Duck Sauce

DUCK SAUCE

Jacob Steinberg

DUCK SAUCE Jacob Steinberg

Copyright Š 2010-3 Jacob Steinberg All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America Cover Design by Jacob Steinberg Cover Artwork by Cameron Guthrie ISBN XXX-X- XXXXXXX-X-X

DUCK SAUCE Jacob Steinberg

2013

…O Love! upon thy dim shrine of intangible commemoration, (from whose faint close as some grave languorous hymn pledged to illimitable dissipation unhurried clouds of incense fleetly roll) i spill my bright incalculable soul.

“Sonnets–Unrealities VII” | E. E. Cummings

con t e n t s

wanderings Stranger

16

I’m too broke for Europe

18

ily but i hate you nonetheless

19

140 Characters To Tweet From A

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Cybercafé Today You Took A Picture of Me

21

If I Lived In Las Vegas, I’d Be Married 7

22

Times Over I Didn’t Want To Kill Him. I Had No

24

Intentions of Ending His Little Spider Life.

Brownian Motion

30

Game Over (or, Porno)

32

‫מתָּ אוֹתִ י‬ ְ ‫לּ‬ ַ ‫צ‬ ִ ‫הַ יּוֹם‬

34

Dover Station

35

Weekend Remains

36

goldfish Goldfish

40

And if this were the last thing to happen…

43

Apocalypse

46

post-amorous disaffection A Joint Stowed In My Left Pocket

50

Jurassic Failure

52

Dead As A Dodo

54

All Bruised Up

56

New York Winter, 2011

58

Final Act

59

Apparently I Suffer From Cognitive

62

Distortion Postcoital Disaffection

67

207 Madison St.

71

175 Mauritian Rupees

72

I Wanna Make Valentina Liernur My

74

Girlfriend ᛉ

76

Fuck Metonymy, I Want Synecdoche

80

your eyes saw my unformed limbs

88

exile Aphasia

120

___+_____ (Deep Web)

122

Depths of the Sea

125

asphyxiated

126

Depths of the Sea, Part II

130

Pilgrimage (Southern Weft)

137

Ode to Flatbush

141

my eXiStenCe is a momentary lapse of Reason.

145

Near To The Wild Heart

152

Tiberius, 00:04

155

Maybe You Were Never In The Room

157

duck sauce Every Gal Adores a Fascist

162

bang bang

166

Duck Sauce

168

New York Is Festering

169

I Am Holding This Stone

170

Chamud

172

wan der ings Duck Sauce | Jacob Steinberg

13

“I want to move to another city” Frank said “so long as I don’t have to take myself with me”

The Book of Frank | CAConrad

14

Stranger In the exact center of my bed in my parents’ house at 3 am The darkness wouldn’t let me rest The anxiety hasn’t abandoned me yet Hazy memories of the days when love was a sacred verse and youth was a flag that I raised each night.

Sitting here with my legs crossed I feel as though my limbs have condensed into a single, vacuous organ.

I feel incapacitated.

Unaware of my surroundings and a dust that’s accumulating on the carpet.

Duck Sauce | Jacob Steinberg

15

And a dust that’s accumulating on the carpet.

One day you left and I didn’t realize.

I am going to move to a foreign land where the standard customs are unknown to me and the holidays hold no special meaning.

I am going to move somewhere where I won’t remember you.

I will be a stranger.

In every sense of the word.

16

I’m too broke for Europe My passport is full of stamps from South American countries.

Is that strange, or does it say something about my personality?

I’ve never been to Europe.

I’d like to go, but I don’t have the money.

Duck Sauce | Jacob Steinberg

17

ily but i hate you nonetheless I could stay right here in front of my MacBook hating you and still wishing you would sign online cursing you but feeling like I need to chat you anyways I will fall asleep like this, with my laptop open waiting for the dot next to your name to turn green and for you to write me and say “hey�

18

140 Characters To Tweet From A Cybercafé @you Sometimes I’m not sure what to say to you.

I wish I were an expert at texting so I could send you the perfect message to make you fall in love with me.

That I could say it in 140 characters or less.

It’s my generation’s problem, cause we don’t know how to express ourselves with our own words anymore, just the lyrics from an indie song or something that a friend wrote on their blog.

It’s my problem, cause I don’t know how to express myself when in front of you anymore.

A lot of times I ask myself if I’m happy in life and I say yeah, but…

And what’s the ellipsis?

The distance between your keyboard and mine.

Everything can be reduced to a problematization of technology.

Buying a computer made me forget how to say that I love you, and now what do we have left?

140 characters to tweet from a cybercafé.

Duck Sauce | Jacob Steinberg

19

Today You Took A Picture Of Me I’ve oftentimes wished that there weren’t any images of me That my parents were Indians who wouldn’t let anybody take a picture of their son Because it would steal his soul and his livelihood.

If all the world is an image, I want to be done with it already.

Today you took a picture of me and then you told me how cute it came out.

It’s a lie.

It didn’t come out cute.

It didn’t come out.

I don’t want there to be images of me I just want you to kiss me.

20

If I Lived in Las Vegas, I’d Be Married 7 Times Over I want to dress up and run through the streets, shouting spells like a madman who thinks he’s a warlock.

I am a madman who thinks he’s in love Wandering back and forth, seeking to prophesy our future.

The emotions within me cannot be settled, and that is why I had to flee home.

I’m tossing croissant crumbs and counting as I throw.

He loves me…

He loves me not…

One. Two. Three.

And poof, do you love me?

I wish things could be easy.

I wish you would kiss me.

Duck Sauce | Jacob Steinberg

21

If youth was just a huge nest of fuck ‘em and forgetabout-em adulthood is a rock in Iceland, waiting for someone to kick it.

And when you are sad, cling to the one you love.

And when you feel alone, dissolve into your surroundings.

I wish you would sleep in my bed.

I wish I could tie you up so you’d never leave.

I wish I could cross your fingers with mine, and once again, just kiss you.

A blue smoke is drawn around me and it makes me delirious.

I picture myself at your side and everything is alright.

Put my heart in a ziploc and save it for tomorrow; Because from now on I am yours, like a trustworthy canine…

Or an Orthodox woman.

22

I Didn’t Want To Kill Him. I Had No Intentions of Ending His Little Spider Life.

This morning there was a spider in the bathroom.

A very scary spider who crawled faster than I’ve ever seen a spider crawl.

I didn’t want to kill him.

I had no intentions of ending his little spider life.

The mystical rabbis believed in reincarnation: all things have a soul in them; all interactions serve a karmic function.

Balance.

As I watched him scurry across the floor I wondered who he was in a past life.

What grievances had befallen upon this itsy bitsy spider at my hands?

Perhaps I had gossiped about him or harmed him in some other way.

I’ll never know for sure why fate sent him to me this morning.

All I know is I didn’t want to kill him.

I grabbed a plastic cup.

Determination is the key to success.

I was determined to remove him alive.

Duck Sauce | Jacob Steinberg

23

He hurdled about near the toilet, unsure of where to go and I just wanted to zero in on him with the fucking plastic cup.

I was going to slide a piece of paper beneath the cup and take him outside where he could happily live his spider life and do spider things and play with his spider family.

But he wouldn’t sit still.

I didn’t want to kill him.

I had no intentions of ending his little spider life.

I just wanted him out.

As I honed in on him and slammed the cup down I saw the fear in his spider eyes, all eight of them: I started to postulate what had happened in a past life.

Perhaps my present attempts to save him were really just embarrassing.

But then again maybe in reality, he was the one who had aggrieved me and this embarrassment was making the karmic correction.

24

I don’t know.

I freaked.

I started to doubt.

I didn’t want to kill him.

I didn’t want to kill him.

It’s weird how some times in life a spider in the bathroom can induce an existential crisis.

I made my first attempt to pick him up but he slipped between the cup and the paper. And fell to the floor.

Another karmic strike against me.

Now he’s embarrassed and he’s just suffered an awful fall.

(It was only 10 inches but that’s a lot when you convert to spider inches).

I trapped him under the cup again and kept thinking who he could have been?

Maybe an ex lover.

Maybe a neighbor.

Maybe we were mobsters in early 20th century Chicago.

