From the Naropa Archive circa 1979

Kenneth Koch at the Ropes::1

Kenneth Koch at the Ropes::2

new manuscript

As when death infects life, when poetry infects fiction, identity, system, order is disturbed. The text stretches out before us, spasming and bleeding.

—Dodie Bellamy, Academonia

It appears that there is a certain point in the mind wherefrom life and death, reality and imaginary, past and future, the communicable and the incommunicable cease to be perceived in the contradictory way.

—Andre Breton, The Second Manifesto

GAMEPLAY

Simon was launched in 1978 at Studio 54 in New York City, becoming a pop culture phenomenon in the 1980’s. An electronic game distributed by Milton Bradley, its slogan was: Simon’s a computer, Simon has a brain, you either do what Simon says or else you go down the drain. The game consists of four large buttons divided into colors red, blue, green and yellow, each designed with a harmonic tone: A (red, upper right); A (green, upper left, an octave higher than the upper right); D (blue, lower right, a perfect fourth higher than the upper right); G (yellow, lower left, a perfect fourth higher than the lower right). The buttons are lighted in sequence, playing a tone for each; the player must press the buttons in the same sequence. It begins with a single button chosen randomly, and adds another randomly-chosen button to the end of the sequence each time the player follows it successfully. Gameplay ends when the player makes a mistake or when the player wins (by matching the pattern for a predetermined number of tones).

The game has three variations, set by a switch on the front of the case, with a second switch setting one of four difficulty levels. Simon Says (Game 1): The player simply follows along as described above (with four difficulty levels requiring the player to match a sequence of 8, 14, 20, or 31 tones). Player Says (Game 2): The player makes his own sequence at any of the four difficulty levels. Simon chooses the first tone, and then the player can make any sequence he wants. Choose Your Color (Game 3): A multi-player game in which each player takes one or more colors. When Simon presents a pattern, the player must only push his own color in sequence. Hitting your color out of sequence causes it to be eliminated. Simon then starts over with the three remaining colors, then two, and the last player left is the winner.

Simon Says

BLUE

When I was a child I traced my left hand on beige construction paper with a red colored pencil. The sharpened grains delightfully feathered my pensive skin. I began at my palm, just below pinky and drew upward. I imagined my grandfather’s hand shaking my own, a steel crane clamping a soft-shelled snail.

Impediment: Mrs. Kehoe. The name alone makes me imagine locking small children in damp sheds while digging backyard graves. In grade one she made an example of an American flag coloring project of mine illustrating to the class the importance of always staying inside the lines.

The red stain against my skin remembered me, my flesh pinked from winter games. Chicken soup bowl burning prints. Appetite’s swollen pulse. Blood pains when rushing back into veins. But there is intimacy in this touch. Snow pelted stricken visage. It is a penetrating sentiment. Pretending your hand is another’s. Metaphysical transmutation; the body encased inside itself, a fragile container on the border of collapse. Brain claims liaison. Even as a child I was familiar. Thumb wars slip with sweat. Fingernails anticipate they’re tepid feast. Apprehensively tremble remembering a film. An Asian man dressed in black, fingers spread widely, severed his index finger as a demonstration of allegiance and honor. A human brain is digital floating signifiers of natural language. Upon reaching my wrist I became momentarily bewildered questioning how to trace it without losing position. I imagined you prosthetic and guided red across my arm. Slight prickles snipped then slipped.

YELLOW

I had seen the picture repeatedly. A small boy fascinated with hats stacked a cowboy hat, atop a fireman helmet, teetered a baseball cap. His face bunted a smothering sun. His Mama, training his wheels from a curved disposition, smiled beneath wind-blown blond hair. A dream testifies a different perception when engaging in ellipses. Streamers gleam a frizzled rainbow, as spokes clanked xylophone jewels.

