<br />
i wonder if i always do that<br />
<br />
i am speaking with a distant love<br />
with an envelope of braided hair and photographs<br />
touching the freckled cream of her hip when i am touching her hip when<br />
i am touching her soft<br />
echoes of movement that duplicate and expand in response<br />
to the noise and airconditioning<br />
<br />
we steal the food off of somebody's abandoned plate<br />
conspire and tease<br />
drunk and pleasant<br />
bewitched and summoned by these semi-transparent yearnings<br />
<br />
in aforementioned virginia hair which smells of cornstalk and handrolled<br />
cigarettes yet<br />
other women manifest and fold their fingers and unfold and<br />
repair me<br />
medicinal ghosts of this burial ground where we<br />
all connect if only to add commentary to our roadmaps made<br />
precious by lost time<br />
<br />
she stays with me too long i surmise<br />
i leave her with the newly materialized guy she doesn't want<br />
<br />
the one she was supposed to knowLeo F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17505602903349656466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365434519960928482.post-75150331336165120742012-07-30T19:00:00.000-04:002012-07-30T19:00:34.477-04:00chances are / spiesand it is late in the miracle evening and<br />
a soft savage breeze demarcates the remnant sand caught between eyelids and<br />
angry language and<br />
it is a kind of strength he<br />
finds himself saying to no one<br />
<br />
it will be weeks someday<br />
at some point he will eat a muffin<br />
or stamp out a capricious cockroach before bedtime and<br />
like every other dead thing it will<br />
be dancing<br />
patient in the tufts of his hair<br />
it is arguable that he will be listening to music<br />
or reading a random book from his shelf by the guide of a torn<br />
receipt shoved meaningfully in at page 97<br />
he will give a woman money for a thin bottle of clear rum and<br />
she will hand it to him with practiced boredom<br />
<br />
chances<br />
are<br />
he will remember the lines in that Peter S. Beagle novel again<br />
the ones that circled his pre-adolescent mind feverishly<br />
utterly rapt<br />
almost repulsed by<br />
their symmetry and ungainly honesty<br />
he will walk a short circuit through a one bedroom apartment<br />
speaking with someone on the phone and instantly forget who he was<br />
speaking with until their voice returns<br />
he will consider this no meager victory<br />
<br />
there will be long pauses followed by cruel activities<br />
he will step on her foot in the crowded bus<br />
a child will kick him gently as he exits<br />
<br />
back on the streets<br />
he will be staring at a sign for a breakfast special in a faceless restaurant for a while<br />
he will not know or understand if he wants to eat here<br />
someone nearby will be angry at someone else<br />
somehow this will cause him to come to a decision<br />
<br />
he will remember the lines in an old novel<br />
in the way one recalls closing a book<br />
more intimately<br />
than opening itLeo F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17505602903349656466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365434519960928482.post-90405685885003626012012-07-17T21:43:00.000-04:002012-08-25T15:14:43.291-04:00egress from a brightly lit land (part 3)i tread these roads with some modicum of trepidation and<br />
<div>
neatly stored fear</div>
<div>
gathering supplies in wait of the requirement to pursue new roads</div>
<div>
with a nuzzle she motions to the horizon as if to</div>
<div>
a new purchase or series of bad scenes</div>
<div>
when he turns around she</div>
<div>
disappears</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
appears</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
here there is soft music around the dying fire and</div>
<div>
other adornments for sleep to shudder through</div>
<div>
the crackling fibers and whispered conversations and</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
though nothing is secure or steadfast we hum in</div>
<div>
unison to the sunlight to come</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
til it is the middle of night</div>
<div>
and one mind might be awake in a sea of muted</div>
<div>
voices</div>
<div>
alone on this night he finds himself leaving the security of</div>
