a l k i m y

Makes a handy door stopper though...

2009-07-07T07:50:00.000-07:00

Bitter Employee Haiku #109

2009-07-06T08:52:00.000-07:00

not worth the paper it's printed on

Global Warming Mug

2009-07-02T15:37:00.000-07:00

***
Saw at a shop in Stratford-Upon-Avon of all places. Had to have.
Available from the Unemployed Philosophers Guild.
[Damn, check out the nifty watches. I may have to start wearing them again.]

Bitter Employee Haiku #9

2009-07-02T12:55:00.000-07:00

Pretty drastic way to revive your career...

2009-06-29T07:54:00.000-07:00

Bitter Employee Haiku #18

2009-06-25T10:26:00.000-07:00

Ode to My Penis III

2009-06-25T08:35:00.000-07:00

Ode to My Penis II, by Mark Sanford

2009-06-25T07:27:00.001-07:00

Ode to My Penis, by Mark Sanford

2009-06-25T07:26:00.000-07:00

Must have French blood...

2009-06-24T15:26:00.001-07:00

Pulitzer winners
not generally known for
their happy endings

***

Dude! Rich and famous
what could you possibly be
so depressed about?

Bitter Employee Haiku #99

2009-06-13T13:15:00.000-07:00

Bitter Employee Haiku #48

2009-06-13T13:02:00.000-07:00

Bitter Employee Haiku #222

2009-06-13T12:51:00.001-07:00

Bitter Employee Haiku #412

2009-06-13T12:42:00.001-07:00

Bitter Employee Haiku #36

2009-06-04T07:39:00.001-07:00

Bitter Employee Haiku #32

2009-06-01T11:07:00.000-07:00

Bitter Employee Haiku #13

2009-05-22T09:30:00.001-07:00

Bitter Employee Haiku #112

2009-05-22T09:16:00.000-07:00

Stolen from Alison at Provocative Haiku :)

Bitter Employee Haiku #44

2009-05-19T07:41:00.000-07:00

adding some crunch the the lunch!

Bitter Employee Haiku #22

2009-05-19T07:26:00.000-07:00

Subtitle: either Retail or Hungover at Home Depot

Bitter Employee Haiku #17

2009-05-13T16:30:00.000-07:00

Bitter Employee Haiku # 7

2009-05-03T12:53:00.001-07:00

Bitter Employee Haiku # 712

2009-05-02T10:33:00.000-07:00

Bitter Employee Haiku #62

2009-05-01T09:07:00.000-07:00

dinner for four just
$1000 dollars. Sales are
on the loose again.

Bitter Employee Haiku #55

2009-04-28T08:22:00.001-07:00

computer turns on
blue screen of death yeah! call IT
go for more coffee

The Death of Handwriting

2009-04-26T11:39:00.000-07:00

I'll not miss cursive
untidy cat prints
on the windshield of my car

or block printing
that awkward formation
of idea to occurrence

killed off by the keyboard
and fingers indentured to
a s d f j k l ;

It can still happen for you

2009-04-16T07:13:00.000-07:00

maybe I'll weed
ideas, lost chances
it all needs
rooted out.

dairy dreams...

2009-04-12T09:45:00.000-07:00

sunday morning, spring
newspaper on front porch
real butter with eggs

Not What I Expected

2009-04-11T08:08:00.000-07:00

The soybeans are coming up
A surprise that—
I thought them
Too long on the shelf
For a comeback
But no, there they are
Bright green as they push
Bulbous heads up through the soil
Looking faintly alien
Until leaves unfold
And the broccoli, bless them!
Still throwing out tender shoots
Topped with tiny flowerets
Still a serving for two
About once a week
I circle the yard
Bees thrum on onions and mustard
Gone to blossom, making
Wry-tasting honey, I imagine
It’s finally rained enough
For the jasmines to put out leaves
Fresh fodder for army worms
I make a mental note
To get out the Conserve
My hip aches
As I trip over the hose
My stomach slightly upset
From the evenings too much
Cheap whiskey and Coke
Last night I was thinking
About how cruel youth was
To spend itself
So unwisely
This morning
As I make neat coils of the hose
I think about
Keeping on.

