Wednesday, April 08, 2009

NaPoWriMo [Cont.]

Musical Garden II

Can’t give you up yet gin and tonic, oh magical, magical drink & the city lights rather than the stars.

Can’t give you up, dreams of a long dead boy drifting into my body, keeping me hidden from waking, puling me down into the death insane mouth of the world

Can’t you up, Muriel, you crazy mother-us-all political poetess, purveyor of peace.

Cant’ give up Fire Island.

Can’t give you up, cheddar, Swiss, American, Gorgonzola, Limburger, Gouda, feta, goat, blue, Brie.

Can’t give you up, ideals & fantasies of vastness.

Can’t give you up, America, you motherfucking rotten boyfriend, breaking my heart over and over.

Can’t give you up New York with all your filth and rats and splendid light.

Can’t give you up beautiful small boy resting on your bed that is too large, all your day’s naughtiness floating off into the night’s air.

Can’t give up poetry – no way!

Can’t give into this sadness that flows through the body like any uncertain movement of listless stars.

Cant’ give you up Oregon mountains to stare into like a million of random trees.

Can’t stop clamoring.

Can’t give up dreams of your gentleness that may or may not exist.

in the tradition of Anne Waldman

Tuesday, April 07, 2009

Today, I met a woman with a severe disability in poetry class who lost her young son in addition to having a miscarriage.

Yesterday, while at the hospital, D., who is under heavy sedation, opened his eyes at me.

This is my poem for Tuesday.

Sunday, April 05, 2009

Monday's Haiku

for d.

leaving the hospital
the daffodils are blooming
april, don't torture me

Spring is nearly here
nearby in the hospital
you rest and rest and

*

It is fucking cold
the shuttle bus is late
I need a shower

*

for Mr. Eric

born on a spring day
mr green jeans o how I love you
let us get married

dearest mr. green jeans
you are so sexy, please come to BK
and do my garden

dearest mr. green jeans
send me a letter on FB
with photos of yr pool

*
for jeff

In the AM child mis
behaves I am so stressed
give me a ho-ho!

Now: words from our sponsor, Susan Sontag: 'Neither is the crisis created by AIDS a 'total' anything. We are not being invaded. The body is not a battlefield. The ill are neither unavoidable casualties nor the enemy.'

See you tomorrow.

Saturday, April 04, 2009

The Poem for Sunday

It was such a wonderful reading. Thank you to Ron, Lisa, Tim, Kristin, & all who attended:

Here's NaPo for Sunday.

Poem based on letters/imterviews between Bernadette Mayer and Bill Berkson
'What's your idea of a Good Time'

Are you a Marxist? I like to believe, utterly. The idea of capitalism makes me what to throw up. I can't stand the fact that some people have $700 handbags while others are starving. I can't stand how America's society is steeped in having rather than loving. I can't stand the fact that my students go to college 'to get a good job' rather than to learn.

Have you ever gone to Mexico? Twice. Both were bad experiences. The first time I ate turtle soup and went to a very boring nightclub. The second time we got stopped and bribed by the police. Then, we couldn't find a hotel. We decided to drive home that night. I fell asleep, my friend took a wrong turn and we ended up lost and five hours out of our way. I hate Mexico.

Where do you draw the line between messy & livable in your house? I'll be honest. My house is very messy. Sometimes it's livable, sometimes it's not.

What are your favorite New York restuarants? Mary Ann's, La Bonn Soupe, The Odeon, and Black Betty.

Do you shock easily? Not as far as sex and drugs. People's cruelty shocks me and people's copacity to be emphathic shocks me. My student's apathy sometimes shocks me.

What detail in your life is most facinating to write about? My relationship with my husband and son. How indepth a relationship with a child is. How it makes you look at the entire world differently. How relationships over the years unfold. You never truly know someone completely. How language makes its way into the conciousness of babies. They are born looking with the inability to describe.

What jobs (other than poet) have you taken on? Data entry, museum gift shop clerk, dishwasher, nanny, babysitter, editor, adminisrative assistant, professor, middle school teacher, GED teacher, poetry teacher to people with disabilities, bookstore shelver, daycare attendant, libarian assistant, customer service representative, freelance writer, pta vice-president, mother, elementary school volunteer, gallery assistant.
Jack Spicer Quiz (in partial form), for norma cole

Politics

What is your favortie political song? Rock and Roll N -er
If you had to choose to eliminate 3 political figures in the world, who would you choose?
Dick Cheney, that guy from Korea, George Jr.

