Seeing as I’m stuck on a eurostar, time to catch up on SpokenWord reports. I will try to reconstruct the night of 15.6.09 from these scattered notes.
Water & Air, 15.6.09
Alberto got lost in the zodiac, bitching about girls. Maxx looked for Ophelia. Xander went where all hikers must sign in. David (me!) was a queer fish, half evolved. Rufo was Featured Reader of the evening. Some fragments of Rufo’s poetics, then –
There were all these birds living in the mess of ivy; a sea so large we cannot see it. The past caves in like a blowhole. Line breaks of the mind. We are more than just meat, but 3 tiny flecks on the turning world; walked for 40 or 50 years – what of it?
Rufo, clearly a man born into a life not his own, makes peace with the lie. His book, Make Nothing Happen, is available from Oystercatcher Press. Or from him.
Then – Leemore’s clouds arrange themselves into a mural; days don’t care how they go by & are never traced on maps. John Abrahams says Stand on a chair; don’t care! Elena read from her grandma’s column for widows, Life After. This was no meek and mild granny, ‘Roadhog, eat my dust!’ Don’t mess with widow Wheeler!
Thérèse tried to include the sky in her life. Pauline révait de quitter la Loire pour une vie atypique, à Paris, paysage de mulitple visages. Dana & Erica would hold you like the sweetest thing, as our lives caved in. So you think you’ve got it bad? when the world around you is shrinking.
Or commun brought un message sur le dos d’un papillon, l’humanisme dans les ondes.
But the city belongs to the drag queens in the corner bar. Suzanne recalled winds, the Santa Annas that fan the fires. Dandelions are her rented lawn. Breathing underwater is easier now that I admit to drowning. There was a blowfish story. The sleeping pill of denial. Motor homes whirrr out of town. There cannot be enough water not anywhere in the world to console this caravan.
Kahina saw un éléphant philosophe j’avais pris pour un oiseau. L’éternité mon cul! Xander by this point was dank & irrational. Lost the rest of my notes on Xander’s stuff, all I can find is a note saying that I wrote them on the backpage of a book somehwere…
Leemore studied waves and sang T.Waits’ Sight for Sore Eyes (?) Alberto will be upgraded next week. Something flows on his cheek like a tear, hot teardrop, soft caress by an angel’s wing. He pulls on the wrong string and extracts a bloody tampon, a psychopathic chihuahua.
Stephanie replied ‘your teeth trace my throat and, Fuck! I’ve missed my stop again..!’ And Michael went back to then, aimed for the sky, crammed his life in a U-haul, to find his part of it all.
Top night.
Cheers.