RainbowKolor

New Mr. Moccasin Video "Black On Black"

2011-12-26T09:57:00.000-08:00

This is the video for Mr. Moccasin's newest song, Black On Black. It features clips from Isle of the Snake People, a 1971 film in the public domain.

Note Cat

2011-09-11T11:16:00.000-07:00

By Jared T. Fischer

This is my email

That is weird

My first email from back

right after college

when I started freelancing

I want to again

So many things to do as a writer

The important thing

is to make some money

from your craft

so you can do a lot

with your life

including your art

Same note

as last note

Weird

What is this

However we

can definitely do

a raffle if

they still want

Why would

anyone write

the same note

twice

What is that

Raffles

Jesus

Giving away stuff

Life in general

For a green

recipe about kale

and other vegetables

Maybe from the time period

of Kat Tsui

with whom

I don't hang anymore

Because she is in California

Oh well

This is probably

a dance-related note

Maybe open house-related stuff

So I see they wanted

to do a raffle

Okay

We went to the conference

They should promote me

and pay me more

Especially since

I wrote the grant

to get them here

Life

Okay now

I remember

how figure skating

made me fluid

and proud

and somewhat hopeful

We did all this

media relations

planning

and we felt great

Yes we did

It is good

to have someone

else there

on the quest

interacting

involving

and

you know

Most of the time

I want to escape

myself in an experience

that is not self

but potential and action

and intercourse

Well just beginning

with the frying pan

this time we

launched

into a green strange

breakfast

Sister distant

divorces the husband

More often than not

they desire you

to pull the heartstrings

Isn't that right

and grand

Isn't that most beautiful

Increasingly sad

and depressed

for no reason

Guilt and no pleasure

Fear on all sides

This thought and that thought

cannot speak

Rightly a spring

bird enters sky

and shows himself

clearly and thoughtfully

I hope for

great fun

and free hands

Marketing

We knew

all about the expectations

of jelly

once

See through

to the vehicle cat spirit

of vast notions

A blank page

with a square around

the name of the publisher

of a few community newspapers

in DC

Buy some

advertising

Maybe

because they ran

a big story on

your company

This cat does not

have to

exist to

rest peacefully

and be

cool

The fan eyeball

blowing toward

me in the nice warm

warehouse

Do I have to

live many years

or just a few

Some of these

scratched notes

tend to be lucid

Others are

the clouded fearful

mind doing

the soft

nonsense

dances

at night

like a world

different

from knowing

these choreographers

At the bridge

for Roman music

Reading through

the Tolstoy book

Note on

annual report

More of the interview

Not sure

if I still care about this

kind of thing

This is the note

cat

Not the police

We used to

interview

younger dancers

by asking them

sterile questions

about education

and career path

A cat can have

the right kind

of ice cream

face

This note

is about the boss's phone

number or

more likely

a note on an important

number to be

relayed to the boss

What is a square note

all about

I wonder

why I made this

When did I make this

I wonder

I could have paid

closer

attention to

geometry

school

Okay

Media relations tasks

for dance company

Showing up inside

the tunnel

for sensual meeting

after work

We always

have meetings

to refocus

our efforts

Great

They took hold

of me so that

I could enjoy

the spring

that is running away

And I think I need

to listen to music

and be cheerful

like falling

from a tree into

the cup of the tree

and arms bloodied

Nice time

in rain and

free feelings

for birds

I recall working

with Margaret

which was frankly

miserable

Oh well

Margaret

is gone from the job

She cannot boss

me around anymore

In fact

I am in her seat

now as

development director

Running a dance

summer camp

and youth employment program

and being excited

for the kids

This cat

sees into the philanthropic heart

beyond smoke

and is not scared

but elated

Where are we

this evening

when we are about to have dinner

with one friend

while thinking about another

Most people

are genuine and good

the great cat

thinks

What would it mean

to infuse

more cultural competency

into our program

delivery

Why

Do you remember

the guy spraying

the bug and rat poison

under our desks

What field of study

is this shy cat

examining

Life skills include

nutrition

job readiness

and financial literacy

I thought about Athena

looking at that note

How strange

How real

Reaching the diverse

community

through artistic

cultural

and linguistic

outreach

and open invitations

Feeling

real love

looking back

upon

our work

With all different

youth far and near

who are the colorful fabric

sewn above

our heads

A hot air balloon

transporting

our basket of

mission

vision

and ideas

Cat says

this is our simple

end of examination

Where are we

I bless you

second to last

page

scrawled lastly

The final

cat

thirsts

not

Watch This

2011-09-04T11:07:00.001-07:00

small*blast>fest 7/31 at Annex 4W

2011-07-29T12:28:00.001-07:00

small*blast>fest
7/31/2011
8pm at annex 4w
music:
eskimeaux (ny): http://eskimeaux.bandcamp.com/
omoo omoo: http://omoo-omoo.bandcamp.com/
mr. moccasin: http://mrmoccasin.bandcamp.com/
bellows (ny): http://bellows.bandcamp.com/
the back pockets (atlanta, ga): http://thebackpockets.bandcamp.com/
anu lee (susannah cutler, ny): http://anulee.tumblr.com/
saint julien (amanda of silent whys): http://myspace.com/saintjulienmusic
free lunch (asheville, nc): http://freelunch.bandcamp.com/album/demo-2011

show curated by jared t. fischer and gabby smith
$5 suggested donation
LET'S ALL HAVE FUN

Two Emotions

2011-06-27T08:44:00.000-07:00

1

men are real
hearts finding spasm ecstasies

sun handled
marionettes acting parts

and little birds
abiding by nest rules

heads up
for mother snip dropped worms

2

women are real
men of southbound moons

imagining pulses
for prop room puppetry

all night
mindful playwrights

and queer wolves
howling forlorn couplets

lost on all
but the lonely lost

Lunchtime Phone Sex

2011-06-11T10:03:00.000-07:00

At the end of May 2011, Virginia Mae Warwick and I teamed up again, after not having done comedy together for a long time, and performed our act Lunchtime Phone Sex at the venerable and well-attended Wham City Comedy Night.

A Tree and Flower in Passing

2011-05-13T13:52:00.001-07:00

I am
having a bad day
having a tree go away
overhead as I walk
and I am
trying desperately to retain
one good thought.
The sun dances with me
but I walk away
not having the skill
of simultaneity.
I want
a bear's aggression
when I feel this puny.
The sun's impression
of unsung depression is
a tree’s absent expression
going away
overhead as I walk.
Unnerved
I wish
to go to bed
to close my eyes
but instead I see
a flower wind on the wind
beneath the passing tree
and I laugh
like a soul set free
on a leaf
blown
in the opposite
direction
of my stumbling feet
that keep going.
My mind
without cover
is vulnerable
to another
dance with the sun.
But even
on a bad day
what is there to hate
about having a tree
go away overhead
if in its passing
you see a flower's chance
and in your laughter
you hear your heart?

draft

2011-04-16T09:25:00.000-07:00

When I was fourteen I rode around on a fox in my dreams
The mother I had decked me out in Victorian clothes
The father I had gave me a bag for my equipment
The fox was born of an explorer from Africa (his mom)
If in the seas of Africa you can remember the fish you can recall all
The fox’s father was a griot full of the wisdom of life
The sun shot up like a high spirit above the family of earth
Have you ever felt how warm a fox’s fur is in the desert?
Between your thighs the fox’s back rocks up
Your mind stops thinking and your body under the sun voyages
Your body under the sun voyages in its quest for somewhere

Now I am fourteen again
Something happened and I can’t remember anything
There is this woman whom I must have married
She is around still talking in the background about the plants
We still live in the royal palace of my parents
My heart says go back inside the fur of your dead beloved fox
Hide from your wife and in your mind run for your life
Run for your life into the hills inside the skeletal remains of the fox
I remember somewhere by a train one morning
My mother held my hand as we watched an old man cry
The sun fried a golden egg on his forehead
His tears were blacked out though still visibly wet
I started crying not in my eyes but in my heart
It was the worst pain
In the seas of Africa you watch the waves swish the anemones
You recall what time’s movement is and you fear the certainties

Like the sun how it always goes down after the day
Like the moon that whitens the fox’s whiskers
Like the responsibilities of dreams that move you forward
You never know where to go or what to do exactly
You are connected with the living and the moving
And the dead and the wished for

It is simple for me to be at that age again
Adventurer and not the hero of my parents’ hopes
Traveling on a living love and not destined
For the future for if I think
Back events and objects arise
To prove the truth and the truth changes like a chameleon
According to environmental factors
The dangers of which the reflexes
Of chameleon skin kick in to combat

Horseback

2011-04-10T09:42:00.000-07:00

HORSEBACK by Jared T. Fischer

CHARACTERS

MINERVA, friend of Cymba; her family owns horses
CYMBA, friend of Minerva; he is from the city
CINCINNATI, one of Minerva’s horses
BLEU, another of Minerva’s horses
SUN, the sun

SCENE I

[It is a humble horse farm behind a wooden fence along Joppa Road on the way to Perry Hall in Baltimore County. The enormous sun, arisen, perches at the height of the sky like a black, red, yellow eyeball gazing down with or without the look of judgment. At least two horses, visible from the road, stand lazily in place behind the fence, wiping away buzzing little flies. In front of the fence, a young couple has recently met up, possibly for horseback riding as this is a farm that offers lessons at a decent rate. They are Minerva whose family owns the farm and Cymba from the city. Leaning on the fence and looking at the horses, they presently reach our ears with their voices.]

MINERVA: Don’t disrespect my horses. Seriously, do better with your life.

CYMBA: I was just saying that their tails look dirty flipping away flies.

MINERVA: I know but that is life. Life is dirty. And I can’t tolerate a grown man saying shit about my horses.

CYMBA: How about I say nothing? [He goes to kiss her. She smacks him very hard—it’s kind of dark and sexual.] Well that was corrupt!

MINERVA: You liked it. Can’t you still taste my fingers? You know I brushed dirty little Cincinnati. You know you like how she tastes.

CYMBA: Fuck you. I like how you taste if you would give me more.

MINERVA: You’ve had a taste. I’m not inclined to grant permission. Try to take something. Take it or leave it.

CYMBA: You want me to advance on it and get smacked and get brushed and beaten down so you can laugh and hold it back from me?

MINERVA: No other way to get at it. That’s the way I am. This life of mine—the love part of it at least—ain’t no pity party award system. I am not giving shit away unless the right kind of man or woman fights me. And I mean really fights me. I already hate life so much: the boring crying of simple shits; fucking grown babies ad infinitum.

CYMBA: So that’s why you get on with horses. Please tell me you ain’t fucking them.

MINERVA: Why does it all have to be about sex? I am talking about love. Like when I made the boat with you in the shed and we worked all day and argued. That was love. That was better than any Salt Lake City intercourse or bedroom eyes whatever. People need to do a better job of weaving sex into the main fabric—like a grandmother working on something real: a doily to display at Christmas.

CYMBA: Bringing grandma in!

MINERVA: As a grandmother is a head of power and wisdom, she should rightly be in all things and all considerations. Would you ever not bring wisdom and strength to a consideration of life?

[He does not say anything. He thinks he tastes a weird horse taste on his tongue like salty hair.]

MINERVA: And don't you think it's fucked up that as a society we are so into young girls and young boys and we forget all about the physical life of our elders? Shit, a man who could get aroused by a grandmother would stand up better in my book. That might steam it up for me. But all this obsession with young girls and boys is toxic and boring.

CYMBA: You're right there. You know, they're building up stars so young these days that even late twenty-somethings like us are considered crusty unusable old folks.

MINERVA: It makes me seriously want to riot. But I don't want blood on my hands. I discovered that the real way to riot is just to live your own life so passionately and intensely and by your own set of rules. Like, come here. Touch Cincinnati on her hind quarter and feel how warm she gets. That is blood. I want blood. I want your blood if you will love me.

CYMBA: Can't you talk normal? I know what you mean and it sounds pretty. But it sounds so funny even just between us with no one else here.

MINERVA: Funny but not boring, right?

CYMBA: It could be considered boring too.

MINERVA: Here, then touch me. Right on my neck. Right here. [She squeezes his hand violently and pulls his arm and makes his hand lightly choke her neck.]

CYMBA: Stop that choking shit.

MINERVA: We won't ever really go far into it. It is just that strange best feeling of the start of violence in love. Never to be completed.

CYMBA: Those who complete it have to be out there. But I don't want that sick shit around me.

MINERVA: It's sicker to be afraid. What laws are you afraid of? There is the start of violence in nature and nature loves the earth. There is the start of violence in both the fly that bites the horse and the horse that shoos off the fly.

CYMBA: You started the violence between us for sure.

[She is quiet, unhearing and involved in examining the horse Cincinnati. Or maybe her mind has recorded the offered weakness of his response. It is not the real ferocity of his spirit. His tight little response just barely covers his interior command like the hide of a horse covering up real blood, muscle and bone.]

MINERVA: Be yourself around me.

CYMBA: I’m not?

MINERVA: When we worked on the boat you were.

CYMBA: Our dreams were locked up together at that moment. I liked that.

MINERVA: We wanted the same thing that life had not given, and we were soon tackling each other to complete the boat the right way for that dream we shared—sailing out and away. Out of the bay and picking up again and hitting the ocean waves.

