Showing posts with label Feldman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Feldman. Show all posts
Friday, March 27, 2026
I Am the Least Difficult of Men. All I Want Is Boundless Love, or: Born 100 Years Ago Today
MEDITATIONS IN AN EMERGENCY
Frank O'Hara
Am I to become profligate as if I were a blonde? Or religious as if I were French?
Each time my heart is broken it makes me feel more adventurous (and how the same names keep recurring on that interminable list!), but one of these days there’ll be nothing left with which to venture forth.
Why should I share you? Why don’t you get rid of someone else for a change?
I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love.
Even trees understand me! Good heavens, I lie under them, too, don’t I? I’m just like a pile of leaves.
However, I have never clogged myself with the praises of pastoral life, nor with nostalgia for an innocent past of perverted acts in pastures. No. One need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes—I can’t even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there’s a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life. It is more important to affirm the least sincere; the clouds get enough attention as it is and even they continue to pass. Do they know what they’re missing? Uh huh.
My eyes are vague blue, like the sky, and change all the time; they are indiscriminate but fleeting, entirely specific and disloyal, so that no one trusts me. I am always looking away. Or again at something after it has given me up. It makes me restless and that makes me unhappy, but I cannot keep them still. If only I had grey, green, black, brown, yellow eyes; I would stay at home and do something. It’s not that I am curious. On the contrary, I am bored but it’s my duty to be attentive, I am needed by things as the sky must be above the earth. And lately, so great has their anxiety become, I can spare myself little sleep.
Now there is only one man I love to kiss when he is unshaven. Heterosexuality! you are inexorably approaching. (How discourage her?)
St. Serapion, I wrap myself in the robes of your whiteness which is like midnight in Dostoevsky. How am I to become a legend, my dear? I’ve tried love, but that hides you in the bosom of another and I am always springing forth from it like the lotus—the ecstasy of always bursting forth! (but one must not be distracted by it!) or like a hyacinth, “to keep the filth of life away,” yes, there, even in the heart, where the filth is pumped in and courses and slanders and pollutes and determines. I will my will, though I may become famous for a mysterious vacancy in that department, that greenhouse.
Destroy yourself, if you don’t know!
It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so. I admire you, beloved, for the trap you’ve set. It's like a final chapter no one reads because the plot is over.
“Fanny Brown is run away—scampered off with a Cornet of Horse; I do love that little Minx, & hope She may be happy, tho’ She has vexed me by this Exploit a little too. —Poor silly Cecchina! or F:B: as we used to call her. —I wish She had a good Whipping and 10,000 pounds.” —Mrs. Thrale.
I’ve got to get out of here. I choose a piece of shawl and my dirtiest suntans. I’ll be back, I'll re-emerge, defeated, from the valley; you don’t want me to go where you go, so I go where you don’t want me to. It’s only afternoon, there’s a lot ahead. There won’t be any mail downstairs. Turning, I spit in the lock and the knob turns.
Four more below the fold:
Thursday, January 15, 2026
My Poem Would Eat Nothing. I Tried Giving It Water But It Said No
I've received two emails and one comment (which I accidentally deleted - my sincere apologies, I meant to approve it) in the last two weeks or so alerting me that this shitty blog is now fuck-all shitty to read on cellphones, and contrary to one opinion I actually DO give a flying fuck about this if for no other reason than why would I not want people to read this shitty blog? I was going to post this Sparklehorse song but can't because motherfucking youtube doesn't motherfucking permit posting a motherfucking song with fucked-up in the title, my motherfucking reaction:
It will never stop, the enshittification of everything. I can't confirm the fuck-all shittiness of reading this on cellphones since (a) I hated the internet on my cellphone when my cellphone could actually access the internet and (b) my cellphone currently can't access the internet because I don't know the fuck why and I don't care the fuck why and I'll be damned if I go buy a new phone to read the internet on the phone, which I hate. I have not changed any settings on this blog in literally at least ten years or more, so while I accept the blame for any and all fuck-ups here this particular fuck-up happened without my attempting to change something and fucking it up and in any case if I DID fuck something up I have no fucking idea how I did or how to fix (guggle's AI code recently installed along with no doubt far more sophisticated spyware, not just me, you too) it. This seems to be happening across every motherfucking spectrum of my life, every motherfucking spectrum but two. Have I told you 345,823,929 times we are being reprogrammed? Strangest fucking days of my life. Where's my kind ghost? Hear, more Sparklehouse, this is one of dozens of my favorite five songs ever:
