Happy New Year

Last Post of 2007 (?)

I haven't been doing much. No, no, that's a bit of a lie. I've been reading and I've been writing (mostly bizarre short stories). All forthcoming. Hopefully the '08 paprika will prove to be spicier, loftier, and chicken-ery.

Christmas Day Holiday Roll-out Closing Day Sales Price(s)

Favorite Dance Dancing Beats of 2007

1. Enur, "Calabria"
2. Bob Sinclair, "World Hold On"
3. radiohead, "Jigsaw Falling into Place"
4. Alexkid, "Come with Me"
5. K-os, "Sunday Morning"
6. Beyonce, "Freakum Dress"
7. M.I.A., "Boyz / Bamboo Banga"
8. Jonny McGovern, "Dick Swang Out!"
9. Calvin Harris, "Acceptable in the 80s"
10. Britney Spears, "Gimme More"

Also, what song totally pulled your heart strings this year? What song came out of the fucking blue and railroaded you? For me, there were two for 07'

1. The National - Mistaken for Strangers
2. Blonde Redhead - Spring and By Summer Fall

(though iTunes informs me that "Jigsaw Falling Into Place" was my most listened to track, what does iTunes know? This computer's been around only for a few months...)

Best of 2007 (Music)

I've determined that each of us is going to do a top 10 list. And since all I do is listen to music, I call music. I personally vote that you two can squabble over poems and books and movies and whatever. Music is mine.

This rating is arbitrary. Say that up front:

Best Albums of 2007
1.) Burial: Untrue
1.) Radiohead: In Rainbows
1.) Pantha Du Prince: This Bliss
1.)The National: Boxer
5.) Menomena: Friend and Foe
6.)Justice: Cross
7.) Battles: Mirrored
8.) K-OS: Atlantis: Hymns for Disco
9.) Queens of the Stone Age: Era Vulgaris
10.) Mavis Staples: We’ll Never Turn Back
11.) Kings of Leon: Because of the Times
12.) A-Trak: Dirty South Dance
13.)Antibalas: Security
14.) Black Milk: Popular Demand
15.) Amy Winehouse: Back to Black
16.) Besnard Lakes: The Besnard Lakes are the Dark Horse
17.) Spoon: Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga.
18.) Wu Tang Clan: 8 Diagrams
18.) Jerseyband: Live: Lung Punch Fantasy
19.)The Dirty Projectors: Rise Above
20.) M.I.A. - Kala
20.) Jay-Z - American Gangster

Best Tracks of 2007:
1.) Rhianna: Umberella
2.) Animal Collective: Peacebone
3.) Peter Bjorn and John: Young Folks
3.) Justice: Phantom I & II
4.) UGK: Int'l Player's Anthem
5.) M.I.A.: Paper Planes
6.) Arcade Fire: No Cars Go
7.) Radiohead: Reckoner
8.) Lupe Fiasco: Dumb It Down
9.) Beyonce: Freakum Dress (God I hope this is 2007)
10.) Amy Winehouse: Me and Mr. Jones
11.) Saul Williams: Niggy Tardust
12.) K-OS: Saturday Night
13.) Burial: Shell of Light
14.) Wu-Tang Clan (but basically GZA): Sunlight
15.) Consequence: Don't Forget 'Em
16.) Battles: Race In
17.) Andrew Bird: Fiery Crash
18.) Besnard Lakes: Devastation
19.) Jamie T: If You've Got the Money
20.) Spoon: You Got Yr Cherry Bomb
21.) Blitzen Trapper: Wild Mountain Nation
22.) Pharoahe Monch: Free
23.) Jay-Z: American Gangster
24.) Rockers to Swallow: Yeah Yeah Yeahs
25.) Grinderman: No Pussy Blues
25.) The National: Fake Empire

Magnets + studying for a final that I'm not serious about = rubbish

Lake(s)

Get at [her] lovely flower,
Crying woman.
Hot summer.
Glowing garden.
Tell her she wanted bubbles.


-I made one tiny little bitty change, I wanted another 'her' but couldn't find one. What are you gonna do, eh?

Extra! Extra! Read all about it!

As a function of chicken paprika, we like to steep ourselves in madness. Therefore, for the viewing pleasure of the general public at large, etc. We present to you, the finest newsletter you have ever seen in print or out of it. Prepare to be shocked and amazed to silence, or moderately amused for the next 2 minutes:


(full-sized) http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/5049/paprika1copyrq6.jpg

a moment to be a fan...

lo and behold, a question I wrote in to radiohead got published:

'When, and how, did the transition from suburban paranoia to sensuality take place?' - Jon Papas, 22, Rochester, New York
Ed: 'Yeah, yeah! Exactly!'
Colin: 'Tick!'
Thom: 'Ed always banged on about how this record was very sensual. The mind boggles slightly, but I think there was a lot of that. It was as much about the way it flowed and whatever, not specific things. But it is kind of... it's not supposed to be in any way cerebral.'

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/story/0,,2221299,00.html
I'm pleased, in a very "I'm famous on the internets, three-fifths of radiohead know me" kind of way.

Assignment

In the vein of lepner's pond, this one is coming to you as a joint effort of the chicken paprikcrew.

write a poem.
Susan B. Anthony Women's Rights National Historical Park
suffrage re-enactment Sundays at two-thirty PM.

Waiting for the detritus to clear

Accumulating friends is such a demanding process. For every new friend you take on, it means familiarizing yourself with entire back stories that come out unevenly, at least on television there is a concern for pacing. All that story gets to be too much, it turns into complex motivations and it's predictive of later madness.

he says to me, "shit. that's means you're going to have to do pretty well."

Sometimes it's hard to keep up. This afternoon is speaking to me. I think I'm willing, occasionally, to graduate for this reason, to let the rubble clear and hopefully stop accumulating these peripheral people. In some maybe masochistic way, I enjoy the piling on. It's fun to dissect others. But emotionally, it's a heaviness.

i wish there were no mondays. my phone won't stop ringing. i smell like cigarettes. all i need to know for the exam is everything.

So we talk and I listen, offer some thin-willed advice and maybe rant about my issues. We all have issues, I'm too empathetic, too emphatic, too pathetic fallacied out - even my tear ducts get sad.

I forgot that this was supposed to be global.

One must keep in mind one's audience. One must never include the 'I', which is selfish. Ms. Faith says in the second grade, if you only have two eyes then you may only use two 'I's in the sentence. I blow my load early: I I refuse your conventions.

(I still miss my I.)

*

and ps

giraffe-

i'm working on the final edition of the manuscript, so i will get around to lepner's pond. i love the assignment. i adore it. so don't let me forget!

my new favorite poet...

is no surprise. I should have been schooled on this man years and years ago, but I've loved him for a long time. This man said one of the coolest things about poetry to Alice then to Lyrae, who I heard it from. I imagine some people don't think it's as cool as I think it is, but if I may paraphrase: "100% of my output is brilliant. 100% of my output is self-serving ars poeticas. 100% of my output ends up in a box, underneath the bed. It's where my brilliance goes to die."

The man woke up every morning, wrote a couple ars poeticas because they were easy to write and showed off all his tricks, and then proceeded to dispose of them into that box, and never think of them again. Now I don't know whether this tactic maintained until his end, but I love every second of it. Here's my life's work, I tried hard. Oh and posthumously, here are the greatest, most fluidly incredible poems the world has ever seen.

So, without further ado, the poem of my day.

Fall fell: so that's it for the leaf poetry:
some flurries have whitened the edges of roads

and lawns: time for that, the snow stuff: &
turkeys and old St. Nick: where am I going to

find something to write about I haven't already
written away: I will have to stop short, look

down, look up, look close, think, think, think:
but in what range should I think: should I

figure colors and outlines, given forms, say
mailboxes, or should I try to plumb what is

behind what and what behind that, deep down
where the surface has lost its semblance: or

should I think personally, such as, this week
seems to have been crafted in hell: what: is

something going on: something besides this
diddledeediddle everyday matter-of-fact: I

could draw up an ancient memory which would
wipe this whole presence away: or I could fill

out my dreams with high syntheses turned into
concrete visionary forms: Lucre could lust

for Luster: bad angels could roar out of perdition
and kill the AIDS vaccine not quite

perfected yet: the gods could get down on
each other; the big gods could fly in from

nebulae unknown: but I'm only me: I have 4
interests--money, poetry, sex, death: I guess

I can jostle those. . . .

-A.R. Ammons

AIM away message haiku craziness / 10 page papers make jack a flipped-out fucker

this paper goes through
these incarnations of me.
Who is the writer?

Lepner's Pond

New Assignment bred out of moments of mad brilliance. Write a poem with the above title in mind. That's all, I don't want to taint the minds.

fragmentary compliments

I will dance through inches
wading along tectonic banks.

I'm messed up with a sweet salt
that even the saints can't help but lick.

With no context to glue
street bums become first rates of the book.

Paisley scratches the irises
I'm left discoballing reverse style--
the itch of the swell too

Homunculi

11.58

dull criss cross spiderweb
sky. No poetry, just lines.

Three pennies in my pocket
jingle, echo and quiet in step –

a thing is right only
in its rightful place.

12.08

my carbon body is steaming;
a reductionist epitaph –

until death, he’d been a man.

1.08

flickers on, a lucid dream of wire.
Blue storm, sight unseen, electric

mitosis. Half-awake, it’s waiting –
I’m waiting, for the prompt.

1.48

pan-fried scallops, spicy red
sauce – thinking of heat.