CYMBA: More than the boat itself we built from scratch that day. You corrected me at every step. You were the expert and I was trying my hardest to learn from you. But I also tried to be important and knowledgeable because I thought you would not like me.

MINERVA: It was whatever. We developed our fighting play like two children in a sandbox.

CYMBA: Oooo. A sandbox. Wish I could be in a sandbox with you. Then I would fight for real. We could not hurt each other and there would be water and wet sand and worms that I could place in your hair like ribbons.

MINERVA: Okay. So I’m going to teach you to ride a horse.

CYMBA: Not me. I’m sorry but I am scared shitless of horseback plus I get motion sickness.

MINERVA: I know when you don’t get motion sickness. I actually know when you give motion sickness and it feels good. Trust that.

CYMBA: You’re a freak. Most other people said I sucked at that.

MINERVA: They must have been corpses that you went into by mistake.

CYMBA: Right. Glad you think so.

MINERVA: But who cares about mistakes when the horses teach you how to fall?

CYMBA: They do? Look at you leaping logically from the bed to bareback. Pure genius.

MINERVA: The physical appropriateness of the associative leap is obvious. A person thinks in the language of her activities.

CYMBA: Okay. . . . Then let me ask how you learned to fall on your feet and be always upright and ready to ride again. Weren’t you ever bashed or crushed by an unruly horse?

MINERVA: I was twice. A third time I ran for my life. The third horse was psycho.

CYMBA: Is he still around?

MINERVA: Fuck no. I moved away from him and started fresh with Cincinnati. I like a ride that I can at least trust if not anticipate.

[He takes a moment to examine Cincinnati. He lifts his arm tentatively to pet her, and he is only a bit scared. Cincinnati is not the psycho horse. She obviously adores Cincinnati and takes great pride in brushing and showing her off. What the heck—learning to ride from her on a horse like Cincinnati would not be half bad no matter how dirty her tail looks with its patronizing flies. And motion sickness be damned, he is down for an adventure with her again.]

MINERVA: Here, slip through this fence and let’s get you started on Cincinnati.

END OF SCENE I

SCENE II

[The two friends are riding. You see the slow horse heads hobble up like small waves of a stuttering sea. The sun splits green and white, no longer red in its first seconds of dropping. The sky washes itself with emerald foam. The horses start slowly under the human weight. Once their occupation feels more natural—when they know the pulls and prods—they pick up the pace. They reach a rhythm half originated in the riders and half their own. We find nature thus on nature, but what souls (if souls are natural) ever join in a relationship?]

CYMBA: Cincinnati, dipping left like how she keeps going, scares me. If she collapses and I go under, I’ll probably puke on my broken bones.

MINERVA: My Cin don’t dip. Let her do her thing. Mind yourself, don’t screw with her or be needlessly afraid on her and you’ll be okay.

CYMBA: You sure that sun isn’t putting her to sleep? It’s blinding me. All in front of me, the glare burns as green and pink as a watermelon.

MINERVA: We can eat watermelon later if you don’t complain too much and persist as a turnoff.

CYMBA: I know! I have to take everything stoically. I have to ride proudly, be militaristic, instinctual and sensual to get on a girl’s good side, your good side. To win you!

MINERVA: I am not a girl. And no one ever wins me. That’s cemented. As I've said, no one ever gets more than he or she takes from me, which is not always what I give. And try to take something I have no desire to give. Brought down and suppressed, you’ll never rethink your transgression. You won’t have the capacity. You’ll be a living regret, and I may never have even touched you.

CYMBA: So spooky and dramatic, overconfident of your desirability and your repulsiveness. But that’s not why I don’t try. I am not a man. Don't know what I am, but I don’t wish to try to take what I want—which is so often unattainable, inconceivable—from another person or from a horse. Realistically, I derive all that I need from inside me, though my insides are painful and full of paranoia. No joyride for me but the internal, personal, self-inflicted ecstasies and agonies. It’s silly what this world expects out of me, and what nature expects is far worse.

MINERVA: Then run nature into the ground. Stomp on your snakes and ride a horse. Everything is just as natural as unnatural. Be a fool on a horse in the sundown farm of love.

CYMBA: That is so good. Ha! That is great. The sundown farm of—

MINERVA: What kind of love did you make before you knew me?

CYMBA: I think I must have been a mirror in a hallway, caught by a thoughtless world of suns that reached through windows to find me with their fingers. I hung myself against a wall to reflect the light and heat enlarged by my disorder. But washing white and yellow under the influence of incident rays, I cast off all of them. In my anxiety of incoming warmth, I threw away the suns at different angles against the opposite walls. Never alone, I made myself lonely.

4/17 at Windup: Climate Peace - A Benefit for Japan

2011-04-01T13:37:00.000-07:00

Many Baltimore musicians along with the Windup Space and local artist Anna Louise Jiongco, who designed the poster, have joined together to stage a benefit concert to provide meaningful relief to Japan. We invite you to be part of this positive and loving transmission of support for all those suffering as a result of the recent disasters.

featuring music by:

bean
we used to be family
the great tap root
mr. moccasin
UXOR
teenage souls
new age music for cats

all proceeds go to japan relief efforts
*red cross relief in japan:
http://www.jrc.or.jp/english/index.html
http://www.redcross.org/portal/site/en/menuitem.1a019a978f421296e81ec89e43181aa0/?vgnextoid=ed4aa50d2ccfe210VgnVCM10000089f0870aRCRD

*international medical corps relief in japan:
http://www.internationalmedicalcorps.org/Page.aspx?pid=1970

Suggested donation at door: $10 (+/- a few $) - THANKS

questions & suggestions: jaredmoccasin@gmail.com

Against Souls

2010-12-23T06:12:00.000-08:00

Trying to revive your soul
You cannot call the cops
And shut down our actions
Because we are primroses growing
In no sun
Just like there are no gods
Other than the wind being around
No good gods come knocking
Asking for toilet paper
To clean a drunken friend’s split head
When the white of rice
Is a sort of snowfall
For our moving out and moving down the street
To the cat farms
When at night
Just like a homemade stained glass window
Through which a priest
Can’t see to our absolution
There is the thought that we are invisible
And though we have no connections
You cannot divide the bread
Because you hate the flour
Sleeping
You have to be as simple as we are

Depression

2010-12-14T10:43:00.001-08:00

No
I really think
You are fortunate
Trust me
You don’t have much to lament
I
In my day
Was extremely tired
And extremely depressed
Dragging myself
Down
That way
Sleeplessly
I in fact
Opened my coffin
And dressed myself suitably for death
I want you to have a better chance
To live
Okay
But I feel tired
And more than tired
I feel fragmented
It kills one to have so many living parts
Separately
Living parts
Like my eyes
What they take in
Never corresponds
With the blood that my heart pumps finitely
And at rest in quiet
My brain cannot do meditation
I may speak all soul
But I
Am some
Body

More Rad Music

2010-11-27T07:34:00.000-08:00

Two Warm Kittens (a Video)

2010-11-10T09:42:00.000-08:00

Sunlight
Into blinds
Video
Dust and apartment room
Thinking two
Warm kittens
Aloft
And no baffled mice
Moving around in our palms
A couple
Not parted
Your hair
So close to my eyes
When a woman shows her forehead
Or under bangs
Under your bangs
Love
Under a green and gold old tree
The mother voice's The Lion King song
To sons all newborn
The two
Of us still
Hold up life
Together
Then separate
Up in the air
Until we lose most of everything
To this video sun

Full Mr. Moccasin Discography Available for Download

2010-11-09T22:14:00.000-08:00

Mr. Moccasin has made available for download its full discography to date: two studio albums, Deer Eyes Bunny Eyes (Moc Rok, 2007) and You Will Take a Trip to the Sea (Shampoo Team, 2010); and a neat cover of an Ari & The Shanks song "Ah Well", originally featured on Splice Today's A Splice Original Compilation: Baltimore Does Baltimore, Part 1.

Large Riders Marathon

2010-11-07T06:14:00.000-08:00

Back in the day (about 9 or 10 years ago), my brother Matty, sister Deirdre, and I (sometimes with input and character drawings from our sister April and our mom) used to make a really tripped out and weird Flash animation series called Large Riders. We would submit each episode to New Grounds; some of the funnier ones remain archived there to this day, bathed in viewer comments that are arguably more insane than the animations themselves: see examples here.

Today my dad took a moment to edit some of the animations into a neat video for YouTube. Here it is:

Happy Halloween! Today Marks the Official Release of Mr. Moccasin's Second Album

2010-10-31T14:10:00.000-07:00

Happy Halloween! Today seems like as good a day as ever for the official release of Mr. Moccasin's second album You Will Take a Trip to the Sea. No more waiting. Get at it!!

released 31 October 2010
all songs by mr. moccasin
produced by rob girardi
mastered by steven berson

performed by hanna badalova; jared fischer; christiana usenza; christina howland; chris martinelli; sine jensen; rob girardi

thing is falling on us when

2010-10-21T21:25:00.000-07:00

thing is falling on us when
tried to escape got tired like the girl said
there was something bright disappearing
she went back into the stars right I remember that
            what did she do
I don’t know
do you know what she did

we say these things about slavery every night
what is happening to us
we do all the work and the eyes on the ones looking at us
then we fall asleep and forget
when was the last time
            you felt like loving her
            it is hard to feel things but you know I do want to feel something
why can’t you
            well for one thing they are probably doing too much to us
spraying us maybe day and night invisibly
            I worked for them last night
            when we both felt like dying yes that was it
            but she jumped back to the stars right
            and she didn’t have to work
            they saw what we saw in her always
            I think one of the ones eyeballing us made love
she would not have liked it though
I wish I could feel something from her now
don’t worry the moon is up and clouds are out
aren’t you sleepy
yes but that is what I don’t want
a life
even one like this
is not sleep

Blast Off Country Style

2010-10-10T22:11:00.000-07:00

I love to get down with Blast Off Country Style.

Yeah. I like being with them.

2010-10-05T11:20:00.001-07:00

Yeah. I like being with them. They are great. I love them.
The thing is you move down the street
And seeing the same people over and over and over
Do you need to stop always? Or can you keep going? Because you know what (what)
You're not going to break any new ground with them. In fact, it will be a lot of the same things. Just so . . . hey you know what would be really cool? (What?) If we did not have eyes! Then if we were walking we would not have to interact at all. But then I guess you could hear someone's presence. So what about the girl with fluffy black hair and the really white skin and how she was soft and her face was sad and beautiful last night when she was talking to the smelly punk dude? Who cares . . . you could not do anything—why do you get the love feeling first? THAT IS NOT LOVE! To observe and be in the presence of a girl is not love; to get nervous as fuck or not do anything and let the punk dude prattle off life-erasing banalities to her (because you cannot speak to her and pull her away from him) is NOT LOVE. I don't care anymore. She is moving in a trajectory, and I of course do not need to be any part of her journey. I think I can just keep moving down the lane on my own. What I see is what I get: visuals, visuals; sometimes a feeling of closeness. But you felt nothing real from her. You did not even get one second in which to know her. Well, stop that part. Intuition and instincts did pick up some things but what they picked up was not at all clear. You grow up moving down the lane. Stop moving down the lane. Stop growing up. Act and think not of all that stops you. Don't act. Let her decide your part. If you have a part. Or attempt a part and see if she reacts. Whatever. This is boring. She is not boring. You can get the sense that she has been discovering things in life and in art maybe. Yeah. She probably commits her time to some kind of art. That's it. We both do that. What else can we do? How she lives physically is probably so beautiful and amazing. What and how she comprehends and muses even more so. Who ever in any day or any night receives such good things from life as these connections with a person to whom one is attracted without cause or reason? I can tell you, you can have most everything else.