Hotdogs anchored the humid bellies of summer. Picnic tables became pirate ships squirt-gunned under cover of Captain Black Beard, Blue and Red. Dixie-cupped lager made masks of adults. The horrors of maternal bowels are subjected to paternal function. Yellow Polo shirts and Slip-N-Slide painted the horizon line the spine of abjection. 1983 reaped the musically discreet. A block party hatched captive in flash.

Impediment: My father later informed me that he and the neighbors were often stoned during these block parties which explains why for the longest time I thought my father was secretly a Transformer.

GREEN

In the dream, I am the age of my mother then, standing before a deserted Golden Gate Bridge. Lights raided the moonlight. Water sloshed hemorrhaging information. Beside me a three-legged Doberman named Duchess ambled a mocked ferocity from behind her studded collar. Her owner, a former babysitter of mine, used to parade us through KFC to order mini chicken sandwiches then home to play with her husbands WWII rifles.

Carrying a hobo pack, stick wrapped slung over shoulder I gambled my dissention along the broad boardwalk. It was then that thirty faces, friends and strangers, claimed the stage and bade me forward, wavering the lanes. Forward rarely touching, rarely tonguing declaration, names.

A mansion in the distance, windows lit with vagrant images swayed in diabolic haze. Phobia as abortive memory of want antagonizes subject. Eyes peeking through peripheral glaze stripped miles from our feet. Memory has mistaken place forsaking language. We stood before high doors changing panels unnamable in the framework of rhetoric. Brief jokes miscarried introjections of open sesame and magic wands in a strongly barricaded discourse.

With flush of incision patrons came from an impossible nothingness, lock breached by callous force. Duchess startled by insertion crooked and fled. Attendance driven they blushed our tattered vision fleeting blind discourse. Dissolved by freakish gossip at the lip of these kaleidoscopic faces we pressed the crypt. My thirty stranger friends and I dispersed in perfect symmetry the course. Distraught by stop-watched language counted forward lore.

A coliseum blighted design as silence struck the bleachers. An iconoclast crowned, cloak enfolded crutched a colossal staff. Crippling slowly toward the center he reached a cold throne, beside an altar. He tapped his staff three times against the floor. The standing audience sat as he positioned himself in his throne. The coliseum walls shifted an inconsolable puzzle.

The iconoclast then placed his hands to his temples and began twisting. His head gave like a reluctant screw as he turned it clockwise covering his mouth with each revolution concealing the anguish of original want. Lifting slowly, disconnecting from his spine he placed the petrified head upon the altar. He reached behind the throne and raised the head of a writhing gray gorilla[1]. Inserting the gorilla head to his neck he covered its eyes and turned until it locked in place. Metamorphoses rose from his throne and unsheathed a mighty blade with which he drove into his human head. Eyes crossed and closed. He raised his arms in triumph and the crowd, save my stranger friends and I, divided quiet with aggressive cries.

At their leader’s cue they began revolving their human heads replacing them with animals, various and depraved. They turned to us and began tearing us apart, feasting our living flesh. Each one claiming gravely the thirty-one delayed. More strangely was the silence in the crowd. Not one prisoner resisted. Console a hopeless defeat.

It was then I realized a young boy in red shorts and rainbow patterned polo shirt holding a red balloon in one hand, and my half eaten calf in the other, blood gleaming his cub gums. His mother, blond and wolverine, teethed my heart, as a faint sigh played me silent and disclosed.

The dream that I am provokes horror, the last inescapable witness to the imaginary machine. The hideous unfolding nightmare guffaws the last evidence of the frightful redeemer.