<div>
fabric to find a private surface upon which to<br />
feel the blue air of the evening and ponder curious<br />
calendars yet to be made real in<br />
<br />
months that flutter into time made<br />
disturbed and intricate<br />
into a flipbook of hours<br />
of pretty faces and ill-received mentions or malapropisms pasted to<br />
beloved tattooed skins<br />
<br />
he communicates to nothing and nowhere in self-interested playlists<br />
merges with his own dishonor<br />
becoming one thing<br />
a mutant of his faith in the ideal and his own<br />
craggy movements through the pride exhibited by strangers with quick<br />
smiles<br />
trust really a peculiar currency always at the ready<br />
bartered handily with the faces that darken these roads and yet<br />
<br />
not sure why<br />
the bold reaching of irrational misspent youth has gone black and dry<br />
he is old now<br />
as grasslands frozen gold in repetitions of sunlight<br />
a consummate liar possessed with disbelief<br />
alone for these mere moments in the dying firelight<br />
<br />
maybe at a loss for the dramatic yet making<br />
manic urges<br />
blood rushing to hungry arms<br />
<br />
alone on this night<br />
perhaps leaving these fellow travelers behind and scraping the dew and dirt to<br />
fill up my footprints<br />
<br />
before him<br />
every highwayman and cold trickster and solipsistic gypsy feeding off the milk of the road<br />
<br />
leaving his blankets and bandaged remnant gear<br />
<br />
neither alone nor released<br />
he has shaken off her fragrance<br />
clothing only smells like me and moonlight<br />
<br />
the only sounds elemental<br />
the only sky grey then forgiving the early morning<br />
the only shirt soft from repeated washing and wear<br />
the only reason a promise wasted on a lover's burning glance<br />
<br />
the only movements these movements<br />
owning nothing but clenched sentences<br />
<br />
the only thing real is this place<br />
<br />
the only thing that leaves it is<br />
what's left</div>
Leo F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17505602903349656466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365434519960928482.post-63546282965608768882012-07-11T19:04:00.001-04:002012-07-11T19:09:53.572-04:00Swarms - Old Raves End<a href="http://swarmsuk.bandcamp.com/album/old-raves-end">http://swarmsuk.bandcamp.com/album/old-raves-end</a>
<br />
<br />
An absolutely incredible, lush and ponderous record. You can hear it for free on Bandcamp or kick the people a few euros to keep it in your headphones. Well worth it.<br />
<br />
Just wanted to mention it, since track 3 was an inspiration for the previous poem and was played on repeat as I wrote it.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0" height="100" src="http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/v=2/album=3546275271/size=venti/bgcol=FFFFFF/linkcol=4285BB/" style="display: block; height: 100px; position: relative; width: 400px;" width="400"><a href="http://swarmsuk.bandcamp.com/album/old-raves-end">Old Raves End by Swarms</a></iframe>Leo F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17505602903349656466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365434519960928482.post-66245154023374409682012-07-10T20:22:00.001-04:002012-07-11T19:01:58.716-04:00ojo ojo ojothe flicker of your eyes<br />
renders dollar store shelves of<br />
rainbow colored plastic shit smashed<br />
with riotous sledgehammers<br />
<br />
the flicker of your eyes rushes crowds<br />
of well meaning itinerant children<br />
into tomorrow's parks tugging at<br />
shirts haggled on tables in times<br />
square<br />
<br />
the flicker of your eyes destroys unopens<br />
destroys unused gated fields suffocated with the idle<br />
debris of unthinking candy bar wrappers and<br />
erects quiet faced guardians to stand<br />
watch over lost spaces and welcome<br />
those who need them and everyone<br />
needs them<br />
<br />
the flicker of your eyes drinks every<br />
bottle in a bar dry and fills every vein<br />
dead with clumping heroin slurry and<br />
every bronchial tube with sweetly<br />
violent smoke violet through diner<br />
neon and burns every hangover<br />
<br />
the flicker of your eyes is a cruel<br />
irresolute madness backbroken on<br />