Mussels in delicious oils, good
for dipping bread and also for

facilitating compliments
attached with smiles stretched.

B.

oral fixations, haikus for your tonguely pleasure

(forgive me, they were written so quickly)

Man-handled turkey
looks up-town suave, arranged twine
tingles in me spine.

Ample evidence
for sureness of existence
is non-existent.

Treacherous trippings
I can’t walk on the damn quad
those squirrels are on crack.

on not believing in tryptophan coma, but experiencing it anyway

Church of the Dispossessed Bull

i.
The break of the bullock was not only
not loud, it was subtle-loud
cruising through plain side
rafting on mole hills.

ii.
And are we not happy with a paucity
of light, restrained & violent?

iii.
The break of the bullock is not
during indian spring
or sasquatch fall, it is here
in the crags of a coffee table.

iv.
I am uninterested
in the rates of current consumption
practice breathing in height instead of length.

An old poem, chopped into bits, and served on a platter, for your thanksgiving feasting.

(so) allen and walt meet in this bar.

I.
I dream of naked white boys
playing basketball-
these age seven savages run flat-footed to
the basket,
long black shocks of pubic hair
scraping the ground.
they move with no grace, rather with lead
(like the metal)
of foot, a loping lilting jilt, punctuated by periodic
squalls of Plant and Page-
the run of young adults whose knee caps
have been bashed out
by the aluminum baseball bats of unqualified
commercial love.
the shortest one, his bare ass wearing
bright red air jordans.
launches towards the basket while the logos
on his feet seem to swarm
and come loose and funnel around his legs, a tornado
of triangular angels.
as he begins his rapid descent two feet below
the net,
his logos fail him and stop humming, becoming little
white men, false silhouettes
plastered on bright red sneakers. they leave him
as he falls, cheap and broken.
the other boys keep playing around him, sporting their
genitals like bowling trophies. I do not know
why they are naked- they are young enfranchised and
white, filled with foam from cheap beer
and I love them, their white slit maxi-pad asses trotting
on hot blacktop,
and I love them, their translucent sweat smelling of old
curly fries and baking powder. I love
them because they leave the taste of rough cotton and
gatorade stuck to the roof of my mouth.

Ia.
in my dreams I am sitting under a railroad track somewhere in gray jersey eating potato chips, rubbing my eyes with sleepy time tater oil, and I eat and eat one then two then three. and as I sit there, gestating the tubers, the guy heating himself at the trashcan next to me starts screaming I CONTAIN MULTITUDES I CONTAIN MULTITUDES and I run to my car, filled to the brim, leaking my dreams like ice into tire ruts, hemorrhaging Doritos, my poor potato dreams.

Ic.
I am confused- did Walt Whitman know of basketball,
or am I getting this all mixed up with a poem by Sherman
Alexie, who wrote a lovely Robert Johnson book reservation
blues? I wish Whitman had at least known about real ass-stomping
spiritual blues, or something at least about gin covered sawdust
floors, rather than knowing all about boys near clear blue lakes.

What would Walt think of the island, overrun by Sherman’s
liquor stores and “no sovereign nation, no (Indian) reservation?”
Would the father of anglo-american poetry give an ass-stomping
to the higher ups or would he go down into his sawdust-
covered basement, stand on a chair, looking down at lakes
of words through the rope around his neck, never getting to see 3-on-3 basketball?

I think Allen (if he could) would take Walt to a fancy reservation-
only restaurant (the kind he would go to before giving an ass-stomping
and suck off to a beautiful boy with a straight-as-sawdust
spine) and give him oceans of vodka, goddamn lakes
of raspberry schnapps, until walt’s bladder was the size of a basketball.
Then Allen would take him home to lie on top of books about buddha and Sherman

tanks. Allen would ask him if he ever wanted to give an ass-stomping
to another man, and Walt would cringe with fear, because the sawdust
beauty of Allen’s shrugged off words would be his lake
covered in midday sun, much too warm and bright for sitting on the basketball
court and absorbing warmth. But the words would push through like Sherman’s
march through Georgia, burning without reservation.

Allen would want to fly around the anglo father of American poetry like sawdust
shards caught in a vacuum, he would want to be the lake
that Whitman writes about, that he makes love to with naked basketball-
sized toes. Whitman wants to leave and get away from his Sherman
tanks and giant linga, he wishes he had never gotten the reservation
to that fucking restaurant, he wants to give the bartender an ass-stomping

of the most profound kind. He dreams of eye-blue lakes
as Allen slumbers next to him, and he is there, basketball
in hand, playing against bare-chested kid TV mascots from the Sherman
theatre, yellow parrot heads on top of bodies from the Turning Stone reservation
casino, their lanky dealer bodies getting an ass-stomping
from walt, his long gray beard machining their offence into sawdust.

The lake was his court, and although he never read reservation
blues you could tell that his basketball money honey would cause quite an ass-stomping
to his brother, who still sees Sherman in his spinning dead mind, burning Atlanta into sawdust.

Ie.
back in the bar, before any of this might happen,
allen looks at walt, and walt looks at allen,
and the cat rubs against the barstool
and the Italian white trash in the parking lot play some pickup basketball,
moving from hoop to hoop,
and they are not anything, they are the form and grace of
bodies moving together, sweet music filling dead air space.
couple next door holding hands,
watching “It’s a Wonderful Life” with fingertouch,
so close together , you’d swear their hands can’t
be any closer than their eyelashes, and
back in the bar, the poets raise their glasses and toast
drunkenly, to the new year, one turkey away.

An (un) Thanksgiving Poem

A little diddy I wrote for Alice's class last year, which was published, and oddly enough, received some fan mail.

Wrist Fatigue

I stir figure nines
in the gravy until
a larger constellation comes
to deceive me.

It’s not gravy ya stirrin’, it’s the whole
goddamn dinner. Doncha fuck it up.

I know the consequences
for a fuck
up and I won’t.
I realize the thick tar
streaming from my
grandmother’s neck.

Ma I gotta wrap the meat.
Hold mah beer, Mattie.
Whatchu studyin’ again?

The sublime taste of subordination—
her tar is creeping its way
past chair legs, under carpet coil,
and the origin of the earth decides
to reveal itself to me in the center
of a gravy twister.

Go write me sommore poems
how bout mah drinkin’ and shit
or that waitress at D’s with the nice
tits.

The stove contemplates near
misses as the ooze rises to
ankles. It’s too hot here
and if I wanted to, one nod
and my face would slide
cool as heaven
into the gravy.

I’m savin’ my bones for the pie.

She secrets hornets
in her hair and never knows
the time of day.

Stirrin’ gravy’s the most important
thing, yah know. You’re burnin’ it
that way. Crazy shithead.

There exists no entropy
merely a lack of will to want
to do better,
to stand up to the deer mounted
on the dining room wall, take
its ruddy lips against mine
and whisper
No, No, you shut up.

let's play a game

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jermaine-dupri/a-good-album-is-more-than_b_73413.html
called "watch jermaine dupri's life fall apart in his huffington post blog." It's good fun. He has a point initially - Apple does take a far larger chunk of the profits than the artists do. BUT as good as Jay-Z's American Gangster was, it was a corporate album full of "eh" stuff. It was a big cross-marketed clusterf***. I respect an artist's desire to keep their work intact. But I don't for a second really see a larger work in Jay-Z's music - he's a man whose built his career off of some of the best singles ever made. There's nothing wrong with that. There just hasn't been a Jay-Z album released without some bum tracks - either singles gone wrong, or awful skits, or just songs to connect the singles together.

Then JD compares Jigga's album to an Andy Warhol painting, making one of the most emotionally unstable comparisons I've ever read. And the fact that JD is terrified that "the consumer" is going to figure out what's going on - can't give the consumer too much freedom or else we'll go postal on the music industry. Well, thing is, if you make fucking great albums, then people will buy them. Anyone who buys a song off of Jay-Z's Vol. 2 .... Hard Knock Life probably ends up buying the whole thing. Anyone who bought "D.A.N.C.E." has a good chance of buying Cross because guess what? A hit single is only better than the rest of the album if you're just trying to sell records. JD, it worked with Kriss Kross because they SUCKED. They needed a hit single or else that album was gonna sell a big donut. That's not a business model to emulate. Hip-hop's marketing power is still tied up in the big single. If the album doesn't have a big single, then why market it? Ghostface Killah's Fishscale, J Dilla's Donuts, The Roots Game Theory. Three great albums that came out last year, not one sold as much as it should have because they had no Ne-Yo/Lil' Wayne cross-overs, no hit singles. The entire album was pure hip-hop magic, but no Top 40 smash, no dice. So these albums didn't get promoted, didn't get hyped, and the best album of The Roots' career is now sitting in Target collecting dust. Donuts is a difficult but life changing album, and I'm the only one I know who owns the damn thing. That's not because it sucks, it's because Radiohead farts in a corner and the world pays attention, whereas corporate music structures think their brand is worth more than their artists.

