have i been here?

the bad rabbit would like some carrot. he starts shoving his wiggly little nose in all the corners of the room. something smells like carrot. a blind mortician comes out of the closet, groping and yelling about the noise. the bad rabbit gets real scared and hops out the open window and across the ocean of dandelions waving like spectator sea anenome. they don't mind. but i'm stuck here, with the myth of the blind, holding my breath and praying to god he goes back in the closet. "GODDAMN CARROTS" he screams, throwing over the kitchen table. a few half-full plates of spaghetti topple over, crash, crash; they turn to ostrich eggs. the eggs begin to hatch, releasing small beady-eyed crocodiles. one egg takes a particularly long time unfolding and out of it hatches the bad rabbit. he's wearing one of those mystery man glasses and mustache combinations like hes some sort of harriet the spy. the kids are all upstairs on the top bunk playing some hybrid adult form of mary poppins goes to the doctor. they have all the silverware in the bed and bad rabbit is pissed because he needs the carrot peeler but he didn't make an appointment. he starts shitting little marble turds all over the goddamn flowered linoleum. I begin to follow him around with a little fairy wand broom and silver ashtray because i can't find the dust pan, but he starts hopping faster, ahead of me, shitting with every bounce and i can't keep up. suddenly i am aware of the neighbors at the window with their dirty noses and pink clammy hands pressed up against the freshly washed glass.

i don't make art.

not quite finished. kyan drew the bicycle in the last frame, i swear. he's five.

the season comes to an end before it begins

this is where we live

so,

i know pretty bikes are like pretty women, they come and go. and i know that women, they will come and they will go. and i know players only love you when they're playing. and i know thunder only happens when it's raining. and i know it's 8:06 p.m. but what about men? BOYFRIEND. it's all muddy, muddled, dirty. what about, uh, that small hole in the wall with a tooth wrapped in canvas hidden inside? the size of an index finger. here your lungs fill with cotton. here your heart is small. what about the small unboned rabbit skinned and rotting on a plate next to the bed? what about how the night always releases a chill and the city lights always look better out the window when drunk? what if it stays the same, the shivers are still there in the morning and the moles make constellations along the subtle curves of the skin of the back and the city still limns along the horizon just as pretty in the soft light of morning? oh, i suppose consummation always debones the phantasmagoria. what if the first jump is never enough? but every jump after could never be as good. if it isn't done right the first time? i suppose i may never be satiated with what i have. aspiration, 'til death do us part. or is that respiration, or both, oh. i thought he had a gun; i thought this is what we were supposed to do; i thought we both wanted it to be a small folded piece of the blustery night that would never unfold in the same way we closed it; i thought there was someone in the backseat; i thought we were supposed to die right then, right there; i thought we would never whisper like that, but we made it. we made it. here your heart is small. here you spiral, constantly alone, ever and cyclical and ever and ever. i suppose i may always hope for something better. is it too much to be content with the current rush? oh. i suppose maybe is a better word than perhaps. the future is always blanker than the past. but sometimes things are so much like myopia, so speckled and bespeckled and the mind just keeps running back to that one thing, that one moment. oh. oh. morning flowers are always better in retrospect, bulb to blossom, that little fire on divison street. and oh.

everything i know

1.
2.
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4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

well,

shit, we shouldn't have been there.

ode to the lovely ms. margaret reges..

I used to make this beer starting late winter, when the first dandelion rosettes would pop up in the soggy ground, all through spring. It will foam up when poured out, but the head dissipates quickly. Don't expect it to be a fine beer, just enjoy it for what it is: a rough but tasty springtime homebrew and a real connection with nature's free bounty.

anyone want to try it soon?



1. Wash a 1-gallon glass carboy, plastic fermentation bucket, or a large, food-grade plastic jug. It's important that this fermentation vessel should not be of metal, and be very clean, with no residue of former food or drink clinging to it, inside or out. Sanitize it with a mild bleach solution (rinse very well till no bleach odor is left) or a Campden tablet if you will - although I use Campden to sanitize my wines, I never did with this beer.

2. Put the sugar and the cream of tartar into the vessel.

3. Wash the dandelion, using any mixture of roots and leaves. Make sure to pluck out any flower stems; they are bitter and inedible. There is no need to peel the roots, just scrub the dirt off them. Chop the roots and leaves coarsely.

4. Simmer the dandelion material with the grated ginger, in all the water (you'll need a large pot, or split this step into two batches). Simmer for 10 minutes.

5. Funnel the liquor into the carboy, using cheesecloth to strain it, or strain and pour it into a jug.

6. Stir well to dissolve the sugar completely.

7. When the liquor is lukewarm, dissolve the yeast in water and add to the vessel.

8. Fit the airlock if fermenting in a carboy or fermentation bucket; if using a jug, cover it with a clean towel. This was my first homebrew recipe, and I had no dedicated beer- or wine-making equipment, so it was a clean towel for me.