Religion

1. Which religious figures had or represented religious views nearest to your own?

Nearest: Jesus, Buddha Furthest: Dionysus

2. Classifiy this set of figures in the same way:

Nearest: I'm hip to Marx, Aquinas, Augustine, Gandhi, Yeats, Proust and de Sade.
Farthest: I'm pretty unhappy with Luther and Hilter tho not in that order.

History: Pass

Poetry:

1. If you were editing a magazine and had an unlimited budget, which poets would you ask for contrabutions:

Betsy Andrews, Andrea Baker, Charlens Bernstein, Anselm Berrigan, Edmund Berrigan, Mei Mei Besrssenbrugge, Norma Cole, Bruce Covey, Marcella Durand Jorie Graham, Brenda Hillman, Robert Hass, Lisa Jarnot, Maryrose Larkin, Reb Livingston, Alice Notley, Michael Palmer, Eleni Sikelionios, Nathaniel Tarn, Kristin Prevallet, Anne Gorrick , Anne Waldman, Jaques Roubaud,Sam Lohman, David Abel, David Wolach with art by Susan Bee, Carol Diamond, Lee Bartlett, Thomas Evans, Amy Evans, and Jennifer Urban. Also, Bill Olsen and Nancy Eimers

Personal:

Name: Jennifer Bartlett Address: Brooklyn
Age: You wish you knew Sex: Sometimes

Height: 5'2 Weight: 125
Married

What animal do you most resemble: pig - smart, salty and messy
What insect do you most resemble - why, scorpian, is that an insect?
What star do you most resemble - Parker Posey

I don;t know tarot cards: but I fear death, elevators, anxiety, sadness, insanity, insane asylums, the police and cabbies.
I desire world peace, happiness for children, to write good poems, a world where people with disabilities are not freaks, a writing job at the New York Times, a Mini, and a ho-ho.

The funniest joke I know is hawaii, fine thank you.

Exercise 1

1.

With the gums gone I longed for longing
are complete And though the nose is nothing
the eye can only see what it chooses

And now the birds lift from the surface
of the radiator spauled across my floor
is given the even row of it
fit to raise
my wild children.

Friday, April 03, 2009

NaPoWriMo [Cont.]

My mother would be a falconress
and I her breaking wing
bloodied at her soul
the doubling of us becomes.

She cannot blame me.
For it is her that taught me
to claw and claw
and request at the world.

Mother, bend at my will.
I, who, so decidedly do
and do not love you.
I do cripple your wing.

Prepare for flight [singing]
the torn open
cling to the hem.
You will crack at the middle
the scratches still upon you
in between the living and dying
a grasp at the blurring earth.

Stillness not escaping
my hand reaches into
only my reflection is mirrord
upon the mirror of her
I glow in her space
little etching that I am
little burning

The damage at the wrist is mine
want and want.

* I hope I don't embarrass myself. This is a nutty attempt at a Duncan/Antony combo. Note: because Mom reads the blog; the mother & child here are me & jeffrey.

Thursday, April 02, 2009

Some Haiku for you

leaving the hopital
it is spring again
when will you see it

she leaves a branch
on our kitchen table
all spring petals drift

my light green knit hat
it keeps my dirty long hair
off my face

my son seems to have
an enormous amount of misinformation
about hippies

Segue Reading

Through the kindness of Lisa Jarnot, I'll be reading at the Segue reading series at the Bowery Poetry Club.
The reading is Saturday the 4th at 4 pm.
I'm reading with Ron Silliman.
Be there or be a circle.
Tin House

Stillness turns in its well, the summit moves with the tide.
The house is constantly unfinished, the desire a cold nest to rest in.

The reservoir is trying [attempting] to freeze over
with an expanding map shaped like an angel.

It sooths and rejects.

I wonder if seasons were create by our brains [memory].

In winter the house will not have us. In summer, it opens.
We are considered innovators of all things.

Moths swarmed the elm tree
one year, and bees the next, so I thought

we misinterpreted the meaning of the word home
in the yard, alien voices

it was the teeming.

The third year brought butterflies.
I found an explanation for the phenomena in the poem.

It reflected the light moving across her black and orange wing.

in the tradition of Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge

*a few lines are, in fact, Mei Mei's. The 'tin house' is my imaginary recollection of Mei-Mei and Richard Tuttle's 'summer house.'

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Missing Paragraph of 1st Letter on Georges

We saw many kinds of animals. Some appeared to be dead, others living, It was as though they followed the pattern of the storm and were trying to warn us. Many of the men were having a hard time imagining the prospect of being saved. The night was so black. The water blocked out any possibility of stars.

in the tradition of Charles Olson