on an oak stump looked into the center at hammer headed mosquito larvae jerking to surface and

sat in some ants

escalating tooth pain

retroinactive

I am sure that many of you reading this (and I, likely) have the government in our computers. ~Elaine Cassel

dark in broad daylight

Ooh, the lightning is now here and the rumbling crackle bounds much more serious!

thunder above

Wai for the ting, hey!

Waiting for the final charge to the line-

I flip forth and back about the weather and while writing Monica an email message.

Now more thunder, but it just sounds distant, in this case behind the rain.

I am now feeling skeptical about hanging laundry outside today.

I am writing an email to Monica about word rhythm.

Well, here comes the rain and more lazy AM thunder. So much for the fog theory.

My street seems sleeping. I was up with the racket of birds a couple of hours ago, lounged and then rose and went out with the dog.

One of my neighbors was out with her two little white fur ball dogs, one of which likes to raise hell whenever it sees mine, at which point mine complies. But those dogs didn't see mine and mine chose to forgo making an issue of their passing our house. Anyway, she had her hands full with Charlie who is now big enough to walk but wasn't, so she was carrying her (large) kid with one hand while leading these two dogs on a leash with the other.

I am now hearing thunder. It simply isn't getting very light this morning, but I thought it was fog and was considering hanging some laundry outside.

I don't believe this thunder. It simply sounded too long and lazy.

the elbelow's dandy-

remember that guy with his own paper cutter?

Steve, how's your elbow today? Are you feeling fully-assembled?

Monica

I'm off to eat kumquats. Then, my final (Modern) dance class at the New Studio of Dance. I want to take the summer Butoh course but it starts about the same time that I depart. No more dance means no more catching glimpes of my Cuban-dancer-boyfriend Nelson Reyes.

Blogging around, I found the following: the second post on Chimera Song Mosaic
has an early (as in young child) fill-in-the-blank poetry exercise for you to complete.

The law goes nuts and raids the house of artist Steven Kurtz in Buffalo even as he mourns the death of his wife-

Likewise I showed Monica the place where I fell on my bike and broke my olecranon completely off the ulna. The xray indicated a substantial gap between the tip of my elbow and the rest of the bone, and it felt for days like somebody was hammering on my not so funny bone. The surgeon took a cordless Block and Decker drill and sunk a six inch bolt in there. That was nine years ago and it still aches sometimes, but otherwise it's mostly okay. A few days ago however I was simply carrying a glass of water and the old battered joint kind of gave way - I had to switch hands. Now my left is my right and vice grip versatility. Maybe the bolt is coming loose? The surgeon told me that was a possibility.

She scowled, but she sure was dressed thoughtfully and neatly in black. Those were some hefty buckled boots she wore which must have weighed about 20 pounds each. And they shined.

I forgot about putting that streetlamp back together.

Monica-
I hope you remembered to lubricate that shredder.

"A swift glance showed me the three bike-lengths I still had in front of me, and I put my head down, eyes on the wheel, for a better aero effect.

So it was in extreme close-up that I saw my wheel tilt, the tire shoot off the rim and squash into the road. Then I saw it twist up and jam behind the fork crown, producing the most brutal deceleration I've ever experienced. I didn't take my eyes off the knot it made at that precise location, and to this day I could still sketch it. I can see it from every angle, since I somersaulted over the handlebars and crashed flat on my back, with the bike, and that damn twenty-fourth sew-up, landing on top of me."

-Paul Fournel

3:36 p.m. Simoni is being shadowed by Popovych, so Saeco has now sent off Cunego.

The "peloton" is strung out and spitting riders off the back.

Range scale = whatever having to do with points a determination of how others rip Tuesday-

Fast Freddy comes through-

Why, I am wondering, are the links in the posts now suddenly underlined?

Books I am reading with much pleasure:

Need for the Bike by Paul Fournel and translated from the French by Allan Stoekl
Violence in the Black Patch of Kentucky and Tennessee by Suzanne Marshall
Collected Poems by Tom Raworth

I keep looking for an update from Fast Freddy.

I got hoodwinked and put it in the drawer.

proportion
ate
scowl

sixt to ninetee toenails and nosehairs as measured by that guy on the sidewalk

weblog = we (steve and me) blog

Steeke, your assignment is to create a scale (or ranges) of points that will determine how people are in relationship to us (or whatever.) Regardless, this quiz needs some resolution!

