My friend Larry has a dream: a Costa Rican coffee plantation. You can buy a coffee plantation in Costa Rica, he says, for what it costs to buy a house in Bethesda. Once there, he's going to plant the best coffee beans in the world and build several cabins for all his friends who are going to live happily in the tropical forest with the amazing waterfall. Yes, it's tropical there and there is an amazing waterfall that comes straight down the mountains to form a foamy frolick pool. Larry doesn't have a specific place in mind: all coffee plantations in Costa Rica are like this. When the coffee comes in, he's going to sell it on the Internet, where he buys his coffee now.
Larry buys green coffee beans on the Internet, roasts them himself, then grinds them fresh every morning and, as he sips in the exotic and fresh aroma, he dreams about his coffee plantation in Costa Rica. There are already investors, he says. He's trying to convince me to buy in. I kind of like the waterfall. But what about picking the beans? Don't you need mules? And hired help? Not at all, he says, we will be the mules and the help, and then we go frolick. All we really need, and this may be expensive, is these small Sumatran cats that eat the beans and pass them through their digestive system. This particular Sumatran-cat-pooped coffee is worth more than gold or cocaine; it brings dizzying sums on E-bay. It will pay, enthuses Larry now on his second cup, for the plantation in one year. And if we can't get the cats, we will do it ourselves.
I'm not sure when this coffee thing took a hold of Larry's mind, but it's made him a first-rate specialist. He goes on about soil, weather, brews, blends, markets, and tastes, as if he were already the CEO of the largest coffee company in the world. The only trouble is that it's an imaginary company. Larry doesn't have any money. He needs to convince potential investors that the Sumatran cats will gobble and eliminate enough coffee beans to make everybody rich and not just materially, but spiritually as well, once the waterfall and the frolick pools get in the mix.
I'm attracted. Like all shmoes who've missed the opportunities of the 90s, I dream of an investment coup. This is perfect. The goldrush of the 90s could itself be attributed to the strong coffee that barrelled out of Seattle unto America like a waterfall of techno-dreams. The prosperity of the Clinton-years was brewed at Starbucks. Who's to say we can't start up the engine again on some remote mountain in Costa Rica with the help of some Sumatran cats? Stranger things have happened.
The bush was in flames
When it handed Moses the Law
It's God's favorite disguise
The Burning Bush
And last night GiO showed it to us
At Feelings restaurant
The flames rose elegantly on her pussy lips
And everyone knew the Law was inside
God doesn't kid around
And like GiO herself said
All of them want to see inside
As the discreet waiters refilled glasses
Go herself in perfect possession
Of the only burning bush any of us had ever seen
Is the President of the Foubourg Marigny association
Charged with defining and upholding the law
For her neighbors
Any way you look at it she is a perfect
Embodiment of the Law
That's two strikes for God
He's still pitching a perfect game
In the bush leagues
Bless you GiO
Feelings Restaurant January 17, 2004
Is the eye of an octopus
Delicately and precisely beaming its rays of beams
And aquatic understanding
At a gaggle of poets poised politely before him
With pitchforks
They are waiting to hear the secret
And the secret is "screwing lightbulbs
In the sockets of the dead."
ahistorical my sense of this man
a sponge soaking up what baggage
the forefathers of the city have carried
away all on the river of fire the insides of eyelids
dreams caked with the surreality of my lesser waking life
reasonably where poets long past infiltrate not by giant squid
longing for something more full of less meaning divinely
i dreamt i stole dave brinks
any woman quoting camille paglia
and utilizing appropriately mind you the word cathexis
twice in ordinary dinner conversation
is at the top of my list of people to fuck
but the line to get at her
the most successful stripper in contemporary america
is rather long with people who have been waiting over two decades
to hold her tiny hands and her huge plastic tits never knowing
she is a better and more erudite citizen than our last dozen governors
oh gio i will call you when the planets align
because i feel it would improve my chances
i don't need special tricks or slutty songs and poles
let's just clash dentata darling
someone read Bataille –
a mad doll-maker,
a mythological diety –
Someone was enchanted
with the Story of the Eye
someone thought
out loud
this should be real
there were blueprints
there must have been
someone had faith in the premise of Weird Science
someone had faith in earth and flesh and language
And this crazed Geppetto,
this inspired Aphrodite,
this divine auteur,
this brave alchemist
rubbed the world together
dipped a finger into our collected unconscious
like it was a jar of honey
and spun that digit like a sorcerer's wand
punching a hole in the sky
and Pandora landed
with her box wide open
lit by fire
Dave Brinks has Blakeian visions
his Milton, a shirtless Ted Berrigen
with constellations of moles on his chest,
in possession of the equation of our mortality
Speaking to us poets,
both raw and seasoned,
of languages in color and water
in color in water in poetry
He cannot share the equation with us
Ted has forbidden it
And besides you can only test it on dead people
So we close our four sets of poetís eyes
Visit the field, the playground, the tree
Outfitted with Dave and Ted
And the formula of the dead
And we contemplate the language of light in darkness.
