THE END OF THE WORLD

Y'all realize that this is the last night one can smoke and drink concurrently in Cambridge, don't you. Seems a shame to waste it. Who's up for nailing the nail into the coffin of the public consumption of coffin nails?

Long time no see, spectres.

Overwhelming urge to travel. Like a membrane, the soft city can become diseased, riddled with sores and small cuts. It whines and shudders like the featherless, vulnerable thing that it is. The calendar is superimposed upon it like those wax pencil lines the surgeon draws to plan his incisions. At certain points there seems to be nothing left to do but walk away. No panacea for the ill soft city. Nothing to do but kill it to end its suffering, or to turn away from it and wait until it becomes healthy again, in a changed state. In the meantime its pathetic groans keep one up at night.

Am remembering a line from the execrable David Lynch version of "Dune." Basso profundo voice speaking the words "Travelling without moving." Folding space, as they say. I remember the Guild Navigator character, something like a cross between a fetus and an anklosaurus. I don't like to think about monsters these days. A dark time, when somebody sets the ghosts against you. The ghosts my hearties. Pitcher-plant spit in my eyes and sand in my mouth. I need to go somewhere with scaly trees and darkeyed women.

Instead I'll go get lunch at the goddamned cafeteria and smoke a cigarette. Travelling without moving. Somebody give me a pill for that.

Like the weather, poetry readings at WORDSWORTH
BOOKS are prone to sudden manifestations.
Manifesting TODAY, Sunday 9/28 at 5PM are:

Sarah Mangold {in a special ENCORE reading from
9/27, clapclapclapclapclap}

Mark Lamoureux

and Dorothea Lasky

C'mon peeps, it's Sunday, it's raining. We'll be
more fun than "The Simpsons."

GONE FISHING

Today's "International" offering at the Harvard Business School cafeteria:

"Hudson Valley"

For some reason, my work phone display reads:

"END OF ANSWERED CALLS."

What else does my phone know about me?

108 GALLERY HOSTS NEDIM KUFI'S FIRST EXHIBIT IN THE UNITED STATES

September 24 - October 12, 2003

View the artist creating the exhibit on site at 108: September 24 and 25

Opening Reception: Friday September 26, 6-9pm

Contact: Kate at 617-441-3833 or kateledogar@yahoo.com


Iraqi born artist Nedim Kufi (www.nkufi.com, www.daftar.nl) grew up and studied sculpture and etching in Baghdad and went on to study ceramics and graphic design in the Netherlands, where he has lived since the mid-90's. Kufi has won numerous awards and participated in exhibits in Beirut, the Netherlands, Jordan, Qater, Morocco, Paris, Damascus, South Korea, Germany and Yugoslavia.

108 is honored to host his first solo exhibition in the United States.

Kufi will be exhibiting his 2-D stretched paper and ink works as well as his flash video series BMK, the politically themed Bad Man Kind project. Please visit Kufi's websites or www.gallery108.com for images and more information.

"My one star is dead; the black sun of sadness
Eclipses the constellation of my guitar."

-Gerard de Nerval

CARVE, Boston's newest poetry magazine, celebrates the release of our first
issue with a hugeass reading!

Saturday, September 20
7 pm.
Wordsworth Books
Harvard Square
Cambridge, MA

Featured: Gregory Ford, Joseph Torra, Dorothea Lasky, Mark Lamoureux, Anna
Moschovakis, Aaron Tieger, Christina Strong, Noah Eli Gordon/Nick Moudry/Travis
Nichols/Eric Baus, and Sara Veglahn.

September fire 

      ring:  taffied 

lungs & 

      dolor blurred eyes.

Refulgent keening 

      turns on 

                 a dime.  



Cut the lock with my own bone.



She don't love me &

Johnny Cash is dead.

Sleep well, Mr. Cash.