You want to give the power to the consumers. Because then, if you really make some great shit, they'll buy it. There's nothing wrong with folks buying Mariah Carey - it doesn't keep the artistic shit from bubbling to the top (I think everyone who posts on this blog owns, in some respect, The Emancipation of Mimi, but have a mix of it with Miles Davis' On the Corner, Bendi listens to it along with Radiohead and indie rock and soul coughing, and Alesia observes and savors Timbaland beats like Dawkins adores himself). This industry just needs to grow a pair and a brain. Yeah, tell apple you want more money for your music - apple should be a third party, not a second party - but spend more of your focus on actually promoting your artists, coming up with creative business and advertising solutions, and actually making good music? Because a number 1 album doesn't translate into a vital industry - kriss kross sold millions? Nsync sold 3 million their first weekend? The God emcee only sold 425,000? That's an empty number one. Freaking Incubus went to number one and they only sold 125,000. Why should a new artist sign to Def Jam. Because if the big labels don't start doing their freakin' job, then they're gonna become obsolete - did you know artists can sell their music direct through itunes without a record label? True story - which will be good and bad, because it's way easier to sell records when you've got financial backing for promotion and touring. Radiohead doesn't need any of that, but the next Radiohead does. And maybe make some good music too, while you're doing your job again.

Oh, and JD - don't know if you got the memo - but "Fallin'" is one of the worst songs on American Gangster. So maybe you should take your own advice and go learn something from the greatest producer on that album - Puffy.

We Only Have Grey Crayons Here

I was with her on the face
of the lunar eclipse and we were drawing a different galaxy.
Delighted in her moon beam capacities
she drew her family except the house and dog.
No room for civilities

on the page, and I was with her until
the hand. A circle with five lines radiating out
or in, depending on the sharpness of the crayon.

Obscene half sun
no difference between thumb and pinkie
just claws of a primitive self.

A crude half-tool dangling
promiscuously promising a future without concert pianists
or delicate cupcakes. I panicked
trying to cover my own hand
beginning to ask about the shape of a palm

what it means to have a heart
but such questions are usually squelched by inadequacies—
the sound of her parents’ car scraping against pavement.

Poteen Evening

Late me into the night
because lately I’ve been feeling
that end gap of the first face isn’t really here
anymore. Late me into the night

and I won’t forget the sins or the sways
against the carpet. I won’t forgive the way you held
the child against the beaten potato sack
the fever had got her and the fever had got her.

Into the night and I am late already
with a jug of heady promise for the local policeman
who can stop the madness in the head if he has the coins
to prove it.

I am providing for the family, yes the night is late
and yes the babies are crying and no the hills aren’t green
but the moon shines and I have to work with its drippings.

Visceral Visages

I've been thinking a lot about the way our visual interactions with the world inform/supplement/enhance/upset our language. Mostly, this comes from Martin Lammon's News From Where I Live, which was a surprising book. I usually like something meaty that both resists and invites interpretation, but this one wasn't very meaty, and I didn't mind. The transparency of the poems didn't matter because his rifts on the separation and marriage between language and the image were so damn good. I'm not talking about any Imagist mumbojumbo either. There is a disjunct between the thing and the word, and Lammon messes with that.

Example:

The Secret of the Platypus
What could this curious melange be,
beyond a divine test of faith and patience?
-Stephen Jay Gould, "To be a Platypus"

Outside my window, a hill
rises the same
as every morning this summer.
I sit in my chair and read Gould's argument
for the marvelous platypus, whose species
dull biologists have relegated
to a lesser rank within Mammalia,
or I write a new poem
about mothers or fathers, cows
or trout. I lift up my head to look at the hill,
how it slopes above our neighborhood's
houses. I do not know how high
but steeper and wilder, I think than I
could climb. I watch the dawn
fog dissolve into the haze of August.

The platypus swims across the river, lays
eggs in the mud, and does not love my poem.
The hill does not need me
wedging my boot against some tender
root. The shrub has its own life. One leaf
strains for a little sunlight. So what if I cannot
witness the way leaves work? I know they stretch and curl
for one day's glory all their own, even if I don't
know how. And if I did sink my boot into mud
where no one had ever walked before, no photographer
or archelogist would celebrate that I had
climbed this hill. The maple, if it noticed me at all,
would shrug and endure my hug around its trunk, a man's
simple panic against gravity.

This morning, I sit in my chair
and read about the platypus, whose strange wet fur
glistens in the moonlight, or I write a poem about a beautiful
woman. There are so many lives whose secrets
do not belong to me, lives besides my own
whose secrets are worth loving.



The bit about the beautiful woman grosses me out, but otherwise, solid.

Therefore (!) a new poetry assignment is here (that's right, I'm going to keep on doling them out and you can choose to accept my gifts of brilliant insight, or you can not):
Use an image in such a way that the image informs or warps or screws with language...or vice versa (language messing with an image). The image at hand? Why, our trusty black & white chicken. Go on, desconstruct, reconstruct, make language sound like an illegitmate foreign sibling & make that chicken one ridiculous mofo.




ps- I wrote this post in a sleep

In the spirit of clarification

Jon's poem, 'Naked' references this one that I wrote about four members of our little coterie. It is late to the party, I apologize.

Dear:

—katherine

I don't remember ever falling
in love with sunsets, like worry

it was always there. Yet the stop-light
moment frozen in amber

skylines over sloping hills, reminds
each of us that beginnings exists.

Even as the sunsets nurse
the seeds of our forgetting.


—jonathan

to prove that boys are giants
is to undress the lion, file his teeth

and show that naked, he is fiercest.
He is fiercest, who knows only

what is beautiful. I follow suit. Unloosening
the riff and the tie. Jon, I'm getting there.


—alesia

If all the poems died, I think we would
laugh and drink beer to bitterness.

We would dance in the ashes of old
worlds and in our caffeine fingers, pray

new ones. Not just poets, but makers
better than those titans before who

pried worlds from words. We are the word:
Logos. Thunder. Sound and Fury. Always.


—beatrice

The body, which is art electric, art persona; masks
secrets which long to be naked. Fuck

polite skins, tear them off - wear earrings in our
ears. The body is the poem, is the method

of the message. I have long learned that skin
is a form of silence in which things not said

become poems and poems and poems.

naked

electric, I search for ground,
finding none, I body.

clouded, condensed, words
on your glasses, because I spoke too close.

if string theory is right, then you are
playing me like a fiddle. If I can ever stop

justifying my text, if I can prevent spreading
and thinning, if I can keep them close, then we can be

naked

because poems and poems and poems and poems and poems and poems and poems

bring the champagne....

... because lil ole chicken paprika is on the a list at wardsix! we may have been there all along, but how do I know? We're not on the b-list!

So if maybe you got curious and clicked their link, we're not nearly as wise as those sixers. But we're way more obsessive, if you like that.

Seriously though, let's keep being weird, and keep having fun. We lasted a full 4 months longer than I expected. Uber-pwnage.

Well I'm Reading Novels Now..

I think I may have overdosed on an entire genre. Reading ("closely") nine or so contemporary poets in the span of three months has really hurt not only my analytical skills, but my enjoyment factor as well. So, I've moved on to the novel, and what a doozie it was. Usually, I ascribe my lack of novel-love to my inability to sit still long enough. Wrong-o! I just hadn't been reading the right novels. Seeing as the last one I'd completed was Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure (which is enough to depress anyone out of dating for awhile)...I decided to read Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

In case you weren't already aware, I go to Cornell. In case you weren't already aware times two, Cornell likes to take claim for any authors that so much as breathed on the arts quad. Junot Diaz was one of them--he received his MFA here in '95, and ever since then, he's been (deservingly) the pride and joy of the English Department. For some reason, I've been afraid to read contemporary novels thinking myself not well-versed enough in the oldies to get a handle on the newbies (hence the Thomas Hardy adventure this summer). Wrong-o again! Diaz's novel surprised and enraptured my forlorn writerly heart, and I'm kicking myself for not going to his reading last year.

Since J Robert Lennon did a pretty thorough job reviewing the book, and I'm out of practice.. I'll just include some of my favorite quotes:


Not only was our girl not embarassed by what had happened, even after being shaken down by the rector, and the nun and the janitor, a holy triple-team, she absolutely refused to profess her guilt! If she had rotated her head around 360 degrees and vomited green-pea soup it would have caused only slightly less of an uproar. 101

And what about the cook, Marco Antonio, a one-legged, no-ear grotesque straight out of Gormenghast? (His explanation for his appearance: I had an accident). 107

All that can be said is that is was the end of language, the end of hope. It was the sort of beating that breaks people, breaks them utterly. 147

Players: never never never fuck with a bitch named Awilda. Because when she awildas out on your ass you'll know pain for real. 175

But not one scrap of paper with his handwriting? That was more than thorough. You got to fear a motherfucker or what he's writing to do something like that. But hey, it's only a story, with no solid evidence, the kind of shit only a nerd could love. 246



The narrator was quirky, but never overbearing. It was exactly the kind of novel I needed to thin my poem-y thick brain. The funny and morose, the nerd and naked truth--it was a hybrid that bridged the gap between the verse and prose world, and any author that can do that in such a consistent and brilliant way is worth the read.



Next novel! William Kennedy and The Flaming Corsage

Saul Williams: The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust – 71%

Before we go any further with this review, bias should be disclosed. I haven’t been able to stomach the majority of slam poetry in about 5 years. It all seemed really cool and counter-cultural until I released that, just like Taylor Mali outlined in “How to write a political poem,” slam is as restrictive a template as your old fashioned pen-and-paper poetry, if not more so (go to http://marckellysmith.com/# for an example. And this guy I worshipped my freshman year. Age brings wisdom? Blech).

Saul Williams and his partner-in-crime Beau Sia are two slam poets that manage to do something creative in an entire genre dominated by one large bloated aesthetic. But Saul’s also a rapper, right? Well, sorta. In the same sense that that guy from Linkin Park is a rapper. For one of the few slam poets to really master rhythmic consistency and variation, a lot of Williams’ rhymes denigrate into a-rhythmic beat talking or Reznor-style shouting. Which leads us right to Niggy Tardust.

