Can't...Stop...

Here is my love letter to Elegant Choice; it depicts me floating above the patchwork earth on an opulent cloud, equal parts starry righteousness and inky diabolism. I have drawn my teeth artistic like a dingo's because that is the way I think of them in my private insecure moments. The same is true of those snowball hands and feet. Because if you ever meet me, the first thing you will notice is that my extremities look totally deceased for no reason. I fear for their future as extremities; I'm pretty sure they'll have to be snipped off at some point to become some other thing, whale fat maybe, or sensual mangoes.

TOTAL CHAOS FOREVERMONTH: Djuna Barnes

SEEN FROM THE "L"

So she stands—nude—stretching dully
     Two amber combs loll through her hair
A vague molested carpet pitches
Down the dusty length of stair.
She does not see, she does not care
It’s always there.

The frail mosaic on her window
Facing starkly toward the street
Is scribbled there by tipsy sparrows—
Etched there with their rocking feet.
Is fashioned too, by every beat
      Of shirt and sheet.

Sill her clothing is less risky
Than her body in its prime,
They are chain-stitched and so is she
Chain-stitched to her soul for time.
Ravelling grandly into vice
Dropping crooked into rhyme.
Slipping through the stitch of virtue,
      Into crime.

Though her lips are vague as fancy
In her youth—
They bloom vivid and repulsive
As the truth.
Even vases in the making
      Are uncouth.

Did you know that the entirety of The Book of Repulsive Women, including the drawings, is online? I am fairly new to Djuna Barnes, but I finally got around to reading Nightwood a few months ago and almost had a stroke. That is, after sweating my way through Jeanette Winterson's introduction, which made the mistake of telling me that after I was done reading this book, a part of me will be "pearl-lined." Anyway, here is a picture of a man attempting mightily to molest a carpet. A vague carpet. Do you like the molester's ponytail? I thought it looked pretty inappropriate. I did not intend for his underwear to be so blood-colored, but I haven't yet mastered the finer points of Corel Painter. If that explanation does not satisfy you, remember also that I am working in the absence of anything that might be called an "artistic eye."

P.S. This drawing tablet is amazing--I will never use a mouse again.

Guess What I Got???

Chalk portrait of our family, drawn by Elegant Choice on my new TABLET! My own skillfully depicted countenance graces the foreground, our gray cat grows staringly out of my cheek, and Elegant Choice himself arises behind us. In the corner hangs a small green clock, reminding us, he explained, of the swift passing of time.

MIDNIGHT, AT LEAST BY MY CLOCK; EFF YOU, FOREIGN COUNTRY OF THE INTERNET THAT TELLS ME IT IS NINE

Suck my ultramodern dick, age 24!

GLUE FACTORY HERE I COME

I have been up to my cooch in revisions for the past few weeks. (I wrote that line about cooches, and then I was going to make a joke like, "get ready for these poems to go down on you until their jaws get tired," when I realized that that was backwards, and the joke should really go, "get ready for your brain to go down on these poems until they give you the head-tap," but that all seemed pretty circuigratuitous, so I made it parenthetical.) Which reminds me, to my great chagrin, that I don't really write poems about cooches at all any more. I used to write about them pretty constantly, in an O WHOA THEY ARE LIVING SHEATHS FOR LIVING SWORDS kind of way, but I guess I outgrew that at some point--or did I.

Anyway, that explains the scandalous scarcity of cartoons around here lately. Maybe if anyone would ever submit anything, the burden would not fall so heavily on my mule shoulders. Also, I have been readying myself for my fast-approaching birthday, because ladies and gentlemen, I turn 25 on Friday. 25! I have such a tiny toe in the grave.

IVVENILIA: OR CERTAINE PARADOXES, AND PROBLEMES

I. A Defence of Womens Inconstancy.
II. That Women ought to Paint.
III. That by Discord things increase.
IV. That Good is more common than Euill.
V. That all things kill themselues.
VI. That it is possible to find some vertue in some Women.
VII. That Old men are more fantastike than Young.
VIII. That Nature is our worst guide.
IX. That only Cowards dare die.
X. That a Wise man is known by much laughing.
XI. That the gifts of the Body are better than those of the Minde.

I've been thinking a lot about juvenilia lately. More specifically: when do you stop writing it? When does the writing of juvenilia end, and the writing of the Early Poems begin? Elegant Choice and I passed a terrifying hour last night hunting down and reading our old poems; his, influenced mostly by rum and James Wright; mine, influenced mostly by my robust belief that Jesus was Lord and loved to cram his muscular god body into tiny bread. Most of these poems have tragically been lost--I think I burned them when I decided that I was going to be a nun. Well, obviously. Not all are lost, though, despite the best efforts of my enemies. Here's the earliest one I can find, written when I was maybe fifteen:

Who will explode to make the next Chaos?
The white dwarfs and red giants
of the sky
have all died like dynamite at the guessing
of their names,
and worlds have risen from their shrapnel.
If that is all a universe can create,
then what greater thing must die
before new men are made?