I'm going home soon.

COSMO (C Ow Steve/Monica Operate) Quiz:

1. When assembling a paper shredder do you:

a. See how quickly you can jamb it? (Just how much is too much?)
b. Read the directions
c. Read the directions after the product is fully assembled (Who needs directions for that spare part?)

2. When eating messy vegetarian food, do you:

a. Use four napkins?
b. Wipe your upper lip with a napkin and the vigor you have when running a bathtowel across your wet back after a shower?
c. Use your pants.

3. When walking down the street (in tandem) do street people:

a. Stare at a prime body part of yours and ask for spare change.
b. Block your path.
c. Express their joy and satisfaction that you don’t appear to be angry at yourself?

4. When you reassemble a lamp post for a surprised goth on a cell phone, does she:

a. Stare at you like you may have been trying to scratch her
sacred boot when actually you were bending down to replace the metal she dislodged?
b. Continue talking on her cell phone and stare?
c. Stop talking on her cell phone and stare?

5. When you discuss speed racing (via bicycles), can you:

a. Accurately define the word “attacking”?
b. Name three top contestants in a current race?
c. Say, yeah, I go really fast on my bike.

Extra Credit: Today at lunch, who ordered falafel, and who wanted a veggie burger?

Tally Yo' Score! If you answered:

1. Tally Yo' Score:
a: 8 points - Steve and Monica like to see how much is too much, and they enjoy the sound of corporate stuff eating itself.
b: 0 points – Why invent the wheel when you can reinvent? (And waste company time using your creative thinking skills?
c: 7 points – Pretty good answer. We like to see what’s actually needed.

2. Tally Yo' Score:
a: 4 points – This isn’t the most exciting tidbit, but Monica did indeed use four napkins at lunch today.
b: 12 points– You’ve got class and style (like Steve).
c: deduct 10 points - (Monica never wears skirts! Trick answer.)

3. Tally Yo' Score:
a: 1 point – If your body is prime, you’ve at least got that going.
b: 0 points: Are you that pansy that you allow street people to maim and terrify you on your lunch break?
c: 13 points – Wow, you must really follow the path assigned for you!

4. Tally Yo' Score:
a: 3 points – You tricked a goth girl! Good work!
b: 2 points – Well, this did happen to us too, so we can’t think you’re uncool if it turns out like that for you too.
c: 4 points – You must have really influenced her aura.

5. Tally Yo' Score:
a: 38 points – You’re good with language and you know what’s going on in different (or at least in one) subculture(s).
b: 28 points – You must be tech-savvy to follow such races, and you’re paying attention. Good work.
c: deduct 12 points - You have exceeded us both; we do not like or appreciate that.

Steve and I had the best time.

Did we:

A) assemble a paper-shredder?
B) wipe our upper lips after messy vegetarian food?
C) accept praise from a street man concerning our sunny constitutions?
D) reassemble a lamp post for a surprised goth on a cell phone?
E) discuss speed racing?

MY FRIEND PATTI'S DREAM: (Patti happens to weld; she is from Pittsburgh; and she does work often with transgender people, but those facts don't make this any less strange--and great too.)

i was ordering welding supplies from a 'man only' foundry. tanks and tips. oxygen and acetylene. little bits to bind things. the men, there were many, were melting down scrap metal in a giant vat. the metal was stirred and then spit into strips onto a conveyor belt. it was a metal of 7 special kinds they said. it was pure, they said. they told me the name. i wish i could remember. it was the answer to one of the world's problems.

i then drove to pittsburgh. there was a party for my dad. it was my mom's doing. when i arrived my mom made me go pick up a somebody of some sort. i drove far. to a salon. a fancy, fancy salon. i went in to find the uncertain guest. i knew he was getting his hair done. but it was not a he, but a she. but a former he. beautiful, brown skinned and handsome. we got ready to leave and again it was he, not friendly, but delibrate and ready. it was clear his hair had to be maintained for the good of all, the reason i cannot remember.