Nerves

2010-08-08T19:48:00.000-07:00

Orange: You are too eager

Cat Face: No I am fine I am fine things are fine

Orange: You are very eager the girl will not want you

Cat Face: Who cares I am not looking for a girl I have this idea about men and women I feel erotic

Orange: See you are eager

Cat Face: No this has been my whole life waiting I got waiting patiently down to a science

Orange: Ha

Cat Face: The science of absorption and depression I have reduced my void of existence down to a science of absorption and depression

Orange: See I always think about you as crazy but yet you hold down a job and you’re not usually depressed you usually have your shit locked down

Cat Face: I know I’m pretty fun to be around right

Orange: Yeah

Cat Face: And I give off like I am throwing the biggest fucking party around and that attracts flies to me right

Orange: Yeah but not flies you get girls but then you don’t do anything they think something is wrong with them they turn to what might be easier more accessible a guy who can talk a little make things happen

Cat Face: Like I said I really don’t care about girls being just girls

Orange: Huh

Cat Face: I am seeing a real big picture in which I am doing things with men and women my capacity for love is this stretching strange thing like when Silly Putty picks up a great deal of print from a newspaper

Orange: So are you saying you like and want men too

Cat Face: Why not why not

Orange: Can people really choose like that

Cat Face: I do I don’t know why I am not afraid of anything or anyone I feel really secure about that I know what my intentions are and I know how I do things what I am doing is not devoid of love what I am doing is what they used to do I do it the same way

Orange: I used to know about Bloomsbury

Cat Face: See that’s right people didn’t use to get bent out of shape with definition and distinction of the sexual kind that was a time of wild fun the excitement of possibilities occurring in people before them the Greeks did it

Orange: I like that but I got to stick to girls I think I would be crazy doing other things than with girls

Cat Face: Well that’s you and no one wants you to be any different but what I like about you is that you let me be me I hope you will let me be me you have so far

Orange: We are friends besides you know I have no control over you no one has control over anyone not even any law any law can be circumnavigated I think

Cat Face: I know

Orange: What’s wrong

Cat Face: I have a storm in my mind

Orange: Then brainstorm ha

Cat Face: It’s nothing about ideas and creation it is a death storm so many clouds so many rainy nights the sound of thunder the sight of lightning really crazy hurtful moments of life all memorable and a desire to keep living like a person who wants more and more pain because it is coming it is certainly coming I know the more I think the more death is like this insane drop off a peaceful mountainside the birds see me splatter on the rocks you know I loved life and that makes me suicidal loving life is the easiest way to become a dead man

Orange: You know I have to take all threats seriously why are you like this plus it is very sentimental

Cat Face: Okay take me home maybe I can stop being out and stop thinking maybe I can sleep yeah I want to sleep take me home

Orange: Okay okay

Cat Face is on a bed his mind is racing he feels awkward he likes reading the Hemingway book he also knows that he can do decent things in life but though he loves the scenery though he is still attached to life he wants it all to change or he wants it all to go away he wants to go away he does not want to be here or alive he can’t keep doing the same things over and over without the scenery royally destroying his little nerves he should not be this fragile yet he cannot help it this basic stretch of life is too much it is given to him and he cannot bail on it he has to live but it is a process of destruction his love principle is fine but he is not fine he meets people in the way that your shins meet the waves at the beach like ebb and flow you know you have not only to think about everything you have to feel everything and it is all so salty and in the sun there are headaches and the sight of constant beauty a woman lying on a beach towel her body does it all she is happy and reading and she is getting a very very nice tan and the strong lifeguard how did he get so chiseled and his glasses are what they are the attraction is toward him too

Cat Face: Orange o Orange you were nice today I am feeling something about you I am feeling always I am always feeling you know I didn’t want to melt down I can’t think about that let it go Orange will not do shit he will not judge you that’s what friends are they do not judge you when you say crazy shit about death I am melting down because I have to it is so natural to melt down like this and I know that my chemicals are not balanced at all but I hate medicine I hate psychiatry if I saw a doctor then I would really shoot myself in the head when I got out I am someone who needs to feel this entire life until it is pulled away from me and I won’t even know any better I am only responsible to the life force for after all my thoughts about gods and things I am only convinced that there is a life force at least here on this planet and evidently in other parts of the universe maybe several different life forces like our concepts of gods but also there may be non-life forces that are above or below why must anything serve or act morally in a sense of righteousness pointing thanks and love toward a god or nature but whatever this is all we know and yet I am struck by a death storm because I feel love for other people but unfortunately I have grown bored of all that I am capable of experiencing in my life I cannot sleep

Orange is hanging with Velvet and Simple and Cat Face they might get food they are on the street it is another night hopefully Cat Face will not do anything crazy to ruin anything

Simple: You know the other night I actually saw a guy get knocked out three kids stormed in on him around the harbor and they first punched him got him down and started kicking his head then most of the body was paralyzed but the head whose eyes were shut was twitching and the arms up around the head were twitching they left him like that some other people and I called the cops

Velvet: I hate violence I can’t stand violence

Orange: Yeah once I saw a guy get stomped outside of a bar in DC and everyone was screaming the poor guy’s friend came outside and felt helpless he was crying and screaming asking who knocked his friend out of course the guy had left

Velvet: Shit again can’t we talk about something lighter we are on the street and now I am getting all paranoid and fearful make it light guys plus what should we eat

Simple: Thai ooooooo Thai can we get Thai

Cat Face: Yes actually there is a great family type of place just a block down let’s get drunken noodles and then get drunk

Orange: Ha stupid

Simple: Cat you have really blue eyes I have never looked at them just thought I would tell you that

Cat Face: Telling me as in you like them or are they a distraction a weird thing

Simple: They are not a weird thing because I like oracles and I like flowers and they are flowers and oracles

Velvet: She likes you

Simple: I do like you

Cat Face: You come right out right out I get weird about that I like to stand back I get nervous I think it is okay though because I am into you

Simple: You know what

Cat Face: What

Velvet: What

Orange: What the fuck

Simple: Cat I love you

Cat Face: You do

Simple: Yeah o yeah yes I do but I don’t know how you do it how you go so long without having sex

Velvet and Orange bust out laughing they can’t believe it

Cat Face: I wait it out I wait for sex sex comes to me it is like that because I can’t do anything I don’t want to do anything my nerves are really destroyed

Simple: It’s okay I wanted to come after you

Cat Face: You have not got me yet I don’t do things right away we got to see if we will even do anything I would like to be alone with you first and see what you do and how you do it

Velvet: Plus you’re out with us you guys aren’t breaking free

Orange: Yeah I don’t want this whole night to be about you all fucking or getting anxious about fucking make that the end of your night now is now we got to eat

Cat Face: Here’s the Thai place come on

Cat Face is alone with her there really is not anything it is all completely dark back at his place where he usually does art late at night he cannot even stand doing art anymore he is frozen in his mind and his fingers are frozen and he touches Simple on the neck she moves in to kiss him and he thinks what does this feel like what is this why is this important I guess there is the need for procreation and restoring one’s fractured soul but I am really near death and what good would it do me to restore my soul before I ship out of this place this is terribly vacuous Simple is smart enough and she is pretty enough and she has parts of her life all mapped out and she has read The Ethical Slut I think she said that when we were getting Thai and yet I cannot trouble myself to deal with her in this dark and physical intimate way like it is a turning point in our joint meaning making but I just keep feeling the reaction of my nerves like I not only have to respond to her in real time but there is some part of my brain that is wondering about her criticisms of this as it happens and a part of my brain that produces really silly and sometimes dark as death criticisms of this but cannot I just let this all move forward and take place look after a while you start to feel something you get horny if you think about this and her at the right time in the right way look you can feel something I know you can feel something touch her again and move down with it feel her between her legs as you kiss her feel her there and think about how open her life is and like you said she is smart I know she is smart and she could be a good companion through life even if for just a few days of this life if you all part who cares you got to the point where you can still be friends with a person after you break up the important thing is to maintain continuity with love and lovers and what about men what about men why have you not tried a man recently why not you think about it and it makes sense to you and is part of what you feel and so why not well not right now not now there really are not any men locally that present or do anything for you they are all kind of low on the totem pole and then Simple moves up over him and he is under her she is riding with rhythm her face is really pretty what he can see of it and it all makes sense and it takes his thoughts not away but moves them to another place that he cannot reach it is like he is drunk or destroyed and he tries to reach for his thoughts and he cannot reach them he has a lot of respect for her he likes watching her feeling something related to him and he tries to feel it also he can feel her and it is not bad in fact it is really good and calming and it makes sense and yet he is destroyed in his nerves he knows that this is not the end for him there is all this dangerous living and inevitably of course there will be sad lonely moments again they are just waiting to come and frazzle his core but he has to live and so he moves toward her from underneath her and he kisses her mouth that is wet and he feels really good about her and what he is able to give her and share with her and then it is weird how he starts thinking about Orange right when he is giving himself to her and roughing her up what is Orange up to and he loses his way and slows down what is Orange doing how is he is he alone Orange is extremely relaxing to be around and he slows down with Simple and he kisses her again her hair feels good and with things moving slowly that feels good too because he is really sensible and hard and he is able to jab himself up and kiss her mouth and he holds her side and then she closes hard on him and starts breathing she gets it she has it and it makes him then free up and have his moment not simultaneous to her moment other times he had had a simultaneous feeling with a girl but not this time but that is okay who the fuck cares about all those damned near Olympic distinctions are they all sex doctors or lovers Romeo and Juliet obviously did not have very many simultaneous anything and it feels good but it is also nothing for both of them what the fuck is this how is this important and then you have to rest side by side and you can whisper and try to analyze how it was but she is not doing that she is so pretty and she just rests on her back and looks up at the ceiling that is kind of like the stars he hates trying to think what she might be thinking because real ideas come to his mind like he could read her mind fuck it the whole making love thing is so draining and nervous what is that is it anything more than just one moment yes fools it feels good it does but who the fuck cares he is drained and he feels depressed you could not possibly be depressed to sleep with a woman just hold her again but do not become dependent on her you don’t want to have her be a crutch each time you get sick in your mind and you need a release I want you to think about her life and how she is separate from you and yet you can enjoy this and you can also enjoy travel but you enjoy travel and fighting and discussing your mind with Orange and yet you do not need to fuck Orange what is all of this it feels really goofy and stupid

Simple: This was not a bad idea

Cat Face: It wasn’t you’re right and this is kind of the best part just resting here with you how else and when else do people get to rest like this together it feels like we came out of a storm or at least I came out of my storm and here are the stars and here you are

Simple: Ha you’re really dumb

Cat Face: Thinking about things is not idiotic

Simple: But listen to how clouded your shit is I recommend that you let everything sink in before you ever comment on anything all that extemporaneous babbling depletes what you could really be feeling

Cat Face: How often do you experience things like this

Simple: Don’t worry about it who is keeping score a life could be zapped in a second without notice think about that boy who got stabbed

Cat Face: You’re right but you don’t have the internal visitors that I suffer the internal visitors want answers

Simple: Fuck them fuck whatever it is that wants to kill you even if it is a part of you if there is a part of you that wants you dead you have to smash that part against the most living things like the sun and like us here kiss me kiss me

Cat Face thinks about her she is the sun she really is the sun and he does not need to die right away

Prom

2010-08-01T09:58:00.000-07:00

Following me
you come from the sky
absolutely crazy
a nervous gait
not stumbling
in your tattered cloud
gown the prom
messed up.
Your hair wiry
with all the stars
freed from
the constellation
about your head,
you would caution
me of mistakes
and hand me wisdom
like a bouquet
of cultivated flowers,
no roadside buy
given by some girl
to some other guy.
You look about to cry
then exclaim,
"There’s no memory
of music,
no sound the same
as a human heart."
Then silence grips
your soft lips
not a breath comes after
nor can I find laughter
for your constellated grief
forever streaming
in a null night;
near dead myself
bones weighing down
feet on the ground
I can't respond
but take your hand;
with nothing planned
nor to understand,
our feelings dance
in the palms of our hands.

Gathering New Inspirations

2010-07-05T12:39:00.000-07:00

Le merle noir

2010-06-20T06:58:00.000-07:00

Le merle noir

By Jared T. Fischer

What are these things that are coming to mind? Meditation, I am so lonely when I think about the black tower, of which I am every second more aware. Inside the black tower sits an old woman in black dress. Or sometimes, she gets up—I see her—and she goes to the window that looks out on black birds passing tunefully, slowly by the purple clouds in front of the old, very old sun. I think the sun is her son if she could ever have one. But it is not fun for her. Not exactly! She is inside a man—in a little painful but just so happy black tower inside a man. And she need never come outside because she is already her whole life outside (by imaginative leaps sometimes abreast, sometimes against the young man’s wanderings) with the sun in her eyes and slicking her black feathery hair. She doesn’t need to die but when the young man dies, when he is old like how she is now. I have seen her late at night when I try to sleep and my eyelids blind my sleepy eyes. I have watched her, pen to paper, writing black words in a black notepad with black pages. I could never read what she writes. Though, she writes of the heart and mind’s disobedience, night and day, so high up in the head of the young man. And she need never change that young man (not by drugs, not by an operation or change of clothes), because each day it is she—it is always she—who observes the sun and those masters of music, those slow soaring black birds. She wrote once that she hated all men (a part of love was in that declaration), and then she wrote (halfway before she stopped) that she hates all women (a part of lust was apparent in that feeling). But she changes so much in her tower. And I give her all the time in the world. The sun is not as constant as we make it out to be. Its flux of moods both close and distant wears the woman down the way a rocky relationship with a prodigal son might do. I often walk away from her plot of earth and erected prison (I don’t want to call it that because that’s not right, not exactly) when I speak to a woman I want, using the young man’s lips (hers from the beginning). But, so clear it is to me, the old woman is a lover of women (a matter of fact; it is also romantic). Late in her development, she ruled finally that men do nothing for her in that way. She even tried to return to those most temporal inklings of passion for men but nothing came forward. It was silly but also in her stomach she suffered a wearisome cringing. Men, especially, and sometimes animals had done so much of violence for her and not for her; against her; inside her; to kill her right where she (for whatever short while) was and is so powerfully, so fully alive, inside this young man who also cringes against all battles. She is a lover of women, and as I think her the greater voice of my being, let her recite unabashedly to my loves and me what she has written and countless times revised. She comes to her mind.