the quick injurious words of a lover<br />
seething across a street learning a<br />
penetrating truth<br />
<br />
the flicker of your eyes is a child<br />
touching everything in the store<br />
and getting the shit smacked out of them forced<br />
to the parking lot in hideous<br />
unjust tears and finding a space too<br />
massive to even understand filled<br />
with more people who don't<br />
understand or care than it seems<br />
there are grains of sand on a beach's<br />
anthills<br />
<br />
the flicker of your eyes is a fucking bitch with<br />
finger deadset in chest coloring you with each<br />
bit of pressure knowing you and rendering you<br />
soluble in dust with each knowing pierce<br />
<br />
the flicker of your eyes knows me through you knows<br />
this through this finds me thinks me whole runs<br />
me lost past post offices closed from disuse in the<br />
reflection of caribbean goods windows and ghetto<br />
doctors offices chased by the slow gait of a woman's<br />
decisions like music flickering<br />
<br />
the flicker of your eyes fucks with parallel universes and<br />
unchanges changed decisions and changes and decides and<br />
drops judgment like tropical hail rattles the walls of jails with<br />
hope and mystical longings makes the free feel chained up and<br />
ruined with jagged movements in your eyes<br />
<br />
the flicker of your eyes tries makes efforts for me it walks with me<br />
through the cities that won't stalk my failures for me following<br />
me swallowing edges of manhattan in pieces guardrail by stoop stairs by<br />
moonlit bad choices stacking bits of a hundred country's voices til<br />
babylon is a bar i decide on on a moist summer eve i find the roads<br />
where your dilated pupils migrate the movements of intoxicated strangers that<br />
touch my arm reminding me to hoist expectations while murmuring the<br />
lyrics to car alarms your eyes<br />
<br />
flicker making me healthy urging each sidestep to danger no closer to better<br />
off without the observation of sirens either bad intentioning females or police<br />
textures watercoloring the contents of my pockets violently transfixing a<br />
touch to my shoulder insecure your eyes flicker and ask directions demure and<br />
unknown standing before the map lacking the craft to find stations which<br />
fill me even alone empty and unknown standing in wait like my passion will<br />
speak for itself as it disregards the words that insist to wait for<br />
<br />
the flicker of your eyes bold and unyielding and standing on chairs too loud talking<br />
loud yet fucking with sarcastic prettyboys and debonair rooftop partyclub<br />
gogetters smacking fourteen dollar drinks out of their hands like WHAT and<br />
screaming shitty obscure options to deejays on tuxedo dancefloors with utter<br />
sincerity prepping moves in mirrors to shake strangers to<br />
<br />
the flicker of your eyes intelligent unbelieving melted salt caramel confrontational<br />
anarchic confounding predictive debunking thrift store riches and favorite<br />
cookbooks with flair<br />
<br />
the flicker of your eyes is a one dollar fifty special on hot dogs at gray's<br />
papaya panhandled on a wednesday afternoon to the tune of vegan supermarket<br />
muzak and samples of mexican food dropping quarters in the empty guitar case<br />
of a travelling headfucked hitchhiker playing blackjack with bad acid trips for<br />
good ones and doubling down<br />
<br />
your eyes flicker and mountains go unclimbed and elementary school poetry withers<br />
unrhymed and awkward in the hearts of bad students with more ink in the margins<br />
than homework assigned accomplishing empty gibberish for the bathroom stalls of<br />
their furious fearless minds learning curse words to mouth in the mirror to present<br />
snickering to bullies before untold acts of cruelty<br />
<br />
your eyes flicker and everything stays serene to contrast the stutter of a pair of ill-<br />
fitting denim pants at the shindig you thought you'd stand out at spitting game to the<br />
pinkhaired character smiling at the goofy unkempt bold motherfucker who keeps<br />
ducking out to smoke his pack of unfiltered social anxiety in the windswept solace<br />
of lamplight leaning on the brickwork in torpor<br />
<br />
your eyes flicker and the city speaks cruelty even in the lack of your flickering<br />