9. All the beer to ferment three days. No need to stir it orinterfere with it in any way; just let it sit there and do its thing. Soon enough it will start to fizz away.

10. After three days, sterilize your bottles. Siphon the beer into them and cap. More confessions: sometimes I would keep this beer, for short-term storage, in sanitized plastic water bottles.


Wait a week before opening. Chill thoroughly before opening.

Enjoy! It's easy to get addicted to this brew.


* Although I've used white sugar, I came to prefer the nutty taste contributed by dark brown sugar.


** A friend says that a darker, sweeter beer may be made by roasting the dandelion roots first. In terms of proportion, I would use roughly 50/50 roots and leaves.


*** Yes, baker's yeast. If you have access to beer yeast, by all means, use it. But I never did, because there isn't any to be had here that I know of. And to tell the truth, I liked the idea of using the homeliest, least complicated ingredients and methods to make this country beer.

I HAVE MARY POPPINS SONGS STUCK IN MY HEAD ALL THE GODDAMN TIME

stupid is defined as heat is to one on one and two equals eighteen quarts of strawberries we squish with our dead skin bare feet we are making wine we are making juice and callous blood and the ripe strawberries pop like ovaries and we are fermenting in our own skins today, right now, stupid. I I I I I I I. not strawberries, but cherries, eyeballs, canteloupe, raspberries, what else are we putting in the witch's brew, cauldron bubbles and boils, frog spawn of course, three red hairs, fish eggs and rat skin and bat wings and toenails and the wine is done, by now it might be done and if it is not we will not be drunk just sick and drooling and dying, yes, still dying.

well, shit, i suppose

hometown coming in strong, closing in (things i am no longer apart of, may have been once, maybe i am making that up), sudden awareness of every external thing, the things surrounding me, happening elsewhere. how much is dependent on location? how much are we a product of environment, how much is environment a product of the self? fictions of the mind vs. real life vs. the external world--is it really what we make it (i)? nothing seems vitally important right now. no motivation to write two papers due tomorrow. this seems negligent, silly, self-indulgent. what else? girls in suitcases somewhere in northern california, people i once knew (idolized?) stabbed in the throat, friends with babies, nyc serial killers in the 70s--all this shit i have no access to, but somehow find infinitely interesting. suicide of this boy a few years older than me, i was in 7th grade, friends of the family, nothing on the internet. fuck the internet. or maybe i am just so starved for something else than where i find myself now. acceptance, immerison, acknowledgement, admission, time to move on, hunker down, focus, hone in. what else but to awake, explode, keep going. prayer is something i have lost all grasp and conception of, yet somewhere i think i still yearn for it, for the idea. i want to say the nature of the thing is more important than the idea of it, i want to say we made eye contact, i want to say this matters, but i don't know what i believe anymore. the future looms blank and blinking. yesterday, today. nap. today. tomorrow is all laid out, tonight, this week, next week possibly the coming months. beyond that? i'm afraid my life will never amount to anything profound, but hey, i've been sitting here for 3 hours and haven't done shit about that. i've learned a lot, thought a lot, discovered and uncovered and recovered. like the pamphlets little girls in floral dresses hand out on the corner of state & north u: i could die today, you could die today, maybe even we could all die today. and then what? will the stars still come out tonight? will the birds still sing in the morning? and god, who is he? are we all so self-focused, centered. reliving and relieving and leaving and coming and going and staying and maybe i just want to walk and breathe and feel the air closing in around me (me me me me me me me me) because is that what it really comes down to, yes? america is for me a bug collection, right now, underglass and dissectable, or maybe that's just my past or maybe, still the possibility that i am making it all up. all of this. solipsism. what place does that notion have? invisibility, indivisibility, oh. there are so many people that have changed my life in those tiny, secret, string-theory ways. and none of them know it. and none of it is significant. oh, nothing, i suppose, nothing but this and this and this and.

oh.

http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/amazonrank/

everything i learned today

x = sex

x + y = relationship

solve for y

(thanks, ariel schrag, potential)

aversion, subversion, diversion, or meta-bored

what? does this count?

poems i will recite if u ask nicely*

*alternate title: poems i wish i would have written. or wish i could have written.
*alternate title: poems i recite to myself when i'm mopping. or doing dishes. or walking. or drunk & feeling self-conscious.
*alternate title: my favorite poems? maybe?

stereo - anne waldman

supermarket in california - allen ginsberg

today in ann arbor - ted berrigan

final soliloquy of the interior paramour - wallace stevens

amanda hopper's house - karyna mcglynn

green mountain idyl - hayden carruth

directive - robert frost

for grace, after a party - frank o'hara

mr. youse (not a real title; cummings never has titles) - e.e. cummings

breakfast @ the country club

"oh, i'm so psyched for this audiohealing workshop nick is doing. it's so cool."

re-shit; [re]shit; re:shit; reshit