Inspiring Finds: Rad Videos

2010-06-19T20:39:00.000-07:00

Two Automatic Poems

2010-06-19T20:26:00.000-07:00

String

This mindless string
Above soapy water

I need to follow you
I have no life
All imagination dies young
As I race
Violent dogs against time’s sunlit rabbit

I have an impulse deathly
Loving you is strange

The yellow and surgical flowers grow up
We pass whole lives
In basket weaving

There is no more matter
No exercise of quivering language
The age
Lives to die like stars die
In the sky
Unseen all day

The string I hold
For you
Above soap scum water
I need
I cannot give it

Feeling stars
Not thinking far
Into the mirror's dove future

Whose guts are these

Owls

I live far from you
Hours are owls dying in trees
Hours are owls
And heartbreak is a snowstorm

I am very quiet and fragile
You are a mountain whose lava
Killed my love
When I was young

I want to see you tonight
But I am a crazy stone captive
My memory is dead like one owl
The police found on a rock by the sea

These stones falling into the sea
You made from me when I lived
Love
What love was never is
Love cried
We have to die

Your hair was long lava
The owls flew over
I turned to see you
I saw the police
I saw
How one can love the dead
Before the sea takes one away in
Its long wet hair

Activity II

2010-06-19T20:21:00.001-07:00

To her, the city is all activity.
She does not want to pay that kind of attention to detail.
She looks inside herself
Because it is way more involved, and she
Does not really love the woman whom she sees regularly.
She, in truth, loves what she feels inside herself,
What is sprung from her.
Maybe that girl on the outside is a nice starting point for the feeling,
But, in truth, she is not needed.
And she knows that and keeps walking
Past the activity to the tea place.
She speaks with a guitar and her voice
Plucks nylon strings. She records
What she wants to put forward to people.

Meet Shampoo Team

2010-06-15T04:42:00.000-07:00

Shampoo Team is not a record label but a team dedicated to releasing unusual and/or obscure music. Shampoo Team's first release is a free digital download album "Poral Bails" by Baltimore lo-fi artists Fridge A. The release first appeared on Beatbots Webzine back in March along with a short story by Jared T. Fischer. Download the album now and enjoy: http://www.vagittarius.com/Poral_Bails.zip. Stay alert for some more digital and physical releases, including a vinyl pressing of Mr. Moccasin's "You Will Take a Trip to the Sea," the band's previously unreleased second album.

Getting word salad out so I can do the real thing eventually

2010-06-02T08:36:00.000-07:00

I write best when I am happy and secure. If I get depressed or have too many concerns or feel claustrophobic and confused, chances are I will not be able to write in my lucid, sense-making style. However, often in these cases I still have a present desire to write. And so I write in an avoiding yet very open and free nonsensical style. And it is warming and leads me down the lane to arriving at a real lucid expression. I let ridiculous fragments of my days and thoughts pan out on paper. This has been happening a lot lately. I have been meditating on many things. I have been spending time with really meaningful women and men. And I get romantic. I also try to solve the world's problems through really small microcosms of spiritual and natural anarchy. I really don't know what I am talking about and that is what is so fun about thinking, with and without support from books and the news and talk radio and conversations. Confusion is an element in which things get done. I did think about this one essential question, however: What is the responsibility of the organism? Also, I got this secondhand Confucian idea: The family is the ideal government. I am letting that stuff work on me as I think. I want the best for all people. I really love people and care about all people. Though often I am uncertain about what I can do and what should just happen under the sun. Here are some of my latest confused and highly personal avoidance poems:

SW

We real young go out into city
Under nice enough sun
Girl is got the red sad mandolin hair
She bangs cute as ever
I think about her how she is write nice song for boy
Who no show it is all magic the violent peaceful little sun
She shine through blue as ever
So apparently the family the ideal government
Nice thought as pink wire becomes
Parts of the sun high as only earth ever
Sees
Nature of the sun what the responsibility of the organism
Where nature change people’s book
Leave them out they gone
If in crooked mind we read member
Hope we don’t write it down the same
Again hope we do instead to nature what she said of her red bang says
Like frozen red fruit on queer trees
As responsible parties is
I know confusion salutes and divide the book
Like liking girl her hair is sad red mandolin
Queer to me she
Me love her always is when she sang sun
For him before him was know not came
It just happen it evaporate and evacuate
Nice to know challenge is real

Where they do the wire thing every days
Abusing their usage no new sun
Like the ship incident
And the Preakness blood and bleach
No one knows but the sun right

Thought

After long thought
I have no desire to check anyone’s motions through anywhere
None of any of this belongs to me
I will die within maybe like 60 or 70 years
I am not important
I have no claims on anything
I like watching people travel anyway
I like watching people live their lives
Even when they are ridiculously, poisonously drunk in the sun
With no children
The children walk by them laughing
And no one likes smelling the alcoholic piss that smells like the sun
I say hello or I do not say hello
I watch the children who are not in school move down the street
What is this
We see each other
I don’t care
And I do care
I have no problems
Everything is happy anarchy
The sky is poisonous
There is cancer all over
There is also most remarkable joys of new life
I don’t care about anything
But if I saw you really suffering I would stop and with the others I would help you up
Off the street
In the sun
The sun protects so much of life
The sun destroy us and gives us the same cancer as the chemicals
It is remarkable walking and dying and reading stupid shit that is too full of enlightenment
To share
With the people
They want you to know different languages
Which is a very good thing
It is all about peace and shit knowing different languages

The Sun

I am writing on the topic of spiritualism
You can feel however you want to feel
You can feel good about people and blessings
And about suffering you have some thoughts ready

But there comes a time when you will have to act
Someone will call to you
Someone will want a demonstration of your heart
Someone will suffer intensely
He will demand you
The problem is that you may not have any resources to solve his problem

You may in fact have the resources
But you may be incredibly afraid
You may be dealing with your own problems
You thought about yourself walking
You also thought abstractly about solving world problems
Through beneficent anarchy
Of microcosms
Lots of people separately
Developing their own morals
By helping others on a small scale
Nothing big
Little actions like this one you cannot complete
You’re not prepared
He thinks it is kind of insulting that you get out coins
You might not have time
Listen to him
He wants you to listen first
He wants you to see that this is about him taking real steps
To get his life back

You might have all the time in the world
And you just won’t act to help this person
You would act
You don’t have the solution at hand
The solution he says is buying his ID
So he can work
The government needs the ID first apparently
He says the charitable human services shit ain’t shit

You have the solution but all of life
With your very busy day prescribes that you don’t move forward with helping this man
In the larger way
Still very small
You were still thinking too big walking
And too deeply and it was foolish
He needs you

This person must have some kind of scam
Out to get people like you
But this may all be real
This person may want to do the right things in life
Here is his paperwork
He has bipolar
He just said to you a thing about wanting to kill himself

As he went up the escalator in front of you
You said life also gives good things
Not just daily suffering
This is not a scam
He needs you desperately
Not your change
He said that when people hold out the coins
It is like eating a steak
All the good parts
And you offer him the bone
Just buy my ID
So I can work for 12 dollars an hour
You don’t think that would work wonders for me
Community Connects is some bullshit
So is Catholic Charities
I kept thinking the government too is messed up
All this need for paperwork to get a man out of his depression
And working beyond his chemical imbalance
I would shred all paperwork
I would shred myself
I don’t need to be here in body and spirit
Suffering this man’s problems
When all things are tacky and sports are being played for big money
And lavish dinners are being held everywhere
People don’t even act right
I act like nothing and then I write this wasted garbage
He cursed the sun-shining air
When I gave up on him
Said I really need to start carrying cash
To help out in cases like this
I did not want to walk with him to the ATM
He really needs you today and tonight and for all of life
This person needs you so much
I don’t want to live with this kind of thing
I don’t want to live anymore
I love this man intensely

And I am a complete fool
A helpless fool
A helpless fool who could help him if I was not a dead coward
I join him in wanting to die
I want to live forever

Because the sun is so powerful and unforgiving
Afterlife or the nothingness has to be like this too

Ground

The ground around the building was horrible. No one could walk right. All this construction work that seemed really sloppy blocked all walkways. We were screwed going to lunch. We waited an extra amount of time at odd places without traffic lights. Traffic cops told us where and when to go. It was screwy. We did not like the feeling. It felt like the earth was being torn apart for no reason. But obviously the workers did meaningful things related to infrastructure below the surface of the streets. You could not fault them at all. This was their grand way of getting paid. And you felt kind of happy for them. The way they enjoyed the sun was pleasant. When you were up in your office however you felt serious vibrations against the large glass windows. Like a mechanical heartbeat drilled itself into your sunken mind. You grew tired. This was terrible. It was necessary for the work to occur in the sun. But you were so worn out and confused you almost wanted to kill yourself. Were there pills you could take to die somewhere peacefully in a mysterious corner? But you wanted also to keep having adventures. On the weekends you went out with girls back in Baltimore who lit up everything for you. You felt your real heart for two days each week. You got on beds with them and looked into their eyes. These women were remarkable; they were lifesavers making everything okay and endurable. There was a mechanical, detestable heartbeat behind the sun-destroyed construction of strangers. Your nerves were absolute garbage. But you got all positive and happy at different times.

Untitled

2010-05-17T08:41:00.001-07:00

Because I don’t move toward you
I offer myself
You have a world
I could not live there
I could not live anywhere
So it’s okay
I still cannot escape thinking about you
Rather distantly
Like I don’t care anymore
You have a world
That you keep up
He is in it, she is in it
I am mist
That you like to feel
On your face, in your hair
I am humor
What makes you laugh
A long time before we quit again
We come back to each other at night
When no one is there
We come back and we don’t care
Why we are into
What we are doing
We do it, it is ineluctable

Unhinged Flower

2010-05-11T07:41:00.001-07:00

I don’t know yet. Where to begin this stupid flower?
I know that I no longer want to be seen in the grave.
There’s a vehicle, a truck, to cart all the primroses
To the public garden by the monument
Of an old drunk warlord

Atop a horse and righteous in his summery, sick bronze.
If I think about that soldier
It is in a dress he never wore
Or if he wore it in the middle of war
It was in his room only.
He takes it from his closet. It’s a floral dress
And he primps before a frozen mirror,
Gunshots frozen in the night outside.

This was related to Baltimore dealing with the British.
I now have a floral infestation of the heart.

My mind is vacated
Like a condemned piece of property,
And someone let wildflowers
Grow in the fenced lot they are converting
Into unaffordable studios.

How long will this condition last? When will I erase
This part of me? Others may erode it, may pick bluebells
From my insane inanity to adorn themselves.

When they move on
I have the quiet task of regurgitating quiet yellow and pink petals.
Replacing stolen beauty,
Some record of city streets but also of earth itself.

There’s a need to replace all that is used.
It is natural, I guess. But I have not figured out
The new thing that I want

Either to plant
Or to see in sunlight,
To uproot, hold, give to you.
Or I’ll move on, too, and drop a flower
On the pavement under
The queer statue’s horse’s hooves.

The Activity

2010-04-13T08:51:00.001-07:00

There’s an activity for her.
She knows what to do with the fish.
Pulling them out
she is up on the bridge
avoiding thoughts of him.
It’s not working.
He is clouding.
He oppresses her.
It’s not simple to say
but he does it
though she could destroy him
she also knows.
She hovers over the fish
she yanked out violently.
Her bucket holds three
that float on each other
with nowhere to swim. This
last one will go in there too.

She Is the Paint

2010-04-07T13:21:00.000-07:00

I am blocked by panic and detailed sight. I truly wish the events of a day would blur. Maybe then memory would not have its place as the leader of this circus. Just staying awake is an investment. You might not want it in Baltimore. The transitioning is askew. I watch the artists visit the boxes with their pink noisy back stories. And the coats: May I hang your coat for you? He composes his cigarette. He’s the one with every malfunction I wish I could really forget . . . . His steps! Here he comes, the man whose brain cannot pick up on sarcasm, addressing now the spit remarks of the composer, something anti-. . . . Then another hated (in a hat) guy off the street lifts his muzzle to allow explosions of Father Time. The whiskey is a mile marker of we are international. This is a dream exchange, I think. Who are the local celebrities? Always chatting, exceptional they are at it; how they have gotten so far! Who analyzed the composition of the foreign composer? Was it air only? A vehicle’s noise. Time is no money. But, “My life has been easy: traveling around to different countries, playing this music and making money.” A girlfriend in Japan! Who is the friend, the companion, the real word? “Something horrible will happen. Go now.” I look at the woman I want, who is a guardian angel with cigarettes. She came with the man without internal controls (not the son of Father Time), animated by his mixed poisons. None of these days are parties. He makes the renaissance art up in the high loft. But his mind is visited nightly by love, mad mad love: a real beast. Though the composer fumes about

who he hates
who he thinks is the cause of
so many ills and pollutions.

We are ready to turn on him.
What he is saying disgusts us.
But is it farcical?

about how things are

not right; too many of the people surrounding us are “fake”—my optimism, my love of eyes and hair (the Me) could not hear the nerve in the complaint structure of his voice (o friend, o friend, o friend). . . . The hard, dusty music in the other room handled the barbaric construction work of our time. The attendants, the silly lovable attendants, so many—the music abridged their true meaning, made a poem of their complexity, their filth, their day-to-day. . . . And I thought of the visionary (she exactly is).