Maybe we were just spiders.

Or rocks.

I made my next attempt

Duck Sauce | Jacob Steinberg

25

and made it from the bathroom to the hall before he slipped out again.

Strike 3.

And at some point as I started to rack up karmic debt I thought maybe the correction to be made is my silly assertion that a spider in the bathroom merits a 20 minute long ordeal and deep metaphysical reflection, when in reality, I should just be killing the little fucker.

I mean I didn’t want to kill him.

I had no intentions of ending his little spider life.

So I put the cup back down and as I slid him onto the paper again his hind legs got caught and I accidentally removed all of them.

He only had 4 legs left.

This was getting absurd.

And as I’m thinking about this more and more now I’m actually starting to cry.

What the hell have I done?

26

I ruined his fucking life.

At this point after so much effort, I really wanted to be successful and just get him outside alive.

And I did.

And as I watched him on the concrete steps outside the front door I realized that he could barely move.

I had ruined his life.

He wasn’t going to frolic about with other spiders.

He would just crawl off to a miserable day or two before he’d finally gave out.

O.D. on sleep meds or hold a glock to the roof of his mouth. Boom.

For all I fucking know his spider wife and kids are back in the bathroom, hidden away, still waiting for dad to come back an hour later (It’s only been 60 minutes since this all happened but that’s a lot when you convert to spider minutes).

I didn’t want to kill him.

So I didn’t.

But now I think that I fucking should have.

Duck Sauce | Jacob Steinberg

27

Or maybe the answer all along was to just leave him in the bathroom.

He really wasn’t doing anything to me.

All he did was try to hide from me.

Am I the scary monster?

A very scary human slamming plastic cups down faster than he’s ever seen a human slam them down before?

I sip my morning coffee and come to a slow realization.

Next lifetime God will make me a bug.

And I will be born in the exact center of a giant spider nest.

28

Brownian Motion You and I are in motion particles that come together and fall apart dictated by the laws of physics.

Instants where you leap in front of my view You drop and we collide floating in the air.

Where will we ever fall?

Will this love

Duck Sauce | Jacob Steinberg

29

e ver lan d some day ?

30

Game Over (or, Porn) I select porn movies based on the likelihood that I could fall in love with one of the main characters.

You seem to be a boy that I could enjoy spending the rest of my life with.

But I guess some of these things are still to be determined.

I like this game we sometimes play where I send a text that sounds too committed and you ignore me for three whole days.

I am confused as to what

Duck Sauce | Jacob Steinberg

31

‘we’ are or where ‘we’ are going with all of this?

Was that a question?

A will-o’-the-wisp lingering in the harbor and my will plunges for you.

I’m lost at sea.

Please send a rescue boat.

Please, just be you with a life jacket and a shit-eating grin that says ‘Game over.

I’m yours.’

32

‫צלַּמְ תָּ אוֹתִ י‬ ‫הַ יּוֹם ִ‬ ‫לטיילור‬

‫עתִּ ים קְ רוֹבוֹת קִ וִּיתִ י שֶׁ ל ֹא י ִהְ יוּ תְּ מוּנוֹת שֶׁ לִּי‬ ‫ל ִ‬ ‫ְ‬ ‫הוֹרים שֶׁ לִּי הָ יוּ אִ ינ ְ​ְדּי ָאנ ִים‬ ‫ִ‬ ‫שֶׁ הָ‬ ‫צלֵּם תְּ מוּנ ָה שֶׁ ל בְּ נ ָם‬ ‫ל ַ‬ ‫שֶׁ ל ֹא אִ פְשְׁ רוּ לְאַף אֶ חָ ד ְ‬ ‫כּי זֶה הָ י ָה גּוֹנ ֵב אֶ ת נ ִשְׁ מַ תוֹ‬ ‫ִ‬ ‫וְחִ יּוּתוֹ‪.‬‬ ‫אִ ם כֹּל הַ עוֹלָם הוּא תְּ מוּנ ָה‪,‬‬ ‫בר‪.‬‬ ‫כּ ָ‬ ‫אֲ נ ִי רוֹצֶה לְהִ סְתַּ לֵּק מִ מֶּ נּוּ ְ‬ ‫מתָּ אוֹתִ י‬ ‫לּ ְ‬ ‫צ ַ‬ ‫הַ יּוֹם ִ‬ ‫וְאָז‬ ‫ספּ ְַרתָּ לִי כַּמָּ ה חָ מוּד יָצָאתִּ י‪.‬‬ ‫ִ‬ ‫זֶה שֶׁ קֶ ר‪.‬‬ ‫אֲ נ ִי ל ֹא יָצָאתִּ י חָ מוּד‪.‬‬ ‫אֲ נ ִי ל ֹא יָצָאתִּ י‪.‬‬ ‫אֲ נ ִי ל ֹא רוֹצֶה יוּשֶׁ י ִהְ תְּ מוּנוֹת שֶׁ לִּי‪.‬‬ ‫שׁק אוֹתִ י‪.‬‬ ‫אֲ נ ִי ַרק רוֹצֶה שֶׁ תְּ נ ַ ֵּ‬

‫‪33‬‬

‫‪Duck Sauce | Jacob Steinberg‬‬

Dover Station All I want is to sink back into your car seat And to remain infinitely at 10:27 pm When we sat in that parking lot and could fold into each other, saying goodbye, Knowing for once that it wouldn’t be too long Until our next time

34

Weekend Remains Today is Sunday.

I just woke up and found this tall, lanky body next to mine.

Are you real, Michael?

This type of discovery in front of your body after such a long weekend has me out of place.

Last night we fucked and now you’re brushing my skin.

I feel like I’m drugged and this whole scene seems impossible your pale body clinging to mine, your gangly limbs, the kisses I’ve left on your neck, shaped like bruises.

What will become of our love?

Will you stay around ‘til tomorrow?

I wish you were a ghost ..or a frog So I could preserve you in formaldehyde forever.

Duck Sauce | Jacob Steinberg

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36

gold fish Duck Sauce | Jacob Steinberg

37

38

Goldfish Fish.

Gold-fish.

Today I want to be a goldfish.

And do the things that goldfish do.

What exactly is it that goldfish do?

We usually think of them as unimportant, dumb fish, the most minute, best fit to be a child’s pet because they require little space, food, and maintenance.

But their name would seem to imply that they are the first place, award-winning fish, scales gilded to indicate unparalleled importance.

But they can’t remember much.

But then again does that really suck?

Some days I wake up and think “Geez, I really fucking like you” There are times in life when you just feel a lot of emotions and shit Does an intensity of feelings intrinsically denote emotional superficiality?

Duck Sauce | Jacob Steinberg

39

I hope not, cause I think I really dig you and I want it to be true.

I’m worried about this feeling and its potential expiration because upon further reflection, I have a tendency to be a goldfish with my emotions.

Perhaps they are too fleeting and may never consolidate into something weighty.

But then again, perhaps fugacity is a part of youth, never feeling too weighed down, always able to just swim to the other side of my fishbowl and forget about what’s stressing me.

Sometimes life is about running away, leaving everything at home and taking off for the beach with a disposable camera in your pocket and the boy that you like on your arm.

Sometimes life is about feeling the urgency of a new crush, and dropping all obligations and acting like a madwoman and trying to play the game even though you have a lot of experience losing at it.

40

The pressure of practicing the right kind of first hug and choosing the best moment to kiss.

The pressure of deciding whether to confront these feelings or just swim across my bowl like a little goldfish.

Sometimes life is about admitting I’ll have sex with people that I met on the internet Sometimes life is really just about admitting that I like you.

Duck Sauce | Jacob Steinberg

41

And if this were the last thing to happen… feeling this real emotion now, in this moment.

Is this outer space?

I want to flee home. I don’t know. run until I get tired and bring a boombox playing the smashing pumpkins

shakedown 1979 but now it’ll be shakedown two-thousand-eleven you and me without clothes (with joints) or better yet, with acid strewn about on the grass and star-gazing

-it doesn’t matter what time it is,

because it’s always night somewhere in the worldstrewn about there, taken by the hand (and by this feelingI don’t know what it is I just wanna grab you by the neck and give you a quick kiss slow and poetized, like that.)