It will never stop, the enshittification of everything. I can't confirm the fuck-all shittiness of reading this on cellphones since (a) I hated the internet on my cellphone when my cellphone could actually access the internet and (b) my cellphone currently can't access the internet because I don't know the fuck why and I don't care the fuck why and I'll be damned if I go buy a new phone to read the internet on the phone, which I hate. I have not changed any settings on this blog in literally at least ten years or more, so while I accept the blame for any and all fuck-ups here this particular fuck-up happened without my attempting to change something and fucking it up and in any case if I DID fuck something up I have no fucking idea how I did or how to fix (guggle's AI code recently installed along with no doubt far more sophisticated spyware, not just me, you too) it. This seems to be happening across every motherfucking spectrum of my life, every motherfucking spectrum but two. Have I told you 345,823,929 times we are being reprogrammed? Strangest fucking days of my life. Where's my kind ghost? Hear, more Sparklehouse, this is one of dozens of my favorite five songs ever:
THE POEM YOU ASKED FOR
Larry Levis
My poem would eat nothing.
I tried giving it water
but it said no,
worrying me.
Day after day,
I held it up to the light,
turning it over,
but it only pressed its lips
more tightly together.
It grew sullen, like a toad
through with being teased.
I offered it money,
my clothes, my car with a full tank.
But the poem stared at the floor.
Finally I cupped it in
my hands, and carried it gently
out into the soft air, into the
evening traffic, wondering how
to end things between us.
For now it had begun breathing,
putting on more and
more hard rings of flesh.
And the poem demanded the food,
it drank up all the water,
beat me and took my money,
tore the faded clothes
off my back,
said Shit,
and walked slowly away,
slicking its hair down.
Said it was going
over to your place.
Anonymous submission.
Tuesday, January 14, 2025
If I stare into it long enough, the point comes when I don’t know what it’s called, a condition in which lacerations are liable to occur, like a slip of the tongue; when a drop of blood might billow in a glass of water, blooming in velvet detonation and imparting to it the colorless, tasteless and originless fear in which I wake
Even if I agreed that if in fact Democrats work in the best faith they can given complete Shitlord control of all narratives why does that oblige me to support them, I said to a departing colleague who after years of me kablamming motherfucking Democrats still thinks I'm one with shitlibs. I genuinely like and will miss her, she's a terrier, a cat lady terrier hence our connection, terriers don't like most people, they're my favorite breed. I started that sentence last night and the gag appeared before I'd typed the second *terrier,* this getting old shit in every possible meaning. She didn't listen to what I said enough to answer my question; it was a nice summational goodbye. Here's one side of L's birthday present
An irony: I accuse Shitlords of planning for then executing deliberate chaos which is exactly how I paint, bad hand skills so chaos with intent. How many people have you worked with, lived with, been forced to love, who create crises constantly as a means of power and control, who with glee chronically make everything edgy and complicated and competitive and ultimately and inevitably terminally fucked up? I'm saying I understand their strategy in the mediums they use, though I like my end result better than shitlords', ymmv. Here's the other side of L's birthday present
We're one fucked up animal. A week from when I type this sentence Donald Trump will have been president six and a half hours. Biden had two months to try and secure and tighten some of the programs and policies they told us Trump will kill and Biden pardoned a judge who sold kids into for-profit prisons and the Biden bragged about being a great-grandfather when asked about the LA fires. He gave Liz Cheney one kind of fake medal and Bono a more prestigious fake medal. In an exit interview he asserted that he would have beat Trump but stepped aside to save party unity which regarding him is a lie but is ironically delicious as that is the heartbeat of professional Democrat omerta: party before country. This motherfucking vain motherfucking banal evil piece of shit motherfucker. I did not say this to my departing friend, if she knows about this blog (Hi Sam) she'd the first in library that I know of who knows about this blog since the exodus of the few who know (or more likely knew and forgot - when you walk out of the building the last time it's like you never worked here, never existed and still don't, and visa versa you who stayed to the departed, poof) just before, during, and after the plague.