we now had to leave and to find the car, the far far car. we leave, the man is now a woman, a different woman, my partner, we're a tagteam for this action. we continue. we walk past a girl holding a snake. it's an albino python with the head of a cat. we think this is rare. just past that scene. there is a patch of stuffed cats arranged into a garden. we walk onto the premises. we've entered the estate of the girl with the snat (snake/cat). she's mentally ill. it's her family's estate. they've left it to her. it's to big for her to maintain. she follows us and tries to get our attention. we do not have time. we have to finish our mission.

we head to the train yard. we have to get to london. but must first catch a train to the car. there's a man there. he sprays our necks with a special spray. at first it feels good, but then it feels bad. he's looking for metal. he has a palm pilot stun gun. he uses the spray to see inside of us. the PPSG (palm pilot stun gun) scans us for metal. my partner against crime she hands me a tiny silver sliver. i'm to protect it from ill will. perhaps it's from the foundry.

the man he still sprays. and i hate the spray. the spray it's no good without the gun. i get the gun and throw it onto the tracks. i grab his hands and throw him on the ground. kneeling on top him i fear he still seeks the sliver. i watch the big screen and wait for the credits to roll and then it's safe to release him.

New Links (see sidebar):

Sini Anderson (smarter than your average spoken-worder)

Spinning Jenny (cool literary journal with the most excellent layout I've seen)

nice piece of writing by a highschool sophomore, Billy Wilson-

here's hoping there's a lot more out there like him-

"I learned that drawing pictures of the President with his arms growing out of his head is no laughing matter"

Brand new book of photos/essays about Bread and Puppet Theater. Rehearsing with Gods Click on "Rehearsing with Gods" on the right side of the webpage.

Everyone has cancer. One time I worked for a company called M-- M-- (I can't really say it here) assembling beaded ceiling fan pulls in my home using aluminum wire that I was supposed to only handle with gloves. Problem is, the things looked prettier if you pushed the metal with a bare thumb, and we all know I'm a sucker for a pretty curve and/or design. I made $200 (piece work, at .60 a pop, picture Bjork in "Dancer in the Dark") there in my total time I think, and now probably have cancer in addition to my brand new (handy?) metal-working skill(s).

Here follows a poem Monica and I collaborated upon, alternating lines corpse style knowing only the end word of the previous lines and those lines we'd written ourselves. In other words, half the text was missing only to come together for each of us last night. It's all been very much fun and we like the results. Now we get to tinker-

I find in the back of my throat strange
goulashes sashay bang haggle bang broker
counting cash in a swimming pool basin
in which the cat pretends
the pillows are gray with age
what’s that the handle borders cranky
arteries chug along, swimming and snapping
it up, or simply, please, disappear
like a sestina ordering my life’s components
afternoons and evenings tumble in turn
I have neglected you and loved poems I have neglected poems and loved light
logic’s slow poison and I would like to stop
staring at my painted toenails
curl only to click as he shuffles over the linoleum
crapout, can I keep pulling shit from the sky?
nothing so heavy fluff woven those shingles aflap on that roof
top pull oh-ver-(sion) to language poetry
blue frankly loosen inflamed parakeets
have blue plumage or red what
was meant by the head wrench, the vague retort
when birds begin to alight in my bathtub
wherein I yellow and for a moment blinded by
my pass
another pepper pappy
aardvarks and antelope lead me to purple
pluperfect, a radiator which leaked and lost pressure, popped
my eyeballs like my bottom teeth
clacking ratchet, a pitch precise drill, under the lumber and hunkers
behind the cargo of the brothers Wright
come up a rung, he isn’t a fletcher, yet armed with one arrow
root, a herbaceous tropical perrenial plant with a creeping
cross the skeptic facade, while any other monkey snoops
around the age of Christ’s crucifixion
under any circumstance, a spastic cynic
only when at work
wanders intoning some circumspect squelch
ing participles on a thick gravel
kingdom of culture on flat me gander
marmalade hysteria
when she left her wallet at the service station
in a life that seems to be a stagnant hook on my left
building come hustle smart shopper smart shoppers mine squat slit and saunter
split quick up my cuntass right
minded urgency to acquire improper paraphernalia magnifies in due
not to return to the point of contact
every known noodle this everyone split shop up hustle rest do needle down
with fig trees, autumn lush, and
noodle eaten stare pop over steam rice no bother skewed squatter
stationed at the orange precipice
fisher discus corn shirts genetically engineered wrestler dies an assistant
to the end
nothing here but us and others and some funky weaver
of the dead
sailing anyway along and unlike anything
you seem to write, regardless, it makes me enjamb
stupefied
by your ratio of apples to eggs I race
most people do not picture fish loaded
with a leg of retro applesauce
for starters, and a splinter stick sandwich to jack
off and flip my automobile to rewind
so bogus brought luggage come in to confusion
is true, and although I may not know much about Mexico
take none mend composition and fierce quality fop umber bum fraudulent graft
the skin back to my fine pink slit
and all we occupies a preeminent brick
bat straight from my
wandering must follow a watchword and flounder
smell best soaped up and then fried by an electric pinball
but of course, the accused must dispute the charge
account meltdown like a voluptuous
puddle paddy whack, gamble on a bone
drenched and tied to the sweet haste of black licorice
chowder, a prelude to fluid a rumor
has it that you and I are on the run