42

you really burned me out boy. that’s how I wanna spend my summer: equally burned out by the sun and by you…

Duck Sauce | Jacob Steinberg

43

A PICTURE OF A CUTE BOY IN THE SUMMER SHOT ON 35 MM FILM, FISHEYE CAMERA, SUNSOAKED RAYS BLINDING HIS FACE AND A GRAINY OUTCOME, NEVER SURE IF IT’S THE SAND IN THE AIR OR THE CAMERA’S WAY OF SAYING: THIS ALREADY HAPPENED, YOU WILL NEVER BE BACK HERE, BUT WE WILL, ITʼS OKAY, CAUSE WE ARENʼT REGULAR PEOPLE, WE ARE POETS AND BEING POETS, WE’LL

NEVER

UNDERSTAND

DISTANCE,

NEITHER SPATIAL NOR TEMPORAL. WE CAN COME BACK TO THIS EXACT MOMENT OF INCERTITUDE AND JUST EXIST IN A SUNBLEACHED SUMMER DAY WITHOUT GOD OR STRAWBERRY PANCAKES OR THE DISCONTENT INHERENT IN AN UNKOSHER CHICKEN FINGER

44

Apocalypse Yesterday an earthquake rumbled through Virginia and now a hurricane is heading towards New York I don’t have a boyfriend either lately things seem kind of bleak while I was waiting on line at a Starbucks this morning I overheard some guys who work at the Apple store talking about the earthquake and the hurricane One of them said “the Apocalypse is coming” but all I could think of is how if it actually came Meteors would crash into the Earth causing polar icecaps to melt major coastal cities would become flooded and the dead would be so many that we would have to pile them into mass graves and spray Lysol to cover up the stench the ozone layer would dissipate and sun rays would burn our skin

Duck Sauce | Jacob Steinberg

45

people would die of skin cancer and the elderly would faint from the heat nobody would remember to feed their pets so dogs would turn ravenous and attack humans the killer within would be unleashed and we’d all become dog hunters everybody would be too busy dying or hunting dogs to work, so vital services would cease fires ablaze and looters amuck the world’s end would seem so imminent money and material possessions wouldn’t matter people would stop reading or caring and all I can think of is how if this actually happened I wouldn’t have anyone to cuddle me and tell me “It’s all gonna be alright.”

46

post amorous disaffection Duck Sauce | Jacob Steinberg

47

{{ All that medieval love poetry }} {{ With its military metaphors }} {{ The woman as the fortress }} {{ The errancies of gallant knights. }} {{ Maybe long ago things were too }} {{ Too solid, and now we live in an ether }} {{ Of ex-sentiments, impossible }} {{ To make sense of except for wet }} {{ Panties, something that even }} {{ In hindsight might never }} {{ Consolidate into a real emotion. }}

Coeur De Lion | Ariana Reines

48

A Joint Stowed In My Left Pocket A joint stowed in my left pocket and my heart in the other.

When did I stop believing in love?

When will cherubim come visit me?

When will they give me a love potion?

One strong enough to wake me back up from this ceasefire that’s interrupted my life…

It seems like little by little I’ve gone about leaving behind my teenager beliefs in the power of the infinite.

The hands of the clock started to move and now shallowness dove deep into the dark blackness of adulthood.

Love disappeared at age 16.

And at 22, I only believe in condoms and pills.

In sleeveless shirts and indie bands In decapitated bodies and uncontrolled passion In you and me and a joint in my pocket

Duck Sauce | Jacob Steinberg

49

and above all else in the summertime and in the undressing of two boys.

At some point in 2011, on a date I have no desire to recall, My faith in love died on a mattress in the southern reaches of Florida.

50

Jurassic Failure I am watching jurassic park I remember that it was your favorite movie but we never watched it together I sent you a text that said “watchin jurassic park..” but what I meant to say was “wishing you were here” either way, I don't think you’ll respond We haven’t truly spoken in 2 months

Duck Sauce | Jacob Steinberg

51

52

Dead As a Dodo Lately I feel as though you’ve dumped a bucket of water on my head and I am running around in circles in an attempt to dry off.

I start and stop sporadically as you look on, confused. “‘In that case,’ said the Dodo solemnly, rising to its feet, ‘I move that the meeting adjourn, for the immediate adoption of more energetic remedies –’” Wtf is a caucus race?

You’re not malicious

....

Just indifferent

Duck Sauce | Jacob Steinberg

53

54

All Bruised Up Today I counted all of my bruises.

I think there are twelve, but I keep finding others in the least likely of places.

I don’t know which ones are from the moshing and which from the fucking.

They all hurt, but I’m happy with them anyways.

They’re in a variety of places: my thigh, my abs, my elbows.

The only one of whose origin I’m certain is the hickey on my left collarbone.

(The sex was rough and affectionate, just how I get the most into it.)

I like that everything fun leaves me marked like this.

I wish other things left bruises on me too. for example: walking the dog or smoking a joint.

Maybe if I smoked a joint and tried to walk the dog, I’d end up with new bruises.

They tell the world: “Hi, last night I had fun.

I’m a cool person who does awesome things.”

Duck Sauce | Jacob Steinberg

55

I go home on the subway and the old Jewish women look at me.

I know exactly what they’re thinking: “What a young punk! He must take a lot of drugs.”

56

New York Winter, 2011 for Javier I will never forget these days where my only jacket is the coke, and the pillow I sleep on is your rejection.

Duck Sauce | Jacob Steinberg

57

Final Act Everything revolves around the same old question: love or hate?

Love or a game?

Did our encounters stop being what they used to?

Did sex become just another sport?

You kiss me.

My lips: the traces of an act out of an unknown work that will never see its well-earned Oscar.

Sometimes I ask myself whether or not you’ve come to play the lead role in this scene of my life Or even worse, if I’ve always just been a supporting actor in a movie that’s actually yours.

Tomorrow you leave.

The next day you will be far.

Go ahead, cause what we shared is over.

I want to get back to reality and know that everything is anything but the dramatization

58

of something strikingly similar but truthfully much more dull.

Today we will see each other -for the last timeDid you rehearse yet?

I didn’t, but our meeting will most certainly be dictated by strange forces.

A puppet master will come to pull strings.

Everything will come out too perfect, like a movie scene.

You and I don’t exist beyond a few New York scenes.

I’ve lost the Oscar.

But even worse: I lost you.

Duck Sauce | Jacob Steinberg

59

60

Apparently I Suffer From Cognitive Distortion Once in Argentina, my therapist told me that I suffer from cognitive distortion.

I thought that was pretty poetic.

She also told me that I should learn to question Facebook. I remember rushing home so I could tweet about it, so the whole world would know that we needed to question Facebook.

Or at least I needed to.

So why am I here again, missing you and misconstruing the things I read on your page.

Seeing you online and waiting for you to chat me. But you never do.

I wonder when this series of manic poems, obsessed with your attention, will end.

I wonder about that often, but instead of ever ending it, I just keep writing them as a way to deal with the anxiety of never hearing back from you.

I am coming home for the summer soon, Jon Ross,

Duck Sauce | Jacob Steinberg

61

and when I get there I’m fairly certain that we will never speak.

We might run into each other and I’ve tried to best prepare myself for that possibility. Ultimately I’ve decided that a lack of planning is the best approach cause it’ll probably be in the same bar where we first met and I’ll probably be wasted and embarrass myself regardless of how much planning I do. This embarrassment could potentially be heightened by attempting to drunkenly follow a script. I’m not good at acting, you'll have noticed.

I’m good at poeting, which is the same as being honest, which is the same as being bad at lying, which goes back to the whole bad at acting thing.

I feel like it’s rough for us poets, cause we don’t got game.

We just got words that are too abrupt and harsh for regular people to handle.

Are you a regular people?

62

I was hoping you weren’t.

Like I always do.

But I guess you are.

So how does this end?

You’re already over it and probably clench your teeth every time you flip open your phone to: New text message from Jacob Steinberg.

I guess it’s just my turn to stop writing about you.

Duck Sauce | Jacob Steinberg

63

From one day to the next, your image starts to fade

And then the memories of us flee to spaces far away.