Love Is A Burning Thing
And It Makes A Fiery Ring
Bound By Wild Desire
I Fell Into A Ring Of Fire

CHORUS:
I Fell Into A Burning Ring Of Fire
I Went Down, Down, Down
And The Flames Went Higher

And It Burns, Burns, Burns
The Ring Of Fire
The Ring Of Fire

I Fell Into A Burning Ring Of Fire
I Went Down, Down, Down
And The Flames Went Higher

And It Burns, Burns, Burns
The Ring Of Fire
The Ring Of Fire

The Taste Of Love Is Sweet
When Hearts Like Ours Meet
I Fell For You Like A Child
Oh, But The Fire Went Wild

CHORUS
I Fell Into A Burning Ring Of Fire
I Went Down, Down, Down
And The Flames Went Higher

And It Burns, Burns, Burns
The Ring Of Fire
The Ring Of Fire

I Fell Into A Burning Ring Of Fire
I Went Down, Down, Down
And The Flames Went Higher

And It Burns, Burns, Burns
The Ring Of Fire
The Ring Of Fire

And It Burns, Burns, Burns

The Ring Of Fire

The Ring Of Fire

Thanks everyone, it has really helped.

My thoughts are with all of you today.

OK, my ghosties. I know you are all out there, floating around in the ether. This ghost has been smacked hard by the material world. Drop me a line and say hello if you're out there. Real quick-like. This ghost would be eternally grateful (use link below)...

Boo

I'm actually looking forward to going to the dentist today, in some bizarre way. There's definitely something wrong with me these days...

Bug whir subsiding

      into ravaged sunfucked



pallor ghouled

      by some winsome somnambula:

              petit mal coma

              bungaloes

              aglint with

                   tricked grandeur.



Snap a pinion,

     nerves flash,



apex cowbody ride on

              Rider 31



"by the way, you were

      the sun



scratched in the errata

     close the tome

          this chapter's written

on smoke.

Pardon me, everybody else (who's results I've seen posted) got "Lustful" except Rizzo, who's in limbo.

Ah yes, limbo, like a day at the beach it was...

Say hello to the Dire Wraiths. (Do any of you remember "ROM the Spaceknight"? He had a device which would banish his foes, the Dire Wraiths (who looked like little Cthulhus), to limbo...)

Bear is starting to smell a little bit less like garbage. Maybe I won't have to sleep alone tonight!

Great, everybody else gets "Lust," but I'm just a heretic.

"You approach Satan's wretched city where you behold a wide plain surrounded by iron walls. Before you are fields full of distress and torment terrible. Burning tombs are littered about the landscape. Inside these flaming sepulchers suffer the heretics, failing to believe in God and the afterlife, who make themselves audible by doleful sighs. You will join the wicked that lie here, and will be offered no respite. The three infernal Furies stained with blood, with limbs of women and hair of serpents, dwell in this circle of Hell."



The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Sixth Level of Hell - The City of Dis!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Moderate
Level 2 (Lustful)	Very High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Low
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Very Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Low
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very High
Level 7 (Violent)	Very High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	High
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Moderate

Take the Dante Inferno Hell Test

Wow, never though *I'd* be the one who gets to say that...

Bear will have to sleep on the floor until he gets cleaned up.

Marshaling Teddy Bear Resources, A Guide for Managers

I was going to go throw him in the wash, but there are some B-school students in the laundry room.

They might try to steal him.

Or sell him real estate.

Bear smells like garbage.

I think it's a him.

Fuck, of COURSE it's a him.

I will refer to him as Bear for the sake of convenience.

I've given him a name, but it's a secret.

I found a teddy bear in the trash!

I first encounted Alan Dugan's work in what was Marlboro College's excuse for a "Contemporary American Poetry" class (this was 1992). I remember liking his work at the time, but mostly because it had so much drinking in it. Can't say that I have thought about it (Dugan's work) for many years.

I suppose it's an accomplishment of a sort, for a poet to die of something besides a heartattack induced by hard living, an overdose, or suicide.