I used to think I hated her (she exactly is).
She at one point accused me of . . .

now we are:

an unclear vision. You’re right, you’re right—I don’t have the energy to understand what is so important. In a car, before coming to her. The B-52’s. I thought about her (how she was) on my birthday, in the side yard (not really a backyard, with him and me) at 4 a.m. (or around that time). She was ready to turn all into celebration (with fires this time). Her mind—in a yard. Never before have I seen a young man so obedient—to her dreams, her representations, control—not subservient at all. What it was adding up to, the fire, the paints on the moist mud floor (she exactly is). Saying “her,” I feel as if . . . . Am I obedient like him? Upon her request, he carried out my ideas and hers (in his pants). I found myself loving him through her mind which was loving him. Latest hours, impossible hours, cutting apart a sister’s book into barnyard scene—a tornado, a barn, a horse, chicks blown and pigs snorting dusk, red air, o red air—with gesso splatterings (and upon looking at it, I think I might just have seen: where, if we needed to change course, we could avoid thinking and most enjoy ourselves, separate but joined, at the birth of quiet, quiet night). All three of us felt and acted like babies. It was grand because I could not handle the feelings that associated themselves with this slim victory: her bringing the night landscapes of her limited attention to me, for an instant, though not looking at me much at all, ordering him so peacefully to carry out what she saw necessary for a proper celebration not only of my life but of the impossibility of ever repeating exactly this (she exactly is), with the paints scattered across the darkened, soft earth where she had placed the wood for a seat. She was squatting flanked by us—she is the paint. Not the war paint. Some kind Sanity, kind to me of all people.

Fridge A

2010-03-29T08:40:00.000-07:00

My band Fridge A invites you to download for free our latest record Poral Bails, a concept album that recounts some strange epic struggle between the misunderstood Medusa, queen of snakes and acid rain, and a courageous tribe of polar bears somewhere in the Antarctic.

The record seems as if played by diverse, unconnected bands, including ensembles comprised of bears and tigers, and even Medusa's queer noise punk outfit. Poral Bails was recorded and produced by my brother Matthew Fischer, 2008-2009, and mastered by Ari Schenck, 2010.

Performers on this record include Matthew Fischer, Chuck Green, Joy Davis, Christina Howland, Rebecca Fischer, Kenny Johnston, Justin Schley and me.

Also, here's an introductory short story I wrote to be experienced along with the record.

Being Scared Does Not Help the Mind at All

2010-03-15T11:37:00.000-07:00

It doesn't help me to be scared. However, right now, I am scared. It is not a serious kind of scared. The fears are silly. The fears are no cause for alarm. It is a very boring scared nature. But it does stop me dead in my tracks. The fear has nostalgia all inside of it. The fear is warmth encroaching on a very cold, very small heart of coal. The fear is temporal. The fear is poisonously boring. It is attached to all people moving about in my little shady city. It is part of very happy and celebratory and positive people moving about their lives. Being scared when holding a mandolin; being scared when eating; when using the computer; when taking a bath; when about to sleep, and you have to go through the motions and thoughts of prayer just to keep everyone alive (feeling that all religions, all wish possibilities and belief structures can wrap nicely into a succinctness of common thoughts, words); being scared of love (the "beauty walks" are simply going for long walks down a very long street in the middle of the city and seeing attractive women and men at the end of the workday, the start of relaxation, or other kinds of business). But these things don't account for the depth of the fright. The fear starts at the top of a snowy mountain and the avalanche is soundless and sudden. I want to stop here, afraid but safe, with my false security (an eventual period). I don't want the words to dig through my fallen mounds of ice and snow. I never want to know why I am constantly scared out of my mind.

Music Inspiring Me to Outlive the Snow

2010-02-10T09:19:00.000-08:00

Upcoming Mr. Moccasin Shows & Link to New Songs

2010-01-30T22:37:00.000-08:00

Here's a nice link to some new Mr. Moccasin songs that you can listen to and download free. Thanks to Mat & Emily of Mobtown Studios for the really fun microshow experience: Mr. Moccasin Microshow at Mobtown Studios.

Next up, here are some flyers that I made for Mr. Moccasin's upcoming shows.

A New Translation of "The Mirabeau Bridge" by Apollinaire

2010-01-30T17:56:00.000-08:00

The Mirabeau Bridge

By Apollinaire
Tranlated by Jared T. Fischer

The Seine streams with our love
Under the Mirabeau bridge
Must it remind me
How joy always followed pain

Come night sound each hour
Days depart I remain

Face to face hold hands with me
While under the bridge
We raise the water waves
Goodbye to our lingering gaze

Come night sound each hour
Days depart I remain

Love goes somewhere like a river
Love picks up and leaves
With the violence of hope
And life’s slow speed

Come night sound each hour
Days depart I remain

The days and weeks pass
Neither the past
Nor love resurfaces
Under the bridge runs the river

Come night sound each hour
Days depart I remain

Baltidelphia

2010-01-11T20:19:00.000-08:00

Narrative Quilt: Sheet Music

This is the work I made for the Baltimore half of the two-city collaborative art show Baltidelphia. The quilt resulted from my collaborative correspondence with Philadelphia-based artist Tyler Kline.

Below, the spiky, feathery purple sculpture is what was born of his emailing and researching me. When he discovered that I was a musician, he wrote excitedly to me; he envisioned himself creating some noisemaking sculpture. At the Philly portion of the show, attendees could listen through headphones to Mr. Moccasin songs on a tape playing in the belly of Kline's beast.

Great Music Helping Me Get Over Being Snowed In!

2009-12-19T21:52:00.000-08:00

Hear Mr. Moccasin Covering Ari Schenck! Part of Splice Today's Baltimore Does Baltimore

2009-12-10T20:46:00.000-08:00

Another Video of North Pole Delight!

2009-12-07T21:33:00.000-08:00

Ponder

2009-12-07T20:44:00.001-08:00

by Jared T. Fischer

The story went that an elderly woman named Vivian Hiver one day washed up on the bank of the pond in horrific fashion. Landers, the fifteen-year-old griot to whom the boys looked for a story when they smoked in the park, told of the drenched and bloated corpse in a one-piece bathing suit, her face a slain Medusa.

Apparently, back in the day, in her early twenties Vivian had competed in the Summer Olympics in synchronized swimming. During televised performances, the commentators would always praise the curvaceous agility of her pale legs as they snipped like scissors, barely disturbing the calm of the teal water. But what was ten times more intriguing, more lovable, was how perfectly she harmonized with her duet partner Carol Bayer on land and in the sun-heated ripples of an Olympic size pool. More than a few fans intuited that the young women were lovers, something more than a professional relationship.

Accepting silver metals for the United States, they held moist, amphibious hands and leaned in for kisses that made them such an adorable pair. No one could have been aware of the bickering, the jealous, bitter fights that played out between them in hotel rooms in the big cities hosting the swimming meets.

“Why do they always lavish so much fucking praise on your legs?”

“They don’t really. They like both of us. Didn’t you hear CBS saying just the other day that they couldn’t wait to see our nimble feet soar like gulls above a crystal sea?” Vivian countered to build up Carol.

“You know damn well which of us CBS favors!”

“Carol, stop it. I won’t be able to perform with you like this.”

“I should have continued on with Nancy, who didn’t make me feel like a whale.”

“Carol, Nancy could not swim to save her ass, and you know it.”

Their first turned out to be their last Olympics together. By the next U.S. National Championships, a frenzied discord had rendered the women completely laughable—an endless charade of dolphin-like one-upmanship.

Despite every sentence Vivian tried to formulate to rekindle the synergy that had made them stars, Carol pushed away, blew up, shredded Hiver’s words and threw them back in her chlorine-stiffened hair.

Nancy Graves was the name that kept bouncing on the diving board of Carol’s beautiful tongue. A miniature Nancy treaded water in her emerald eyes, and that more than anything pained Vivian to the point where she could not cry.

Michael Landers hypothesized that the brutal breakup of the fame-bound duet always weighed on Hiver’s heart with oppressive force, even fifty or so years after Carol swam off surprisingly not with Nancy but a young unknown named Mariana Black-Blake. While Vivian abandoned all competition after that embarrassing mess at the National Championships, she still cherished water as her natural element, a Pisces through and through. She moved to Loch Raven in Baltimore County and took up residence in a neighborhood of historic log cabins with access to a considerable, placid pond and the larger reservoir.

The pines of the woods in the sun and in the winter the smoke of the chimneys made for the best aromatherapy in all the world.

By thirty, Vivian had eased into a new path in life. She excelled as a private swimming instructor, focusing specifically on blind young girls and girls with disabilities. Fulfillment came from floating their trusting, exuberant little torsos in the chilled pond, guiding frenetic arms, legs and stubs, teaching the blind to splash and smile. Hiver established such good relationships with the families of these girls that she barely had to stock her own kitchen cabinets. Monday dinners were with the Adams clan in their cozy cabin on the hill. Mr. and Mrs. Jones always equipped little Amelia with fabulous pecan and rhubarb pies to give her instructor; however, the desserts often soaked up a little too much pond water by the time they made it into Hiver’s hands.

Landers did not know anything else. Fuck it. It was all mostly archived gossip. Perversions of pond, a pitiful deluge of accusations and speculation. He smoked with his buddies, and they didn't ask many questions. The boys walked the park, smoked again and went their separate ways. Landers thought about the dumbness of talk, and he shit on the idea of a book. One of the boys, Matty, had coughed out, "You should write a book, yo." But Landers wasn't ready to tell stories, especially when he didn't know much of the middle or what really led to the gruesome end. He didn't trust his imagination. He was paranoid about it. The woman died slimy wet, a legendary loss not fully mourned in this town. The mystery of Hiver was abysmal, though he had jazzed up what he knew. Shit to shoot in the park with his buddies.

Music Currently Inspiring Me

2009-11-28T09:27:00.000-08:00

North Pole Diet Poetry Reading: Timmy Reed

2009-11-22T20:10:00.000-08:00

Timmy Reed, hands down, delivered one of the best performances at the North Pole Diet Poetry Reading, because he seemed to have tapped into a remarkable, inventive technique of opening the poem up beyond what is simply written on the page. Rediscovering his visionary "Rainbow Water Salad," inserting new colors and trains of thought, he achieved some true moments of hilarity and made the whole thing very conversational, repetitious, but never dull. I was inspired by what he accomplished onstage with his friend Bella standing at his side like his absurd muse.

The Positive Spirit

2009-11-22T10:22:00.000-08:00

I am not going to doom and gloom and talk garbage about other artists and their projects to bolster myself up. I lack those feelings really. I was taught early on by one of my main inspirations to sort of bob my head in the joyous uncovering of the world’s colors and laughter and its blood and its fortunes and upsets. So goodbye to the boy who frightened me out of my mind! Because I am so happy, feeling so many details of the happiness that is constant like a heartbeat, I also carry around the attached void, the vacuum sealed depression (a locket of eternal times, whose meditative, unmedicated facts refract their wild light all along the mirrored clown town of these days in my human skull's jelly brain). The therapist cited chronic depression. Whatever. . . . I never really feel it in the way that you feel a cut. And it does not stop me from stacking up the ridiculous amount of activity that is an adventurous flower towering over the family of this world and these words, the simple suddenness that sustains the “anti-suicide.” The Ohio boy’s clown explosion and internet of protective hate (infected dog bites) are lava streams of the killer weaknesses cluster-fucked all around my volcanic happiness. Boy, o, boy, remember this uncelebrated corpse that you shunned while he lived in the sun of fun.

North Pole Diet Poetry Reading: Video Part I

2009-11-22T08:34:00.000-08:00

Sat. 11/14/09 @ Sonar: Times New Viking, The Axemen, Mr. Moccasin and Slow Jerks

2009-10-23T08:27:00.000-07:00

Mr. Moccasin, who recently contributed a rad cover song to A Splice Original Compilation: Baltimore Does Baltimore, will be playing Sonar on Saturday 11/14 with Times New Viking, The Axemen (of New Zealand), and Slow Jerks. 8 p.m., all ages. Find out what new songs everybody's cooking! Get tickets at www.sonarbaltimore.com. Thanks, yo.

Circus of the Glass Harmonica

2009-10-21T07:27:00.000-07:00

Somehow, this whole niche musical exploration is not frivolous. The development of the shrill language of the glass harmonica and the talents of its performers are breathtaking. I do prefer to see the glasses sprawled out on top of a precarious table and attended like the scale of a xylophone or bars of a marimba. The resultant laughter, suspense, suspicion and awe rise high above those of watching someone merely daub wet, scientific fingers along the simplified spinning bowls of Franklin's armonica.

North Pole Diet Poetry Reading 11/19/09 @ Zodiac, Baltimore, MD

2009-10-21T07:20:00.001-07:00

North Pole Diet Poetry Reading:
The Legend of Watermelon, Pumpkin and Fruit Cup
Thursday, November 19th, 10 p.m. at the Zodiac
FREE ! ! !

This eccentric poetry reading is the autumnal fruit of Jared T. Fischer's yearlong research in support of the North Pole Diet, an imaginary diet that promotes cooking with friends and the creation of art.

Mr. Fischer solicited poems from diverse local and regional writers, requiring that they adhere to the following guidelines: 1) Cook a meal with friends or alone; 2) document the experience with photos; 3) list the ingredients in italics; and 4) launch into a poem inspired by the experience.

Come scope out the results. View the photos. Hear the impassioned words. Get the free limited edition poetry pamphlet (while supplies last). Enjoy musical performances by our special guest house band! ! !

New poems by:
Chuck Green
Brian Schmukler
Anna Louise Jiongco
Jared T. Fischer
Jennifer H. Fortin
Hanna Badalova
Stephen Reichert
Becky Hunter
Ashlie Kauffman
Timmy Reed

Pumpkin pie and other dainty refreshments supplied by the North Pole Diet Food Committee! ! ! !

SPECIAL NOTE: zodiac is a 21+ venue.