64

d r a p e s ‌ | Cameron Guthrie (2011)

Duck Sauce | Jacob Steinberg

65

Postcoital Disaffection I just finished watching this porn clip where a middle-aged white guy (Well, I guess he isn’t middleaged. He’s probably in his 30’s, but I’ve never really been good at calculating age.)

Anyways, this guy simulates that he is going to a massage parlor. When he enters, a petite, Asian woman simulates being his masseuse and as I watched I couldn’t help but notice how ungodly long her nails are. So long, in fact, that this can’t even be trying to be realistic.

He lies down and she ‘massages’ him, well, first she peeks in on him getting undressed, then she massages him but with those nails and suddenly she gets to his front thigh, and she’s grabbing his cock. Seconds later they are fucking and it is rough and fake and he looks like he’s supposed to be married, a DILF type.

I guess there are a lot of stereotypes going on here. Typecast fantasies.

66

The cute Asian masseuse. The married, 30-something year old dad. The massage…

I guess it seems like I keep pointing out how this whole scene is so apparently a simulation, but then again, what ever is sex if not the Simulation of scenes we’ve seen in porn a thousand times before. Playing out the same old fantasies that mankind’s perfected. But does anybody know how to act when it’s over? This clip just ends once he cums on her stomach, but in real life it’s not so simple as just flicking the Camera off.

How do parts fit? That’s an interesting question that I feel a lot of people neglect to ask themselves. The physics of bodily contact. Fusion and Fission. Two sacks of cells somehow make an arbitrary opening in one of them so that the other may enter.

Duck Sauce | Jacob Steinberg

67

Linger for awhile. But how does that hole seal up later?

There is just a void.

A nest, I guess you could Say. What are orifices if not Nests where we deposit far much more than Semen.

I’m sure the void of these holes has been addressed. (It ought to be a recurring theme in film and literature.) Maybe even the way they seal back up Later.

At the very least it ought to be found in a particular science textbook.

I’m just still not sure I can relate to the paradox

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of a vessel overflowing with feelings and the emptiness that this has implied from time to time in my own life.

I guess post-coital disaffection is similar to what I felt when I finished watching all 13 extant seasons of Law & Order: SVU. My heart swelled with so many things, But somehow there was still just such a

lack.

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207 Madison St. I wanted you to taste the sadness in my kiss.

I wanted you to intuit my problems, and for words to have no place in our encounter.

I wanted you to know my burden, but you confused it for the lingering remains of honey whiskey and coke in the back of my throat.

I am better than you, because a bit of your regret is still clinging somewhere on the surface, to the inner part of my lower lip.

And I haven’t pretended to ignore it.

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175 Mauritian Rupees 175 Mauritian rupees are all that’s left of our love 175 Mauritian rupees they’re the rupees that my ex boyfriend brought me after coming home from Mauritius I don’t know anymore what ever happened to Edward He was British and I was American and our love was a resonance of colonial times.

Being in love is the ugliest thing in the world.

Loving another person is always the same as being a slave.

Edward cheated on me.

And after that, I wish I could say that I’ve been more careful and that now I am liberated that I’ve emancipated myself from love and all of the curses it bewitches me with But I am not free

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I keep looking for love Crawling to any boy who sends me flowers or buys me a drink Does this mean I’m a slut?

Cecilia says No, that I’m a romantic like her But I still promised this Rosh Hashanah to stop being such a slut.

All that I have left are some Mauritian rupees, nothing more.

But I don’t care about money I care about love.

I’m going to burn the rupees to emancipate myself at last!

But surely afterwards I will always be waiting for the person that will fill the space the rupees will leave in my life.

Come please.

Come.

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I Wanna Make Valentina Liernur My Girlfriend I’m the type of guy who buys a book because he likes the cover, nothing more And what’s more, my type buys a lot of books even though he knows he’ll never get around to reading them all.

I judge by the appearance of things and, whether or not they have good content, I dedicate myself to getting them.

And, Valentina Liernur, I’m out to get you.

I met you recently.

I’ll make a file: brown hair green eyes you’re I don’t know how tall I don’t know how much you weigh either you’re an artist.

The truth is I don’t know much about you at all.

But these details bore me.

You’re beautiful and that’s all that matters.

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All of my will to see art at the exhibitions I go to is gone.

Because now I am taken over by a will to just watch you.

I’m not straight, nor do I suspect that any day I will be.

But I know that, objectively, you are stunning, and, subjectively, I’d like to get to know you better.

I know that we will probably never get married, That I am too gay for your tastes.

But I like to imagine it anyways.

On this projected future, I am fixated, and it is like Eden.

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ᛉ Sometimes I think of us as two dumb planets who refuse to stick to their orbits.

Two balls of mass the Universe intended to keep separate, and yet we insist on crossing paths.

Yesterday I bought a big bottle of Moscato and I brought it over to my friend Meghan’s place.

We sat on her bed and listened to some 2012 subgenre of hip-hop and discussed all of our problems with interpersonal relations.

Meghan has a pretty good grasp on my issues, I guess.

She explained to me that I am intuitively romantic.

She also told me that I seem to date boys who are intuitively logical. Ones who can never overcome their built-in systems of reason enough to let themselves just fall in love.

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Fall in love. What a poetic phrase.

We were talking about these dynamics and even though we were both pretending to be talking about Txxxx, it was pretty obvious that we were talking about Txxxxx.

So at a certain point I just said it. And I also picked up my phone and then I texted him.

He texted me back and that felt like some sort of validation.

We had a brief convo where we both admitted that there are still a lot of unresolved feelings, and that maybe we should see each other to sort them out.

Crossing paths seems potentially inflammatory.

We’ve done a pretty good job of ignoring each other and moving on with our lives up until now. I guess a major part of it has to do with both of us breaking up with our rebound boys this week.

Idk.

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I thought about Friedrich Ulfer’s seminars where he’d abuse the phrase ‘chiasmic unity’ to explain the intertwining of opposites. The Greek letter chi has the shape of our letter X. But in the chiasmus there’s just one point where two distinct beings overlap, then separate.

I thought that we might be another shape, so I looked up runic alphabets on Wikipedia.

I decided that we are an eolh.

I don’t know how to pronounce this, but its shape is kind of like a trident. It has three branches that fuse into one long line.

I imagined us as a series of eolhs head-to-head, constantly splitting off and then fusing back together.

It would seem that some innate force of physics thinks we’re better off separate, but a middle thread always strings us along, connected, no matter how distant.

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This thought scares me. That I may be able to defy nature’s fate and return to you endlessly.

It scares me and it awes me and today I will do it.

I only wonder if this time our straight line can manage not to split off two separate ways.

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Fuck Metonymy, I Want Synecdoche When I first moved to New York an older gentleman at temple warned me “This city will eat your soul, kid.”

I thought it was endearing (like a scene out of an old movie, that 1920’s Crown Heights accent in a dark alley warning you to “look out sonny”) and I assumed he just meant that I would easily end up doing drugs or having a fair deal of bizarre sexual encounters with strangers I’d meet on Craigslist. Now in retrospect, I’m not sure if New York ate my soul. There’s certainly some cultural consequence of cramming 8 million people together onto a confined, narrow island. Small differences stop mattering in a gargantuan expanse where the bizarre simply fades into an amorphous blend.

But when it’s just me and you, one on one, all of the incongruities stand out; an insurmountable abyss grows between us and

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my behavior seems erratic. But that’s not really fair. Because you’re such a product of suburban America and you have never been exposed to a wide range of life scenarios that I imagine to be exclusive to living in a major metropolitan Area. Like getting mugged, or throwing up on a subway at 5 am, or having to wear a cat suit on public transportation because tonight is Purim. Some how in crowded places like New York there is an unwritten rule that anybody can walk around in costume at any time of the year and nobody seems to notice or think that you are crazy.

Regardless, the entire bus ride to this party I kept feeling like everybody was glaring at me and my kitty ears and I texted you about it and it was a great sense of comfort to feel like you were sharing in my embarrassment.

