The Experiment is Over--originally published July 17 on my other blog

Recently I was on Nada's blog, ululate.blogspot.com, reading of her experience in Japan; her description of eating a bowl of noodles is fantastic. She also mentioned how Japan anticipates a person's needs--"buffered, sweet, comfortable, happy!" This description perfectly captures this aspect of Japan. I think, that perhaps, this is also why Ammie and I have decided to return to the loving streets of Oakland. In Oakland, when you run around by yourself, and then trip and fall, it doesn't kiss you, but instead tells you to get up, brush yourself off, and get goin'. Yes, we have indeed decided to return. Japan is now more beautiful, because we know we are leaving--it's become a great honeymoon, now that we can distance ourselves from it.

Kunitachi--where we are staying--is incredible! The Kunitachi apartment situation is just what we needed to mend us after our -- to be quite honest -- somewhat heartbreaking decision to come back.?It`s quiet and private, but within 15 minutes on foot to the college town of Kunitachi. The town is beautiful, and it`s apparent that actual city planning has happened to make sure development doesn`t run amok. There are good record stores, a fantastic forest-like campus to explore, cheap groceries (that carry real cheese and proper bread!), and noodle shops. From what Stephen and Jeremy (our kickass guesthouse roommates from Scotland and Seattle, respectively) tell us, there are also 400 yen ($4) all you can drink bars. Scary, yet slightly inviting.

tachikawa hanabi

tachikawa hanabi, originally uploaded by trevor23.

poem written at night

There was a squall inside the music.

Diagonal, like a misread line, something
sat obscure. In the grass,

there were ten thousand small, lit displays,
quelling the moon and perhaps its gravity.

Valorously, the fireworks abandoned
their souls, massively drifting—

a suspended infinitive alphabet.
I was susceptible to reading.

Tobacco smoke drifted by, so I began
to float away on it. Really, there was no

music, but it began the evening.

ashtrays rule!

ashtrays, originally uploaded by trevor23.

Isn't this a great ashtray? Sublime.

kunitachi, 1:43 a.m.

the drenching sound outside
of language diminishes
this room's electric thrum
the spider living out there
is large and will weather

Well, I haven't added to this for a while, but thought tonight would be an appropriate time to do so. Ammie and I have started a new blog (http://www.usagi-kage.blogspot.com/) to document our life in Japan. For all our friends who are checking this, we love you gals and guys and are so grateful for such an eclectic, generous, and glorious group!

So here's a tentative list of books I'm bringing to Japan: this was serious work!

1) A gift from my fab girlfriend: a first edition of _Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti_ by Maya Deren.
2) _Science Fiction_ by Andrew Joron
3) _Poetry and the Fate of the Senses_ by Susan Stewart
4)_Selected Non Ficions_ by Borges
5)_The Collected Books of Jack Spicer_
6)_The Black Reeds_ by Mark McMorris
7)_Gravity's Rainbow_by T. pynchon (because I've been reading it, in very small portions, very smalll, for three years now)
8) _Tales of Murasaki_by Martine Bellen
9)_The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon_
10)_The Shadow of the Wind_ by Carlos R. Zafon.

Of course this is subject to change, but I think it's a good start.

For those of you in the Bay Area, please do attend Loop/Press62's poetry event at Escape from New York Pizza in S.F. It starts at 7pm on Friday, May 7. It's a fortuitous date and time, I'll be reading (among others, I'm sure), and you can get a slice of pie!

On a side note, on the radio, right now, there's a song being sung in German which sounds as if it's sampling the screams found on Nick Cave's song "Stagger Lee." Ah, now it's concluding with a quote from G.W. Bush. Pleasant. Enough of this Pamela-nonsense.

Here's a line from James Meetze's chapbook, Serenades:

To disclose the facts of our pasts we spoke the future,
coy as ghosts of summer in what little shade.
Why not be furious at last
from all angles at once.


It's a lovely book filled with a lot of lovely poems.

You should all open up another window right now and google Andrew Joron's NEO-SURREALISM: OR, THE SUN AT NIGHT (Black Square Editions 2004). This book is so fascinating. Andrew's writing is top-notch: "Surreality is not a state of standing 'over' reality; rather, it is the boiling over of reality, a phase-change that always departs from a highly specific set of initial conditions."