REbirth/DEcay

2009-09-12T22:29:00.001-07:00

Some of the work I made during art nights with friends ended up being featured in an art show REbirth/DEcay curated by Anna Louise Jiongco at the Hexagon.

Lunchtime Phone Sex

2009-09-12T00:24:00.000-07:00

This video was filmed by Chuck Green and edited by Virginia Mae Warwick, my comedy partner in Lunchtime Phone Sex. Watch us attempt to marry drum 'n' bass with our raunchy routine. The performance occurred at the Hexagon.

We're Back! Lunchtime Phone Sex (Drum 'n' Bass) Show 9/9/9 @ Hexagon

2009-09-02T08:34:00.000-07:00

Lunchtime Phone Sex, the comedic duo of Jared T. Fischer and Virginia Mae Warwick, gets down to the ripe discussion of lunch and love one more time--but now with drums and bass? Weird but true. Don't miss this on the awkward horn ball night of 9/9/9, 8:00 p.m. at the Hexagon. Guests: The New Heaven and the New Earth; Anna B; Emit Es!! - Support the sport!

North Pole Diet: The Science of Summer Soup

2009-07-27T13:42:00.000-07:00

North Pole Diet with Mr. Moccasin - Wild Friendship of Bees

2009-07-05T08:26:00.000-07:00

Green beans, red pepper, white onion, fake hot dogs, brown rice, salt and pepper, asparagus, avocado, olive oil, butter, cashews, arugula and two kinds of salad dressing.

Wild friendship of bees
roving a meadow not alone
the old tree home to hive
of common interest honeycombs
and a queen's questions
but at the sun's suggestion
the bees gun for flowers
riding bareback on a breeze
like bandits who make fun
outrunning the tired law
of life for a few hours
peers of the riotous sun

North Pole Diet - Green Beans, a Documentary by Chuck Green

2009-07-03T23:22:00.000-07:00

This is the North Pole Diet!

The Dog Car, a Poem

2009-07-02T10:39:00.000-07:00

The quiet launch
you retire
the voiceless spitting of a dog
on the corner of our minds
all the good fur
so your hand
it was right all along
the miniature dog
all the hair along our minds
the spitting vegetables
the maid and circumstance
of us leaving each other alone
only because this wave of the beast
of time happened to you first
called you away to solve her fall
which would absolve you
prove false the friend
jealous of your free time
I want you
but it is not a thought for now
your hand which held mine
in the dog car
has released bodies from war
and I revisit your thoughts
like a church wedding
at which--outside of the party--
we are friends
all else unclear

By Virtue of North Pole

2009-06-25T09:58:00.000-07:00

Vegetarian meatballs, two cans of pizza sauce, onion, garlic, olive oil, butter, a baguette, fresh shredded mozzarella and a wholesome salad with two kinds of blue cheese dressing.

“Why would you know?” his old friend says.

Okay, it’s just. But it really is kind of a rush, he thinks. Off to see her (his new friend), to abandon, to fantasy.

But they (the past in the present) had plans.

They had plans smashed to atoms.

Both now reeling with the drunken microscope of thought inspection. They have it down to a science.

The clear and tearful séances of time. And are they kidding themselves, alluding to being worn out? Separate.

But pile the mash of fake meat into the slit of the sub.

The music they've been writing together for years draws them back to a promising, once beloved confusion.

He wants to rush from here to new feelings, but he doesn’t want to rush songs still possibly to be born of the established connection.

Like brutal wrestling without a mat, the bloody embrace seems to last forever. And how to let go? Submit?

What seabirds warble? What wet of the sea drips from their seashell beaks as they clip apart crabs?

They are outside of their past, though there is the sofa and there is the cat, a familiar pattern, a home in which they have alarmed each other many times before.

But truly, what she, his old friend, wrote and reads to him about the guy (a new man for her, now gone, dismissed by her), about sheep (cows?), just so clear and real to see in his mind, it startles him.

A whole movement of writing opens up around him. She's making it. Then he asks about the other guy, and she says, “I’m done with that.”

He has to get his own recent movements into the lens (something more about the woman, his new friend, who knows the guy, that fact hurting her, a disloyalty in him).

Little amoeba of feelings spray painted
on her wooden fence

a defense not hiding jealousy; there's jealousy
but she is not really jealous
he is not really jealous

He has to ask. “What does it mean if she wrote this and then I wrote back this?”

“It’s fine. But she knows you’re obsessed.”

He's not. Not yet. He doesn’t know what to think. He stays on watching TV with her. He doesn't go, not even when he sees her crying, talking to her mom on the phone.

He keeps composed. Tries to feel anything, feels nothing. Away from her ear, she holds her mother’s Sisyphus stories (getting a job, losing it, getting another, her drunken boyfriend screwing it all up again).

She's living, not dead, holding up a bouquet of irises.

Her eyebrows arch like rainbows as she holds the phone farther away.

Her mom stormily talks of her problems like a tiny ant trapped in a phone.

Though she must have some idea of the rainclouds in her daughter's eyes.

Her cat appears dizzy.

Or so he thinks. He wants to go.

But he stays with her because he starts to know that their storm is over. Over again.

Not even a final wrestling match. That too is something past.

Now is more like easing up, because it has to happen.

Like the sign of a rainbow. Or some peace not to be savored.

06/22/09: DC to Baltimore

2009-06-23T12:53:00.000-07:00

White mushrooms, garlic, olive oil, red, yellow and orange peppers, couscous, quinoa, tofu, hoison sauce and corn salad.

It is never a good feeling
having survived
when others
torn apart
dead or looking into sky
lie immobile
at the bottom
of a metal tunnel
after an earthquake.

I couldn’t wait
to come home
to this meal
home to you
to be with you
to eat
and to see her off.

I was impatient
for all of this
not knowing
nine lives
were sacrificed
to an accident

that would murder
all our questions
or lack of them
with sickening luck.

But still
I'm grateful
that much I feel.

Art Morning and Eskimeaux Show Recap

2009-06-07T09:55:00.000-07:00

Art morning? What the fuck! I got real antsy this morning, found an old pencil turkey sketch and took it downstairs to revisit it with Kat's generously donated box of art supplies. Lucy, my favorite cat, was sitting on the table so I had to weave her into the mix. Hope you like the overall thing. I enjoyed making it.

So as mentioned earlier, my band Mr. Moccasin had the wonderful opportunity to do a show with Eskimeaux (Gabby Smith, featured here in this photo) and Exactly (a neat, raw DC band that kind of sounds like early Flaming Lips but rendered by two magical dudes fondling crusty keyboards and a hammering drummer). This concert went down at the Hexagon on Wednesday, June 3rd. I first met Gabby by booking Br'er, a weird folk ensemble in which she played several instruments, at the Golden West Cafe. It was then great to discover how rad her own songs are: Eskimeaux draws icy sweet pop from tinsel-toned ukulele and guitar, and her sad, soft vocals lose you in a swell of storied dreams and spirals. What a moving performance she gave; it totally made all the planning and hyping worth it. And below is a picture of Mr. Moccasin from that show.

New North Polism - Little Help from a Friend

2009-06-02T07:51:00.000-07:00

Jasmine rice, black salt, cannenelli beans, kale, organic onion, amino acids, balsamic vinaigrette, garlic, mushroom, thyme, etc.

Eat me because the long dead heart of the night cries for the farm boy

I am divisible; you and your friend prepared me

You, in not knowing me, in experimenting with parts, love to know me best

when to her, in her hands, under her touch, I appear to dry all tears

Don't Miss 6/3 Eskimeaux in Baltimore!!

2009-05-31T16:12:00.000-07:00

www.myspace.com/eskimeaux - Yo, I am psyched that Eskimeaux (of New York) will be playing sweet Baltimore this Wednesday, June 3rd with Mr. Moccasin and Exactly. Anna B and I set this joint up. Don't miss!

Untitled Poem

2009-05-28T13:37:00.000-07:00

Nowhere is a hand foreseeable
We are a magnet for our worth

We just do cave and paint voices
Well lagging she explained casual

You know a voice cave and paint
Her hair her smoke a room is noises

Faint cleaning the astrological connect
Cry for a smothering mention of man

The dismal succulents wade good
The humor is stucco thousand leggers

Of candlelight whispering orange
Makeup and fingers a wire friendship

What do you think
about

Lunchtime Phone Sex

2009-05-27T11:19:00.000-07:00

Here is just one photo of the house show, a fun birthday party for a young guy, that our comedy duo Lunchtime Phone Sex was invited to perform during our tour of Chicago. It was one of the most enjoyable and memorable shows during the tour.

North Pole Diet

2009-05-27T07:28:00.000-07:00

One night at my house, I cooked pierogies with fried onions, broccoli and carrots.

Pictured here is a meal that Christiana and I recently tag-teamed at her house: savory chicken teriyaki with brown rice, red peppers and red kale.

So some of you know that I have been on this whole North Pole Diet kick. Basically, this translates to me not eating restaurant food and not drinking alcohol, coffee or tea. It started as a neat little prank of adherence to an imaginary manifesto that I created. See my earlier post: 1st Draft of the North Pole Manifesto. However, after I started uncovering the actual benefits of this marked lifestyle adjustment (e.g., weight loss, financial savings, greater control over the content and portions of meals, sharpened cooking skills, opportunities for friendship and community building, etc.), I got it in my head that this diet is the perfect subject for a book or books, or a TV show.

Still I am in the research stages.

Art Night

2009-05-27T06:42:00.000-07:00

At a recent art night, we were doing abstracts in mixed media. This swine flu meditation is what I produced on watercolor paper. I was pretty pleased with what I created as well as what my friend achieved in his abstraction. Art night is one of the coolest underground currents in Baltimore at the moment. Get involved. You'll love it.

Lunchtime Phone Sex

2009-05-09T22:30:00.000-07:00

O god! Virginia and I are going on tour as Lunchtime Phone Sex, our little comedy duo. It's for real!

Who Wants to Be a Baltimore Superstar?

2009-04-25T08:42:00.000-07:00

During my joyous after-work exercise in DC (walking/jogging from Columbia Heights to Union Station) a few days ago, I received an unidentified call on my cell. It was Chuck Green, who had recently collaborated with my brother Matty and I on our new Fridge A album and live show. With a sense of urgency, he invited me to act in a short film he was shooting in Baltimore. I have loved acting ever since my brother put me in a couple of his films, so I was almost hyper about not missing this opportunity. I explained to Chuck that I would get back to Baltimore as quickly as possible. I picked up my pace and ran most of the way to the train station. See below the pretty interesting film that Mr. Green has entered in a contest and posted on YouTube.

The Imaginary Clay Battles of Bear and Anteater Dolphin

2009-04-13T06:55:00.000-07:00

BY JARED T. FISCHER

"You won't find any ratty, catty ants to suck up here in my cave," said Bear with eyeless anger and testosterone.

"Then allow me to meet your grizzly growl of impertinence with one of your very own neon glass stalactites," sneezed and wheezed hyper Anteater Dolphin, all vengeful and like a samurai. The crystal cave echoed the baritone moan of a black bear pinned to the cold floor. The cave bats imagined there would be nothing more to see than bear blood and tragedy. Thirstily, they licked their mini fangs.

But before those bats could sing for supper, the supine bear became aware of a ready stalagmite at arm’s length behind his head. So he punched and freed it and clutched it for a sword, curling up and twisting loose the bloody dagger from his hairy rib. O he kicked his foe in the trunk-like snout, and without even a shout he stood and swung and sliced the mixed up creature’s head from off his sealskin shoulders. The explosive blood bloomed like a flower of red mud. Now the pink fat cat bats had more to drink. But the bear’s rage did not subside, there was no relief. Instead he quickly died from all the precious blood released through his enormous wound. And the bats got sick from all they watched, all they drank and all they ate. The moral of this gruesome tale is that fighting is a waste.

Communal Music in March and April: Fridge A and Mr. Moccasin

2009-04-11T08:19:00.000-07:00

Fridge A is the otherworldly, demented lo-fi music that my brother Matty and I have worked on since we were young teens. We used to go into our basement in Hamilton and press record on a primitive boombox, and then accidental, totally free songs would come out of us, and we would develop all sorts of characters, voices and mangled but sacred sounds.

The best part was that we could do this just fine as two brothers, but we also made some magic moments by luring friends and weirdos into our lair to participate in those zany creations. Roughly 400 songs came out of this effort. Now in 2009, you see us at work again, slightly older but still alive and open to the strangeness of our instincts and imaginations.

Presently, we've made an epic concept album about polar bears plagued by Medusa's snakes and acid rain. Matty, who has recorded it all, has named the work Poral Bails, a sort of retarded mispronunciation of polar bears.

We are again happy to have the support and engagement of good friends on the album and in our live shows: Joy Davis, Chuck Green, Chris Martinelli, Kenny Johnston, Chrissy Howland and Justin Schley.

Below are videos from our show with Pink Reason.

Since August 2003, Mr. Moccasin has been the primary songwriting vehicle of bilingual singer Hanna Badalova (a native of Baku, Azerbaijan) and me. Over the years, we have enlisted several friends to enhance the textures of our music and redefine the band. We are so grateful to everyone who has played in our band, and we remain in complete adoration of our current extended family of band mates: Chrissy, Christiana, Sine, Chris, Greg, Stephen, and Dave. Below are videos from Mr. Moccasin's recent performance at the Zodiac, a wonderful and super fun venue managed by Adam of Wham City. Special thanks to my dad (FYOM) for these clips as well as the Fridge A videos.