Morton Feldman's 99th birthday was Sunday past, same as L's, why did I never think of his music as eligible for My Sillyass Deserted Island Five Game when I was obsessed with My Sillyass Deserted Island Five Game, I've always listened to it as much as the two permanent members and certainly listen to it more now since I (love listening to Feldman when making chaos and trying to control it) rarely listen to the two permanent members and then only when it comes into my ears without my making the selection and my best guess viz Feldman and My Sillyass Deserted Island Five game is I can't air guitar Feldman which suggests deeply horrible things about me but an absolutely true reason is it's too large and quiet to listen to in a car because of road noise. I no longer tend any of my deserted island five games. Fine metaphors abound
BLADE
Franz Wright
If I stare into it long enough, the point comes when I don’t know what it’s called, a condition in which lacerations are liable to occur, like a slip of the tongue; when a drop of blood might billow in a glass of water, blooming in velvet detonation and imparting to it the colorless, tasteless and originless fear in which I wake
Tuesday, January 16, 2024
Who Could Have Called Their Slow Creation *Rage*?
Anthony Hecht born 101 years ago today. I deliberately did not post this shitty blog's traditional Hecht birthday post last year (and am not this year) though I knew last year was his centenary and though I can imagine all the possible reasons I didn't I can't remember which one I chose (I'll not choose one today). Yesterday was Captain Beefheart's birthday, Don Van Vliet born 83 years ago, I deliberately did not post this shitty blog's traditional Beefheart post this year and though I can imagine all the possible reasons I didn't I can't remember which one I chose. Four days ago was Morton Feldman's birthday, he was born 98 years ago, I did not post this shitty blog's traditional Feldman post this year and though I can imagine all the possible reasons I didn't I can't remember which one I chose
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Can't bring myself to shred that though I haven't used that avatar in years (though there's still one on the blogroll), the pin fell off my backpack years ago. Shredding continues apace nonetheless. I've also removed and destroyed all hard drives from dead computers, not that I could ever access them again and not that anyone who works for Power would access them (yet) but the discs are smashed to slivers. People keep asking when I'm going to retire, that's the wrong question. I'm destroying all my stuff because I plan on surviving our looming internment and immiseration and incineration, I just want it to be me who destroys me, he types into the cloud
GREEN: AN EPISTLE
Anthony Hecht
I write at last of the one forbidden topic
We, by a truce, have never touched upon:
Resentment, malice, hatred so inwrought
With moral inhibitions, so at odds with
The home-movie of yourself as patience, kindness
And Charlton Heston playing Socrates,
That almost all of us were taken in,
Yourself not least, as to a giant Roxy,
Where the lights dimmed and the famous allegory
Of Good and Evil, clearly identified
By the unshaven surliness of the Bad Guys,
The virginal meekness of the ingenue,
Seduced us straight into that perfect world
Of Justice under God. Art for the sake
Of money, glamour, ego, self-deceit.
When we emerged into the assaulting sunlight,
We had a yen, like bad philosophers,
To go back and stay forever, there in the dark
With the trumpets, horses, and ancient Certitudes
On which, as we know, this great nation was founded,
Washington crossing the Delaware, and so forth.
And all of us, for an hour or so after,
Were Humphrey Bogart dating Ingrid Bergman,
Walking together but incommunicado
Till subway and homework knocked us out of it.
Yet even then, whatever we returned to
Was not, although we thought it was, the world.
I write at last on the topic because I am safe
Here in the grubby border town
With its one cheap hotel. No one has my address.
The food is bad, the wine too expensive,
And the local cathedral marred by restorations.
But from my balcony I view the east
For miles and, if I lean, the local sunsets
That bathe a marble duke with what must be
Surely the saddest light I have ever seen.
The air is thin and cool at this elevation,
And my desk wobbles unless propped with matchbooks.
It began, I suppose, as a color, yellow-green,
The tincture of spring willows, not so much color
As the sensation of color, haze that took shape
As a light scum, a doily of minutiae
On the smooth pool and surfaces of your mind.
A founding colony, Pilgrim amoebas
Descended from the gaseous flux when Zeus
Tossed down his great original thunderbolt
That flashed in darkness like an electric tree
Or the lit-up veins in an old arthritic hand.
