"Ladies is pimps too, go and brush your shoulders off"
--Jay Z

"Faith without works is dead"
--James 2:26

Bhanu Kapil

I went running through the 97 degree heat yesterday in Philadelphia and by minute 45, I was close to what seemed my last breath. I had downloaded a reading by Bhanu Kapil from Penn Sound (http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Kapil.html) onto my ipod per Eric Baus's zealous recommendation earlier in the Spring and had loved it. But even then my love was not a save-you-from-the-97-degree-heat kind of love. But yesterday, I found that kind of love for Kapil's poems and found out how the excessive heat can cause you too to realize that "there is no such thing as skin" as she writes in her Autobiography of a Cyborg. I urge you to listen to the reading on the Penn Sound site and also buy her books, which can be bought here http://www.durationpress.com/leroy/cyborg.htm and here http://www.spdbooks.org/SearchResults.asp?Title=&Author=kapil%2C+bhanu&Subtitle=&submit=Search .

A kiss from a Chow Chow

EB/DL color breakdown

EB/DL colors include (regardless of location):

royal blue
kelly green
forest green
brown
maroon

No one may break this chain.

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant––
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind––

--Emily Dickinson

Jelly Fish All Around

Laura Solomon's second book will be out soon (8/1) and you must read it: http://www.uglyducklingpresse.org/page-blueandredthings.html.


Russian Poem

I have a red heart
& a green wall,
the other side of which
I’ve never seen.

When he is lonely
God visits
me in my itty room—
he always says the same,

“I have a green wall
& a red heart,
the other side of which
I’ve never seen.

When bored I
create & destroy
to prove I am not
a piano key.”

-Laura Solomon

I've Got A Thing About Seeing My Grandson Grow Old (Cat Stevens)

I buy the nicest things from a super market store
Vitamin land and marzipan and I know just what they're all for
I've organized my useless life in a way I've never done before
Even visit the dentist now

But I've got no time for silly chitter chatter
I'm on my way
Cause while my blood's still warm and my mind doesn't matter
I'm hoping to stay
'Cause I've got a thing about seeing my grandson grow old

I just can't wait to see that city on the moon
With air conditioned gardens that'll play your favorite tune
I'll see my feet upon that street if it's the last thing that I'll do
Even sweep the roads to be there

But I've got no time for silly chitter chatter
I'm on my way
Cause while my blood's still warm and my mind doesn't matter
I'm hoping to stay
'Cause I've got a thing about seeing my grandson grow old

I'll see my feet upon that street if it's the last thing that I'll do
Even sweep the roads to be there

But I've got no time for silly chitter chatter
I'm on my way
Cause while my blood's still warm and my mind doesn't matter
I'm hoping to stay
'Cause I've got a thing about seeing my grandson grow old

Cat Stevens - Where Do The Children Play

Neil Diamond - Cherry, Cherry

EDDIE RABBITT - I Love A Rainy Night

Raining in Philadelphia

Noisettes IWE

Noisettes - Don't Give Up

Noisettes - Scratch Your Name: Performance Version- Closed Captioned

Lady Lazarus (Sylvia Plath) I have done it again. One year in every ten I manage it-- A sort of walking miracle, my skin Bright as a Nazi lampshade, My right foot A paperweight, My face a featureless, fine Jew linen. Peel off the napkin 0 my enemy. Do I terrify?-- The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth? The sour breath Will vanish in a day. Soon, soon the flesh The grave cave ate will be At home on me And I a smiling woman. I am only thirty. And like the cat I have nine times to die. This is Number Three. What a trash To annihilate each decade. What a million filaments. The peanut-crunching crowd Shoves in to see Them unwrap me hand and foot The big strip tease. Gentlemen, ladies These are my hands My knees. I may be skin and bone, Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman. The first time it happened I was ten. It was an accident. The second time I meant To last it out and not come back at all. I rocked shut As a seashell. They had to call and call And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls. Dying Is an art, like everything else, I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I've a call. It's easy enough to do it in a cell. It's easy enough to do it and stay put. It's the theatrical Comeback in broad day To the same place, the same face, the same brute Amused shout: 'A miracle!' That knocks me out. There is a charge For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge For the hearing of my heart-- It really goes. And there is a charge, a very large charge For a word or a touch Or a bit of blood Or a piece of my hair or my clothes. So, so, Herr Doktor. So, Herr Enemy. I am your opus, I am your valuable, The pure gold baby That melts to a shriek. I turn and burn. Do not think I underestimate your great concern. Ash, ash -- You poke and stir. Flesh, bone, there is nothing there-- A cake of soap, A wedding ring, A gold filling. Herr God, Herr Lucifer Beware Beware. Out of the ash I rise with my red hair And I eat men like air.

Sylvia Plath Reads Lady Lazarus

Fever 103° (Sylvia Plath)

Pure? What does it mean?