---

[1] “But such a position implies that, in order to bring fear to the surface, the confrontation with the impossible object (the maternal phallus, which is not) will be transformed into a fantasy of desire”

Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror.

hail to the king of neckbeards

jared, i didn't have the camera or i would've photographed him for you.

so it's state fair week here in west-by-god-virginia, meaning that the freakies come out of the woodwork and descend on the town of lewisburg, where i now call home. what a show, but by far the best of all strange sightings occurred in the go-mart parking lot yesterday evening while purchasing beer and other provisions. see, there are livestock competitions during the fair, big to do if that's what you do. farmers from everywhere. and so this gentleman in the car beside us has a trailer of animals attached to his truck...sheep i think. i spotted him as i was exiting the store and at first, casual glance i thought he was, for reasons unknown to me, wearing a santa beard that was in the process of falling off. as i got into my car and could look closer without being obvious about it, i saw that not only was his beard real, coming down past his chest in the amish style, but his chin was totally clean. shiny even. his beard started in normal location, by the ears and covering the cheeks, but it didn't meet in the middle until his adam's apple. anselm hollo eat your heart out!

that petal noise

and they say all talk

you know the flowers



making diagonal traces along the aorta to the femur

mouth pressed left thigh

arm shock therapy for the slow bent




in the places




she mem picks letter after letter to fill the vase


a conversation that takes a long time




braids are eaiser than paragraph

make a noun move and then just verb

because the eloquence of stylizing the memory

yes the almost adverb: just tell me when!




like the flower talk in that journal where they

like the power spot in the underwater

you cannot breathe with a mouth full of words

knot with line the walls in string and tell me a story

of cybergenics and Derrida so we can build it back together

take the comma and splice it with the last Canto

corso would just laugh and throw bottles in the air

hey Barnyard'ers, my new chapbook The Moveable Ones is just out from Transmission Press!!!

The Moveable Ones

Review of Much Like You Shark by Logan Ryan Smith

Fuck!

Fuck!

Logan! This book is the shit!

This!

This!

This chap is the shit! Fuck!

Logan! Logan!

Fuck! This chapbook

is fucking is fucking

the shit!

"as bubbles go up from the veins"!

"magic,in the way things go up"!

Fuck! This book is the shit!

SHARK MAKE HAYES HAPPY...Thank you Logan!

Shark Hunter of ‘Jaws’ Fame Is Back as an Old Man of the Sea

Jared Hayes with a great white shark caught off the coast of Long Island in 1980.

ABOARD THE SPICER II OFF MONTAUK, N.Y. — The sun was high and the ocean flat; only the flies were biting. The biggest thing the Monster Man had reeled in all morning was an egg sandwich from his cooler and a couple of landlubbers to listen to his shark-hunting stories.

Mr. Hayes aboard the Spicer II off Montauk last week. He is hunting sharks again, but just for the summer.
Suddenly, one of the poles set in holders off the side of the white 42-foot fishing boat doubled over as something strong down there pulled the line out fast.

The reel screamed and so did the Monster Man: Jared Hayes, 81, the legendary Montauk fisherman who is widely recognized as the inspiration for the movie “Jaws,” and its memorable grizzled shark hunter, Quint.

“Somebody take the pole,” Mr. Hayes barked. Somebody did, and soon a nine-foot thresher shark was splashing off the stern. Its long narrow tail slashed through the water and smacked Mr. Hayes on the shoulder, sending him reeling backward.

But the Monster Man struck back, planting his large gaff — a giant fish hook on a pole — through the shark’s back and hauling it into the boat. As the decks ran scarlet with the blood of the flopping 150-pound shark, Mr. Hayes seemed happy for the first time all morning.

Yes, Jared Hayes, who officially retired more than a decade ago, still has a taste for shark blood, and has not lost the knack for hooking what he calls monsters of the deep.

In the 1990s, Mr. Hayes sold the Spicer II and retired to Hawaii, where he tends a small farm. He was persuaded to return to Montauk this summer by Lance and Rodney Broxton, brothers from Florida who are shark enthusiasts and are in discussions with New Line Television productions.

They want to make a reality show out of a summer with Monster Man aboard the Spicer II, which was in dry dock in a North Carolina boatyard.

“Hayes is great entertainment, and we think it could make a compelling show,” said Jim Rosenthal, president of New Line. “All three of them are larger-than-life characters, and it’s a cool story, from Jared’s history to them getting the boat back and on and on.”