Gio holds court at the head of the table
nothing is average in the stories people tell
Just starting out she steals the cigar trick
from an Asian girl at a club in Alphabet City
She blesses dark places in Canada with
beads made holy in the juice of her choosing
The Burlesque Queen finds a home on Bourbon
and clears the stage of bored girls
who might as well be pushing mops
Let us take a moment to mention the non-poets
the writers of law who outlawed public displays of bush
What is there for them to fear?
Is not the bush the mouthpiece of God?
the law of man has conned us out of too much
the Gospel for marks indeed
the Law of God has bit
the mouth that first inspired It
But the Bible is right about one thing
the bush doth burn with truth and prophesy
I pledge my allegiance to the tattooed flames
on the outer lips of her labia
and to the pubis on which we gaze know this
stories make you caricature
churches thrive on you
But poetry will sing praises
written in the light of your burning bush
This is a Sunday poem in New Orleans
Yesterday was the holy day.
I feel the distinct reality that
we are surrounded by
millions of tiny black holes
as it is said on npr
and these words
are what separate us from
the memory lapses
these holes could be natural
nothing to fear
what is a hole but a window
from whence came Alice
tea parties
and relativity
all circles that complete themselves
dream of Ted Berrigan at thirty
the constellation of moles on his bare chest
a tree that smells like oatmeal
it is not a process
this it
it is precision
do you understand?
here in the church of the Goldmine
perched around whiskey barrels
Dave Brinks points to the skull of a cow
with lights in its sockets and says
words that the microphone misses
because of technical difficulties
whatever you do
for the sake of words do not
wait for science to catch up
the boom mike can only record one facet of the words
like eyes that blink at creatures deep underwater
the flash of Christmas lights
used for unknown purposes
all adult things require too much work
for not getting paid enough.
Early morning New Orleans coats our tongues tongues lashing us to the blasphemous rocks of our collective self-unconscious yet awake with eyes closed and legs open and hands full and skin and smudges one welcome in the combine from a communist past leaves straight lines curved in new truths less ecclectic and more subtle than flirting with disaster on a hot day gives way to night and evening a bright blue paper moon and silver strs and stripes and dots and freckles pop up anew with each evil thought because that's what keeps us from wanting to get out of bed in the morning becomes electric with bird-seed will do in a morning fix but what I really need is a $2000-word is the answer to the question yourself until you sweat communion together we neve know what it is until we ask it a question always hanging there obver our scholastic heads which beckon some change me into a scarescrow and rub scream never curdles enough to make us cheese (the whiz kind) running through the channeols in our naked brains spilling out her ears onto her shoulders mixing with raven clack hair, strawberry tipped and snow-white wrists kissed by thousands of lepers
Jan 16, 2004
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Megan is the toughest of the bunch truly, madly, completely unserenely—but serendipity has arrived through a serious effort at fucking mindlessly which is different than absent mindedness, that malady is indecisive where mindlessness is purely a flaw forgiven by my body parts scattered across the kitchen table and ceramic tiles, Italian marble and sculpted angels of stone sprouting water divinely imagined by your pussy folds of flesh speak immaculate truth index finger buried in the wettest vortex of my mind and were turn to minds and absence and absinthe? We digress it seems to mindfulness and mindfuckers and the almighty windfucker who sings songs of lust and liebezhindfuschmilke ejaculate some sense of purpose bloody but unbowed by valor untouched by fear and loathing in New Orleans but what to fear, what to lose, let me count the things, the numbers, the fingers with long nails raking damp thighs and armpits and real pubic hair love a fifteen year old and sing songs of daisies and smart sharp kisses on the ground deeply into our collective psyche say the Jungians but they are beaten, without mercy, by the Freudians no friends of mine their tiny dicks so many in a row like ducks for the shooting down or shooting up but if you don't do drugs than what? fuck makes me think of GiO's pussy lit in flames on my pussy and incendiary dicks we lick, we suck, we wonder how it's been licked before and then after but really who the fuck actually cares really? except for when i'm kidding like right now float split legged special olympics purely shaved and naked like jagged rocks near avalanche of desire feeling in shards on our faces belong in your lap with a pussy covered in flames flames and licks and licks and she dances that faux ho, but wow that pussy pussy is my jewelry which can be shiny by rubbing rubbing harsh but nicely across my broken bones of words made from ?Lory's not driving ?it in a back room at Molly's so what that there were 40 of us, its interesting interest accrues over time supposedly people don't think pussy belongs in poetry everything is permitted until dawn comes early on days when i've been too well fucked because we're all fucked in one way or another I think that's what Blondie meant to say do think or fuck you and that bright light in my eyes in my eyes are threats carried out often enough pussy my beard will frost like St. Nick wicky wick Vickram Seth give it to me harder than i've had it before and after and then again what was I saying? I can't remember again Represents Repetition I Repeat Represents Repetition, competition ad other worthless pursuits that leave us bored and numb numb comfortably with the memory of your cock dripping poems across my pale stomach.
Jan 17 2004
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