The tongues of hell

Are dull, dull as the triple

Tongues of dull, fat Cerberus

Who wheezes at the gate. Incapable

Of licking clean

The aguey tendon, the sin, the sin.

The tinder cries.

The indelible smell

Of a snuffed candle!

Love, love, the low smokes roll

From me like Isadora’s scarves, I’m in a fright

One scarf will catch and anchor in the wheel,

Such yellow sullen smokes

Make their own element. They will not rise,

But trundle round the globe

Choking the aged and the meek,

The weak

Hothouse baby in its crib,

The ghastly orchid

Hanging its hanging garden in the air,

Devilish leopard!

Radiation turned it white

And killed it in an hour.

Greasing the bodies of adulterers

Like Hiroshima ash and eating in.

The sin. The sin.

Darling, all night

I have been flickering, off, on, off, on.

The sheets grow heavy as a lecher’s kiss.

Three days. Three nights.

Lemon water, chicken

Water, water make me retch.

I am too pure for you or anyone.

Your body

Hurts me as the world hurts God. I am a lantern––

My head a moon

Of Japanese paper, my gold beaten skin

Infinitely delicate and infinitely expensive.

Does not my heat astound you! And my light!

All by myself I am a huge camellia

Glowing and coming and going, flush on flush.

I think I am going up,

I think I may rise——

The beads of hot metal fly, and I love, I

Am a pure acetylene

Virgin

Attended by roses,

By kisses, by cherubim,

By whatever these pink things mean!

Not you, nor him

Nor him, nor him

(My selves dissolving, old whore petticoats)——

To Paradise.

The Fire that burns the bird


The fire of the poem is within this bird.
O Lord poem!
My Lord poem, serva me.
Save me O Lord from men, who are sure to poison me.
Save me from abuse and wisdom and red hot sin.
Take me into the pure fire, the red eye
The burning fires of morning
That impinge their soul in winged flame.
And on the flame of my tongue
O that Lord, it was I, burnt out more holy than the rest.
O that I on winged flight
Reach into myself and pull out
The pure gold baby that
Burns to a shriek.
In the sun we will all come clean
And washed of our bones
The finger of light, the translucent devil
He makes his soft bed amongst our bones.
And on our bones, he lays his devilish tongue
Licking the marrow of you Lord from us.
And O that I were pure enough
To melt among the earth and trees
And be one with the woods!
The heart of me, bursting within itself!
Like a tree burst of its brain.
And flying above in golden ash and talking tree-like in fiery breath.
It would be I dissipating with you my Lord
In almighty fiery word.

Sylvia Plath Reads 'Fever 103'

talking dog

Dramatic Chipmunk

Doom

In the dream, the tiger was alive but the child did not notice
Its gills were made of moss and the child wept and walked
And had no idea that the tiger was eating its own gills.
She had been in a clean white room for over 2 days,
Had slept and woke, eaten lemon water through her nostrils,
Her bleeding heart like a bleeding windmill within itself.
When she happened upon the tiger she did not notice
But we in the bus did.
We had been talking about love, six girls and a gay guy.
Juliette had worn grey shampoo, not washed out and we told her she looked old.
Mabel had red stockings. I had nine etchings I had bought at a thrift store.
Three were of a scene that progresses from
One man scared of love until his dying day with a graceful mistress.
There was death in the air when the tiger bit.
The child’s limbs were shotty anyway, now she was simply a mess of bone.
We wanted to cry but we couldn’t help thinking that it was all kind of beautiful:
The tiger, the bus, the red stockings.
The sun bleeding in spite of itself.
The sun’s heart like a bleeding spirt that lights the world.
Don’t you see, it is the sun that lights the world?
You take it all very simply, but it is the sun that does it all.
And without it you would be swimming in darkness,
Unsure of tiger, leech, or bitter friend.

Peggy Lee - Fever

John Travolta - SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER More than a woman

Cyndi Lauper True Colors World Liberty Concert 1995

"The great and golden rule of art, as well as life, is this: That the more distinct, sharp, and wirey the bounding line, the more perfect the work of art; and the less keen and sharp, the greater is the evidence of weak imitation, plagiarism, and bungling."

--William Blake, A Descriptive Catalogue, 1809

Very compelling argument for action against climate change:

http://www.break.com/index/tough-to-argue.html

Fleetwood Mac - Never Going Back Again - Live 1977

Never Going Back Again, (Fleetwood Mac)

She broke down and let me in
Made me see where I've been

Been down one time
Been down two times
I'm never going back again

You don't know what it means to win
Come down and see me again

Been down one time
Been down two times
I'm never going back again

Even if one were able to render the whole of the content of faith into conceptual form, it would not follow that one had grasped faith, grasped how one came to it, or how it came to one.

--Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling (1843)

Black barn

Death was never the problem
It was life, that was the problem for me
Getting life, that is what I wanted
Except I couldn’t get it, no matter how hard I tried
I tried and tried and my heart burst with trying
My throat closed with regret, o throat
You never knew the way to anywhere
So I left you where I found you
By the road
Black butterfly that rains so
On the barn
There are so many of you, my blackness
And the things you tell me
Are not so much trite
As they are old
And I don’t want anybody around me
When I die
I want to go
As peacefully as I came
Onto this earth, not the horror I have become
Black life that has left me
No mother, no sister
No father, no lover, no child
No dog
I knew no dog to come when called
I only knew the notes of the universe
They came when called
And when they came to me
Like long lost brothers
And when I speak to you now
My long lost brothers have called me home

French Bulldog Puppies

Elvis Presley - Burning Love (Live '73)

Mariah Carey - against all odds

Phil Collins

Phill Collins - Easy Lover Live

Icehouse - Electric Blue

Listen To The Music / The Doobie Brothers

Ever Read a Book Called Awe?
_____________________

Have you ever read a book called Awe?
I have. I wrote it. That’s my book.
I wrote that book. I wrote that one.
Some people read it, they said
We will make your book.
I said Really? I love you.
They said, We love you too.
I said Good then
I will love you forever
They said Great! and looked scared
Some people I love
Don’t love me
Others love me
That’s good
When you sit in landscape of snow
And you’re a bird, that’s Awe.
When you look over a big green field
And the dead soldiers lay all around you, that’s Love.
That’s Love and Awe.
Say it
That’s Love and Awe.
There is nothing better.
Or if there is
Then I don’t care

Muppet Movie - The Rainbow Connection

Hello Operator

Dolly Parton - 9 to 5

islands in the stream

TORI AMOS--Crucify

A classic.

"My first band was another girl and me," Cyndi recalls. "She played the meat and potatoes on her guitar, and I played all the droning weird stuff. That's how I worked in all my bands: Whatever nobody else was playing, I played against it. I did the textural things that were always missing. And whenever I felt some other rhythm pulling at me, I played it. That pushing and pulling builds an interior rhythm, and that's the place where I sing."

I found this on Cyndi Lauper's webpage, the bio section: http://www.cyndilauper.com/uniquecirx/bio.php

Cyndi Lauper "True Colors"

You with the sad eyes
Don't be discouraged
Oh I realize
It's hard to take courage
In a world full of people
You can lose sight of it all
And the darkness inside you
Can make you feel so small

But I see your true colors
Shining through
I see your true colors
And that's why I love you
So don't be afraid to let them show
Your true colors
True colors are beautiful,
Like a rainbow

Show me a smile then,
Don't be unhappy, can't remember
When I last saw you laughing
If this world makes you crazy
And you've taken all you can bear
You call me up
Because you know I'll be there

And I'll see your true colors
Shining through
I see your true colors
And that's why I love you
So don't be afraid to let them show
Your true colors
True colors are beautiful,
Like a rainbow

April

Aside from being the cruelest month, April is National Autism Awareness Month AND National Poetry Month.
Diamond is the birthstone of April.
The daisy is April's flower.
It is also the month most connected with the sign of Aries.
It is not April anymore, you know. It is May.

Lisa Lisa Cult Jam Lost In Emotion

Fantasia - When I See You

Girls Just Want To Have Fun - Cyndi Lauper (HQ Audio)

Cyndi Lauper - True Colors

John Lennon -

Phil Collins In the air tonight Live NYC 88

In The Air Tonight Music Video

Talk to me - Stevie Nicks (HQ Audio)

van halen - jump

Gwen Stefani - 4 In The Morning

"The Shop" (A Photograph Essay with Christopher Roberti)

Stevie Nicks - Sara - Live

Crowded House - Private Universe

Fleetwood Mac Everywhere

Silver Jews - How Can I Love You (If You Won't Lie Down)

Silver Jews - Slow Education

bonnie prince billy

Tom Petty - Running Down A Dream

"marvellous artifice"

A face in the crowd - Tom petty

The American deadpan

Juice Newton -

Juice Newton Angel Of The Morning.