The production here is a gift and a curse. Thavius Beck’s production on “Black History Month” is L.A. filthy, Satan’s-marching-band rude (and somehow reminiscent of Death from Above 1979 to me, for some reason), and Trent Reznor’s hand makes “Break,” “Banged and Blown Through,” and even the cover of U2’s “Sunday Bloody Sunday” sound just really fucking good. “Break” itself veers between Zero-7 chanting, stereophonic dueling Saul raps, and a rave up that, if you didn’t know that NIN guy was producing it, you might mistake for a take on power music / electric revival (don’t worry, Trent Reznor did not ruin “B.O.B” thank god). That U2 cover still throws me, though. Out of context from the album, its good, but I still don’t see the artistic urgency in choosing that song. In the sequence of the album, I can make some kind of poor urban condition / street violence connection between it and the sprawling racial commentary that makes up Tardust, but it still seems a bit too easy on an album whose title track and hook actually addresses the DL.

If you’re unsure about what the DL happens to be, go learn it. Music review, not gender politics. Briefly, the urban community shies away from discussing homosexuality because many men have gay affairs on the side, contract HIV, and pass it to their partners. The community blames it on homosexuals rather than adjusting the uber-masculine image expectation on the African-American male. Fitting into all this are those never-gonna-die rumors about how your favorite rapper is in the closet. “Niggy Tardust,” as far as I can divine, a.) Spends a chunk of its time setting up 50 Cent as the new black androgynous bi-sexual figure, “don’t call him by his name / white people call him ‘Curtis,’” and b.) Notating the DL by singing in the hook “When I say Niggy, you say nothin’ / Niggy. Niggy. / When I say Niggy, you say nothin’ / Niggy. Noth-Shut up.” Not even the hook can come close to questioning this standard, because that compromise of masculinity would entirely destabilize the proto-machismo of his identity. It’s a kind of flip from actual Ziggy – you had to comment on Ziggy because Bowie was actively playing with gender roles and stereotypes. Even that Lil’ Wayne / Baby kiss fell out from the discourse because no one wanted to think about the repercussions of a non-heterosexual image in hip-hop.

“The realness // god of the streets,” is the fulcrum of Tardust. And as critical as Williams is of mainstream rap’s myopia, he’s still “got the whole host of angels // shuffling on my iPod.” The first line of the album comes from a Biz Markie song, “Tr(n)igger” samples “Welcome to the Terrordome.” When it comes to criticism, Williams is either quite naff (“Would Jesus Christ come back American? / What if he’s Iraqi and here again?”) or fire-and-brimstone-y (“Pimp thug bling / drug lord of the underground kings / how can you be so sure I won’t call down the rains?” both lines from “Tr(n)igger”). And that’s why this album is so difficult. It’s a combination of pure hip-hop experimentation and NIN b-side level stuff. For every two tracks like the Afro-beat crooning of “Sacred Money” and the Prince-ly “Raw” (“What’s a song if you can’t fuck to it?”), you get a “WTF!” and “Raised to be Lowered,” and on the former you can actually sing that “Every day is exactly the same” song off some recent NIN record (I could look it up, but it’s NIN. Just turn on the fucking radio). There’s something of worth in each song, either through Saul’s scattershot genius lyrics or some creative stuff with the hook (the ah-ah-ye’s at the end of “WTF!” are pretty alright) but you have to get through the first minute and a half without pressing the skip button. And when I hear Trent’s voice at the beginning of “WTF!” my finger has already pressed the button.

Here’s the thing. It’s thick for a hip-hop album, if it can be called that, and I love the idea of a truly 100% collaborative experience in hip-hop. But there’s an issue with hardness. In tracks like “DNA,” Williams and Reznor are commenting on some kind of “hardness” or “realness” of the streets, but these feel approximated at best on the album itself. It’s still a sort-of hot beat wrapped in those NIN/ennui synths, like Reznor looked up from his deck of Nine Inch Nails b-sides and said, “Hey, Saul, you’re black, this is hard, right?” The hook is whatever and the rhyme patterns you see coming from a mile away. So are you emulating that early nineties shit, or are you making fun and one upping modern attempts at it? Because neither is realized (for some real fun, check the “Have You Had a Stranger” skit from Pharoahe Monch’s Desire). The weird overproduction of Tardust throws Williams’ generally excellent vocals all around, keeping him occasionally trapped in that awkward rap shuffle (this may not be the best album for life-changing flows). At best his rhymes are angular and fluid, and his singing (especially in “Scared Money”) is like a sinister, black, rawer JT. At worst his flow is arrhythmic and nonsensical, and his singing is a kind of monstrous Frankenstein Reznor attempt (but that voice is great on “Black History Month”). It’s weird to have an album so invested in blackness and realness be bogged down by the music of sad white suburban teens across the country, but that said the first half of the album is produced real good. The second half falls off something steep, though.

That 71% is indicative of the goodness ratio, but not of whether you should buy it or not. Buy the goddamn thing, it’s worth every penny. This experiment, as flawed as it is at times, is worth $5. It’s ambitious as all get-out in its own way. The production curses the album with a surprisingly high forgetfulness factor. Unless I turn them on right now, I can’t recall the second half of Tardust. So it comes down to what you can tolerate. Me, I can’t tolerate NIN or most of Reznor’s production, but I still think this is the closest Williams has ever come to a really great album, and it’s completely worth the 5 bucks, if for nothing else than that sweet picture of him with that Blaxplotation disco jewelry on, holding a kitten with a red eye patch. Aspirations aside, The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust is really good, and the best we’ve gotten from Saul Williams yet. It’s still a little uneven, and its play count drops off after a week or so, but it’s quite possibly a gift to any mix tape made in the next year. So he’s way better than that guy from Linkin Park – that was way harsh. Buy the album, and let’s steal Saul from that creepy old guy from that link up there once and for all – if he’s that good at poetry (and he’s fucking incredible) maybe we can finally get that Saul Williams & Ghostface Killah collab I’ve been jonseing for.

*****

Side note: Jay-Z's American Gangster is surprisingly good. Takes about 4 tracks to get cooking, but tracks 4-15 are pure soul sample rhyme magic. Like, fuck this guy, for taking six months on one of the worst albums of all time (Kingdom Come) but cranking out this almost-classic in 4 weeks. So, in closing, here is a sample of Jigga's most aware lyrics in the past 10 years, from the track ignorant shit: "So, don't believe everything your earlobe captures / It's mostly backwards, unless it happens to be as accurate as me / And everything said in song, you happen to see / Then, actually, believe half of what you see / None of what you hear, even if it's spat by me / And with that said, I will kill niggaz dead / Cut niggaz short, give you wheels for legs." That's right, meta-hova.

Clarinet Hating (If Mr. Spena had Allowed me to Play the Harp)

I don't remember how it went down
but I'm sure I was devastated

We are sorry to report a lack
of eye witness reports and fund raisings
has caused a cut
back on the allocation of orchestra materials
and maintenance. The band and choir, naturally will feel
no effect. Kindly encourage your children
to choose brass
or woodwind instrument.

In my dreams I see nothing
except suspended strings and horsehairs braising and bruising
suburban bodies.

Not that there was ever a harp
in the budget, but I was promised certain things.

Harpo
a banjo
the knot of string against a can
he was a real unmentionable mensch
but here I am twiddling along on the clarinet
so unlike Harpo, yet still I am earning, respectable.

I often wonder, if the band had been disbanded instead
what a harpist's skin would feel like, but I'm too loose
and the jacket is too tight, so I keep on clarifying the notes
on the page, the division of the staff
to my students--never a teacher for the ages
or for the apple.

Are Hooks Entitled to Interiority? Etc.

Couple of thoughts:

The other day I was listening through Ye's last album, preparing to write a post about how convuluted his idea of conscious rap is (which I'll get to in a bit) when a pattern emerged - Ye (and Common, all the Chi-Town backpack rappers, Souljaboy, Lil' Wayne, etc., etc., etc.) addressed the hook as though it had interiority, as though the song was an active duet. The particular one in mind is "Champion," where he flips the Steely Dan sample and answers ("Did you realize that you were a champion in their eyes? / Yes I did! / So I packed it up and brought it back for the kids...")

Hooks, middle eights, choruses, all function as the aural grab, the singable bit, or at least the cool bit that you don't really understand but sing in a high falsetto anyways (see "Peacebone," Animal Collective). However, addressing the hook, addressing an element of the song adds a kind of narcissistic mirroring to the proceedings, which makes perfect sense, given that all of the world's music loving population is aware of Kanye as "that guy who has hissy fits." It is kind of clever, but its also smug and in this situation, incredibly lazy.