Bottle Dreams

2009-04-10T08:16:00.000-07:00

Dawn makes a rainbow of sorts.

Blue and green, amber and brown,

off the broken glass outside your window.

You smile at me, white teeth a shock

in this rainbow world.

The egg runs yellow and oval

in your black pan.

I watch your shoulders

square and round, t-shirt bright white

in the morning sun of another day

that I sit silent.

You fold your hands

and I see in their shape

my heart, lily-white, in your hands.

What the Weaverbird Knows

2009-04-08T07:25:00.001-07:00

10,000 years in a prison
10,000 years to cry
10,000 years to remember
Endless time waiting to die

Love came with no promises
Love swept you up from the plain
Love in the end was a devil
And now you are caught in his game

So fly away, fly away, weaverbird
But first sing me a song of home
Sing me a song of the sunshine
While love picks me bare as a bone

For Nada
Who only loved
Too much

Escaping Flatland

2009-04-07T07:27:00.000-07:00

There comes the realization

it’s all changing.

Spider veins become spider maps you could move

a horse and buggy around.

Wipe rust off

foggy mirrors

and peer uncertainly

at a face that’s no longer yours.

Time your messages.

Let egos break eggs, open cans.

It’s of no significance.

You can let sleeping dogs lie.

We’re baptized by unnecessary actions.

Take care of yourself, now.

Fine cracks start to appear

and you could fall between them.

You know who you are...

2009-02-04T05:38:00.000-08:00

***

romance was her mantra
and each day
was a Betty Crocker cook-off kind of day
filled with spun-sugar confections
of imagination

Do you want fries with that?

2009-02-02T07:02:00.000-08:00

I find your bracketing betraying.

Bitter Employee Haiku #89

2009-02-02T06:49:00.000-08:00

bitter employee haiku #89

why depend on facts?
let's make all our decisions
based on what you like.

Bitter Employee Haiku # 117

2009-02-02T06:44:00.001-08:00

bitter employee haiku #117

you ask your questions
I answer with long emails
seemingly unread

The White Knights

2008-12-28T10:54:00.000-08:00

bitter fruit burnt my tongue
untasted by the meek
scorned by the strong
me
somewhere in the middle
spitting out the taste of something
I wish I hadn't bitten
into

5 Oranges for Frank O'Hara

2008-12-28T10:52:00.000-08:00

I have brought you
green flowers
Orange seeds fall on your face
like hopeful tears

4 Oranges for Frank O'Hara

2008-12-28T10:30:00.000-08:00

wine
held to
the light
turns my world
orange

Who is Frank O'Hara?

2008-12-27T06:30:00.000-08:00

Frank O’Hara was an influential New York city poet and curator at the Museum of Modern Art, who collaborated with many artists in his lifetime including Grace Hartigan, Larry Rivers and Franz Kline. My series, 12 Oranges for Frank O'Hara are also an homage to those literary-visual collaborations. Several of them are on this blog.

You can see the rest of the series here but I haven't converted them all yet to something that would work as a t-shirt or product design.

One of my favorite O'Hara poems.

    ANIMALS
    
    
 Have you forgotten what we were like then
 when we were still first rate
 and the day came fat with an apple in its mouth

 it's no use worrying about Time
 but we did have a few tricks up our sleeves
 and turned some sharp corners

 the whole pasture looked like our meal
 we didn't need speedometers
 we could manage cocktails out of ice and water

 I wouldn't want to be faster
 or greener than now if you were with me O you
 were the best of all my days

More about Frank O'Hara here.