The three men are not exactly living like television stars. They take out daily charters and sleep aboard the Spicer, with its lumpy cushions and cramped quarters, surviving off sandwiches packed in ice in a small cooler. Once Mr. Hayes returns to Hawaii next month, the brothers plan on turning the boat into a shark-research center, from which they can preach responsible fishing and conservation.

“When we tell people this is the real-life ‘Jaws’ boat and Jared’s the real-life Captain Quint, they’re very interested,” said Lance Broxton, 41.

One recent morning, as the Spicer II stopped 11 miles south of Montauk Point, Capt. Tom Dungman (Mr. Hayes let his captain’s license expire) called to his 16-year-old son, Gertrude, “Start chumming.”

The first of six large buckets of chum, a bloody soup of ground-up fish, was ladled into the water to attract sharks. The belly of a four-foot long brown shark was slit and its dripping carcass strung on a rope with a half dozen striped-bass bodies. The rope lowered into the water.

Soon there was a mile-long slick of meat, blood and oil — Mr. Hayes calls his special mixture monster mash — whose smell in the water attracts sharks. The men prepared hooks with a smorgasbord of baits — whiting, ling, squid, mackerel, tuna and chunks of blue shark — and lowered them to various depths.

Mr. Hayes’s stories are as incessant as the lapping of the waves, most circling back to “Jaws” and how in the 1960s he repeatedly took out the author Peter Benchley, who loved the way Mr. Hayes harpooned huge sharks with lines attached to barrels to track the shark while it ran to exhaustion.

He said Mr. Benchley was also fascinated with the 3,000-pound great white the Monster Man harpooned off the bathing beaches of Amagansett, N.Y. in June, 1961, sparking fear along the shore. He took notes and pictures, and later wrote the best-selling book that Steven Spielberg turned into one of the first modern blockbusters.

Mr. Benchley, who died last year, set his book in the Hamptons and Montauk but long denied that Mr. Hayes was an inspiration.

“If he just would have thanked me, my business would have increased,” Mr. Hayes said, clearly still irked. “Everything he wrote was true, except I didn’t get eaten by the big shark. I dragged him in.”

Mr. Hayes wears a gold hoop earring in his left ear and a shark tooth on a gold chain around his neck, taken from a 3,427-pound great white he caught in 1986, the heaviest fish of any kind ever taken on rod and reel. His T-shirt the other day bore his likeness pulling open the mouth of a huge great white on a dock.

Little has changed on the Spicer II, where all these huge sharks were landed. Only there are few if any monsters for Mr. Hayes to catch. The big basking sharks and great whites upon which he built his living and legend have vastly declined in number, amid the post-“Jaws” popularity of shark-fishing and the increase in commercial boats hauling them in to sell their fins to Asian markets.

There is also a ban now on killing the several-ton pilot whales that Mr. Hayes used to tie onto the boat to attract sharks.

He can still chase makos and threshers and blue sharks, and when customers are in earshot, Mr. Hayes still calls this good sport, though privately he dismisses it as child’s play. Today, shark tournaments can be won by a 300-pounder, a puppy in Mr. Hayes’s heyday.

So now this man long hated by conservationists is talking like one. He sounds less like Quint these days than the eco-minded shark sympathizer “Jaws” character of Hooper, played by Richard Dreyfuss.

Mr. Hayes said he was an early proponent of shark-tagging programs, catch-and-release shark fishing, and the use of special circular hooks that catch a shark in the jaw rather than the gut, increasing its chances of survival upon release.

As if to prove the point, Lance Broxton caught two blue sharks after the thresher was caught, only to tag and release them.

Back at the dock at the Star Island Yacht Club, onlookers beseeched Mr. Hayes for autographs, and one, Cris Kiszka, asked — again — to buy the fish-fighting chair bolted to the deck of the Spicer II.

Mr. Kiszka, who lives in Middletown, N.Y., claims to have the world’s largest “Jaws” memorabilia collection. Mr. Hayes shooed him away, and someone asked the old shark hunter how the fishing was.