The whole thing about

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Purim is that we read aloud from the Book of Esther, and while I’d like for this not to turn into some complex metaphor about Ahasuerus trying to murder off the Persian Jews and a general trend of suppression of the Jewish people, it seems slightly pertinent that there is only a week’s difference between my heavy intoxication in a cat suit to celebrate that ancient Jewish victory over the Persian enemy and you now forcing me into a bizarre manic rampage of blogging and taking extreme doses of Ecstasy to try and feel alright about my life again. But I guess I won’t go down that route.

I think I’ve done enough damage at this point and equating you to an Iranian tyrant is probably not a very well thought out move at this time.

But then again when was any of this particularly well thought out.

I guess now since the creation of

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the State of Israel, it can be tricky to use the plight of the Jews as a metaphor. Palestine has become such a polarizing issue.

People use weighty words all the time like Apartheid. Or Genocide.

Things have become so Dense and Confusing. These are weighty words too. Now I’m not sure if I relate more to Jewish plight or Palestinian despair. I guess my issues are too insignificant to live up to either comparison, but what else is the purpose of metaphors other than to amplify the ambiguous?

It’s been a week since Purim and that camaraderie we shared during my bus ride is gone, so I wrote a poem about you on my blog. And I made sure to text you and let you know that it was there.

And I even wrote it in English so you would understand it (I have been in the habit of of writing in Spanish, you see, something I started doing when I was in Argentina so boys like you wouldn’t

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understand my poetry). But last night it felt good to admit that I wanted to cry on the phone a lot in my own language.

To make up the new word: “this-boy-wants-to-cuddle-with-me” to describe my feelings right before you called and shot me down.

It seems risky because I think we might still have a chance and that the poem might ruin it. But a subjected person with a platform should always voice their oppression.

This might be teetering in that dangerous territory of excessive metaphor again.

I’m being pretty stupid.

I guess I’ve always really understood where you’re at and I know it must have sucked and I believe you when you said that you really liked me, but just got out of a relationship and are going through a lot of shit.

And while I’m clarifying what is what

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and what is exaggeration (Is anything here accurate?) this isn’t the poem I texted you about, the one on my blog, next to a little quote I posted of a part of a poem by Ariana Reines about “metonymy.”

It talks about rubbing against something and taking away some of it, like transference.

Maybe if we had ever spooned before I came back to the city, you would have taken on some of my poetic qualities, and written me a beautiful letter, instead of a clumsy phone call, like the one you gave me last night to call it quits But how could metonymy ever describe this relationship when you’re 1000 miles away doing normal things and I compulsively check Facebook and my phone to see if You’ve written me?

Maybe some day we’ll finally fuck, & metonymy can become, like, Synecdoche.

These are such lofty aspirations on my behalf, but I did wear a cat suit on the M14 last weekend

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in an attempt to prove something about my people and our perseverance.

I guess maybe I can make it through this.

I guess, maybe, I can make it through this.

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your eyes saw my

unformed limbs Duck Sauce | Jacob Steinberg

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[The word] ’adam (man) is derived from ’adammeh [i.e., I will imagine]. After God made everything beautiful and glorious He wanted to display His actions so that one would see everything. But those who exist, apart from human beings, do not comprehend anything but themselves. God created man and he is the power that is comprised of the upper and lower realities, which all can be imagined in the soul of a person. This is the essence of man that he sees, comprehends, and imagines, like no one else.

Qol Simhah | Simhah Bunem of Przysucha

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I step forward.

Grass surrounds my bare feet.

I approach a garden.

There are tiger lilies but beneath them there is dirt.

Larvae of locusts burrow through this dirt and I reach down with a plastic spoon.

I accumulate the dirt in a bucket with the small plastic spoon.

My fingernails get dirty.

There are grass stains on my knees.

I go back inside with the bucket of dirt, like a child with a pale of sand on the beach, to try and perform magic.

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Legend says that Rabbi Judah Loew successfully created a golem.

Texts of the Kabbalah, beginning with the Book of Formation, claim that the letters of the Hebrew alphabet contain the powers of creation.

With the right combination, man could grant life, as God did to Adam.

I mold the dirt into a corpse-like shape and on his forehead I inscribe: ’ e m e t h .

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In a state of loneliness, it is easy to be numb.

I think I am starting to feel lonely.

No, you don’t understand.

I think I am starting to f e e l lonely.

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My frame was not concealed from You when I was shaped in a hidden place, knit together in the recesses of the earth.

Your eyes saw my unformed limbs; they were all recorded in Your book; in due time they were formed, to the very last one of them.

Psalms 139:15-6

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The act of reciting a blessing is founded upon a mystical belief in language.

In medieval times, alchemy was considered a science.

Today we laugh at that thought.

But men of faith still treat blessings as linguistic alchemy.

My lump of dirt has been inscribed with a divine phrase.

He will soon reach out his little dirt fingers.

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Cordovero insisted that the golem could never have a real soul.

He claimed that only God could bestow that.

Instead, the golem received Ḽ

,

vitality.

But even that is enough.

I guess that is enough.

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There is an excess in my pectoral cavity called heart.

When you are here, it will no longer be excess.

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Twenty-two Foundation letters: He engraved them, He carved them, He permuted them, He weighed them, He transformed them, And with them, He depicted all that was formed and all that would be formed.

Sefer Yeᚣirah 2:2

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I begin to study the permutations that will be necessary to give him life.

I mumble Semitic as I lean over soil.

Not a single mistake may be made.

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Once you have formed him, you must walk in a circle 442 times, reciting 221 alphabets.

The sum of pronunciations is 97,240.

They must be recited without failure in order for the creature to rise.

I enunciate ’uyu.

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Between us a barrier has risen and I only seek to get around it.

But you are so far so far away.

Now I must resort to becoming a warlock.

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Kuyu kaya kiyi keye koyo Kuhu kaha kihi kehe koho Kuvu kava kivi keve kovo Kuhu kaha kihi kehe koho

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I feel better about things when I’m not thinking about you.

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I circle and recite imagining your body.

Soon he will come to life.

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We can gather indirectly from such instructions that the ritual culminates in ecstasy.

Gershom Scholem, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism

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The golem awakes but he cannot yet speak.

He will need to learn to express himself.

But who will teach him?

For words, I do not know.

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When will I stop making golems and just tell you how much I miss you?

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We cannot speak, neither him nor I, for I am out of practice and he simply does not know.

We spend the first days in silence staring at each other.

One morning he makes me coffee.

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This we call a homunculus; and it should afterwards be educated with the greatest care and zeal, until it grows up and begins to display intelligence.

Paracelsus, De natura rerum, I, xi, 316-7

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Over the course of several days we grow fonder of each other.

I begin to feel that I may speak and confer upon him words.

I teach him to make me breakfast and sweep the kitchen.

At night he sometimes sleeps in my bed.

His skin is not as soft as yours.

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As time goes by he becomes better at household chores.

He learns to do laundry and feed the pets.

He even makes the bed.

He still hasn’t learned to speak yet but his companionship is crucial in this time of your absence.

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We are getting along fine.

It has been a few weeks.

He is growing but it’s alright; On the weekends I buy him new clothes.

He’s remained mute but his face looks appreciative.

He doesn’t like when I mention you though.

It makes him feel inadequate.

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His jealousy is getting to be a bit much.

Lately I’m thinking about you more.

It’s all I wish to speak of so we’ve simply stopped talking.

He still makes my morning coffee but lately it’s more bitter.

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I never thought you’d be gone this long.

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In order to take away his strength, which ultimately becomes a threat to all those in the house, they quickly erase the first letter aleph from the word ’emeth there remains only the When this is done, dissolves into the clay

on his forehead, so that word meth, that is, dead. the golem collapses and or mud that he was...

Letter to Johann Christoph Wagenseil | Christoph Arnold

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Once he became too strong, Rabbi Judah Loew resolved to kill his golem.

To this day, its ashes are in the attic of the Altneu Shul in Prague.

Maybe that is where I will take these ashes.

I really wanted it to work.

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I dump the dirt back in the garden.

After the funeral, I go inside.

The house is left a wreck.

Did you ever really exist?

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exi 116

‫ויעקב דיסבול גלותא יטול כלא‬

Jacob received it all by suffering the exile The Zohar I:198a

le.

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Aphasia Some times it is easier to be mad than to feel sad.