That whooshing noise you hear is me blowing your mind--or rather, me making your mind DIE LIKE DYNAMITE. Hold on, are you ready? Because I'm about to do it again:

I'll Inhale Your Snot Any Day, Ahab

My favorite part of Moby-Dick so far is the scene where Ahab shoots some snot out of his nostrils into Starbuck's lung, like so:

(Aside) Something shot from my dilated nostrils, he has inhaled it in his lungs. Starbuck now is mine; cannot oppose me now, without rebellion.

Astonishing. Dan Beachy-Quick, are you listening? Spell was good or whatever, but I am thinking a whole snot book.

TOTAL CHAOS FOREVERMONTH: John Donne

A naked thinking heart, that makes no show,
Is to a woman, but a kinde of Ghost

--John Donne, The Blossome

Too obvious? My original plan was to depict the naked thinking heart groping a lascivious pot-thrower, but this scenario proved complicated, and after a few abortive attempts I gave up and just let the heart stand next to a blobby sex sculpture, out of which he has presumably torn hunks to smear on himself. Like many people, when I hear "naked," I think "corkscrew pig penis," so I tried to reflect that in the naked heart's anatomy--not to mention his private thoughts, which obsess themselves with the desire to disappear Whoopi Goldberg down a pork vortex. A Porktex, if you will.

TOTAL CHAOS FOREVERMONTH: I've Never Regretted Anything Else I've Posted, Why Start Now?

Oh my God. It is so early that I feel like I've been peeled. As you know, I am one of these people who rarely ventures forth into consciousness before noon or so, largely because of an irrational belief that the young sun is capable of sucking my life-force like a cat, but today I had to wake up at 7:30 because I am visiting the lady-doctor. I had to get a new one, because the last doctor had a thick incomprehensible accent, referred to Plan B as the "abortion pill," and recommended that I start taking Ortho-Tricyclen in order to "reduce facial hairiness." I don't know if you know this, and it's hard to tell from the pictures, but I am basically a Sphynx. There is no facial hairiness to contend with, though I often wish for something waxable and villainous. So this guy is new, and what's he going to tell me, that I have genius labia? Like he could even recognize genius labia if they softly bit his face. That my cervix is actually a tiny stack of gold coins? Because I already knew that.

TOTAL CHAOS FOREVERMONTH: I Grow Weaker by the Day

That silence you hear is me attempting to resist the siren song of Sharon Olds. I fight manfully, but it is hard--my God, God's lard!

TOTAL CHAOS FOREVERMONTH: Dan Chiasson

Lincoln's Dream

It is impossible to state just how in love I am
with my own body, the white snows of me,
the sudden involutions and crevasses of me,
my muscles tensed or slack in anger or fear.

This is why, wherever I go, I am in Lincoln’s dream.
A sentry stands by, the stairway is eerily lit,
light is a little milk splash on people’s faces,
the faces of my Cabinet, grotesque and funny masks.

Who is dead in the White House? I demand. Who’s not?
answers a soldier, pointing to a shrouded head
on my own body, encased like a gangly insect
on the catafalque, and the loud sobs wake me up.

Reader, when you caress yourself in the morning,
amazed that you are made the way you are,
sure that yours is the finest body of all,
remember, you are Lincoln having Lincoln’s dream.

--Dan Chiasson, The New Yorker ( I keep typing The New Orker, which I wish was a magazine)

My secret feeling is that The New Yorker has been on kind of a roll lately. I was seduced by "The Museum of Stones" a few weeks ago, and now this. Maybe it has something to do with David Orr snorting their dad's ashes all over the place--I don't know. Anyway, Dan Chiasson, all I can say is damn; if you wanted to be celebrated so badly, you should have published a poem about Lincoln feeling on himself in the New Yorker earlier.

P.S. I resisted the urge to expound more explicitly on the concept of your crevasses, not to mention your milk splash on people's faces. Perhaps next time.

I Know, I Know, Always with the Excuses

Last week we learned that our across-the-hall neighbor was moving out, for reasons far too genuinely depressing to mention, so we soberly and respectfully arranged to take his apartment, since it is much bigger and there are doors. Doors! I feel like the freaking Sun King, what with the decadence and the Infanta-fucking. Did you know that our previous apartment had no doors? Except for the bathroom, and we didn't even particularly need that one--with the ocean so close, who uses a toilet? We might have been able to install a bedroom door, except for the fact that the landlord decided to cut a huge gaping "decorative accent window" in the bedroom wall before we moved in, for no reason that we could discern. Anyway, we've spent the last few days moving all of our worldly things ten feet to the north*, which has fucked with the cat's mind so severely that she does not know which way is up. Is that God's beard, she asks me despairingly, or a tuft of Santa's hell-pubes? And I do not know the answer.

Which is to say, I return tomorrow in full illustrative force.

*Direction picked at random, since I have compasses neither moral, material or instinctual

TOTAL CHAOS FOREVERMONTH: Mary Jo Bang

Ham Paints a Picture to Illustrate an Early Lesson: O Trauma!

--Mary Jo Bang

I have something of a flair for meat, I am discovering, though each new foray presents its own challenges. How would a ham-hand look, I asked myself, and here is your breathtaking answer. Notice how fully he is studded with cloves; notice how his face is a flapping slice. Also, did you know that there exists no Wikipedia page for Mary Jo Bang? Which is disconcerting, because I think of her as being at least as famous as, say, Adelaide Crapsey.