eyes looking for judgment and redemption in a smile to accommodate these<br />
wasted yet urgent grasps for reason and the cosign of a strapless bra shuddering<br />
close to my blathering mouth territorial for purpose in your effortless mouth<br />
territorial<br />
<br />
i flicker when you watch me<br />
jumping in and out of your vision<br />
surreal and televised<br />
conquered and yielded<br />
your most minute graze thrilling<br />
your most particular shift documented<br />
<br />
ruined in your careless glance<br />
a jazz solo in a muted cough<br />
the flicker of your eyes annotated<br />
footnoted and obscured to smaller text<br />
<br />
muted trumpet when you speak<br />
never speaking when you speak<br />
you are here with me<br />
<br />
the city only ever a memory<br />
witnessed<br />
replete with imagery cataloged in disfiguring prose<br />
the flicker of your eyes recording me in silence<br />
epoch in a grateful glance<br />
<br />
we could be nothing and you'd forget each of these words<br />
but when you watched the sidewalks shifted alignment<br />
i stepped north to go east<br />
then you ordered hispanic sodas in the confusion and<br />
<br />
all i tasted was sugarLeo F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17505602903349656466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365434519960928482.post-15009721530248907042012-07-08T20:54:00.002-04:002012-10-19T18:47:59.942-04:00palabrassome of these sundowns the dreams somehow<br />
pierce some of the blank blackness echoing every<br />
single night and<br />
i could be remembering something i lost months or years ago<br />
<br />
could be finding it like a drawn breath in<br />
<div>
dawn light and i fight suffocation</div>
<div>
to return to it<br />
<br />
recline into the chemicals of waking like<br />
rubbing the arms of a long lost green chair before standing up<br />
to breathe in all the incineration i've caused<br />
<br />
it's fast and slow<br />
like the drift of her through hallways last night<br />
a phantom adjusting the stupid things i've placed around<br />
the house<br />
<br />
woke up today and cleaned it like life or death<br />
put together the broken shelf and replenished it<br />
with scattered minutes and hours we spent in dusty<br />
bookshops<br />
finding fragments of her poetry bookmarking half-read chapters in her<br />
messy script<br />
<br />
i'm sitting on a freshly vacuumed carpet<br />
squinting and cleaning my glasses to discern these<br />
words<br />
<br />
words used to be all we had but they transformed in the grind<br />
of years<br />
drained of their direction she<br />
angled them into herself<br />
we used to sit and read to each other passionately in that shitty<br />
studio apartment with the junk lamp and the proud<br />
futon i purchased and pushed home in an abandoned shopping cart<br />
<br />
it happened a little bit, later<br />
sometimes we found a passage here and there in someone else's writing<br />
and escaped for a minute sitting close together with averted gazes<br />
<br />
but she stopped reading me poetry<br />
very quietly<br />
in her way that she has<br />
in her voice always too loud (i called<br />
it her portorican voice<br />
sweetly) in her abrupt and running movements were<br />
the silent withdrawals she demonstrated<br />
the ones i pretended to ignore<br />
<br />
words used to be all we had<br />
we wore them and placed them around each others necks<br />
and kissed them and fucked them<br />
we strung them through the house<br />
we machinegunned them with cocaine and<br />
sometimes even took the ones we didn't say and<br />
said them to each other<br />
<br />
in my dream she's a laughing spirit<br />
flaunting through burning doorways<br />
destructive<br />
troublesome<br />
angry<br />
i drink her fury and chase her<br />
tearing at myself<br />
pulling off outfits of myself<br />
her distance mocks me<br />
i stop chasing her because it is<br />
the only way i can imagine that she will<br />
find the joy i neatly removed<br />
<br />
i wake up and clean the house<br />
i put all the words away and they are neat (not neat<br />
like she used to put all the words away) and square<br />
and spilling over with her blood<br />
<br />
i sit on the carpet and read the words she left<br />