I feel like I am running away into relative obscurity.

I feel like this is okay.

I step out of my house and there is a deluge going on.

I must swim from my car to the supermarket door just to grab an avocado, please.

Everyone I pass in the parking lot stares at me like they mean it.

Why can’t I speak to them?

Their eyes are so harsh and my defenses, so weak.

Language is rough.

Trouble formulating words.

This is aphasia.

Might could be the last time I ever write you.

I came home and I cut the avocado in half and I took out the pit and it slipped to the floor and I cried.

The oven preheated to 425, but nothing really changed.

It all stayed basically the same.

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What are you doing now?

I mean at this particular moment in time.

Outside there are trees and raccoons.

In here there is just me.

Maybe I should run away.

If I reach another country, where they must believe me when I say: I am a wild fox.

I will burrow in the yard and bark when I think of you.

I will hide myself away.

And most important of all, nobody will disturb me.

And I never said that our promises mattered much, but you did say that you would never leave me.

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___+_____ (Deep Web) And painfully I take control of the recesses of myself, my ravings suffocate me with so much beauty… I am before, I am almost, I am never. And all of this I won when I stopped loving you. Água viva | Clarice Lispector

I dropped a thermometer today and mercury spilled on the hardwood floor.

And as I cleaned it up, I couldn’t tell if it had fallen because it was an accident or if my unconscious truly wanted to drop it. (destroy physicality) For I am consistently incapable of dealing with the awareness that our bodies are two separate beings Or the somatic illness awoken in me by perceiving your absence

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and your figure unseen.

How can I defy my corporeal limits?

How can I come back from the ledge to a place I no longer recognize?

I cannot stand to enunciate the word home, 5000 miles displaced from myself.

Returning is but a perverted rite.

(And The stars waltz in blue and red tonight) A stretched out sliver, I’ll never forget how it felt hiding from you just one meter across the bed.

This situation seems intense. just lying there You look so innocent all curled asleep and heavy breathing (if only you know the damage you’re creating.)

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I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my lids and all is born again.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I said: I think I made you up inside my head.

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Depths of the Sea I always knew the day would come when you’d flee And I prayed we’d meet face to face for goodbyes But you ran away to the depths of the sea.

I wish I’d accepted your love wasn’t free Before I’d spent all of my effort and time.

How could I expect that some day you would flee?

Oh how I yelped and to the heavens I’d plea!

How my words rippled out in an onerous cry– Yet you still disappeared to the depths of the sea.

Looking back, the way was laden with worry But I couldn’t accept that our ending was nigh; How could I ready for the day you would flee?

For the thing that I did fear hath overtaken me.

And in spite of his faith, Job still begged to die, So I threw myself prostrate in the depths of the sea.

And of the blows I could take, apathy was the least.

And of the things I could beg you, the most vital: to try.

I must have been waiting for the day you would flee…

But it was me who drowned in the depths of the sea.

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asphyxiated I tried making empanadas I should adjust, I suppose, & learn to get along here. //and they almost came out perfect but the bottoms stuck to the pan and the insides gushed to the plate// corn and pepper and onion and yellow and red and red and the Guts just lying there

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too hot to repair wounds too fresh to touch.

What has happened to us?

Buscaba alojarme nomás Buscaba alojarme en tus palabras.

Il mio supplizio è quando non mi credo in armonia My torture is when I don’t believe myself to be in harmony I am far.

There is no synonym sufficient for how f a r I have

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reached and you can’t even hear me.

But I keep screaming.

i will haunt you in your sweetest dreams and i will haunt you in supermarket aisles the way that you haunt me. i will be there when you make your morning coffee and i will be there when you start to kiss some other’s lips and i will be screaming i will be screaming i will be haunting and screaming and doing nothing else until you finally look at me i will be so white a s p h y x i a t e d

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and empanada-like my insides will gush they will gush i will gush.

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Depths of the Sea, Part II You had all of me; you wanted more.

I left home at 11.45 am. I descended in the elevator and smiled at the doorman as I walked out of the building. I walked the block from 111th to the train, and I lowered the steps down to the subway.

I watched the water pooled in the train tracks, and it rippled to the tune of my ipod, in anticipation of the coming train.

I imagined my body being projected, thrown forward from the platform by some unseen force, and I wondered what I would say to God, there, in that moment.

I remembered lines I had written the last time that you left. In my head, I went back to a different time, one when I had also fled home. But that time it was for

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much longer. Things I had written you now cycled back through my head…

“One day you left and I didn’t realize…”

The words trailed off as the train rushed into the station.

[I am down here. I am down here and it is darker than any surface I have ever navigated before. I am down here and I am discovering dark recesses of the sea that no man has discovered. I am down here and gravity is strong and the pressure of ten billion cubic tons of doubt weighs greater than my heavy heart can handle. I am down here and I believed in us. I believed in you. From down here I still believed in you and I put aside so much of myself to fight for you. I am down here and I deconstructed everything else that I believe to

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make way for you. I am down here and I never thought that we would separate. I am down here and I am overwhelmed and I wonder and I am down here and I can’t help but wonder if I will ever make it back up to the surface‌

In this seat I try to make myself small And contract inward to the simplicity of youth.

My emotions, however, cannot be contained and they expand outward like a fractal, working their way over to the other passengers.

Language ripples outward like waves in the sea.

Like the little concentric circles that swiftly grow on the surface of the deep as I gasp for air and struggle to resurface.

[I am down here and I am starting to become a deep-sea creature. I am down here and there are life forms we would scant acknowledge on the surface. And I am slowly morphing into one of

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these so-called forms of life. We are translucent and our organs serve functions that are other.

When you spend this much time under water, you start to forget that you ever needed air. I am down here and although I am surrounded by these other creatures, I am still alone. My skin has slowly become see-through and elastic, and deflated, maroon bags can be seen floating inside of me. I am down here and it is hell, but I am still convinced that it may just be purgatory. I am down here and I pray, the only lines I can remember.

God open my lips and let my mouth spill your praise

I stare at the other passengers and wonder why they are not trying to help. I can tell that they see I am besieged with worries, but they just watch my lips mumble prayers in a fury and they, too, put their faith in external beings. Devotionem. I am down here and nobody can

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tell because they still see me sitting next to them.

[I am down here and I am far from you and I am screaming prayers in a language you don’t recognize. My tongue is split in two as it cries out to the God of another faith. I believed in love and I believed in us and I held these values so steadfast through every inch of descent and you tricked me, you know, you really tricked me into believing that you, too, shared this faith with me. You tricked me into believing we would sink together and now my body is deteriorating from the salt and lack of oxygen.

The train moves from station to station.

The faces around me change,

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but the sentiment’s just the same.

I am too far gone and I miss my stop.

I am struggling even to lash out.

It is hard to let go of the many doctrines to which we learn to subscribe.

All I can do is remember the lines I had written the last time that you left.

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“y la superficialidad era lo mismo que tomar lo de adentro y sacarlo hacia afuera y la superficialidad significaba que llevaste el corazón más cerca de tu piel para que, cuando lo sacaras hacia afuera, pudiera ver que me lo regalabas a mí y la profundidad era no dejarte alcanzar ni por una llamada ni un grito y estabas flotando en alguna parte pero tu exterior todavía funcionaba y todavía mostraba señales de vida”

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Pilgrimage (Southern Weft) I never cared about Thanksgiving until it was November in Argentina And Buenos Aires was but an expanse of bus exhaust and dense cab fleets in which I consistently choked but never managed to leave.

It was plazas and peddlers and wild fantasies Of being mugged in my doorway, Slowly stripped of my adherence to oh but so many beliefs.

Until enough days had passed.

And I had nothing left.

And as my days grew many in that Southern weft of asphalt & emotions, left complex to die,

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I never got rid of the MetroCard kept in my pocket, in case when I lowered those tiled steps, one day, I’d find myself -oh what a life; so subitaneous!underneath Union Square, awaiting the 6.

As the city around me gradually dissolved, I never lost hope that return was imminent.

An eternal boiling, somewhere deep in my blood.

[It was time to come back

‫מפני האהבה‬ ‫הגדולה שאינה‬

to the surface.]