1st Draft of the North Pole Manifesto

2009-03-31T08:24:00.000-07:00

The economy being what it is today, and tragic ice of winter causing us to keep close and do little, in inactivity our thoughts are stirred to those warm improvements we can make to our destined lives. . . .

That is why, as eccentrics, as artists, we now bring this North Pole Manifesto before your very eyes, that we may sign with our souls and endure the cold, outlive the crippling cold—as polar bears once did and as polar bears do again today.

Below outlined are the principles by which we intend to live peacefully, healthily and happily forever or until the icebergs melt from under our feet and we perish in a dark sea:

1. No restaurant food
2. No alcohol
3. No coffee or tea
4. Drink water and eat fruit for the juice
5. Eat only what you need when you need it
6. Eat not for enjoyment but for health
7. Eat with friends
8. Share with friends
9. Create art
10. Promote the arts
11. Love the people you love however you love them
12. Don't look back

Signed faithfully by:

Polar Bear 1
Polar Bear 2
Polar Bear 3
Santa Claus
An Elf
Mrs. Claus
A Deer

Fridge A Reunion

2009-03-22T13:30:00.001-07:00

We're back! This time, Fridge A is Matty, Chuck Green, Joy Davis, Chris Martinelli and me. We've made a new record and are doing a reunion show with Pink Reason and others at the Talking Head.

A Rough Draft of Emotions and Tattered Detail

2009-03-19T13:41:00.000-07:00

Can I say I am sorry it happened to you, but what is this light you are forcing me to share with you now? It was your chair, your father. You were thrown in the oily river. I was not—love was my lesson as a child. In my anger now is my health. You are avoidable, already avoided and dismissed. You cling to a reference of strength. It is a repetition of the oil industry. Dust is not my scheme. So to swindle me, you are cheating that very little light between us. You are walking over a corpse. To say your ragdoll means anything to me is an incomprehensibly foreign phrase, a death so meager the dogs are not eating it. I am more so the acid rain in a stretch of city light.

I am blocked by panic and detailed sight. I truly wish the events of a day would blur. Maybe then memory would not have its place as the leader of this circus. Just staying awake is an investment (you might not want it) in Baltimore. The transitioning is askew. I watch the artists visit the boxes with their pink noisy back stories. And the coats: May I hang your coat for you? He composes his cigarette now. And the one—with every malfunction, I wish I could really forget . . . the steps—whose brain cannot pick up on sarcasm, addressing now the spit-remarks of the composer, something anti-Semitic (a Polish accent) . . . “bullshit.”

Then another hated (in a hat) guy off the street bridles the explosions of Father Time. The whiskey is a marker for we are international—this is a dream exchange, I think. Who are the local celebrities? Always chatting: exceptional they are at it; how they have gotten so far. Who analyzed the composition of the foreign one? Was it air only? A vehicle’s noise. Time is no money. But, “My life has been easy traveling around to different countries, playing this music and making money.” A girlfriend in Japan. Who is the friend, the companion, the instigator, the glasses, the real word? “Something horrible will happen. Go now.” They asked o, o, my visionary one to leave, and she took her time.

The Fire and the Paint

2009-03-13T08:49:00.000-07:00

These barnyard birthday scenes are the products of our last art night.

Wild Planet

2009-03-03T19:35:00.000-08:00

Damn, kids, these cats are one of the main reasons why I continue to feel so happy and zany in 2009. O, this and my academic return to Edith Sitwell's oeuvre.

Our Musical Hearts

2009-03-02T11:34:00.000-08:00

So what is a second life, and what is exodus?
Who from the first life is calling you back?
Your family and friends: they have reappeared
In music mostly—in music as free as a story
Being written by a tribe: “We are polar bears!”
And Medusa, who is Medusa? I sort of know,
But who is she in this context of blurred travel
From the icebergs to Hawaii and to Lithuanian
Hall where coke is a key? This is youth.
I think it is youth. When I was 16, my name
Was Potential, and when I was 18, the circus
Beckoned: I knew the tricks of fire and of guitar
But I was never a star, just a peripheral idea
A dusty baby bat scared of love. That was dangerous,
Black magic . . . . Wasn’t it key to avoid it?
Now I think of you. Doing everything that makes me
Happy, I still think of you. Who are you? Is it
Possible to know? Must I know? Can you be drawn
To someone you don’t know? Polar bears.
Thinking like polar bears, all the icicle isolation
And the frigid salmon streams. What is warm blood?
Who is warm-blooded and not clueless? Am I a fool
To imagine you again? Everything else is moving.
Only a baby polar bear is forgotten, lost at sea
On the narrowest patch of melting ice, crying
Like distortion of a bowed saw . . . to our musical hearts!

Sinta

2009-02-21T14:12:00.000-08:00

Sinta of Washington, DC is a wonderful band. I'm so glad Mr. Moccasin finally got to play with them.

A Poet to Read - Jorie Graham

2009-02-01T20:15:00.000-08:00

Yeah, she seriously knows what's up. Read her. I promise you will be inspired.

Just Enough to Live Off

2009-02-01T17:42:00.001-08:00

Some people have—an existing—her feeling was—if I should see geese again—disappear from the ugliness—in a picture, long hair and smoking—eyes are always—poinsettias, so meaningless—the rapture—short-lived—avenues for lighting, living—meditating on floors, with white dust—the wisdom of noisy birds—J knows the written spells, the grief and how to page emotions—into more meaningful blurbs than what—I have issued from these flowers, dried and sunned—the blue dust now—covering up—just connecting anything that fits, the green cactus dust in water she held by my lips—what happened in her bedroom—what is happening—I feel for her—but what—what was done to him—if he did anything—the end is the same and ok—throwing up is a horrid inconvenience—so glad I didn’t, so glad, so glad—if I should play with . . . I now have eyes for—don’t go that . . . —but whatever—clear is—the cats like a warm . . . —her little grace and mystery, with them so calm—a dark movie going for noise and scenery—I am clear to the birds—not doing their nested ways anymore—brown beaks pinch—just enough to live off

The Multi V's

2009-01-31T13:02:00.000-08:00

God, my friends and I are all such big fans of the Multi V's, an experimental duo out of Alexandria, VA. Kelley and Erin churn the seven seas of surrealism, with fresh, playfully loose keyboard beats, claps and tambourine jams. Simultaneously, they chant or sing gleefully the strangest lyrics, bright-toned but dark and dirty (like porn in a church), awkward but full of wit, satire and true comedy. I am delighted to have captured their 01/29/09 performance at Murky Upstairs on video. Check it out!

Who Is? Who Is? Who? Who?

2009-01-31T12:57:00.000-08:00

Alert to—not understanding—
Unconfident—the earth’s growing—
Awake, measuring—hate—to love—
Brought out—of you—I—piecing
Togetherness—and one silent—she
—And night—traveling—not to—
Be here—would be—sizing, saying to
—Unearth—what is—asking—so little—
the naked—all of us—channels—changes

Abiku Bewitches

2009-01-27T08:15:00.000-08:00

From time to time, I film bands that inspire me. I have filmed Human Host and Ra Ra Rasputin for this blog. And just recently, I was delighted to have had the opportunity to film Abiku, a unique screamy, post-apocalyptic noise-thrash-dance band from Baltimore. Yeah, I think that’s how to describe them. A girl/guy duo, Jane Vincent and Josh Jaworsky stack up endless totem poles of huge amps, monitors and speakers. In sparkling warlock costumes, they sway and writhe before synthesizers, inflicting static doom on a death metal guitar and charming keytar. Jane does the most colorful screaming—going from guttural wolf sounds to more desperately human wails—through a headset microphone hidden beneath her sequined hood. I adore this band. Check them out. My dad (FYOM) edited this 01/24/09 concert footage.

Lynn Uninterrupted

2009-01-23T08:15:00.001-08:00

Getting really strangely passionate
she finds the blue flower
the wind’s winding fever flourishes
in her curls, those honeysuckles

she says:

I grate on my nerves
feeling frozen
avoiding submission

these bees tease me
mentioning memories of men
when I want new blues
from true fruit taken from you

it sucks to hear her
pain pain pain
she sees what can’t work
and you fail
to
unfreeze
Lynn Lynn Lynn Lynn Lynn Lynn Lynn Lynn Lynn Lynn

only her name

Dumping, Now Just Dumping Words

2009-01-16T08:56:00.000-08:00

I am adjusting to disbelief, the field is frozen, we are changing, we remind everything of everything, and last year I didn’t feel so good, this year I do feel much better, under ice things wait for their chance, miserable feelings then good ones, we are the ones set in stone, but that doesn’t matter anymore, a flint stone situation. . . .

My mother tangos with the bear, events merge into miserable consciousness, mini aspirations (something about doing music) and venting, massive depression, my vehicle somewhere distant in Hampden, a change each day, doing the basic things in a tired state, announcement of some victory, surge of creativity, ice with fish swimming below the surface, wasting their lives by doing only what they can do, I imagine a person, a nice person.

Continuation of The Ones

2009-01-15T21:52:00.000-08:00

We are the ones not feeling what is a secret language
Our pride shot, we don’t get around to doing what we never did
She alarms me, just watching her I’m afraid for her life
What she might do—she could do so much
On opposite platforms in a metro’s dusk after hot cocoa
So mutinous, mine curdled, hers a thick white pudding
I see her, again I can’t describe it, yellow train windows
Zoom and snatch her, some fanfare I tell you, alone
My, we have nice ideas, talk up possibilities (the inauguration)
Eat vegan café fare, discuss her sex life, my avoidance
Know each other, the ones not feeling this secret language
Our pride is only the potential for performance, jointly
Knowing each other, the damage we do in comedy
Believing an act with chocolate cake would win
All for us, a vision only, so worried about her, one of the ones

Wrapped by Unseeing - Excerpt from The Ones

2009-01-15T12:18:00.001-08:00

Wrapped by unseeing, low feelings, thoughts attached to walls back when . . .
Drinking mutinous hot cocoa, into each other, the ones, we look and avoid
And look, a sort of lit-up therapy, she calls it that, and I excuse everything
Are we the ones worrying the others drinking coffee
Are we shielding ourselves from greater frustration
We announce nothing, just keep unrolling past detail
Too tired to analyze the present beyond humor and acceptance

Wishes Immense

2009-01-01T22:59:00.001-08:00

Wishes immense find their frozen way of curling home
A lone cricket abandoning his voice

Lynn

2008-08-13T12:39:00.000-07:00

Getting (fast food, the cars are) really strangely (fixed for) passionate (adventures)
she finds (meaningful things to do in the country, picking) the blue flower

(singing low-toned about) the wind’s winding fever (which) flourishes
in (every fiber of this wooded, unfrozen land like the gods’ bizarre love of) her curls, those (woven) honeysuckles (anxiously smashed into drinkable juice, however little, and)

she says (in no way dreaming):

I grate on my nerves
feeling frozen
avoiding submission

these bees tease me
mentioning memories of men
when I want new blues
from true fruit taken from you

it sucks to hear her (honeysuckle voice in a void of unavoidable apology mixed with)
pain pain pain
she sees what can’t work (after she gives you a little)
and you fail (in a frozen puzzle of sighs)
to (stop screaming I want to)
unfreeze (//please//)
Lynn Lynn Lynn Lynn Lynn Lynn Lynn Lynn Lynn Lynn

(getting) only her name

The Removal of Love

2008-07-15T07:36:00.000-07:00

My room was where—
the major event,

a clamor the size
of a state
so dear to me—

she played for hours
to still
the bees
and when we tasted honey

we were pleased, living in the east
village
where street urchins drum
on boxes.

The half moon was
chained to a brewing storm

while in my veiled bed
we were blind to
the night’s secret plots
to snatch our life
blood,
grasping
our obnoxious fun
in my room.

The Sooner the Better

2008-07-14T12:55:00.000-07:00

was taken (thought about it / thought about not wanting)
it wanted it from me / was taken / no i gave it it
sand (i see) is far from it / is clean / is a measure of light
is soft / is light / lighter (didn't think enough) - about -
started acting - felt what it was like to act - unclean -
but that was clean / but i didn't feel (what i felt in the past)
the past is darkness / but isn't darkness kind of more comfortable
i think i am turning against what i did (i know i am) / i am turning
against it - will it also turn against me - that would be great
- it wouldn't be sad / i could escape - i wouldn't have to feel bad
- i could be really selfish / that would be exciting / i would be
free / let's never be in touch / forget it all

The Strength of Love

2008-06-25T11:23:00.001-07:00

My room (on these sheets
she left her dress) was where—
the major event (the one
I remember as love),

a clamor (she fell) the size
(too much) of a state
(her panting, daydreaming)
so dear to me—

she played for hours (the organist
below us fingered four hours
of harpsichord) to still
the bees (in my head and knees)
and when we tasted honey
(wax combs of our bodily exchange)

we were pleased (to eat honey-
dipped fruit), living in the east
village (outside a homeless
woman's face, blue without lamplight)
where street urchins drum
on boxes (and bow banshee violas).

The half moon was (eyeless
Samson) chained to a brewing storm
(high above a ridge of broken clouds)

while in my veiled bed (hair in our eyes)
we were blind to (the terrors of money, lies
and murder below on the street) the night’s secret plots
to snatch (our strength, our love) our life
blood (for nothing more than fear
and jealousy), grasping (but never owning)
our obnoxious fun (the fruit, the play
and music mixing) in my room.

