KOI POND
Well,
we both just love carp so much
it was inevitable, really.
JUMPING IN THE FOUNTAIN WITH MY SUIT ON
Who's boring now, Margot?
Not the guy in the fountain with his suit on.
My briefcase is in here too
wet papers floating around
full of data, probably.
"Numbers."
Who cares.
Not me.
Not the guy splashing around in this fountain
in his new Brooks Brothers suit
laughing, dancing
everyone must think I'm so crazy
and maybe I am
just a little ;)
but sometimes it's what you have to do
just jump in a fountain
to feel really alive.
I'm wet and alive and spontaneous and fun and I feel good
I feel good
I feel good about my life
and all of you.
And you, Margot.
How's this for living out on the edge?
I think the cops might have to ask me to leave.
That's how it goes when you're having too much fun
that's how it goes when you're going a little crazy
the man comes in and shuts you down.
That's how it goes
when you're in a fountain
with your suit on.
With this one act
I am absolved of my former life
by your wishes.
NOT DROWNING, BUT WAVING
Hey!
Hey guys!
Look over here!
Guys!
Look at me!
Hey!
Look at this!
Over here, guys!
Guys!
Look!
I'm splashing!
This is great.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Those Who Can
MY WIFE
by Your 10th Grade English Teacher
My wife...
My...fucking wife, she...
Ah
She should've gotten into a better law school.
She--listen--
I'm just trying to prepare you for the realities
you
are
going
to face
in college.
They don't take late work there.
There aren't any extensions.
They won't go as easy on you as I did.
As I've been doing. You'll see.
If my wife had--
if my wife had gotten into a better law school
I wouldn’t have to be getting my Masters now
and we’d—
she went to a second tier university
because she didn’t work very hard in high school
and just—
it’s affecting us now.
That’s all I’ll say.
I don’t mean to be too personal.
To give too much information.
“TMI.”
You know.
But we would both be somewhere else is what I’m saying.
My wife and I.
She was so smart. Just like you.
She thought she was so fucking smart.
But now.
Well
here we are.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Bestiary 2: The Yeti
The Yeti is
NEEDY
the last of his kind.
He has some trust issues,
he's been left behind.
Mateless!
Alone!
A big furry mess!
Take pity on him
but avoid his caress.
For though he seems sad
in tone and inflection -
he's drunk and he's thinking
with his dumb Yetirection.
NEEDY
the last of his kind.
He has some trust issues,
he's been left behind.
Mateless!
Alone!
A big furry mess!
Take pity on him
but avoid his caress.
For though he seems sad
in tone and inflection -
he's drunk and he's thinking
with his dumb Yetirection.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Bestiary 1: The Dismal Drunk
The Dismal Drunk,
the worst of his sort
too sober to smile
too bored to cavort,
he listlessly sips
an unhappy cup
wondering why he
can’t ever cheer up.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
On That Ass
"Tangible evidences of prowess--trophies--find a place in men's habits of thought as an essential feature of the paraphernalia of life. Booty, trophies of the chase or of the raid, come to be prized as evidence of preeminent force. Aggression becomes the accredited form of action, and booty serves as prima facie evidence of successful aggression."
Thorstein Veblen
Thorstein Veblen
Monday, February 8, 2010
A Life In Tiny Placards
100% Trash (Mixed Media, 2009)
Ryan Fitzgerald and Brendan Hill
Fitting with his stated mission of wanting to "poop in...everyone's...mouth," 100% Trash explores Fitzgerald's varied and lifelong fascination with the insatiable consumer and the inevitable result of his consumption: refuse. "The detritus we shed is more clearly indicative of who we are, socially, morally -- more intellectually honest about the self we inhabit than if we were to compose something with any consideration of style or forethought," frequent collaborator and noted thugonomicist Brendan Hill was quoted as saying in The Schooner Review.
Possibly originally titled An Happy Accident, suggestive of a smiling toddler, sitting proud in the bloated fecundity of his diaper, this pastiche (with materials as diverse as nonsense and falderal) is part of the "lazy and untalented" school that rose to prominence in the early 21st century. Combining a cultivated lack of ambition with the anarchic disinterest more commonly found in the glassy-eyed scrawlings of alcoholic mongoloids, 100% Trash is best understood as a culmination of Fitzgerald's callow period, also noted for works such as the conceptual piece, Playing Grand Theft Auto While Unemployed For Two Months. Unveiled as the centerpiece of the infamous "Saloon des refuses," the artist added to his reputation as a clear leader of the avant-garde by explaining his masterwork only in finger guns and mouth explosions.
While its intricacies continue to provoke debate among critics and scholars alike, the question of why it took more than one person to make this piece of shit is perhaps best left to history.