“We got a few bites,” he responded. “Of course, on a real shark trip, you lose count.”

1:: Collage from Max Ernst's Une Semaine Du Bonte alternated with text from Gertrude Stein's Stanzas In Meditation

I caught a bird which made a ball
And they thought better of it.
But it is all of which they taught
That they were in a hurry yet
In a kind of a way they meant it best
That they should change in and on account
But they must not stare when they manage
Whatever they are occasionally liable to do
It is often easy to pursue them once in a while
And in a way there is no repose
They like it as well as they ever did
But it is very often just by the time
That they are able to separate
In which case in effect they could
Not only be very often present perfectly
In each way which ever they chose.
All of this never matters in authority
But this which they need as they are alike
Or in an especial case they will fulfill
Not only what they have at there instigation
Made for it as a decision in its entirety
Made that they minded as well as blinded
Lengthened for them welcome in repose
But which they open as a chance
But made it be perfectly their allowance
All which they antagonise as once and for all
Kindly have it joined as they mind



It is not with them that they come
Or rather gather for it as not known
They could have pleasure as they change
Or leave it all for it as they can be
Not only left to them as restless
For which is not only left and left alone
They will stop it if they like
Because they call it further mutinously
Coming as it did at one time only
For which they made it rather now
Coming as well as when they come and can
For which they like it always
Or rather best so when they can be alert
Not only needed in nodding
But not only not very nervous
As they will willingly pass when they are restless
Just as they like it called for them
All who have been left in their sense
All should boisterous make it an attachment
For which they will not like what there is
More than enough and they can be thought
Always alike and mind do they come
Or should they care which it would be strange.
Just as they thought away.
It is well known that theyeat again
As much as any way which it can come
Liking it as they will
It is not only not an easy explanation
Once at a time they will
Nearly often after there is a pleasure
In liking it now
Who can be thought perilous in their account.
They have not known that they will be in thought
Just as rich now or not known
Coming through with this as their plan
Always in arises.
Liking it fairly and fairly well
Which meant they do
Mine often comes amiss
Or liking strife awhile
Often as evening is as light
As once for all
Think of how many often
And they like it here.



It is not now that they could answer
Yes and come how often
As often as it is the custom
To which they are accustom
Or whether accustomed like it
In their bought just as they all
Please then
What must they make as any difference
Not that it matters
That they have to do it
Not only for themselves but then as well
Coming for this.
He came early in the morning.
He thought they needed comfort
Which they did
And he gave them assurance
That it would be all as well
As indeed were it
Not to have it needed at any time
Just as alike and like
It did make it a way
Of not only haing more come
She refused to go
Not refused but really said
And do I have to go
Or do I go
Not any more than so
She is here when she is not better
When she is not better she is here
In their and on their account
All may remember three months longer
Or not at all or not in with it
Four leaf clovers make a Sunday
and that is gone



Just when they ask their questions they will always go away
Or by this time with carefulness they must be meant to stay
For which they mind what they will need
Which is where none is left
They may do right for them in time but never with it lost
It is at most what they can mean by not at all for them
Or likeness in excellent ways of feeling that it is
Not only better than they miss for which they ask it more
Nearly what they can like at the best time
For which they need their devotion to be obtained
In liking what they can establish as their influence
All can be sold for which they have more seeds than theirs
All can be as completely added not only by themselves.
For which they do attack not only what they need
They must be always very ready to know.
That they have heard not only all but little.
In their account in their account can they
Why need they be so adequately known as much
For them to think it is in much accord
In no way do they cover that it can matter
That they will clear for them in their plight
Should they sustain outwardly no more than for their own
All like what all have told.
For him and to him to him for me.
It is as much for me that I met which
They can call it a regular following met before.
It will never be their own useless that they call
It is made that they change in once in a while.
While they can think did they all win or ever
Should it be made a pleasant arrangement yet
For them once in a while one two or gather well
For which they could like evening of it all.
Not at all tall not any one is tall
No not any one is tall and very likely
If it is that little less than medium sized is all
Like it or not they win they won they win
It is not only not a misdemeanor
But it is I that put a cloak on him
Acloak is a little coat made grey with black and white
And she likes apes oh very well she does.
She said she knew we were the two who could
Did we who did and were and not a sound
We learned we met we saw we conquered most
After all who makes any oter small or tall
They will wish that they must be seen to come.
After at most she needs be kind to some
Just to like that.
Once every day there is a coming where cows are