City Poet, by Brad Gooch, is a really entertaining book about the life of Frank O'Hara. And by that, I mean the boy really dishes. City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O'Hara

There's still hope for all of us

2008-12-19T07:22:00.000-08:00

Change Is Good

2008-11-30T09:50:00.001-08:00

This piece was an entry for Embracing Our Differences, an outdoor art exhibition here in Sarasota, Florida. As part of the event artists were asked to spend two Saturdays at the park answering questions about their work. A surprising number of people believe that the theory of evolution is a challenge to Christianity. Luckily I had just read I Am Charlotte Simmons: A Noveland I was able to comment on the difference between the origins of life and the origins of species through natural selection. Not the same thing at all.

[Liked I Am Charlotte Simmons but think that The Bonfire of the Vanities: A Novel is still my favorite but A Man in Full is a close second.]

Doll's House

2008-11-08T07:14:00.000-08:00

for desire
the most difficult
of the endless

sleep paints you

2008-10-29T08:59:00.000-07:00

like a child of atlantis
I watch you dream

too....long....meeting

2008-10-21T07:44:00.000-07:00

If you speak again
blood will run out of my eyes
ruining your notes

there were a lot of meetings at [insert corporate name here].
and srsly, notes? why, did anything ever get done?

I mean _seriously_ people.

2008-10-13T07:47:00.000-07:00

Preludes & Nocturnes

2008-05-29T08:37:00.001-07:00

Some of the pieces from The Dream Suite directly reference characters and stories from Neil Gaiman's The Sandman series--Desire, Dream, Despair and lesser characters like Lady Bast, Emperor Norton and Fiddler's Green. Others, like this one, riff off the title Preludes & Nocturnes, number one of the collections.

Sweet Ice

2008-05-28T13:15:00.000-07:00

essence mixed with ice
could be granitas
could be city suit in snow

Bitter Employee Haiku Caveat

2008-05-28T12:07:00.000-07:00

Bitter Employee Haiku # 72

2008-05-28T11:16:00.000-07:00

that vodka bottle
really shouldn't be doing
your talking for you

aka danger at xmas parties

not really about hinduism

2008-05-27T12:41:00.000-07:00

***
the streets are full
of sacred cattle

I've lived in two places--Key West and San Francisco--where there are lots of street people. It always made me think of how our culture can chew people up and spit them out. As well as the idea that perhaps the mad are closer to god.

3 Oranges for Frank O'Hara

2008-05-26T12:13:00.000-07:00

ah, life...

2008-05-26T10:22:00.000-07:00

Among other things sometimes more boxes just means more decisions...

Bitter Employee Haiku # 128

2008-05-23T14:58:00.001-07:00

it's monday meeting
here cometh the time vampire
move quick, stake her heart

do you get the idea i really, really resent meeting and people who speak at them?

fearless

2008-05-19T15:39:00.000-07:00

~~~
For Destruction, brave enough to change

baggage...

2008-05-14T16:19:00.000-07:00

You can only leave so much behind.
Change is good, but not always so easy...

Bitter Employee Haiku # 177

2008-05-14T16:11:00.001-07:00

it's an interview
i wait for the dumb question
where I blow all chances

oh dear. so many times this has happened. when the clueless HR person asks you "what gets you up in the morning?" don't answer "uh, coffee?" if you want a job. If the VP of some now-defunct division of an almost-defunct company who's current revenues were at about $4 million says "My boss gave me a rev figure of $40 million for next year. What would you do first?" don't answer "I'd go back and tell him he needed to pick a new figure" if you want a job.

It's perhaps better I didn't get any of these jobs :)

Scintillant Orange

2008-05-13T14:35:00.000-07:00

~~~

Inspired in part by Rainbow Stories
, by William Vollmann
[Also by the many indignities that can be inflicted upon artists]

2 Oranges for Frank O'Hara

2008-05-13T14:23:00.000-07:00

1 Orange for Frank O'Hara

2008-05-13T14:05:00.000-07:00

While 12 Oranges For Frank O’Hara was inspired by the O’Hara poem "Why I am not a Painter," each painting itself references one of the poems from O’Hara’s "Oranges: 12 Pastoral"

O’Hara, an influential New York city poet and curator at the Museum of Modern Art, collaborated with many artists in his lifetime including Grace Hartigan, Larry Rivers and Franz Kline. These pieces are also an homage to those literary-visual collaborations.