Phew! I bought my tickets and luggage, so now moving to a foreign country is cemented! Somehow, that flurry of spending made everything more real...mercantilism at work! Maybe it has to do with loss: the loss of income acting as a sacrifice of sorts, and thus making the ritual of moving "true."

On to poetry:

Here are a couple of recent poems I'm working on from a series called "Struck Landscape."


Corners collapse and everyone has the feeling of collapsing

like both buildings in large cities and suns describing advantages
of gravity and geometry. A mantis can fold in such a way as
to disguise itself from other small things because it is complexity
that breeds fragility—viruses are durable and strong
the most brave fragile thing is god because we can
only eat and fuck and sleep in a miraculous world.


A cup scattered in the kitchen exploring

the breadth of the floor and simultaneously enacting
a redefinition of self somehow finally knowing the popular theory
that time does not even exist and without it the universe makes
sense again. I think immediately of only loss, sit unexpectedly
down to cry and notice how the lowest tip of my spine bends
easily in accordance like a bee stinging its own back.

My computer has been crashing like every other day--I would turn it on and it wouldn't be able to find the hard drive. Finally, I set the preferences so that the machine would never "sleep" and, voila, problem solved. It turns out this often happens with the new macs...

I did learn a valuable lesson: it's just a machine.

Everyone, you should very much check out Eric Baus' book _The To Sound_ (Verse 2004). This is not only a shameless plug for a friend, but also, luckily, a sincere desire for for you to have a transformative poetic experience. _The To Sound_ reminds me how poetry can almost transcend (and always should try) its medium. Eric's book is like discovering that the ether really does exist.

I told you this would be shameless and true.

maybe I should start a separate blog just for poetry...but what would I call it?

Here's a new poem that I'm still kind of feeling out...

Tincture of an event, with

some sense of determination and exploration and how does one begin to approach an end to something when his/her only compass is a feeling of lightness sometimes at the base of the skull? Copious note-taking, enlarged hypothalamuses, a history of mythography in the west—none of these things will act as the thing itself that is soon ending. The tincture should only be so sweet and should not be expected to help

It's always a great pleasure to discover that someone you've known for a year or two is a writer. It's an even greater pleasure to discover that you think his or her writing is phenomenal. Check out the link below (The Demanding Birth...) for some of the best short fiction I've read since Borges (really).

Send him an email if you enjoy the stories, hate the stories, or want to accuse him of appropriating elements of your life without permission.

Ach! On the day of poet’s theater, my car’s clutch breaks, but my mechanic (a super guy) saves the day by offering a free loaner (a Mercury Sable). I was supposed to pick the car up at six. At six, there’s no car yet, and when it does show up, at 7 or so, it’s transmission is slipping so bad that it barely moves. Needless to say, I missed poet’s theater, several surely wonderful plays, and eventually found myself broken down in a foreign car late at night in Oakland. Sweet.

Okay, I know that was mostly unnecessary and long-winded, but please allow me to offer a fun exquisite corpse (we only knew the last word of the last line) I wrote with my girl, Ammie, as recompense:


Live/time

A rabbit breathes on a cold night
The steamy heat attracts an owl in the tree above.

And such weight pulled our eyes to the ground to the details of

A Romantic painting, soft and dreamlike.
So we began collecting curiosities—moths, robots, incantations.

The air was crisp and smoky
Then, we planned how we would react to rain. We’d only

Risen to greet each day out of habit.
It was all we knew. We’d visit, often,

The surface of the sun.
Ammie, you always were so stylish.

Flax, raspberry, ochre, and lavender palettes were
Stupefied, shell-shocked, aroused, fractured, but most of all

Lined neatly in a row, much like the famous
And dead.

But it didn’t stop there; a vast fleet of
Debonair obsolescence. Even far off cosmonauts
Settled nicely on the fourteenth star, and the forest was at peace.

Hello again. It's been a while. I'm moving to Japan in June--if any of you have any advice or stories please send me a note. Here's a new poem from a series called "Rarified Tissue":



Sometimes in a ebbing and unsettled winter,

My hidden month whispers consolation.

It tells of Oakland’s secret history: magicians
and tobacco and decapitations.

Can smoke stream out from a disembodied head?
12 seconds, and a cigarette is all you might want

because you quit and still dream.

Poetry and divination do not always save the day.

Believe me, if I were a cat, feral and shadowed, I’d forego
writing and perfect the art of pouncing—

I’d encompass the universe as I lit upon a pigeon,
Biting off its head in one effortless motion.