Ye, via Steely Dan, has it declared that he is a champion. Now braggadacio is alive and well in rap, and if done well, is incredible, but the bar is raised that much higher. If you want to declare yourself the hottest thing alive, you've got to sound it, you've got to have the skills to shut people up. See Black Thought: "I'm like aquaman and brown hornet / I'm like Imhotep but don't flaunt it." As the Village Voice has already pointed out, Kanye is not really an MC, he's a rhythmic talker. His subject matter only includes himself, and is only referenced via immediate conventional means (Fresh, fly, shoes, Louis V, Chi-town, D's), and he has no rhythmic or melodic variation in most of his songs. He rap-talks. So this use of hook as interlocutor is smart on Kanye's part - he can have the hook declare him champion, and then rap about how he's lifting up Chicago's youth with his rhymes. This is essentially indicative of Graduation as a whole. It's an attempt at a true mc album, a rappers album to show off Kanye's rhymes, but unless you want to take eight hundred rhymes about LV and a "black kate moss" to the bank, then it's gone broke. When Lil' Wayne addresses a hook (here I'm looking at every song on Da Drought III), it's as a support - he takes the gist of the hook and raps about it. But this is a trend in rap, and an interesting one. As much as I think it's laziness on Kanye's part (like most of that album), I do think he's the only one who could get away with it. So we'll see. Nothing wrong with a conversation between rapper and hook - let's just get a bit more out of it.

One other thing, I had mentioned to both Alesia and Bendi wait I mean bic_razor and the ole bigscarygiraffe: Ye's fight to stop homophobia in rap lyrics is coupled with his ignorant misogyny. See "you could be my black Kate Moss tonight," "She'd do anything for a klondike / well I'd do anything for a blond dyke," "how the hell could you front on me / there's a thousand you's, there's only one of me." That's all from "Stronger." Ye wants to stop homophobia, but addresses the women on his album (in many places, not just Stronger) as dykes. Classy.

One last musical thought before I disappear into applications for the morning: In Rainbows has been the talk of the town, everybody's reviewed it (except for CMG, bless em), and it's "the heir to OK Computer" or "really peaceful." And I wonder if we're all listening to the same album. Everybody likes to divvy up RH albums: Kid A, Amesiac, HTTT are the "electronic," indulgent records, whereas Pablo Honey, The Bends, and OKC are the Brit-Pop, rock and roll records. And my god does that not make any sense at all. The prevalence of electronics on OKC is always ignored, bizarrely so, because on that record they have human voices (fitter happier, as well as exit music, karma police, and lucky - the weird, disembodied electric choir). You would not believe how much music in the current marketplace is synthesizered and not guitar, so the claims of "I don't like electronics" tell me that the person a. isn't listening and b. never really listened to Kid A or Amnesiac. (rant: at some point, some reviewer decided to use "glitchy bleeps and bloops" as a way to describe the beat elements in RH and Thom Yorke's albums. Least descriptive and most nothing phrase in musical criticism in the past couple years - Idioteque is certainly not bleepy or bloopy.) IR is not a rock record, nor is it an electronic record - I'm even disputing the claims of mellowness. It's sensual. Everything is tight and rounded, the bass is amped, even 15 Steps evolves from its initial banger-in-an-empty-stadium vibe to a just syrupy guitar line while Phil Selway freaks on the drums. It's something different. It's not the new OKC, and it won't be, no matter how many conspiracy theories you find in it (same number of letters in ok computer and in rainbows! OMFG).

So, word. Applications. Thanks for reading.

The Genius Genie

So I've been stuck in the autumnal cycle of self loathing lately. College (or as I've been ad nauseamly reminded "the best years of my life") is reaching it's almost-done point, and I frankly don't feel even close to half-baked. I've met amazing people with amazing intellects. I've seen the capacity for brilliance and its squander (usually Thursday nights...those are good squander nights). But what I haven't seen, or at least have been reluctant to see, is my own shiny light of smartness. I haven't really cornered the market on anything, and while that is a very liberating and renaissance achievement, it's left me a little more than dissatisfied. The couldahs are wafting in, and instead of actually, say, writing a thesis, or polishing a chapbook of poetry, I'm painting nice watercolors and vacuuming my carpet. I play the couldha game too much, and maybe that's why I'm a writer. Fantasizing about all those couldhas of all the possible personalities of my word is just plain addictive. Maybe that's my collegiate achievement--the ability to mess around in a highly imaginative environment. I'll probably miss college, but I'm going to exploit the hell out of it while I'm here.

This is all to say, of course, that a new poetry assignment is upon us: Write a poem with a voice a person's whose life and trajectory couldah been yours, but isn't. Try to draw outside the character box of your own selfhood. We're all genius genies--messing with what little magic we've got, but try to mess with someone else's mojo. Get into their box, become too familiar with that box, and then poetically explode it from within. I think I'll assume my biologist alter ego for this one. Let the life-play begin..

(geta)

you see these shackles, I’m your slave
through clawed talks, razor pony tail, braid,
I just keep losing my way.

No ring, no fucking promised day,
like booted soldiers, I take what I’ve got, this’ll
be my shackles, see, I’m your slave

again, like smoke to dirty lungs I stay
on my cute gold filter chain, though I bristle,
I just keep losing my way.

your wolf canines, vampiric, spay
my dick, of my throat render gristle,
you see these shackles? I’m your slave,

a copy atop normative copy on the day
you find me, pillow-shaped, forested, little,
just losing my way.

I am bitched, tamed, collar flayed
and screaming, blind through spittle,
you see these shackles, I’m your slave.
Can you help me find my way?

Dodge Draft

I'm just a man
triphopping from one ghost town,
on the new once again.

I didn't just walk I ran
from bar to prophylactic downtowns;
I'm just a man.

And would it be a problem if my name was Jan?
I was tired of those clowngowns--
on the new, once again...

This ain't Harold's crayon
it's a full on noun.
I'm just a man

whoring what I can
or will before I'm down,
on the new once again.

To hell with the straight plan
you can keep your crown.
I'm just a man,
on the new once again.






**So instead of taking 2 consecutive lines (which I didn't even consider when I wrote the assignment), I've taken a line from My Love and All Over Again...slant rhyme totally counts. Can't beat that shit.

Other boys

Them other boys don't know how to act,
those broken hearted boys with fists of spun gold
Those motherfuckers don't know how to act.

Some boys swallow guilt, spit blood, choke
on insincerity, fucking what is convenient, old
them other boys don't know how to act

but I flourish under blacklight, snort poetry in coke
form, speak from the poise of gentle knight, valiant bold:
Those motherfuckers don't know how to act,

and we get bad wraps, the punchy coat tails of popular jokes,
palms bared for slapping, we cry out when elders scold,
"Them other boys don't know how to act!"

What's left to speak of those boys, that hasn't been spoke
three, fifteen times until the memorized refrain holds:
Those motherfuckers don't know how to act.

We are those boys of youth, of one breed, of shared yolk
vagabonds until given time to regret and unfold -
Them other boys don't know how to act
Those motherfuckers don't know how to act.



+ Alesia, I don't know how I'll forgive you for forcing a justin timberlake line into a villanelle. It's like fitting a warhead into a clown car and hoping for the best. This is the resulting tripe.

New Assignment, Punks

Since no one is listening to my borrowed poem assignment, I have a new one. Write a villanelle!! Lord only knows I completely ignore everything old school. And I shouldn't. It's time to itch out of our comfort zones. I want to be a masquerader of the lyric, of the Imagists, and yes, even of the villanelle. And I want to rock it. And so do you ..?
Here's the real kicker though: the "refrain" has to be a line from JT's Futuresex/Lovesounds. So go forth: exploit, create, pun, riff the hell out of it...mine will be up oh so soon..

(for an extra sexytime, check out Dylan Thomas reading his very own villanelle)

Next Assignment! a borrowed poem of sorts:

On Opening Up a Norton, and Finding a Random Poem (Special thanks to Shakespeare, via Sonnet 20)

Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion--
wrote the roses, aligned the times?
You spit wit like Bailey ran his circus, and your face
a woman's face, with nature's own hand painted
is ugly to the touch.

Your coat rack of wigs, nutmegged and cinnamoned
for the daily dressing, always taunting
A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted
with history, the arts of liturgy.

The refinements of toast and tea and opium
dens are really enough for me, but I love
a good bang--
With shifting change, as false women's fashion;

I am the pimp
Daddy and you are painted whore, lucky enough to have
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
but your tempests were remakes and sequels, stealing &

gliding the object whereupon it gazeth;
You curve canonically, demonically around
the shape of our younger years.
Putting into doctrine
A man in hue all hues in his controlling,

correcting the miscreant, bracing the book & the back
I learned the game of blush, the kill
with pallor
Which steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth.

And for a woman wert thou first created,
it'd be a hell of a lot easier
to get to the grocery store.

As for now, our nails and hair are glued
to the margins, pasted for a day
Till nature as she wrought thee fell a-doting,
insanity has its perks.

And by addition me of thee defeated
we will feel no loss and suffer no gain
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.

I am sure you will continue
the reverberation, stultifying the sparrows with
'But since she pricked thee out of women's pleasure,'
and the rest, but I will also continue

to abuse your pages with rough delicacy,
find falsity with coterie
until sore with refuse:
Mine by thy love and thy love's use their treasure.

Person I Know Assignment Thing

Funeral Rites

Peering over the fashionable box
an aperture, just wide enough for comparison
opens. My hand: taut-smooth, wound
from circus tight ropes. Hers: threatens
unsound architecture, and I am amazed they ever wanted
to perform at all.

She palsied across piano keys maintaining a concert
perfection, and I was also very perfect at turning the pages
making them breathe across her face. The fine hairs quivered then
suspend, mid-thought, waiting for the next chord.

The scene was electric, and my body found its way
jolted to paralysis.

On this day death
has its revelry, but my hands don’t look right.

Feigning consternated prayer, I coerce my skin back
in place. This smooth patch under a finger.
That rough patch where I forgot scissors are sharp two Mondays ago.
With horror I realize I am

a thing entombed and
my Hatshepshut hands
can only clap with glee.

