[CLAPPING]
Hi, thank you, everyone, for being here.
And thank you so much for the Poetry Center's invitation
and graciousness.
And it's quite a pleasure to be here.
So I'm going to start off by reading some poems
from a project that's been in the works
for about 2 and 1/2, three years now,
called The Putterer's Notebook.
And it's an anti-memoir, but then I forgot what that means.
So basically, the ideal is to think about narrative
and recreating the body of a life
through the questioning of that life
and through the dispersions of narrative.
And the primary question that drives
this book, The Putterer's Notebook, this very, very
long poem is from Giorgio Agamben's The Coming Community,
where he poses the question about, what
is the primary duty of repair?
So that's what got me into this particular investigation.
And at some point, I'm going to collaborate The Putterer's
Notebook with a section from A Toast
in the House of Friends called the--
da, da, da, what is that section called?
Aha, I love this title too--
"An Arranging Guard of Angels Thusly coming to Greet."
So I'll switch text back and forth, eventually.
[FLIPPING PAGES]
"As if lateral lines and neo-nationalism were
essentials, the world tipped around an image of you
I create on the train, collecting ruins.
This is an epistemology of forget,
or then curiously, I am a system of relations, later devotion,
Los Angeles, treacherous, a surface recedes,
a narrative of whoever collects shorelines,
a disassociation between forms.
You, my ongoing query, what do you dream?
We, who are at opposite ends of a myth
of lineage requiring negotiation.
All these abstractions in my teeth,
I could tell you stories, you skyver.
I will talk while we work, for example, I am seduced
or I offer me as proposal.
We don't recognize ourselves as vulnerable landing here
at the airport, I hide at a newsstand for hours
waiting for the terror to fade.
My raw sexuality watches horses sleep in Jersey.
I attempt I to degender violence to no God.
I remember your body asleep in aspersions.
You told me about a childhood in Minnesota,
and I thought of the movies.
And I thought of how tough it is to learn to read,
knowing ultimately I would betray you.
And I thought of death again, as a way
of looking through funny mirrors.
Or the tightrope and the angelic failure to catch you.
But even now when it's all said and done,
I missed the momentary frail vision.
The chaotic bodies in hip black shimmering down Bedford.
Like apparitions, like liars, I had
expected to find allies there.
Unforgivable violence, something dropped.
Untouched, inhabit a queered more plural.
I'm here, Theresa hotel that collapse, shining Prince
Castro, all of us fatigued the century,
I as in not Freudian mistranslation.
When is the tipping point?
New York, I've been back, back many times.
Sacred Heart been back, back many times, eluding best time.
Then conquered, then hairdressers remembering smell.
Burnt alterity.
I'll never leave you no matter what.
When I saw you, your said architecture I shook.
I architecture, shook.
House, a dangerous weave.
House, a dagger.
A dagger, "Yes, yes," it mimics.
This body, a public adornment to speak of in relation to scale.
In the Charlton's close, I collect epigraphs
to mark this forum is urgent.
Sinking replicable, and twisting like nightmare
seeking solitude.
Nostalgic in postcolonial light, I
am not seeking more than an indicant of our love.
That broken umbilicus left ungrounded
for so many refused season.
A bargaining chip between us.
Beautiful boys, girls, beautiful.
I'm extending to you this ah.
I am extending to you this ah.
I am extending to you this ah, ah, ah.
I am extending to you this ah.
Traveling to and away, then I was
carrying the baby in my arms.
And as I said that, the energy shifted again.
Desire is not clean.
Desire is not clean, it's not clean, it's not clean,
is not desire sing.
And once again, leaving this filmy mist that surrounds.
Stay.
Let go, no.
Stay here in me a little longer.
Keep you here in my body, a little longer on earth.
I didn't expect to be in this temple.
I want you to tell me things like, "It's
so beautiful out there," you'd tell me
when you tell me things.
It's your innocence and complexity that floors me.
Are you my ancestor, my angel, my guide, my chosen one
in this cycle of little deaths even now?
Yellow shirt days.
Vandal days.
Hush mouth days.
Mistaken days.
Grace days.
Go days.
Thank you u days.
Little days.
Days of, "let me go."
Days up, "Oh beautiful boy days, beautiful girl days."
Then I commanded the stage again, as embodied activism
this time.
A gone time from a before, then, if, so, therefore,
without pretense.
Nothing or used this phrase, this constituent, this color
Lily I've never seen before.
A calculated blue.
I was considered a last resort.
I was considering going there over by the lost boys,
but I didn't know how to speak of a genocide that
wears my face.
A calm and then, temple, anyone, please.
We used to pray like desperados, then
silence as charade to lay upon.
Beautiful girls, boys, beautiful.
I'm extending to you, I'm extending to you this, oh.
I am extending to you this oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
Angels can you spare just one?
Can you spare just one?
Keeping time with angel's, beautiful boys,
girls beautiful.
All around me, keeping time all around me.
My sweet one, who's that?
Who's that?
My sweet one, my sweet one, always eyes.
Not one, both.
I have bathed your feet and hair in the fifth chamber, see you.
Walking in spirit all the way up there,
I have baptized your testes and stomach with eucalyptus kisses.
Beautiful boys, girls, beautiful.
I disrupt my imaginary.
My marketable language receives you, tattered one.
Is this ending good?
To be good, to be unknown, to be broken, to be sentry?
To be just here, be good earth?
I've been back, back many times.
What is the primary duty of repair?
Where is your embodiment?
This small obsession of becoming and collapse.
Or the desire to be in the world as image, or as voice.
Or a knowing or known clatter prostration, the world.
In Madrid we made a mistake.
Unable to be big about and admit,
we claim holy connection.
Drunk all the time, closer to thee,
leaning towards Madagascar dust mites.
And I meant so many times too.
A laceration and drain, just yesterday.
Then by morning again, suspicious
and not reflecting a shine.
You send those comrade poems coupled, crumbled.
And I should be but I'm not saying, "Just
tell me what happened at that night of the full moon."
As if amnesiac and unable to sort.
Alternately then, how nice it is to sleep
doing a shared darkness?
Or spruce is a street to go down to look for, so impossible.
And sends a quotation in the midst of words
I wanted in the impossible break of a single line,
had beautiful teeth.
I break while inventing Kentucky bluegrass and alcoholism.
Who knew what a best seller either of those would be?
I'm laughing all the way to the bank, as they say.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
How come you want to treat my baby so bad?
How come you want to treat me so bad, baby?
Good to you have I been, when we were practicing human.
My father told me so many stories with place names,
Michigan Lake, given names.
All laid out with punch lines, or morality moments
and I don't remember any of them.
Only Lake Michigan, where I could never imagine him
rowing with a picnic basket.
My mother, a calm.
How much time is enough time?
All I think I feel I've stolen from someone who's already
said it before, as if the mind were a doubt.
This is the thing, I'm trying to understand
how much I loved him, her, them, they,
and how badly I expressed me.
Then something would be solved.
Silly.
California, vomiters' paradise.
To sleep, I must resolve to kick someone's ass.
In the dream, all this terrain is familiar to me.
Not sane, doused in incorrect light, suspended.
I don't know what I did before 1:00, o'clock,
heartless bastards.
Up here airless but tight, flying not like a bird,
rather entrapment airborne.
Ulterior contradictions, the air below clouded, cushioned.
A scenery that has seen itself, but likes to reminisce.
Irritated at signs of time streaking over brokerages,
It's Boston., bellows the clouded mirage.
I have no emotion no comment.
Departure conditional to love, and to a result of--"