‫מתגלה זולת‬ ‫ע"י הגלות‬

“For great love is revealed only by exile”

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(Don’t you think I’ve paid my dues?

Haven’t I suffered enough?)

There is a tradition in Israel that when you land you should kiss the ground because every step there is holy now New York is Jerusalem and returning is a riteEvery outing, a pilgrimage by nightWonders that are fresh to my now-foreign eyes, but something inside me still insists: A part of me never left.

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‌there is something so subtle about the way the asphalt hits my feet.

A murmured joy to this yearned reunion How even the Earth is so charged with fervor.

And I can’t help but cry and repeat amen each day (For no matter how diligent they were in their courting, Penelope waited, still weaving away.)

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Ode To Flatbush I’m the only customer in Dunkin’ Donuts at 7 am in the “hood.”

My friends don’t get why I live here.

They think it’s remote or dangerous.

It isn’t quite anywhere near gentrified yet.

But there’s a certain charm to Flatbush that can only be seen in the first rays of morning.

As I strolled with my coffee along Church Ave. and the schoolchildren marched by, en route to the bus I felt a sense of inner peace that I never remember feeling on any sidewalk past.

Not even the graveyard across the street could detract from the calming aura, for I was certain that the spirits that lived here before were content with my presence -no matter how out of contextin the southern reaches of Prospect Park.

I have begun to feel nostalgia for the present but not quite a desire to remain in this city.

It’s a nostalgia for this state that I’m in, and an anticipation, or the fear, that soon I will change.

Fifty-six years ago my father was born here and lived in a house on East 5th St. It’s not far from my apartment, about ten blocks.

My grandparents went to Erasmus Hall High, right around the corner.

And without any awareness when I made the decision, I came here in search of my past.

Remnants of that era still linger in the yarmulkes that march down Ocean Parkway, Friday evening at 6.

But for the most part the Flatbush dialect has evolved into tinges of Patois and Creole.

The old Jewish bakeries are now Jamaican patty stands.

And my five-year-old father has been replaced by a 21 year old poet.

It’s funny the kinds of thoughts you can have in a Dunkin’ Donuts at 7 am.

As if days long gone had suddenly rushed upon you and converged in your morning coffee

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("Light, no sugar please") staring you in the face (Is this young, black cashier the image of my past?) offering you some company as you make your way home.

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((((I stay enmeshed | ἡ π ήή ν η ν όό τ ι ο ς ) ) ) )

elevations | Cameron Guthrie (2013)

my eXiStenCe is a momentary lapse of Reason.

how do i start destroying poetry ? haʊ du

aɪ stɑrt dɪˈstrɔɪŋ mī-ˈself

welcome the year is ||||||||||7777777777||||||||||2222222222

sickening cadāvera depleting oxygen ceasing respiration

the smoke it billows. ugh. what is this shiii that i’m reading can’t anybody tell me what happened to publishing? | ost | rac | ize (me | its grave was laid with a million bears and too little care for the ghosts the guardians

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||||||||7777||||||||2222 of centuries past and metaphor, destroyed so much work thrown away by you stupid fucking slaves to minimalist misery when you come out your shit is gone you’ll suffer eternally for the sake of good tweets XXYYXXYYXXYYXXYYXX XXYYXXYYXXYYXXYYXX

20 will burn, 20 will burn XXYYXXYYXXYYXXYYXX

but who on the breaking wheel will turn

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buildings upon buildings have risen in flames and the new york i knew now withers ablaze and i’m trying i’m trying to understand where -o to wheretalent has gone. they’re searching and searching for the responsible parties for the death of beauty and the rise of apathy.

XXYYXXYYXXYYXXYYXX

20 will burn, 20 will burn XXYYXXYYXXYYXXYYXX

but who on the breaking wheel will turn

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Here , on this very day, i watched a homeless man masturbate on the subway platform and felt a greater sense of alienation than any of your works ever made me feel. остранение остранение остранение остранение

ask the formalists. (cause i know nothing) ‫אני לא יודע שום דבר‬ ‫אתה לא יודע שום דבר‬ ‫הוא לא יודע שום דבר‬

douse the scarecrows in kerosene. my eXiStenCe is a momentary lapse of Reason. how did i end up in the midst. we were simply trying to free the language. and now look how far we’ve fallen from even a taste of emancipation.

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and they’ll blame ignorance. and they’ll blame stupidity. but both of these concepts are so far beyond me.

XXYY XXYYXXYYXXYYXX

20 will burn, 20 will burn XXYYXXYYXXYY XXYYXX

but who on the breaking wheel will turn? aɪ doʊnt noʊ ˈɛniθɪŋ except but intuitively . silence your mouth. yours souls need some peace. (and mine too) i’ve forgotten how to truly speak.

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. . i feel my bones crack. into ashes you’ll delve. but eternally i spin about here on maiden lane, april 6, 1712.

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Near To The Wild Heart [To drift in the immobile with no before or after, a hyaline now without contact or references, a state in which the container and the contained were undifferentiated, water flowing in water, until without transition it was the impetus, a violent rushing projecting her, drawing her along unable to grasp the change in any way except in the dizzy rush on the horizontal or the vertical of a space that shuddered in its velocity. Sometimes it would come out of the shapeless and accede to a rigorous fixedness also separated from all reference and nevertheless tangible…] you & me and our decapitated bodies in a weight less room the onslaught of my senses and then the con/cl/fusion that comes after I am the waste of capitalism.

Exiled from m|y|/ /S|E|L|F| by

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reason of my own doing. a möbius strip of meaning [the same old lines we always said folding back in on themselves again and again] and now you think you can just come back from the dead, Buster?

(What did you expect, really?

You never saw Beetlejuice, clearly; or you’d know that it’s not so easy!)

Incapable of living by reason of diminished faculty [ie, mental defect]

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I am the waste of our relations, spilled seed unsure . . of where I’ll land.

Still in Sus pense. …almost a tangibility…

just a body ditched in the woods and a heart left out to dry Do you know how to dissociate?

I’ve gotten so good at it, lately, that I’m hardly myself any more.

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Tiberius, 00:04 Wanted too badly to be beyond feeling In sensation only And then everything dissolved Why am I here, in a hotel in Tiberius, while everything back home is so unresolved?

I wish I could know what you’re feeling right now, thousands of miles away.

Where you are at, or who’s comforting you through this.

The dense realization that our love is just a form of servitude, incomparable to centuries of suffering for my subjugation stems from below.

What did you mean when you said I’m “the one?”

Was that your confession of love?

This distance is crippling.

I cannot sense your presence.

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So far away.

All I desire Is to overcome this And yet, I can’t.

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Maybe You Were Never In The Room I feel like unfolding into different emotional geometries.

From a central point I draw out shapes.

From a central point, I become a triangle.

Then I am trapezoidal.

Now I am hexagonal.

And slowly I become fractal, developing into the expanse of the unknown.

I want to return to you.

I want to feel as though one of these planes might bifurcate, and somewhere down one of these legs, I might be lead back to your sheets.

Today I spoke to the trees and I spoke to God and I said: Wow, all I really want is to kiss your lips just once more.

And deltoid-like, I collapsed Slowly imploding back in on myself.

My center of gravity is off since you’ve left my side.

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And the world around me seems to have slowly lost its order.

Out of orbit.

This game is silly And I used to love you.

Doesn’t that count for anything?

An astrologer told me that starting last week Venus was entering Gemini and would stay there for 4 months.

Something about lots of temptation and little stability.

Maybe that’s to blame for all this.

Astrology, bah.

I have run out of weapons to point at your face.

I am running out of options.

I surrender.

You and your eyes and my weightless body in an empty room an indefinite blueprint (Non-euclidean) where I hoister a tattered white t-shirt.

My arms are scarred by the leashes of love But you miss the signal.

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Bang.

Here the squad fired, but in retrospect, you had already left.

Maybe you were never really in the room.

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duck sauce

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“I should have loved a thunderbird instead; At least when spring comes they roar back again…”

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Every Gal Adores A Fascist “There can be no poetry after Auschwitz” Somebody painted a swastika on the sidewalk outside my house.

I must now walk over it every day.

It is across the street from my building At the only crosswalk On a major avenue.