My mind is mummifying outwards
to my body, and I cannot lay in the tomb with her.
I am glad not to have to walk beside her:
to have to sit at her feet and rub the dust in my eyes.

An impossibility of the physics of preservation.
How can her skin, which melts and drips away
from her bones house the same fury
mechanism in me?

I refuse to lay beside her, to sit at her feet, to perfume
her rotting skin in my youth. This must be contagious.

And as my knees collapse
unknowingly, definitively, beside her
I inhale the dust of her divinity and
her paper lips smile

the fetishist dies in a new york bathroom

facedown in a urinal, body slack and sex
rigid. The blood rush doesn't comprimise
the evidence drip, evidenced on the prick
tip, wet with one last hurrah. The cock forgets

to die sometimes, pantomiming life like
the brain does daily. The fetishist's smile
takes on water, logging the pleasure-still
instant where it all came together.

An experiment: me, writing about actual people

Bad-ass Florence Bender

[first view: sassy flo (really, I’m related to a Florence Bender)]

Flo, you beautiful fucker,
hooknose like a crook, shepherd
leopards with trainsets and crisps.
underwear, paisley printed, still speaks to
me through centuries of scrapbooking.

Killer kink in
your knitting, say it with a hard K please,
because Great-Grandma Bender died of
a cervical canker

give the woman her fucking
cue – give her kites to climb to convalescence.

[second view: train-bender, mind-render]

like twin mounted engines, your camel humpshoulders
assault my eyes like color insults

black and white. your face waters, like a million
pennies spinning crushed through air,

secreting from the rails, syrup from a maple.
your bits and pieces, in separate boxes they

lay. keep the watermelon in the cistern. keep

the unreal in the oven. keep the indulgence in

the panties.

even after the fact, like like brother charlie, I
find hidden longing in your kitchen, baked into
crusts, slowly being crushed between the twin
cakes: poetry, patriarchy.

New Assignment: Pick a poem...any poem...

There's been some talk about plagiarism. Good. For this assignment, I want you to react to something on this blog. It doesn't necessarily need to be a poem, hell - it doesn't necessarily need to be coherent. I want reactions, explosions of lyricisms, madness, etc. etc. We know what I what, I want you both.

In a little experiment with context, I want you to obscure the source material. Chop it up, Burroughs it, gargle and spit brilliant.

I have faith.

I have nothing BUT faith.

-B.

ps. I don't care if you chop your own shit up or someone else's, but for the sake of adventurous-ness, you should probably try for something outside your own head. Also, feel free to take potshots at the comments of any particular post or incorporate them if you're working with the post they were in reaction to. (I hope that makes sense)

The First topic, I'm catching up boys..

they come from everywhere

sauntering, never swaying, she walks to me
her mouth cotton

candy style and her hair blown up big
because hair spray smells better than the blood they give you on Halloween
and she walks to me and says she’d like to know
how to get to the bottom of the hill
where the man with the big arms serves the big girls
those papercup drinks.

I nod and know and of course I give
her directions and of course I smile
because we’ve been taught to nod to that beat of direction
giving and kindness to strangers
but not the ones with candy.

I’m telling her something like
the boys down the street, if you say Jimmy Jingles
well they’ll give you a shot for free
and she’s not saying anything other than that uh huh
which means everything more than Gothic windows on Sunday

of course
not this Sunday. I’m bouncing
pressing cider
into the palm of my pointed hand, pulping up for the big show

LBPBG: Bendi's version

jump hearted, broken started.

I can't be cleverer cuz he knows
like, every-thing ever - no duh.
Like which rangers could kick butt
best, and forget to take prisoners.

I wanna be cleverer, cuz he makes
me think he's my only friend when

he grins, I lend out my very rarest
x-men cards and get them back and
count the finger prints. He's mine

until the years shear the feeling
down to its essential parts. Miguel
is mine only in the memorabilia, so

cards become caveats and feints
with you, ever the difficult saint
of lost things, of lost hearts, of
anything that fingers take apart.


+ Question: How much should a poem exist outside of its context?

LBPBG: Jon Version

the wind is a strange freak, now.

cavity cat-fight in a canine
tooth, I press leaves onto
my caramel apple like corn
on a cob. I hide slugs in the
candy corn, to steal away salt.
I can declare certainty, for all
time, in Luke Skywalker and
Jim Kelly and jack-o-lanterns.

fall’s pretty, sorta, if
you block it out. leaves
like gothic Murakami,
little veiny faces squinting
plunging into void with jaundice.

fall’s
fucked up,
fire hearth and
football. freaky-deaky
wind with a
bow in her hair and a
bulge in her pants plays
popsy-pumpkin with punks,
hiding beneath the bleachers,
waiting for whimsy like Godot.

I read Sharon Olds in the concrete
steps of a library so I can feel
that devil clawing up inside,
steaming against my hoodie.

I look on, like a relic, staring at a world
drenched in sepia rainbows, wondering
which button gets me back

to black and white.

A Vaguely LPPBG Poem

Since I'm a plagiarizer by trade, this is a poem I kind of reworked to fit the assignment suggestion. I want to do orgasm, but I can never find time for those sorts of things these days. Soon though.. very soon.

Ars Poetica #1: On Titles that Are Too Long and Teachers who Edit Too Much

“Mrs. Poo—
diak, I got a question, a question about that letter” This letter, have a question
now let’s get to business:

Your assignment is to write a letter to your pen
pal from Mexico. He or She speaks English like
you. Only write one page only and in only
cursive. Don’t forget to print neatly, spell
right, and be nice. Tell the other student all
about your life in America. Your favorite
foods, television shows, things to do after
school. Remember to have fun!

So you spell my name like, and I guess
you say it too Ah-

lee-
sha (That means Alesia, which is my name)
Care-(like I care about
you)Oh- (like o)-Sell (Like I sell girl scout
cookies)-EE (like me). (That means Caroselli, which is
my name?

A too quick swipe of the red
pen, and she is stunned to
rebellion. Bringing in artilleries
of white security envelopes and
momdad pens from momdadd desks,
V becomes Mollify and the Princess
only sometimes finds the pea.

Experiment/Assignment #2

In a brief poem, move from a state of immaturity to a state of full maturity. This can be reflected via maturation of images, a syntactical movement from young to old, chronicling of a life, etc.

The length requirement is fluid, but the idea is to accomplish sweeping maturation (of whatever form you choose) in a concise space. If it's syntactically decadent, that's great - the concision refers only to the physical space of the poem.

we shall refer to this exercise as the "lil boys pushin' big grills" experiment, or the LBPBG. because it's funny.

for OCD's sake, when you publish yours, do "LBPBG: [your name here] version." so when we search through things, it's easy to decipher.

Poem Experiment #1: Bendi's Version

Quick note - the experiment was to write a poem which captured the kinetic/emotional drive of an orgasm from start to finish. [Sorry if it's less palpable than yours, "Jojo". AD, you in on this? -B.]


filia -

I'd like to place Occam's razor
in the candied apples, to cut
the fat places in my family ties,
betwixt muscle and bone, where

old wounds calcify. I'd say, 'simple
is best, Mom' and we'd smiling
slice away rock-hard grudges from
both lineage and lymph -

to begin we'd incise,
our methods precise

to the blood drop, nothing done in
errancy, photos cropped, excellent
photoshopped memories mass made
in absentia, the maudlin goes missing
from albums, only marmalade sweet
sunday snapshots make it in-


yet


if the engineering is genetic
in the discretion lies the sin.

Why Writing a Thesis is so Hard

For one thing, I love the world and everything is too inherently interesting. For another thing, I may have an incurable form of literary ADD. If I can move from a formalist poet who in nearly every poem hails back to "the Bigs" (I'm talking about Dana Gioia and his love for common mythology and BIG important authors like Flaubert and Rilke) to evolutionary theory and how Darwin's Origin of the Species was like a soft opening of a Vegas Strip Joint..something must be wrong.. or terribly right.

I'm writing (or preemptively writing about writing) a thesis on the authorial mask. The protean switch-up between biography, speaker, author, person, persona, gender, race, whatever. Huge topic, right? Well, fear not, my base is John Berryman's 77 Dream Songs...which scares the crap out of me. The guy's been my hero (and antagonist) for 4 years now. It's probably high time I write about him, then again, every time I start to think about him critically, I get bogged down, freak out a bit, and start reading Richard Dawkins. Well, Life, Friends, is Boring, and I'm just going to go for it. To hell with convention, I'm writing an genetically, literary, John Berrymanian thesis that'll be great. Take that, English Department.


PS- I'm going to post a review on Dana Gioia's Interrogations at Noon real soon.

Poem experiment #1, as assigned by Bendi

3.5:

[wine/candles/a real stand up kind of dude]

navigating by touch is dangerous in a knife fight,
so take the snake tongue glare with a sense
of delicate balance. a dance, not death. think of
handles resting between palm lines, a filled alcove,
touch so light feathers give goosebumps. a chink in
the armor where skin used to be. knife fights are
romantic to knife-fight writers, so think about metal
nuzzling metal, two steel Charlemagnes resting in
in the other’s crook. hilts that won’t stop. circling,
dancing, for the possibility of pain. Two tongues
reaching, extending, expanding, never touching. Even
flesh can build on pain.