Well it was all okay and only a little strange. I am used to people looking at me like I am loony so I must be. Nothing new there. I get used to myself somehow and will write poems anyway.

I nearly got cancer yesterday.

I was looking around for something onto which my grapes could climb and found fenceposts at Lowes but a tiny sign said they were "treated." Hmmm... and I wondered with what?

Well each post had a tinier tag on the end where written in an even tinier font it said they were treated with arsenic as a pesticide, yuck!

So I am still looking around for something up which my grape vines might twine, probably getting cancer anyway from UV rays or formaldahyde or something else invisible.

That roof is prime territory for dancing.

PS - Steve I don't even smell the new carpet smell anymore. Do you think that I already have cancer of the big toe from walking around barefoot?

PPS - I leave a pair of pretty shoes in the office (in case I wear sneakers to walk to work and then want to walk around on my lunch break looking pretty), and my boss (a girl from Morganton) saw them yesterday and said, "What are those dancing shoes doing here?" I explained the sneaker-change situation and she said, "Oh I thought you'd been dancing in here." If I were dancing, I'd be making my own music, as the only radio is traffic from the open windows.

Here is that most illicit poem, written on the floor of my office, exquisite-corpse style so that Steve and I didn't know what the other was writing, other than the sestina-supplied end words.

*

Green Goo Doodle Do

put me on a roof and call me mexico
such a grand desire of waste
then stumble up a sidewalk defiant and lame
and also bring the boring stealth of mud
the manufacturer’s brand, an aluminum honda sestina
makes my popcorn-machine seethe

this old honda spews smoke and then it might poppycock seethe
with my pink-colored shell from mexico
when squeezing into a crumpled sestina
you’re not a waste
instead the road coils into a simper of mud
but sometimes when writing you out in the hot afternoon, I require one of us must be lame

not a white-bread and marmalade lame
when I recall my neighbor’s inexplicable seethe
toward the left shoulder of mud
without some such destination in mind I find myself blistering with mexico
kind-hearted waste
of distance withers and dissembles around in my honda sestina

a dusty old road squatting all square in front of a cantina sestina
not only odd but moreover lame
uncertain come peeking through curtains and muttering waste
my shampoo-parrot-sleeve determines to seethe
motionless frozen a clown again halfway asunder so forsaken for mexico
that I’ll learn to like the flavor of last Friday’s mud

not that kind of mud
bolstered adobe and stacking with slabs of sestina
with one leg erected athwart mexico
worry the hip and wobble all waving and lame
I work to make everything full color-coated so that everything possible will seethe
somebody parched and another all willing to waste

an arrangement of liter jug luggage and utter stank waste
mark and/or mud
my head which does nothing but sputter and seethe
the most robust sestina
machinery roundabout statues so clever and lame
everything concrete is grounded and locked within mexico

what an undulate waste of water this sestina
harumphing amid mud paste and lame
amid which I slither and seethe seeking quetzal askew rosy windows fomenting my own fervid mexico

(Stephen Kirbach and Monica Fauble, May 2004)

Oh man, did I ever pick the wrong moment to pee. It's true, I left Steve alone in my office (on my day off, although we decided to go to the office for roof-top views etc.) so that I could use the girl's room down the hall, and of course at that moment the weird Morganton NC maintenance men showed up to assemble two chairs (a task I was instructed NOT to do, being a girl and thereby helpless-get the picture?) and of course I had left Steve alone for the only four minutes during which things were destined to be weird. But when I say destined to be weird, what else would I mean except that things have to get weird when Morganton-maintenance-men show up?