Goodbye, Mr. Dugan. Sleep well.

Four miles

     over the basilica



note how she

      traverses

         the isthmuses



A longing 

      to be smudged



Distance pills

       & bloodless

               resolution



Since there are monsters

      you should prolly

           give the monsters

                   names

Empiricism

      loaded falsehood

            of dusty skies



& founderling

       basso profundo

              reckoning

                 not wraith spasms

                 nor travesties of skin



Bottlenecked

                   auroras



Facile temporary

         shelter a dropout

                      facility



A pointed rumor, forked

       trellis where

             coaxed tendrils



approximate scars

Hammer air

      diluted placid

           forget-me-not

                    lure



Tepid blaspheme

           forgetting how

               to spell

                   better fiends

                        burrow

                           into largesse



Hop the train

             entrails

                  entreatied

              to far off

                   black spark



wrestling with encryption

               there's never any

                      end to

                          the night

What did I do this weekend? Well, Christopher Rizzo and I wrote this exquisite corpse together at Charlie's kitchen on Friday night. The rest of the weekend more or less follows suit.

GRIM LITTLE



I.



Xylophone networks

	for bruised cacophony, digits,

pick-up--say Humbuckers cannot

	sate the hunchback now peerless

		I's for dignities, mercies, violas

	in gravel diaphragms, sickly blues

in this city of Dis, disasters Cambridge-styled

	can drag a corpse to water but

		can't make it Wallace Stevens's

Pilsner Urquell, a career in safety-nets

	brandishing bouquets of wax zeroes,

		trauma stipend & distressed

		 	hambone ergonomics in C flat

		sea changes, wanton muddy eddies,

feces river	sly Styx night

wears a black hat, a blank harangued 

basque in a leper brothel,

sediment broth to sup and ring a bell

to let them know you're coming:

	city of dreadful daylight & dim

		hours read full,

dead poets ghosting loam, ready

	for sutures, a burning rhizome

		in a vacuum.

O city, he'll crank this zeitgeist through the ringer,

	dwell outside		the music box

with the faux leopards & dreadful trees. 



II.



Grimmy asks who put

	nettles in the Cheerios? Ratchet-up

a requiem for Macintoshes

	or perhaps eyes without apples,

her eyes of potatoes agog with

grog, fog thickened. "Somebody

get this guy some Prozac,"

	Grimmy gets sugar pills, fustigated,

		one lump or three?

For good measure six and dosed with sex

	indeed, a "sexed up" resume, arm chair

despot lousy with sloth & ambition--

two roads diverge and Grim Little

		equivocates a lot

			and there's a noose in the median &

				karyatid floozies. G:

is that a hand grenade or are you just

		ambivalent?

Pull the pin and swallow your wallow-pill

	and go dancing with the

		will o'wisps: there's a 

door in the swamp dontchaknow,

leeches led by suckers, saps,

		sanguine guardians of destination,

so that:

	the lobby shall be emblazoned:

"GRIM LITTLE SLEPT HERE"





III.



Sun-flare equinox armies	

	advance on his cubicle, cuticles

chewed away:

Here come the suits and a vague narrativity,

a nativity scene for

	the infant brigand:

"ONCE IN a SYCAMORE

	GRIM LITTLE was

				framed"

Pinned gold-leaf, a little mug

shadow-boxed beneath museum glass,

	a gloss of latency, prodigal

stutterer & wire-framed

by infamy, Grim inked in headlines,--

the more expensive lawyer aptly argues well.

	But what

did Grim do?

	What with the brobdignagian head rush &

the irksome police skirting

	the perimeter of

meter swiftly, shouting Breaker of iambs!

Imperative aperitifs, motifs, blank

motives, evocative votives and a wish for

	some dynamo lachrymary:

it was called dead, but it moves!

Cry cry there is no story

	worth the telling.