Juice Newton - Queen Of The Heart

stevie nicks

Fleetwood Mac Live Midnight Special 1976

Stevie Nicks - Stand Back - 1983 Appearence

"Coyote," Joni Mitchell

No regrets Coyote
We just come from such different sets of circumstance
I'm up all night in the studios
And you're up early on your ranch
You'll be brushing out a brood mare's tail
While the sun is ascending
And I'll just be getting home with my reel to reel...
There's no comprehending
Just how close to the bone and the skin and the eyes
And the lips you can get
And still feel so alone
And still feel related
Like stations in some relay
You're not a hit and run driver, no, no
Racing away
You just picked up a hitcher
A prisoner of the white lines on the freeway

We saw a farmhouse burning down
In the middle of nowhere
In the middle of the night
And we rolled right past that tragedy
Till we turned into some road house lights
Where a local band was playing
Locals were up kicking and shaking on the floor
And the next thing I know
That Coyote's at my door
He pins me in a corner and he won't take "No!"
He drags me out on the dance floor
And we're dancing close and slow
Now he's got a woman at home
He's got another woman down the hall
He seems to want me anyway
Why'd you have to get so drunk
And lead me on that way
You just picked up a hitcher
A prisoner of the white lines of the freeway

I looked a Coyote right in the face
On the road to Baljennie near my old home town
He went running thru the whisker wheat
Chasing some prize down
And a hawk was playing with him
Coyote was jumping straight up and making passes
He had those same eyes - just like yours
Under your dark glasses
Privately probing the public rooms
And peeking thru keyholes in numbered doors
Where the players lick their wounds
And take their temporary lovers
And their pills and powders to get them thru this passion play

No regrets, Coyote
I just get off up aways
You just picked up a hitcher
A prisoner of the white lines on the freeway

Coyote's in the coffee shop
He's staring a hole in his scrambled eggs
He picks up my scent on his fingers
While he's watching the waitresses' legs
He's too fat from the Bay of Fundy
From Appaloosas and Eagles and tides
And the air conditioned cubicles
And the carbon ribbon rides
Are spelling it out so clear
Either he's going to have to stand and fight
Or take off out of here
I tried to run away myself
To run away and wrestle with my ego
And with this flame
You put here in this Eskimo
In this hitcher
In this prisoner
Of the fine white lines
Of the white lines on the free, free way

Poets on Painters exhibition

An article on the exhibition at the Ulrich Museum of Art: http://www.artknowledgenews.com/Ulrich_Museum_of_Art_Poets_On_Painters.html

Also, the exhibition website:
http://paintersandpoets.blogspot.com/

Bruce Springsteen-Human Touch

"In the end what you don't surrender, the world just strips away."

Becky Rosen's new website

My uber talented friend Becky Rosen has launched a new site and it is just gorgeous. Check it out: http://www.dorkorbit.com/

Eddie Money-Think I'm In Love

One of the best videos ever made.

Feist: Inside and Out

janet jackson, all nite

Valentine for Perfect Strangers

Thank you Jason for showing me this!!!!

Broken Social Scene

Belle and Sebastian, "The State I Am In"

One of the most important inspiration songs to my new book, AWE. I feel like all of the poems are somewhere within this song and I just couldn't have written them without it. Has something better ever been written? I would like to see that, if there has been.

"I was surprised, I was happy for a day in 1975
I was puzzled by a dream, stayed with me all day in 1995
My brother had confessed that he was gay
It took the heat off me for a while
He stood up with a sailor friend
Made it known upon my sister's wedding day

I got married in a rush to save a kid from being deported
Now she's in love
I was so touched, I was moved to kick the crutches
From my crippled friend
She was not impressed cause I cured her on the sabbath
I went to confess
When she saw the funny side, we introduced my child bride
To whisky and gin

The priest in the booth had a photographic memory
For all he had heard
He took all of my sins and he wrote a pocket novel called
The state I am in
So I gave myself to God
There was a pregnant pause before he said ok
Now I spend my day turning tables round in Marks & Spencers
They don't seem to mind

I gave myself to sin
I gave myself to providence
And I've been there and back again
The state that I am in

Oh love of mine, would you condescend to help me
Cause I'm stupid and blind
Desperation is the devil's work, it is the folly of a boy's empty mind
Now I'm feeling dangerous, riding on city buses for a hobby is sad
Why don't you lead me to a living end
I promised that I'd entertain my crippled friend
My crippled friend"

"Some have a style
That they work hard to refine
So they walk a crooked line"

––The Bangles, "If She Knew What She Wants"

in the aeroplane over the sea

Neutral Milk Hotel

Feist: One Evening

Feist - 1 2 3 4

Teaching

Mushaboom

BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards Feb 2006 : The Matty Groves Perform

The Arcade Fire - Rebellion (Lies)

"I hear you be the block, but I'm the light that keeps the streets on."
––Beyonce, "Upgrade U"

I just feel so bad

I just feel so bad
I don’t know
How to overcome it
Skinner says that it is my
Way that makes me function
In this world
I like to think
About things that are nice
And pretty
I like to plant purple flowers in my mind
That dazzle the starscape
There is no one for me to talk to
Except you dear reader
When there is no one else
To love, there is only you
To pour my love into
The snow
Echoes out the landscape
I have no home
No bread
I am destitute
But inside me
Is a little voice
That must speak
It gets louder when you listen

Check it out

Check it out: Noah Eli Gordon's new interview in Rain Taxi