Monday, April 24, 2006

The Record

PreMay 2006

I. Invocation

Dante:
during this so brief vigil of our senses
that is still reserved for us, do not deny
yourself experience of what there is beyond,
behind the sun, in the world they call unpeopled.
and
quench deep in myself the burning wish
to know the world and have experience
of all man's vices, of all human worth
Canto XXVI

II. The Record

To lawns and porches of east ann street along 1010/210;
the planada-rest in peace-and the corner of 7 where the rhine spilled over;
catherine street and my boys loney and chap, the petition couch, squalor is high modernism fellas, spills high postmodernism, keep your head up lads steadfast against misanthropics;
here stands commie high, zingerman's breadly, argiero's and the sheds of saturday mornings;
lawrence street and my main man linford you harbored me;
south fourth of three summer's past fans turning in lateday, the west beckons across yard and leopold's where we have cleaned;
detroit street, washington, ashley on some sundays, liberty out west and over the hill, huron river to north territorial to m52, cedar campus and whitefish point where we forged meta and in silent rooms transversed time, men's retreat and focus week of frozenbay broomball and narnia;
i left you a gnome and a thing called meta (tb douce, d dunkel, taitcha: respek) blessed be these terrains and abodes.
to my people uprooted and gone ya'll better dig in;
the fellows;
justin b (tinney some time yore);
dave o and dumie we formed a midhall triad;
eadie, mick, snuph, schteeny, sprech my harvard colleague and carlsone the easy e;
delorean of car fame, meul, mccrack - see you all soon;
jen hubes, derek of cigars, bf5, and carolina fame (tiger, chaser, drock, dj) and your honey ms. single no longer - ya'll better remember where ya'll been and reroot for the land of vinyl brick and pears;
tom e thane of thanes much love to you and to the little ones;
troy and jess and as you have it boo, you are exemplars;
rich the aussie god bless ameerica and the leelanau, the manistee;
darren you're a legacy van der keesma;
hull i missed you what happened since pre-moore talks on couches?;
muncey dear matron you're a staple;
chelsea in the leelenau from sf to jonestown you've got roots honey;
bling, ryan, dawn and/or delahoya: stratford was vernal even in the grey of autumn, blessings blessings blessings;
keith at asp, john perkins down in jackson;
ann s of mo and la keep breathing;
jess whang of jersey like fish in and out of water please babe be strong;
k v dyke and the pressing;
raynor post focus week i miss the land that i never knew;
backypacky amy and rachel, we are all alone so let us hike;
the taubman crew: mississy, chang, lads with cigars and whiskey, alexa, hemingway, devereux and melissa who rocks blue spandex, mick and bodley, ddrek;
ddrek of many nights at arbor our home; graham, pennings, yang, melema, steveo, tb, tracy, and the ivers;
what has happened?;
what to you kg son of swan?: turn back around some day; you missed it;
alex, tait, andrew, megan, timmy, i love you.
three thumps and a sign over the heart for my people, the homeland, our mother the lake;
and to the crew in el: look and see what's following you.


Chanson: Neutral Milk Hotel, Holland 1945

Thursday, April 06, 2006

Wet Land

On the first of April

a knotted lot of reeds and weeds where six shacks shackeled in vines
and blossoms rise from ebb of knoll on elderly hunched totem poles
here the sky is white and the earthen vernal in low opacities an iron
road of euclid [points do not exist] runs course behind the yards of
the hallow and for all i know this train that has just glid past is from
nowhere and knowhere and is going nowhere and knowhere
chap holds a fragment of falsetto past that has worn like the ground
affecting to carry it to present memory and relicy and i am sitting
telling our other that some things belong on the earth even when
left when forgotted when ungraspt when found free in rest
i do n't believe in ghosts but they must believe in me as on the coast
when we came up with notions ideas and mights over rising sun cried
gull and tern - we refer to some things because they refer to us and all
their abode is in our own world where walls corrode slump and infer
an invitation so here we are within standing slumped below slouchingly
post and beam, slat and plank, nail and tooth breathing tooth and nail
to come to some melancholy terms with the falsetto past, reliquary wall
where at long last our brothers sit and plant into the earth the rooted past
forgetting rhyme time, affecting to rest and rise, turn breath and walk away

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

The Phenomenology of Winter

II. How it feels to be something on

Sometime in January, 2006

Meul,

My flight from Newark to Detroit was marked by great comfort and the beautiful winter sun flooding the skies at 30,000 feet. I knew Detroit would be cloudy because the pilot said it would. I was prepared for that. But I didn't think that shit would last fourteen days. I'm losing it. For the first time in all my memory, the site of the thick, foggy mat of clouds in the sky this morning driving down the street made me feel like I was on the verge of flipping out like I was in the fifth day without water, or that stranded on a raft in the middle of the Indian Ocean following some TIF shipwreck my willpower collapsed as I plunged my face into the salty seas and took long, deep gulps of saltwater, only to cause severe delusion and violent hallucinations mere hours later as my body kamikazzied its last wits in the throes of dehydration. It made me feel like I was strapped to a chair in an empty, abandoned Soviet state hospital in the northern Baltic circle with a tape recorder in each ear playing a tape of Bush saying the word 'freedom' over and over and over and over again. I wasn't ready for fourteen days of this merda. My break, initially steeped in the optimistic hopes to reroot in the land and get my final papers done in hermitage, has given way to lethargy and sure weight gain. If I was not me, I'd be sitting in the basement right now smoking reefer and watching porno. This weather will get to you, no doubt. No doubt about it. I don't remember winter being this despairing from childhood, and I certainly didn't expect to get blindsided and drowned by the fucking constant saturation of drizzle fog and winterdew. Outside is the color of a rotting corpse. I may have no choice but to leave home and become a crow, or possibly a raven.

Your pal,
Patrick