The light cycle usually takes 2 to 3 minutes so I stand on bent arms and I think: My floor has played host to a winter’s anxietiesyesterday’s clothes and a copy of Hopscotch, falling to pieces, that still refuses to explain Where have you been.

Symbols of oppression

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Vacancies and voids I’ve spent time on the bus listening to ’06 hip hop played on repeat like the lines in my head leftover from our banquet but better yet the etiquette got lost in the lobby because by the time you made it up here nothing was so rehearsed you had lost our Formalities to which I still fervently subscribed.

The only way my grandmother knows how to emote is through voicing complaints.

But I inherited other genes, I suppose.

Submission seems to run somewhere remote, deep in my blood, so tucked away that some things in life are just not fair and you make me want to crack my teeth on the pavement.

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What are your bearings?

When did the dirty tactics begin?

A war is being lost as I fail to adapt to adequate defenses against your guerilla techniques.

Now I’ll march as they play that old clichéd gramophone tune and kiss all that I’ve ever understood: good bye.

I loved you, you know.

Well, maybe you didn’t.

I’m not even sure I, myself, will ever get why.

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bang bang Quotidian discourse is insufficient to name the feelings you aroused in me.

Pixxels I prefer to forget.

Worn out words that wasted their meaning.

When I left, I swore I would never dddeflect.

When I believed I was too devilitated.

Doubtful dialectics.

Pain and the fine line it shares with my desire to shoot a bullet at you.

Bang. in the headd.

I advise you, be safe: save up your strength.

Bear your arms just as do I. I sdrive to ddeflect at a blow the blow.

And I won’t fail, he who fails has female his soul and female is not my soul nor the pistol with which I’ll try.

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The symbol of the crown of kingship imparts that the feminine potency (malkhut) ascends to and surrounds the masculine (keter) in a manner that mimics the state of affairs prior to the bifurcation of the male androgyne.

The eschatological restoration of the feminine to the phallus marks the final obliteration of the evil force and the restitution of the world to a primeval state of chaos, a time that is marked by the overturning of the table…

“Divine suffering and the hermeneutics of reading: philosophical reflections on Lurianic mythology” Elliot R. Wolfson

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Duck Sauce Even though they always gave out duck sauce for free, when my grandpa would order Chinese food, he’d only get one packet of the sauce, and make everyone in the family share it. To this day, my uncle hoards duck sauce in his kitchen, in subversion of authoritarianism.

Yesterday you came over to my place and we ordered Chinese food Soy sauce or duck sauce?

Soy sauce or duck sauce?

We made love for the fifth time that day.

The last time you never came, but you did spill soy sauce on my sheets.

Hoarding the duck sauce was an emancipatory act on my behalf, Unrecognized by you.

You left at 2.

I jerked off at 2:05.

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New York Is Festering Today I was a block away from your house and I saw a dead rat on the sidewalk. Its bloody corpse had been flattened out just like the feelings that I had for you.

Today all of New York remits to festering – it’s a city full of dead little rats.

The entire East Village is plagued with mice: rats, rats, rats like you.

What’s up lately that all these boy thinks that giving me blow is like professing their love to me?

Bye babe. It’s a shame how everything’s ending.

Perhaps I’ll still give you those daisies I promised to cut for you.

Perhaps I’ll tie a note to them that says: “I have a confession: I always thought you were dumb.”

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I Am Holding This Stone When I went to Israel I visited the gravesites of a lot of righteous souls.

An orthodox man called them “resting places” instead of “graves” which I thought was beautiful.

There is a custom to leave a stone at the resting place of somebody you visit, but if the person was completely righteous, you should take a stone instead and hold onto it, for strength.

Now is when I think I am needing it.

A spiritual guide that asks me: “Who is the person you want to be?” and then “What do you have to sacrifice to become that person?”

I think you are somebody that I love a lot.

But I think that type of love is an emotion.

The guide said that emotions are not a part of the spiritual path.

That love is truly a tool to inspire you to change.

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And if a relationship depends upon its constituents “feeling” in love, it will certainly fail.

Now is when I think we are failing.

Despite my attempts to care for you, you don’t seem willing to change.

Or maybe I am the one who is unwilling.

I don’t know.

I am not a guide.

I just know that things aren’t working so well.

And the last time you left I know that I slept with a rock in my hands every night.

And now I have taken it out again to ask for strength.

This isn’t how things ought to be.

I don’t know how they should be.

But I know that it’s better than this.

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Chamud The Kabbalist rabbis have taught me a lot.

They have sayings for everything.

Like Nachum Ish Gamzu, who would say: “Gam zu l’tovah” It’s all for the best…

Chamud, do you remember that time when I told you that I wanted to seek out a state in which there would be no object that, if I lost it, would make me sad?

Some would call it impossible, others, old age, but I don’t think it’s so absurd or far off.

The night that I told you this, I gave you my favorite shirt.

Soon after I moved and threw out a lot of stuff.

And this past week, the head gasket blew on my car engine or something like that…

(I really don’t get mechanics but I lost my car, nonetheless)

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All these things: I don’t need them (the Kabbalists tell me) Happiness isn’t obtained from material objects Well, chamud, do you remember that I told you this?

Watch out, cause you, too, are just an object.

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acknow ledge ments

The author would like to thank the following publications that have previously printed material included in this collection: New Wave Vomit - “ily but i hate you nonetheless,” “140 Characters To Tweet From A Cybercafé,” “Today You Took A Picture of Me,” “Weekend Remains” & “All Bruised Up;” pressboardpress - “Brownian Motion”; have u seen my whale - “Game Over (or, Porno),” “Duck Sauce” & “New York Is Festering;” for every year - “Dead As A Dodo” & “my

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eXiStenCe is a momentary lapse of Reason;” The Mall “Fuck Metonymy, I Want Synecdoche;” Pangur Ban Party - Your Eyes Saw My Unformed Limbs; Screaming Seahorse - “Aphasia;” Galavant - “Depths of the Sea, Part II;” Cityscapes - “Ode to Flatbush;” & Metazen - “I Didn’t Want To Kill Him. I Had No Intentions of Ending His Little Spider Life.”

The italicized portion of “Dead As A Dodo” is taken from Chapter 3 of Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll. Portions of “___+_____ (Deep Web)” are taken from the poem “Mad Girl’s Love Song,” by Sylvia Plath, both italicized and not. “Depths of the Sea” features a non-cited line of text from the Book of Job. The Italian stanza in “asphyxiated” is taken from the poem “I Fuimi,” by Giuseppe Ungaretti. “Depths of the Sea, Part II” features lyrics from the Madonna song “Love Spent,” a stanza from the author’s own poem “Stranger,” a brief verse from the poem “In Which She Pays For Her Tardiness”

by Ariana Reines, and a line of text from the Jewish Amidah prayer. The Spanish poem between “Depths of the Sea, Part II” and “Pilgrimage (Southern Weft)” is the

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author’s translation of a poem from Eliza Scott’s blog, posted on June 4, 2011. The Hebrew quote from “Pilgrimage (Southern Weft)” is from Rav Yehuda Ashlag’s Ha-Perush commentary to the Zohar, I:212b. “my eXiStenCe is a momentary lapse of Reason” contains lyrics from the Death Grip’s song “Hacker,” and its Hebrew text is a translation of a portion of the Oliverio Girondo poem “Espantapájaros.” The italicized portions of “Near To The Wild Heart” are taken from the short story “Moebius Strip,” by Julio Cortázar. The italicized epigraph to “Tiberius, 00:04” is taken from the poem “Ate Shaft To Hilt/Trying To Be Boring/Making More Of It Than Should Because,” in Ariana Reines’ The Cow. The epigraph to “Every Gal Adores a Fascist” is a quote from T. W. Adorno. “bang bang” is heavily based on the poem “XIII,” from César Vallejo’s collection Trilce.

The author’s photo is an original photograph by Alexander G. Comiskey, distorted by the author for this collection. Other artwork in the collection was adapted from the internet. Where credited, artwork included is by Cameron Guthrie for the purpose of this collection.

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Jacob Steinberg has perfected the art of selfimmolation, but nobody seems to have noticed or cared. http://magulladon.tumblr.com @posnoventista

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