inclement

St. Mark’s Poetry Project was started before I was born, so somehow I could feel it working in what I read. I could see the mannerism and gesticulation, the pews and poems, the oil and water, the drunken, strung out poet pissing herself at the altar. I never saw a culture moving forward while institutionalized, but I had to see how the sanitarium worked, how they delivered the handout, at least once. So I’m jerking awareness along for the ride, or something is pushing awareness over the cliff. One three nine, six four eight. Neither. I normally don’t take that train to Third Avenue. Then down, over, through the rod iron gate to a bright white room around back.

And here’s Anselm Berrigan saying he likes intimacy, pushing the podium forward. And here’s Peter Gizzi saying he likes salvage better than salvation. And there he is again in Gregory Corso’s apartment, many years ago when he lived in New York. A controlled panic, anxiety. A clarity. And there’s Corso sitting beside me, the ghost of America, sucking up all the good air, licking Tom Pickard’s anecdote about laudanum’s hawk shit, begging to burn my scotch-taped dollar bill like a dirty handed deity of the underworld.

prohibit

re/started reading David Bromige Desire: Selected Poems 1963-1987, Lee Ann Brown Polyverse, David Antin tuning, Kamau Brathwaite Middle Passages and Ancestors, Rae Armantrout Precedence and Up to Speed, Tom Clark Empire of Skin, David Shapiro After a Lost Original and Lateness, Denise Levertov The Freeing of the Dust

delay

delight

I got up yesterday morning at six a.m so that I could vote at West Side High School. I only had to wait thirty or forty minutes. What can I say. Our leaders fail to respect common people. A two-party system cripples progress. Our country's intellectual life is detached from everyday life. Support the alternatives.

disgust

and reading is biological