behind<br />
almost none of them are complete<br />
little fragments<br />
i find myself mouthing my name written in her hand as if<br />
it is her words mouthing my hand written in her name<br />
<br />
i am still sitting here<br />
i've been sitting here for months<br />
not knowing how to write myself a space where she remains<br />
<br />
i put the words back into the words and put<br />
them back onto shelves of words with other<br />
words of hers maybe hiding in the the words of<br />
others that i haven't found<br />
that maybe she hasn't even found<br />
<br />
i know them<br />
i don't have to look for them anymore</div>
<br />Leo F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17505602903349656466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365434519960928482.post-27688417154469251532012-07-07T16:05:00.001-04:002012-07-07T16:05:05.803-04:00GaboMarquez has dementia and phones<br />
his brother with simple questions<br />
<br />
his life unwritten unfurls as a banner on an<br />
endless battlefield<br />
wrapped around the forgiving and<br />
contemplative eyes that always stared at me from the severely<br />
worn paperback with the Rousseau cover<br />
<br />
i miss Gabriel Garcia Marquez<br />
<br />
i miss the music of his poetry describing a thousand<br />
foolish characters and the smells<br />
of his cities<br />
i miss not knowing who he is when i read him and<br />
not caring<br />
i miss the bookmark his work of loneliness crafted<br />
connecting me to my love<br />
and the sound of her laughter when she found herself<br />
reading it again<br />
<br />
i have always been proud of him and i don't know why<br />
have always lived with his souls<br />
have nestled in his blankets in awe<br />
<br />
i still find myself<br />
returning to his words like the door of a<br />
lost home filled<br />
with antique intimacies and the voices of dead relatives and<br />
the feel on my cheek of chilly fog emanating from<br />
the wondrous ice of gypsies who will<br />
die and never leaveLeo F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17505602903349656466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365434519960928482.post-16222793826954595062012-07-03T19:34:00.002-04:002012-07-08T20:59:37.119-04:00putting things away<br />
know it kinda starts to look that way<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
stricken and healing</div>
<div>
dug below the soil like a dog in summer</div>
<div>
reaching for the cooler</div>
<div>
myths lower than the sun</div>
<div>
denser that the last seven</div>
<div>
words we shared</div>
<div>
searching for below</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
after enough nights of</div>
<div>
composing strength and excuses in</div>
<div>
decomposed brain cell</div>
<div>
reverie</div>
<div>
we signify and play together in the</div>
<div>
ambivalent sun</div>
<div>
and scraps of our connective</div>
<div>
memory circulate in these</div>
<div>
lone meanderings</div>
<div>
linked by the returns and bent streets of</div>
<div>
our lives</div>
<div>
choked as the</div>
<div>
dream of you</div>
<div>
shimmers</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
maybe all of these swept recollections</div>
<div>
define a</div>
<div>
cracked child</div>
<div>
who looked for</div>
<div>
you</div>
<div>
never looking for anything</div>
<div>
or</div>
<div>
a crass thickheaded adult</div>
<div>
who (looking for a</div>
<div>
cracked child) kept time with your</div>
<div>
sincere agreements</div>
<div>
who smiles when he's insecure</div>
<div>
he looked for you</div>
<div>
when he didn't know what</div>
<div>
anything looked like</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
it starts to look like him</div>
<div>
this</div>
<div>
scavenged cave graffiti</div>
<div>
clueless notes wet with past</div>
<div>
intoxicants in the</div>
<div>
scrawlspace of notebooks or</div>
<div>
the blank pages of novels</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
he</div>
<div>
would fill the blank pages diligently</div>
<div>
looking for the answer in an awestruck phrase or</div>
<div>
a pretty fist of words</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
he had a lot of ideas</div>
<div>
they formed dense cancers of</div>
<div>
unfulfilled infuriating notions</div>
<div>
sometimes</div>
<div>
they were merely</div>