Here is the microscope one had as a child,
The Christmas gift of some forgotten uncle.
Here is the slide with a drop of cider vinegar
As clear as gin, clear as your early mind.
Look down, being most careful not to see
Your own eye in the mirror underneath,
Which will appear, unless your view is right,
As a darkness on the face of the first waters.
When all is silvery and brilliant, look:
The long, thin, darting shapes, the flagellates,
Rat-tailed, ambitious, lash themselves along -
Those humble, floating ones, those simple cells
Content to be borne on whatever tide,
Trustful, the very image of consent -
These are the frail, unlikely origins,
Scarcely perceived, of all your shall become.
Scarcely perceived? But at this early age
(What are you, one or two?) you have no knowledge
Nor do your folks, not could the gravest doctors
Suspect that anything was really wrong.
Nor see the pale beginnings, lace endeavors
That with advancing ages shall mature
Into sea lettuce, beard the rocky shore
With a light green of soft and tidal hair.
Whole eras, seemingly without event,
Now scud the glassy pool processionally
Until one day, misty, uncalendared,
As mild and unemphatic as a schwa,
Vascular tissue, conduit filaments
Learn how to feel the outposts of that small
Emerald principate. Now there are roots,
The filmy gills of toadstools, crested fern,
Quillworts, and foxtail mosses, and at last
Snapweed, loment, trillium, grass, herb Robert.
How soundlessly, shyly this came about,
One thinks today. But that is not the truth.
It was, from the first, an everlasting war
conducted, as always, at gigantic cost.
Think of the droughts, the shifts of wind and weather,
The many seeds washed to some salt conclusion
Or brought to rest at last on barren ground.
Think of some inching tendrils worming down
In hope of water, blind and white as death.
Think of the strange mutations life requires.
Only the toughest endured, themselves much altered,
Trained in the cripple's careful sciences
Of mute accommodation. The survivors
Were all, one way or another, amputees
Who learned to live with their stumps, like Brueghel's beggars.
Yet, for all that, it clearly was a triumph,
Considering, as one must, what was to come
And, even by themselves, those fields of clover,
Cattails, marsh bracken, water-lily pads
Stirred by the lightest airs, pliant, submissive -
Who could have called their slow creation rage?
Consider, as one must, what was to come.
Great towering conifers, deciduous,
Rib-vaulted elms, the banyan, oak, and palm,
Sequoia forests of vindictiveness
That also would go down on the death list
And, buried deep beneath the alluvial shifts,
Would slowly darken into lakes of coal
And then under exquisite pressure turn
Into the tiny diamonds of pure hate.
The delicate fingers of the clematis
Feeling their way along a face of shale
With all the ingenuity of spite.
The indigestible thistle of revenge.
And your most late accomplishment, the rose.
Until at last, what we might designate
As your Third Day, behold a world of green:
Color of hope, of the Church's springtide vestments,
The primal wash, heraldic hue of envy.
But in what pre-lapsarian disguise!
Strangers and those who do not know you well
(Yourself not least) are quickly taken in
By a summary prospect, shades of innocence.
Like that young girl, a sort of chance acquaintance,
Seven or eight she was, on the New York Central,
Who, with a blue-eyed, beatific smile,
Shouted with joy, "Look, Mommy, quick, Look. Daisies!"
These days, with most of us at a safe distance,
You scarcely know yourself. Whole weeks go by
Without your remembering that enormous effort,
Ages of disappointment, the long ache
Of motives twisted out of recognition,
The doubt and hesitation all submerged
In those first clear waters, that untroubled pool.
Who could have hope for this eventual peace?
Moreover, there are moments almost of bliss,
A sort of recompense, in which your mood
Sorts with the peach endowments of late sunlight
On a snowfield or on the breaker's froth
Or the white steeple of the local church.
Or, like a sunbather, whose lids retain
A greenish, gemmed impression of the sun
In lively, fluctuant geometries,
You sometimes contemplate a single image,
Utterly silent, utterly at rest.
It is of someone, a stranger, quite unknown,
Sitting alone in a foreign-looking room,
Gravely intent at a table propped with matchbooks,
Writing this poem - about me.
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