The Perch, or the Waning Passion of K and P

2008-06-17T08:10:00.000-07:00

K: This perch. A vague world, a supported system. Traveling the branches in hope, catching a tiger as he leaps from the rock, Path P, you are great. You listen to the rush of my underground water and clarify the sounds uplifted through your resounding farm field well.

P: Ah, love, so what is your perch?

K: If I hammer it hard into the ground, it is steel. It is a chair.

P: That’s good, Kathy. But what about the memory of evil? Let’s bathe in Lethe and forget murder, anguish and sexual frustration.

K: No, I will resist the blanks, though I remain in a vague world on my perch, like a parakeet loaded with shitty songs and a block of seed to support the system of worldwide knowledge, depression and doom. Here I will stay, rotating my feathered head with open beak just to keep on warbling lyrics of failure, but in a bird bright way with ample voice, my cat, P.

P: Well then catch me as I am drying off, nude and warm. Maybe we can go right into it.

K: That would be nice, but as of late sex has been boring … as boring as eating grapefruit—more part of a diet than a mysterious enjoyment. I have so much to think about tonight.

This Young Beaver

2008-06-08T06:39:00.001-07:00

not yet exhausted
busts the work of her dam
in the schizophrenic reservoir

where plashing white water’s
incommunicative noise
accompanies each redirection

as she rolls the shoddy planks
paranoid in a pattern of panic
employing yellow teeth

and her waffle paddle tail
to loosen wet warped wood
none of which is lost on me

who knows what it is to form
a poem and want to shred it
when the music isn’t there

Hound Boy Girl (Nouns), a Poem

2008-05-30T12:05:00.001-07:00

Branch snap street feet
shock appearance periphery
eyes marbles devil sockets
bush opening animal leaves
instant instinct dog teeth breath fear
disgust rape retreat ghost sensation
hero boy heroine girl runners home
hill street lamplight honeysuckle sweat
skin love girl scent fatigue speed
ages loss joggers knowledge stop death
continuance evasion instinct sight
warmth house end night regeneration
sex fire hearth distance perception
dream weakness bones muscles
travail avail speed friction hill loss
stones eyes periphery breath tears
smell knowledge rabies noise
cheetah speed hound prowler howl
boy girl pressure journey apple afterthought
snap apple tree branch cause effect feet

The Heart

2008-05-29T08:01:00.001-07:00

Yes
it gave up this morning
in piercing sunlight
half in shade of trees
whose dull flashed colors walled
the vacuum of the speeding train

it gave way and gave up
through a cell phone
made the last of its idiotic
pleading speech
against the bulletproof glass
of what was already known

I don’t love you

then it advanced
thought about the truth of release
that blesses more infinitely
than any living carcass
(and distant brain on the slope
of its own fantasies)

watched the pine trees slipping back
blinded by the sun's glaring bulb

thought about DC as a city
in which its new freedom
could be quiet
unjudged
unkilled
could be quiet
until another advances
for adventurous love

Yes
it was necessary for Orpheus
to look back once more
to fuck up the desperate
song of a phone call
and lose her heart for good

it laughed at the underworld of failure
and disappeared into the huge city
letting its beat come back naturally

Documenting the Power of Human Host @ the Deal with Pine Trees Festival, Westminster, MD

2008-05-26T09:36:00.000-07:00

Saturday, May 24th, I was out in the county. The morning sun stung all flesh, human, plant and animal, with a hot iron calling. If the sun had a voice it would have screamed like a mother to her late sleeping children, “Rise and do something productive on this beautiful day.”

So to energize my arms and soul, I went into my parents’ basement and hammered out some annoying drums; however, it sounded really raw, exciting and untaught. Lots of cowbell and paradiddles. I need to write beats for an electro band.

Next I ate half of a meatball sub, grabbed my dad’s video camera and drove over to my friend Mike’s house, deeper in the county, around the reservoir in bucolic Phoenix. Sun-crystal-frozen farm implements, corn and high grass, the heat haze rising in waves!

In the basement of an old country house, Mike and Aaron of Baltimore’s weirdest, most theatrical punk band Human Host calmly ran through some sick keyboard/drum jams at half volume. It was a pleasure to see how dedicated they both were to getting the challenging but fun songs as tight as possible. Mike had several juicy pedals hooked up to his two keyboards, and he maintained the EQ of each song through a small mixer. Aaron’s stripped down kit included a floor tom, cymbal and snare.

They sounded like a garage rock band that had tapped into the magic of some occult underworld full of ogres, gnomes, lizards, devils and wooly mammoths. Their jams had mutated beyond rock into a new music that was both the future and the very primitive genesis of sound as art. Next they tested the pre-recorded iPod beats and, God, the one Aaron wrote blew my mind. Then I helped them pack up the gear, and we hit the road to Westminster. We were all thrilled to be headed to a park in Carroll County for the Deal with Pine Trees Festival.

The Deal with Pine Trees Festival, orchestrated by a nice, amazing guy named Kyle and his friends, is hands down the most vital source of music in Westminster. Rivaling the loyal draw and unbridled fun of Baltimore’s Wham City collective, the Deal with Pine Trees crew get down and dirty with nature while enjoying an eclectic crock pot of ska, pop punk, grindcore, screamo, folk and weird, experimental acts like Human Host.

Notable Westminster bands of the day included Another Reason to Hate Machines, whose rabid, spastic explosions of metal, noise, pig-squeal screamed vocals and flailing theatrics kicked serious ass around the poison ivy-clad tree (the backdrop for all of the bands), and 12 Hour Shower, a really funny young ska band with lyrics about a “slutty” ex-girlfriend.

The park was beautiful but also perplexing. A stream encircled the concert area and could only be traversed by two wooden bridges. Young women in flower dresses dipped their feet in the water. Kids played Frisbee. Further in the field, along the banks of a pond, a flock of geese stamped around and ate some of my popcorn. Big lumps of their white and black shit soiled every stretch of grass so that you had to walk on sun-dried waste. The pristine baseball field, with its huge scoreboard and sparkling bleachers, showed the community’s interest, especially when compared to the tennis court whose burnt, fallen and shredded nets gave the impression that the fenced-in space had suffered a small nuke.

But Human Host took the cake for best performance. Their set was nonstop bestial hilarity and cutting edge sounds. I am going to let the video I captured of them do most of the talking. Keith, of the likeminded electro/visual band Cream Center, joined Aaron and Mike, with a crazy homemade witch hat, hood and some Hawaiian grass skirt used as part of his headdress. He shared the vocal duties and had the crowd laughing really hard. The audience showered the band with unchiseled compliments such as “fucking amazing,” and requested an immediate encore. Human Host answered the call with its lively post-hip hop dance party “Bathtub Blast.”

My dad edited the video footage for me, to go on YouTube; so this is not their entire set. But I hope this will encourage you to spread the love for Human Host.

The Pond, a Poem

2008-05-23T21:58:00.000-07:00

Baby, form me
show me your shadow
on the way to the jungle, if we could get in a vehicle tonight
and kiss, my hand reaching for the overhead light
you might say, "You are my shadow
you are close and form me, but I have forgotten you
and moved into a blue cave not a jungle," if we could abandon the van
by the pond where we first saw ducks, too close
we’d duck our feathered heads
in each other’s shadow for another kiss hidden from the moonlight
this time lasting if loosened by laughter, what, what
a form for us we cannot keep, neither in shade nor florescent light
away from the van, too close but losing each other to the undefined
shadow, our separate minds sharing too much
of what cannot come to light,
hearing the ducks quack, gliders on the formless pond
that stopped us on our way to the jungle

Baby, form me
if your shadow has not changed
I wonder what light enters your blue cave
if its wet rock walls amplify those duck voices
that joined our kissing shadows once before we started laughing

From a Diary of Poison

2008-05-20T12:36:00.000-07:00

Flirting fails.

Time stops
lucid
looking
for me to pinpoint
the zero
of a try.
Hurry up
don’t crash into that bush
and don’t act
like a drowned worm
in a flooded sandbox.
What’s wrong with you?
she asks
knows
I'm alive
her question
there to poke me
not impervious
to language.
A reaction
would suffice
to crown
her head
her mouth
pleased
with its
thyme-scented
breath.
This sandcastle opens
for my turtle.
I found him yesterday.
In my blood
a pulse
doesn't lack
the force
to draw back
recoil
and snap
like a snake
to poison
with a sudden
bite.
Stop!
You hit something
in the grass!

Mouse in the Morning

2008-05-05T12:07:00.000-07:00

These windows magnify the mouse
that suddenly pops out and zips about
the roof of my neighbor's house.

Its raised fur is buttered by a blade
of sun without the marmalade
of shadow and clearly displays

a purpose that does not crumble
like cornbread when fingers fumble
lifting it from the dinner table.

This new day's search hides the strain
of last night’s hunger through the rain.
The pin nose fishing in the rain

gutters again for crumbs in the soup
that cools before it drains off the roof
like corn gone down a garbage chute.

Really Glad I Came Back to See Lizz King

2008-04-17T11:36:00.000-07:00

For me, Wednesday night, April 16th, started out addled by an unspecific boredom and longing. I drove home after the train commute back from a productive day of work in DC. I work for a nonprofit dance organization, and it is fun to hammer out grants and hope that the money comes in to support the great programs for youth.

But back in Baltimore, I felt restless enough to brush my teeth, floss and then embark on a scenic walk through Charles Village. I was pleasantly surprised that the Hopkins students had started donning hipper clothing as if they had been listening to stuff like Dan Deacon, White Williams, Car Clutch, High Places, Drums Like Machine Guns, etc. I think the girls at least were buying stuff from Cloud 9—they have one on St. Paul Street. And they achieved a New York presence. I recalled being in Brooklyn in the summer, watching the Boredoms in a fabulous park by the water. All of the young men and women maintained this real shiny, dirty elegance; the neon of it all was hyper attractive—lust rose all the way up to the bridge!

(Out of the reverie) I ran into my friend Ari who was out walking his dog. And we talked through the basics of our present excitement and anxieties. He is about to tour with his band. Then we retired to his house to prepare for a vegan pizza party that he was hosting. However, my mind was spiraling nervously out of control. I was extremely antsy, and I could not wait for the other guests to arrive. His band mate Brian had come with a rough, black curly-haired female dog, which made for a little humorous fun. I watched Ari’s horny mutt futilely hump the spayed bitch, and meanwhile a cat was jumping around everywhere. This all amplified my own spring fever and unexplored frustration. When Brian’s dog shit on the floor and the spinach-like odor of animal waste assailed my nose, I became even more oppressed by a vague longing like waiting for a dear friend to return from England. (You clutch the giddy postcard you just received, imagining it was written with something nearing love.)

I noticed in the newspaper that Lizz King was playing the Talking Head with the Degenerettes and an Italian noise band, Trouble vs. Glue. I figured that a show would relieve some tension and force me to be social and meet new people. So I went there. The Degenerettes, a trio including Chrissy Howland, songwriter of Scout and an amazing bassist, did not fail to impress with a trebly garage rock set full of what I call vintage fire. I think that phrase touches upon how the band seems to have swallowed the right portions of punk, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Nicks and even Johnny Cash. I spoke briefly with my artist pal Megan who rode her bike there. And Lizz excitedly mentioned to me that she was playing with a live drummer—Kevin of Video Hippos.

After the Degenerettes, my longing was still a huge mangled albatross about my neck; it made me feel all gruesome and worn out. Thus I aborted the show, with no intention of returning. (The Fritos I ate were annoyingly salt-saturated and dried my mouth, but I didn’t want to drink more than one beer). I loaded Megan’s bike into my car and gave her a ride home. But before that, I apologized to Lizz about leaving, saying that I hoped to catch her at Wham City soon. I felt really bad about it. But after dropping Megan off, my spirit renewed itself, and I thought, “Fuck feeling down.” Lizz’s music is all about being strong in the face of love and its challenges. So I drove back to the Head and caught the tail end of the Italian duo. Their lo-fi noise, tooting and snoring fuzz through live and electronic drums, keyboards, pedals, guitars and heavily-accented English language vocals, kind of occupied an uneventful, dead space. I was like, Come on, let’s get to Lizz.

Though extraordinarily nervous about messing up, taking breaks to apologize, Lizz King played a set that was uncannily intimate, and her voice was like a separate body—a lone woman full of love but under rain without an umbrella. She first sat down in the center of the room on the dirty floor with an unamplified banjo. Both the cover song and the original, dealing with kissing/lovemaking, were terrific and essential. Then her voice exhibited a deeper sense of blues as she launched into a fun laptop electronica number.

When she picked up her guitar onstage and Kevin joined her on drums, the magic truly unfolded. It was powerful in just being so raw. Like bluegrass musicians from an earlier time! Kevin captured a light ska beat that had originally been uttered by a drum machine on one of her recorded demos, and her sensuous southern folk playing soared above his sticks like a lark. She kept the set real short, and it benefited from that brevity—left you wanting more! At the end, she said that the stuff she’s recording now with Kevin is more about sex than love, and she mentioned that she is kind of ready to bury some of her older material—making room for new nuggets of gold. I was so glad to have come back. It made me want to write some new songs.