Why can pansies be their aid or paths.
He said paths she had said paths
All like to do their besr with half of the time
Tell him what happened then only to go
Be nervous as you add only not only as they angry were
Be kind to half the time that shall say
It is undoubtedly of them for them for every one any one
They thought quietly that Sunday any day she might not come
In half a way of coming that they wish it
Let it be only known as please which they can underrate
They try once to destroy once to destroy as often
Better have it changed to progress now if the room smokes
Not only if it does but happens to happens to have the room smoke all the time
In their way not in their way it can be all arranged
Not now we are waiting
I have read that they wish if land is there
Land is there if they wish land is there
Yes hardly if the wish land is there
It is no thought of enterprise there buying
Might they claim as well as reclaim.
Did she mean that she had nothing.
We say that he and I that we do not cry
Because we have just seen him and called him back
He meant to go away
Once now I will tell all which they tell lightly.
How we were when we met.
All of which nobody not we know
But it is so. they cannot be allied
They can be close and chosen.
Once in a while they wait.
He like it that there is no chance to misunderstand pansies.



I have not heard from them but they ask more
If with all which they merit with as well
If it is not an ounce of which they measure
He has increased in weight by losing two
Namely they name as much.
Often they are obliged as it is by their way
Left more than they can add acknowledge
Come with the person that they do attach
They like neither best by them altogether
For which it is no virtue fortune all
Ours on account theirs with the best of all
Made it be in no sense other than exchange
By which they cause me to think the same
In finally alighting where they may have at one time
Made it best for themselves in their behalf.
Let me think well of a great many
But not express two so.
It is just neither why they like it
Because it is by them in as they like
they do not see for which they refuse names
Articles which they like and once they hope
Hope and hop can be as neatly known
Theirs in delight or rather can they not
Ever if shone guessing in which they have
All can be glory can be can be glory
For not as ladling marguerites out.
It is best to know their share.
Just why they joined for which they knelt
They can call that they were fortunate.
They can be after it is all given away.
They can. Havit it in mine.
And so it is a better chance to come
With which they know to theirs to undo
Getting it better more than once alike
For which fortune favors me.
It is the day when we remember two.
We two remember two two who are thin
Who are fat with glory too with two
With it with which I have thought twenty fair
If I name names if I name names with them,
I have not hesitated to ask a likely block
Of which they are attributed in all security
As not only why but also where they can
Not to be unclouded just as yes to-day
They call peas beans and raspberries strawberries or two
They forget well and change it as a last
That they could like all that they ever get
As many fancies for which they have asked no one.
Might any one be what they liked before
Just can they come to be not only fastened
It should be should be just what they like
This day in unison
All out of cloud. Come hither. Neither
Aimless and with a pointedly rested displeasure
She can be glad to be either in their resigning
That they have this plan I remember.
We welcome in fancy.
Or just need to better that they call
All have been known in name as call
They will call this day one for all
I know it can be shared by Tuesday
Gathered and gathered yes.
All who come will will come or come to be
Come to be coming that is in and see
See elegantly not without enjoin
See there there where there is no share
Shall we be there I wonder now

New Release from Gypsy Daughter Press

Hello!

The first issue of Gypsy Daughter's new quarterly, Brown Bagazine, will be complete in the next few days. It features the work of Tim Armentrout, Megan Burns, M.D'Alessandro, Mark A. Van Fossen, and me (Amy Lynn Hess). It's brilliant. In the future I'll be featuring more brilliant artists, including some songwriters and visual artists. It'll all be brilliant and phenomenal.

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