It's stupid that things got so weird. The men could have

a) asked Steve who the hell he was (which would have been valid since I am the only office employee at this time, and I wasn't theren with him.)
b) ?
c) been weird

The men chose c, although a would be the only logical/human response, although this company is neither logical nor human since they sent two men 50 miles (not a responsible response in terms of gas OR company time) to assemble two chairs that I could have put together using sheer will if not my own skill(s).

And I too even tried to make jokes with the men, and I smiled my best harmless smile, and they (at least one of them) even ignored ME and am I not their long-distance coworker, and shouldn't they at least try to be nice?

I hated the whole thing, and I hated my company even more, and I apologize publicly to Steve for drinking that Thai Iced Tea at lunch (probably the cause of my temporary exit from the room.)

All this to say: the public's inability (UNWILLINGNESS) to speak/interact/respond makes poetry even more subversive than any of us thought.

what's with this thing? why cannot I just click on Piombino and go?

instead getting some kind of error junk.

to go to the family
of cognitive tortures, president phrases.

I guess people are simply complicated.

What's going on here? Hey.

When writing a poem feels like something illicit -

when I sat on the floor of Monica's office writing my lines which

alternated with hers and those guys came in to put together the chair, it was weird. I had my feet stretched out and papers all around and they looked at me like maybe we/I were/was doing something illicit, Monica down the hall for a moment, and I suppose we were, blindly writing a sestina after taking a tour of the downtown rooftops and lunch at Doc Chey's, the new carpet smell guaranteed to cause cancer of some sort, and now the adminstrators have redesigned this place as well, anyway, I just continued to write my lines and made some jokes about the plastic wrapped pieces (not following instructions) to which the chair guys didn't respond. I was an oddity to them so they pretended I was invisible, and that was kind of funny, though the novelty of hanging around writing a poem shifted toward wanting to go outside again, which we did. We got our sestina anyway, but I concealed my task from those chair guys. That is, I wrote openly in front of them as if doing so were some kind of obscenity, but I did not speak about the writing at all, so this made it sort of furtive, like if I was to say, hey guys what's up, we're just writing a poem, huh, as if it were not the most ordinary activity of all?

The institution says "uh-ho":

In a recent survey (conducted at a lesbo-birthday party) 3 out of 4 Asheville lesbians are (currently) actively-engaged in (biological) boy-love. 1 out of 4 Asheville lesbians reports that boys are "eager to please." A second of 4 states that "boys just aren't girls." A third says, "I love boys!" And the fourth lesbian was supportively silent.

If this were a riddle, which it might not be, what would the lesson be?

Today I realized my dream of walking around downtown stuffing my shell-of-a-mouth with a hot dog. It was semi-delicious and messier than anticipated. I had a cappucino appetizer while being stood up by a former professor o' mine.

I'm beginning to taste sparrows.

Steve,

this
bitch (me)
is back on

line
(or wine.)
Nothing has been

said
about our
after hours making

of
sestinas in
my office. However,

those
chairs (now
assembled courtesy of

men)
are no
longer stationed together

but
pushed apart
t(w)o separate rooms.

Steve, the photos (from Iraq) are astounding.

m.

I am quite suprised to find that Rumsfeld mustered up any goodness to squander!

"Oh my goodness, any American who sees the photographs that we have seen has to feel apologetic to the Iraqi people who were abused and recognize that that is something that is unacceptable and un-American."

The poor fellow, I wonder how much good will he was spreading when he visited Abu-Ghraib in person; gee willikers, here he is with Karpinski!

and talk about an understatement,

"In some instances various compensation has been provided to people in Iraq whose circumstances were altered unfairly," he said without providing details

many thanks to Sue Pleming for bringing us more words from the mouth of the great obfuscator himself

dozens of seriously disturbing pictures from Iraq as posted by Robert Fisk, many of children