<div>
anecdotal and weightless</div>
<div>
filling the conversational air with</div>
<div>
strangers</div>
<div>
sometimes</div>
<div>
they were</div>
<div>
precious and secreted away and they</div>
<div>
weren't real without you</div>
<div>
until and</div>
<div>
of</div>
<div>
you and even</div>
<div>
with you</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
i'm in the process of</div>
<div>
forgetting your smile</div>
<div>
a very dry and witless task like</div>
<div>
a prep cook rendering nature</div>
<div>
to compartmentalized</div>
<div>
utilitarian</div>
<div>
refrigerated</div>
<div>
contents</div>
<div>
i find myself cutting your smile into</div>
<div>
thin rings of wet amethyst like red</div>
<div>
onions staining every surface of</div>
<div>
memory</div>
<div>
i collect their perfect order</div>
<div>
scattershot into</div>
<div>
plastic containers and seal them</div>
<div>
against the elements</div>
<div>
taking your bent sleepy legs to freeze next</div>
<div>
to crushed basil and coffee ice cubes</div>
<div>
i gather your hungrily offered kisses</div>
<div>
slightly parted with reassuring tongue behind</div>
<div>
the supplies for our dead pets that</div>
<div>
we couldn't bear to discard</div>
<div>
i fold the sweet way you correct</div>
<div>
the bottom left corner of your panties with a gentle</div>
<div>
snap into the linen closet tucked among</div>
<div>
medicine and cocoa butter</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
i somehow do these</div>
<div>
mundane things</div>
<div>
with love</div>
<div>
very carefully</div>
<div>
sullenly</div>
<div>
without defiance or anger</div>
<div>
very softly</div>
<div>
with a kind of stupefied distance</div>
<div>
i know it appears diligent</div>
<div>
inspired even</div>
<div>
maybe it might appear as if i understand it completely</div>
<div>
scientifically</div>
<div>
maybe it seems as if i accept it or i'm facing it with</div>
<div>
confidence and verve</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
it starts to seem that way</div>
<div>
bereft of bitter self-destruction but</div>
<div>
a little bit fascinated with my own movements</div>
<div>
listening for your echoes in</div>
<div>
strangers</div>
<div>
watching for your echoes</div>
<div>
i know it looks like i am buried by them</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
it starts to look that way but</div>
<div>
i am unfettered</div>
<div>
sprawled in these pages</div>
<div>
nothing pulls me down</div>Leo F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17505602903349656466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365434519960928482.post-53724816148745231542012-06-23T13:31:00.003-04:002012-06-23T13:31:46.624-04:00the bronx: a shopping list<br />
spinach<br />
milled flaxseed<br />
green platanos<br />
the name of that person who plays the saxaphone every saturday morning to the first arcs of sunshine exploring cracked sidewalk quadrants vibrating the weeds and crabgrass in between their teeth<br />
dr bronner's tea tree soap<br />
a 50% success rate with the paid laundry machines<br />
a guy on the subway who isn't doing that wide-stance seating bullshit rubbing his knee against mine in some kind of weird alphamale exultation<br />
a senior citizen in my building who doesn't think to herself why the fuck is this guy living here every time i doom her afternoon into sharing these cramped quarters with me for 45 seconds<br />
whole wheat potato bread<br />
bustelo (find it on sale somewhere)<br />
a halfway decent sushi restaurant closer than 12 bus stops away<br />
a pair of jeans that aren't fucking bedazzled or pocked with any number of stylistic piercings and medallions<br />
any one of ten thousand gorgeous single mothers picking up their kids from the bus stop outside the projects on webster ave next to western beef<br />
(check out western beef the sale on canned beans is thorough)<br />
pomegranates at the korean market where they're always so cheap for some reason<br />
turkey coldcuts for the cats cuz they likes that shit<br />
a handful of yellow pills from an old friend<br />
red cabbage<br />
some kind of weird vegetable i've never cooked but should experiment on<br />
hair stuff although i lack the most basic awareness in what i'm supposed to do with my hair<br />