The Poem:

Why I am not a Painter
by Frank O’Hara

I AM not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,

For instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
“Sit down and have a drink’
he says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. “You have SARDINES in it.”
“Yes, it needed something there.”
“Oh.” I go and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. “Where’s SARDINES?”
All that’s left is just
letters. “It was too much,” Mike says.

But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven’t mentioned
orange yet. It’s twelve poems. I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mikes’ painting, called SARDINES.

The Poems:

Oranges: 12 Pastorals by Frank O'Hara

More about Frank O'Hara

Modern American Poetry

empire

2008-05-06T18:43:00.001-07:00

~~~
those who ignore history
doomed to repeat it
which is probably why
all empires come to an end

bearing towards oblivion

2008-05-06T18:16:00.000-07:00

Another little ode to Desire
[Why forks? Aren't we a culture of consumption?]

lots of useful skills here...

2008-05-06T15:37:00.001-07:00

~~~

marketing weasels
drink their martinis
and practice lying

oh c'mon, it's just a haiku.
besides, i'm one of the brethren ;)

wasted trees

2008-05-06T15:33:00.001-07:00

I file blank reports
no one notices business
proceeds as always

actually, I filed the same report month after month.

my interview lunch...

2008-05-06T15:23:00.001-07:00

included a long, long, discussion on lipstick.
~~~

I left Key West for San Francisco

and an artist became an executive for Women.com.

There is no way to keep your feet on both shores.

cultures of consumption...

2008-04-17T11:15:00.001-07:00

i actually did this piece before that nut-job was let loose in the white house. i've been thinking about cultures of consumption for a long time.

and now for something completely different...

2008-04-17T09:21:00.001-07:00

'nuff said.

Calling Mary Kay

2008-04-17T08:20:00.001-07:00

it's always bothered me how many women's magazines and women's product companies are owned by men. not that i don't wear make up, or recognize the pressure to conform to 'normal.'

nobody got hurt

2008-04-12T12:42:00.000-07:00

[it's an org chart, get it?]

I left Key West for San Francisco

and an artist became an executive for a dot.com.

There is no way to keep your feet on both shores.

sum of her parts

2008-04-12T12:24:00.000-07:00

she liked to pretend sometimes
she was more
than the sum of her parts

equal interest in people and medical dictionaries can keep me occupied for a long, long time.

inspired by prodigal summer

2008-04-12T11:46:00.001-07:00

I am learning the language of seeds

the thinnest edge

2008-04-12T11:14:00.000-07:00

all the troubled children
gather near the water

war is so damn hard on humans. even the ones who make it back.
and what an irony that the instrument that launches the sword is the pen upon the page

Dream of Anna

2008-04-11T11:38:00.000-07:00

Love curls around my heart
like a snake
on a warm rock
in autumn

There were a few piece that made it into this series--The Dream Suite--that were influenced by other things I was reading at the time. This piece was influenced by Russian Poet Anna Akhmatova's [The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova] poem

Love.

Now, like a little snake, it curls into a ball,
Bewitching your heart,
Then for days it will coo like a dove
On the little white windowsill

Or it will flash as bright frost,
Drowse like a gillyflower...
But surely and stealthily it will lead you away
From joy and from tranquility.

It knows how to sob so sweetly
In the prayer of a yearning violin,
And how fearful to divine it
In a still unfamiliar smile.

I loved the imagery of the first stanza. So sweet. Then the descent into the tortured Russian soul :) . Two great reads on the evolution of the Russian characters. The Moon Goddess and the Son by Donald Kingsbury is a Neal Stephenson-type novel. Big mix of characters and ideas but one of the constant threads is the cold war and a section of the book in a really entertaining way covers the Russian character.

I pretty much only like my history told through fictional narrative, but hey, it works. Russka: The Novel of Russia was excellent, in that regard.

I could go on and on

2008-04-11T11:07:00.000-07:00