[expansion by concision]

veins: because blood accrues in tubes.
the wildflowers of sensory experience
dictate that skin is like tissue paper,
pretty decorative stuffing, except on the outside.
skin is fat to a steak, skin is thick
and precisely itself. It is not strange, it is not fresh,
it cannot wine and dine. Skin cannot rhyme, because
skin has no rhythm, skin could not dance
to “killing me softly,” even if anyone else could. Skin
is not sawdust to a workbench, it is sawdust to a floor,
wet, hoppy, ill-mannered cellulose. It is wrapped on tubes,
accrued like tar to a seagull. Sit still-
feel this sawdust sopping me: feel this thickness.

[rough, like cowboy rough/like a rentboy on fire island/ like Jubes’ Drag Show Explosion]

our dialogue is concussive, our contours
and cartography make holes like Kalamata olives
shot through cardstock. We are it, James Deans on
fingertouch subways, shooting whatever it is
that Dean shoots like fucking prize winning Palamino
studs. we speak like a map directs – we’re always
goddamn right on, our fonts sing like shot rooster, we
are pure escalation, copied and de-authored. undocumented,
we dress in high heels and matching flannel, we exist
imprecisely and unconcise in phonetic fleshwrap. feeling through words
like a worm through soil, we fucking erupt, sucking,
desperate, hungry, for that great goddamn light.

[“We’re meant to be active beings”/uuuuaaaa…/similies for sex/haiku for handjobs]

like spigots shooting
glass peppermint shards piercing
giant musk bottles

as if metal clamps
needed nipples, as if lube
needed vaginas

we are not flowers,
plants are always wicked lame.
we are leg sore gods

rising to the peak
with frostbitten cuticles,
engorged, greasy laps.

[the hedonist mantra/BAM!/apocatastasis]

with greasy knuckles I rap out my song on the
keyboard: xdzklj jj m,.

with overclocked pituitaries, screaming “fuck you, heaven!”

with unconscious fingers, quietly bliss typing.

[the appetitive comedown]

I can see with my fingers;
the way apples see Magritte

So I shaved my head tonight...

It's bizarre how dependent my body is on little ticks. Maybe like really good crack, or better yet, like a really dependable poet...I look for meandering lines, sexy metaphors, even a kickass epigraph before I read.

I touch my head while I write, before I say something that requires thought, even while I'm drinking (water, get your heads out of that gutter). There isn't hair to twist anymore in writerly consternation. Even the wind, which I thought I understood, is a strange freak now.

One thing that I've learned in the past three hours is that I used hair as a mask. It was nice to hide behind my mane.. even when it was short, I would shake my head and let some of it fall forward. Embarrassment, frustration, adoration: anything and everything could be disguised. Not anymore...in fact, my girlish ticks look silly now. My head is shiny, and so are my thoughts, and maybe my writing will spice up as well. Or maybe I'll just keep rubbing my head like the cueball it is.

In rainbows

alright, this is going to be overtly stanny and excitable, but let me just get this out.

Radiohead announced, about 3 hours ago over their website, that they are releasing their new album "In Rainbows." Aside from the fact that it's radiohead and they're fucking great, here are several reasons why this album is revolutionary, without even hearing it.

a.) the record is entirely self-distributed. You go to radiohead.com to get the album. No major label is responsible, no one made any demands of radiohead, no corporate branding anywhere. It's, from the ground up, a self-propelled release by a band that can do it. This is, in essence, the music industy's Lexington. It's the shot heard round the world. because:

b.) the download comes from radiohead.com, nowhere else. It's DRM free, it's high quality MP3's, and if you want a hard copy, you order it from them (and get vinyl, cd's, artbooks, and a whole other album's worth of material, essentially making it a double vinyl album (because the other songs aren't b-sides by any stretch of the imagination)). Here's the best part: you decide how much you're going to pay for the digital album. Seriously. If you want to buy the album for 1 cent, it's yours. so:

c.) why bootleg it? it (most likely) won't leak because the hard copy isn't available until december 3rd. And the digital album will be out October 10th (yes, releasing an album 10 days after the announcement... bad-ass). And you can literally download it for free, as long as you tell radiohead.com that you want it for free. If you choose to support radiohead and give them money, great. If not, great. The download is through radiohead.com. And who knows what will be included in the download package as of now?

d.) since they can establish their own design in their own matter of choosing, it looks like the "discbox" is going to be an art student's wet dream. AND YOU GET THE VINYL NO MATTER WHAT! so maybe some music fans will be motivated to go out and buy record players and see how great music sounds when it's physically reproduced. Man. This is literally a home run of a record.

I can't begin to tell you how excited I am. even if the album sucks, this may end up being one of those moments where we all get the treat of seeing an entire industry and economy slightly shift one way or the other. if the album moves a million units (easy for radiohead) in the US, then we'll see Billboard charts have to completely readjust their sales standards (because if it's the most popular record in the country then it's the most popular, regardless of whether they sold it to you for free), we'll start to see "indies" actually become indie, we'll see artist driven labels (like, for real), we'll see tour sales go through the roof (hey! that band that gave me their album for $5 is touring! why not!), and we'll see a paper culture industry actually catch up to the times. I know this is one album, but it's a huge album, from the biggest free-agents in the music world. U2 and REM and the Stones have more money than God but they can't directly sell their album to their fans? yeah. Good job radiohead.

And for luddites like me, I can get the album on vinyl, CD, and my computer without having to buy the same thing 2-3 times. And I can get a massive art book by one of my favorite artists. We all win.

i'm gonna get back to not sleeping until next wednesday

Slightly, so slightly

I confess, this new adventure into literature and literary ideas as the basis for this petite meeting of the minds, is daunting. I'm not frightened by the idea of engaging texts and bitching about them, but I'm concerned that my blog-interests are off-topic, even when they're on topic. I'm sure that makes no sense.


Anyway, something that's been getting my goat recently is the idea of aesthetic. Though I'm aware we all have our own aesthetic (some things get us off and some things don't) I resent the idea that we have to bring this entire hierarchy worth of baggage to the stuff we consume and decide how things fit into those tight schema, or not. I constantly feel, in the poetry community, a need to be tightening my viewpoint, learning to better argue matters of taste until they mystically become matters of value. I feel poetry should be about expanding onto a larger and larger world, opening up to it and consuming what we find - like children wandering through orchids. Instead, a lot of the time, it's about walking through the orchid and saying, 'this tree is diseased', 'this tree is of little use to me' and 'there is neither a thing good nor strange' about some other tree. Though this is a criticism, I think it's also an impossible dream.

I think that most of the poets who want to be poets will continue to specify their viewpoints out of a desire to be taken seriously and produce recognized work. I'm not sure what the alternative is, nor how it can be achieved, but I think questions of aesthetic are running a muck and that reading a poem for the sake of enjoying it and saying, 'huh, that's fucking good' is becoming something of a lost art.

[the first draft of this post was riddled with grammatical errors, I've fixed a few - but to my defense, it was written at the zenith of my weariness.]

Executive Decisions

Dear Kids:

I have some bad news. Chicken Paprika as we know it is dead, buried behind Aunt Betty's barn. But from all bad things like death and and construction sites, come good things, like resurrections and room changes.

This is now a place to rant, rave, and obsess about literature or things that we can loosely, but always fascinatingly, connect back to literature. What do I mean by literature, you ask? Well, I mean nothing, and I mean everything. I don't read Judith Butler or Roland Barthes as much as I should, but if I do, I will post what I think here.

Classrooms are stifling these days. I can't say what I feel, I have to say what I think, and those thoughts have to be very grounded in the text or I lost my license to practice reading. I say bah! to that. It's time to hash it out, to write unfettered. We are all apologies and niceties, and while respect to the author and the text is important, sometimes shit is shit and it sucks to read it.

Will you help me in this next unworthy endeavor?

Sincerely,
Me

letter to a caroselli

Dawnie-

can we change the name? i want recycled chicken names, every week. I tried to do it, but 'taint let me. i mean, if you really like paprika, then let's roll, but i think some header witticism might spice the place up. and I will be posting, come thursday, a minute by minute account of me & Bendi's real time drunk and out of control review of MIA's Kala. Believe it, fam.

I have been a bad, bad blogger.

I haven't read this thing in ages. From what I can glean, Bendi and Jon are engaged in an epic battle and I forgot to buy a ticket.

Here is a little something I'm working on. Right now, I'm trying my bestest to write an accessible poem on the surface, but then again it should also have a little somethingsomething to it.. (maybe paprika), that makes you want to read it again..

Lesson One: Meringue with Sir DOMS

i.

Delayed Sir Doms: I have done it again. I have eccentrically contracted
my muscular meat into that petrified pretzel of pain.

Onset, on the street, You follow me everywhere and now I have
nothing but this motorized scooter and a pocket
full of milky dreams.

Muscle me, Sir Doms, all day long, but the situation grows
lethal. I request a formal
hearing with the ministry of cheese. “I am rejecting this house of glass
bones. The recommended prescription is a good bout
of calcium.”

The Soreness salsa: fin-ger quicks, fin-ger quicks, fin-ger quicks
in the mean
time, this slow-
Moe has got me jiving with you, Sir Doms,
and I am heavy-tired.

ii.

Did you know the cause of your existence is tearing not
buildup? You break me down to build me up better
cup and I could say that I am grate
full, but I’m too lock-jawed for thank-yous.

untitled

man wars perfectly
seperating fat from thighs with sharp
memories of guerilla warfare jumbled
recipe calling for more blood in the soup
eyed general points and 15 boys drop dead
weight! Throw out the freezer burned bits,

or they'll ruin the stew.