30 people at the gym who don't stake territorial ownership on three stations at the same time<br />
a sandwich boarded aggressive WE SELL GOLD AND DIAMONDS guy on fordham road who doesn't stab me and my complete lack of gold and diamonds with weaponized business cards<br />
pearled barley<br />
lentils<br />
some free time and the resolve to render them alchemy-like into a pot of soup i won't despise after two days<br />
a new mattress not soaked with loathing<br />
a sidewalk not spackled with weeks of moldering dollarstore trash<br />
something else to walk beside instead of angry or disinterested parking lots<br />
the balls to play 3-card on fordham at least once<br />
bleach<br />
cheap rum<br />
a lottery ticket<br />
papayas<br />
cigarettes<br />
paper towels<br />
the energy to stay or leave<br />
lemons<br />Leo F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17505602903349656466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365434519960928482.post-13172473025171306712012-06-20T07:14:00.001-04:002012-06-20T07:14:23.960-04:00egress from a brightly lit land (part 2)<div><p>bonfires to<br>
dance around<br>
singing in your underwear with painted slang runes on skin</p>
<p>you sing your elders<br>
you sing for the lost skincracked molecules of friendships<br>
for the couple on the bus formed around their infant like a forcefield<br>
you sing for what you admire and in the sarcastic face of what you condemn<br>
you sing farces that make light of your insipid and self-absorbed struggle<br>
you sing for absorption spitting cachaca into the blaze<br>
hair whips like a bucking loa soulspanking jerky movements<br>
you sing stupid haircuts<br>
bonfire as panopticon<br>
restless in the center of your own surveillance<br>
you sing calm and croon self-destructing questions<br>
you sing explosions back into themselves as cat claws<br>
you sing consumptions and empty threats<br>
sing old lives that emerge from the heat as nickelodeons animated underneath each error<br>
sing subtitles for each wrongdoing<br>
sing roadside secrets and grand admissions</p>
<p>on the edges of your society we post gypsy tent towns<br>
permanent camp on the borders of your disgrace<br>
we eat<br>
we eat for the first time in a long while but in the dim lanternspace<br>
we eat as if we remembered</p>
<p>there are sounds that emerge from the roads<br>
reminding us of exile and half-confident promises and<br>
the taste of poisoned waters warming<br>
scars reminding</p>
<p>it is quieter here<br>
with those sounds soft and distant and constant and<br>
somehow beautiful<br>
in the darkness the echoes conjure pleasant hallucinations or memories or shadowy dream material<br>
and we recall crippling dangers with humor and pained laughter</p>
<p>we would not trade this night<br>
for all the certainties<br>
we left<br>
behind</p>
</div>Leo F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17505602903349656466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6365434519960928482.post-28785611780515429262012-06-17T13:32:00.002-04:002012-06-17T13:32:16.365-04:00clinic / i'm ok<br />
killed 2(<br />
gunman<br />
inc<br />
luded)<br />
<br />
killed 2(<br />
7 wound<br />
ed inc<br />
luded)<br />
<br />
killed 2(<br />
the rest<br />
are exp<br />
ected to<br />
survive)<br />
<br />
killed 2(<br />
wounded<br />
at rest 2<br />
waiting<br />
2<br />
arrive at<br />
their dest<br />
ination<br />
alive)<br />
<br />
in the drag of a lost universe<br />
between the ears and bleeding<br />
captives of deadly ambivalent serotonin place<br />
one foot in front of the other<br />
and wander to the end of their halfbaked goal<br />
<br />
there but for the grace of chemistry<br />
and featherlight<br />
dice go<br />
2(wound<br />
ed inc<br />
lusive)<br />
exactly<br />
the same<br />
<br />
our pains are identical<br />
even as the maw between<br />
our actions renders no<br />
unity or sympathy<br />
exactly as different as can be<br />
<br />
we are both exactly irrelevant<br />
2(wounded)<br />
one continues to elude<br />
<br />
you killed 2 because there is no country<br />
for the suffering to own<br />
<br />
one of them was you<br />
because you never owned anything<br />
but suffering<br />
not even yourself<br />
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />Leo F.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17505602903349656466noreply@blogger.com0