Ryan Fitzgerald and Brendan Hill
Fitting with his stated mission of wanting to "poop in...everyone's...mouth," 100% Trash explores Fitzgerald's varied and lifelong fascination with the insatiable consumer and the inevitable result of his consumption: refuse. "The detritus we shed is more clearly indicative of who we are, socially, morally -- more intellectually honest about the self we inhabit than if we were to compose something with any consideration of style or forethought," frequent collaborator and noted thugonomicist Brendan Hill was quoted as saying in The Schooner Review.
Possibly originally titled An Happy Accident, suggestive of a smiling toddler, sitting proud in the bloated fecundity of his diaper, this pastiche (with materials as diverse as nonsense and falderal) is part of the "lazy and untalented" school that rose to prominence in the early 21st century. Combining a cultivated lack of ambition with the anarchic disinterest more commonly found in the glassy-eyed scrawlings of alcoholic mongoloids, 100% Trash is best understood as a culmination of Fitzgerald's callow period, also noted for works such as the conceptual piece, Playing Grand Theft Auto While Unemployed For Two Months. Unveiled as the centerpiece of the infamous "Saloon des refuses," the artist added to his reputation as a clear leader of the avant-garde by explaining his masterwork only in finger guns and mouth explosions.
While its intricacies continue to provoke debate among critics and scholars alike, the question of why it took more than one person to make this piece of shit is perhaps best left to history.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Strange Knows Strange
That summer he fell in love for the third time, by his own count, and this time it was to be the last. The feel of final love was like grass. Like plain green grass that sat on lawns and needed mowing. It was well regulated and even and never struck him to be portentous in any way whatsoever that he could notice. The penultimate love was something of the same, carrying with it not a hint of what was to come. But he had fallen in love for a third and final time and attended to the duties involved therein with the same motions he had learned from the previous two. Where to place the hands. How to cut with the knife and fork. The thing to say to the mother. Not so much the father, to whom there was never anything really to say that wasn't an apology.
They went to the movies and didn't talk about them afterward, which left him feeling scandalized, that the transition from silent darkness into pavement daylight didn't jostle opinion. She would not participate in his rites in this way. She would grapple with his hands in public, wrenching them away from each other, holding them firmly and sometimes tugging him to follow like a boy in mittens.
When it ended, the only answer was to be dead from it all, as this was his last love and now he knew it all along.
Given to overstatement, he threatened to drink himself into a coma, as if he even knew what that meant or would entail, what kind of slow organ-death that would require. Little things burst bit by bit, spring leaks that empty into the various pits and pails of the main-guts before seeping out into the glommy passageways and getting pushed back into the dense meats until they stopped squishing and contracting. The kind of real damage that can only result from something as misguided as tough self-love.
These are the reasons he didn't kill himself: The mockery to follow. The glib way he talked about dead acquaintances and their contributions to the culture, his culture, his immediate world. The thought that it might be met with indifference, derision, photoshopped pictures of himself with dick in hand, in mouth or worse, no one there to object or delete them. It was only the thought of more shame that pushed him forward, ever. Pressed on by the promise of paranoia, by the thought of suicide at all. It breathed a kind of surreal glow into the otherwise unremarkable life of a stranger, not so strange, but just alive as everyone else. Just as odd awake and unsure of the measurements of sleep.
They went to the movies and didn't talk about them afterward, which left him feeling scandalized, that the transition from silent darkness into pavement daylight didn't jostle opinion. She would not participate in his rites in this way. She would grapple with his hands in public, wrenching them away from each other, holding them firmly and sometimes tugging him to follow like a boy in mittens.
When it ended, the only answer was to be dead from it all, as this was his last love and now he knew it all along.
Given to overstatement, he threatened to drink himself into a coma, as if he even knew what that meant or would entail, what kind of slow organ-death that would require. Little things burst bit by bit, spring leaks that empty into the various pits and pails of the main-guts before seeping out into the glommy passageways and getting pushed back into the dense meats until they stopped squishing and contracting. The kind of real damage that can only result from something as misguided as tough self-love.
These are the reasons he didn't kill himself: The mockery to follow. The glib way he talked about dead acquaintances and their contributions to the culture, his culture, his immediate world. The thought that it might be met with indifference, derision, photoshopped pictures of himself with dick in hand, in mouth or worse, no one there to object or delete them. It was only the thought of more shame that pushed him forward, ever. Pressed on by the promise of paranoia, by the thought of suicide at all. It breathed a kind of surreal glow into the otherwise unremarkable life of a stranger, not so strange, but just alive as everyone else. Just as odd awake and unsure of the measurements of sleep.
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