------------------------------------------
Yo Jon, you wanted a shit fest?

colossal panther mechanism

I.

fuck the horse you rode in on, ride
the lightning. fingers ride the blade
edge like thighs on stripper poles. wrap
your fingers in her hair, grab ‘n’ tug,
hold thunder like hips, like shoulders,
like a TSE. spread-eagle in hair, spread
thin, butter on toast, oil on feathers, stuttering
like quarters on china. absorb in darkness,
wet like ink, damp with void, the kind of
darkness age fears. the kind of darkness
that only makes sense huge, that only makes
sense when senseless. play it out like phobic
Kabuki. blade step hari-kari with a pen,
with x’s and o’s, with geometry. promiscuous
with bias like a giant is promiscuous with air.

II.

flee
quick
giants
quickly
approach.
fluctuate
giantesses
snowballing
moth-catchers,
child-catchers,
agriculturally
Caufieldesquely.
superskeletalsex.

III.
not enough holes to hide in, all
the things they don’t teach you on
groundhog day. billy used to
push you facedown in the dirt,
let you taste the earth, what a
simple gift from such an ass.
the act of panther avoidance
is incapable of sustaining metaphor
longer than nine lines. just don’t tell the
panther that.

IV.

I lust for things I do not lust for,
in-between dusty blinks, damp
pervades sheets. If you could be a
sex constellation, which would you
be? a pearl necklace means far
too many uncomfortable things, especially
past midnight. The underside of my chin
bobs like a croaking frog, determining
determinism as though decided. Yelling,
we navigate. compass-less, we divine.

V.

like sledgehammers two-stepping,
I untangle my legs from soft grass.
no sound is softer than the sound
of submission. no one touches
lighter than one who succumbs
to giants. the tiny shall grow and
be tiny again. riddles make hearts
grow found in the winter. like a
colossus, I wrap myself in layers
not to keep warm, but to mask
old healed over knifewounds. gotten
from ill-timed poledances and ill-
gotten losses. like sledgehammers
unraveling, disintegrating, particulating.
giants are no closer to heaven,
they just see more empty sky.

sangwich (notes)

since no one has posted a real shit sandwich yet, read the poem above.
a little light notation:
-this is one of the black panther mechanism poems.
: the wrinkle is, this one uses tropes from Team Ico's "Shadow of the Colossus." because I thought it'd be weird.

-II is a oulipo form called a snowball.

*don't judge me on this. this is an experiment.*

I'm a compulsive blogger, shoot me.

Tinder box god head

i.

I kindle the tinder box god head and
righteous noises catch the catechisms
of impotent saints, work it in – full on
jack off session, petals, boughs and all,

come constellations spider silk tender
erase at the touch, becoming just wetness.

ii.
pragmatic excuse-maker, sand sifting lips
smoothed and raw opaline kissable.

(Is the pulse of modern
man

the modem’s hum?)

Sibylline Confucius-speak rhetoricized erectile
puzzles in judeo-christian, I only speak English.

I disinherit lies, my love,
this means you.

iii.
Dilettante rosary-kisser wet with imprint,
impresario of infatuations in low-cut bikini,
hypoesthesia sets in
I mistake it for arousal, but
honey, you’re a goddamn nosebleed.

iv.
tinder box god head rescues all the hindu gods
from a 10 story blaze

spinning plates on wine glass
stems. Mars rover blows up, much tumult
approaches with the wind, nature reclaims her spoils:
virginity and all.

I had half a quart of gin &
chronic ills plagued every drop.

Eventually, I will fall asleep
to a kinder lull but for now

I’m far too busy raising hell.

:P

Le Challenge de Poetry

I was trying to write a place poem, but couldn't, because it didn't feel right or fresh...or anything for that matter. So I got to thinking, what if we were forced to write outside of our experience all together? You might say, "But Bendi, I just wrote a poem about Sylvia Plath's suicide last weekend!" and I would respond, "Did Sylvia Plath describe her suicide to you? No? Then this is different." I think there's something in the personal element of story telling combined with responsibility of doing justice to experience (which poets understand so well) that opens an avenue for moderately challenging work

Here's the challenge: Someone describes to you an authentic experience of theirs and you flesh it out in a poem that is in return 'authentic,' or as true as possible to the person's original experience. As a safe-guard from boredom/complicator, the experience when described should be communicateed with as much concision as possible.

The point here is not to actually produce something that is a facsimile of what someone else experienced, but to be immersed in the process of creating using someone else's frame of reference. At best, it will be an exercise in empathy and we'll all learn something about the displacement of self. At worst, this is a stupid idea.

:P

Monogamy (formerly, Accident #21)

I know I said, "forever, forever" placating hands
smearing promises on the dashboard, britney
spears pantomiming vocals on the radio. You bare
faced hoping I'd concede to we, but -

in walks a blond mane flopping
sheepish grinning powder blue covered
he-man, god man! Is he a man, or what

were we talking about, again?

Third World Countries or My Time in West Campus

In the better interest of the blog and not so much of myself, I am posting a generalized story loosely linked to literature in hopes of sparking a little something something. This is my fourth year living on campus, and I'm tired. A bomb went off today at noon preceded and followed by a tirade of those monster truck rally air horns. I'm literally living on a construction site--the "West Campus Housing Initiative." The part of the dorms I live in, Founders, has that very foundering air to it. I think the ghosts of the founders are wandering around coercing me to be rebellious. The other, new! dorms are cookie cutter monstrosities that are creepily reminiscent of oppression. And in the middle of all of this old and new is a gigantic chasm in the earth.

"We live in a war zone" is the most repeated phrase these days. The atmosphere is tense and begging to be popped. As a part of a "getting to know you activity" we painted bricks as door stops today. In my building there is not one public refrigerator. In the cookie-cutters there are several thousand on each floor. I feel like I am a part of a lost generation. I lived in what is now that chasm in the earth not so very long ago and met some excellent people and had some excellent times. Now there is rubble and no proof. In my naivety and hopefulness I believed the spirit of my old building (aptly titled "The Class of '26) would live on. It hasn't yet, and I'm just sitting at a computer, writing my ass off, waiting for the fall out.

Hopefully Mr. President's secretary gets back to me soon, no one wants another red bud incident...at least not in this heatwave.

Bamboo??

So here's my problem. I've ariticulated this to a lot of you, but I'm stuck by my own form. During one of my many successful internet searches performed while "working," I came accross a little thing called the "Black Panther Mechanism." Brief history of the mechanism: L. Ron hypothesized hilariously in Dianetics that all human action can be explained by a man named Gus (first problem: the human Gus will explicate human action?). Gus is sitting in his living room, in his futon, or perhaps his ottoman. Gus has had a long day of selling George Foreman Grills to poverty-level school districts, and just wants to lie down in his bed and relax the night away. But there's a huge black panther (as in the animal) on the steps to his bedroom. And, as L. Ron and Scientology make pains to point out, this is an angry panther. As he would be if he was stolen from the jungle and transplanted into a Miami Beach nursing home. So our Gus (his real name. That part I'm not making up.) has five options, Hubbard says. He can attack (which means strangle the panther, because Gus can't use tools for some reason) the beast, he can flee the panther, he can avoid the panther (which apparently means sneaking to the bedroom via some undisclosed route, but really, if Gus has a separate set of stairs, why are we having this conversation? Gus would go up to bed and call animal control or something, which incidentally is something Gus can't do [get help from others]), he can neglect the panther (don't understand this one. Maybe the panther dies from loss of love.), or he can succumb to the panther (which unless he's dramatic about it, is not a solution, unless Hubbard is being incredibly fatalistic about humanity).

So problem & five incredibly restrictive ways to approach it. I love the sound of it. I can conjure up infinite computations of it, working in formal elements and possibly even my crack addiction to oulipo. But I find myself in a place where I literally cannot write a word, because I feel this oppressing need to reckon with the fact that this is from Scientology and I don't necessarily have to believe in it to use it. Granted I am interested (cue backing track of Alice and Rima singing "exoticism! Exoticism! in ducet harmony) in eastern forms and in dialects, but usually I can make use of these without too much reference to the fact that I am using them. I'm having an unbelievably hard time even getting through the first stanza before being sucked under by a dragging current of L. Ron mockouts, like a seventh grader.

I'm sure this problem will be solved soon, naturally, and I'll get the hang of it, but I'm thinking that it's a matter of opportunity. To be honest, I've had too many friends lose their families, money, and good name by the Church of Scientology to be a-okay with it. So to use a form without doing some meaningful work with the original subject within in this case feels like a grave disservice. I'm in a PICKLE. What Would Alice Do? (WWAD, in case you want to make braclets)

I'm currently listening to Menomena, the new Foo Fighters video (what can I say? Ice rinks and explosions of blood are just a part of who I am [http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/page/forkcast/45032-foo-fighters-the-pretender]), and thirty seconds of new MIA songs, excepting "Jimmy" because it makes me cringe in a big way.

-jon

(next blog to feature a discussion of gender, mother-hatred in soofyan's music, and the incredible sexuality-myopia of fantasy writer Robert Jordan's the Wheel of Time series, because if I'm going to read shitty beach fantasy novels, you BET! I'll try and make a case for its worth when Waffles starts laughing at me. I will also attempt to mirror Butler's mellifluous prosaic style.)

{and I think it'd be fun for everyone to be admins and just go ape-shit on this blog, so email Alesia, who's name is bigpurplebroccoli or something. and adminit}.