published in amphibi.us

I went to the NYC Department of Housing and Community Renewal today to ask them a question about my apartment building. I walked in and I was convinced it was the bleakest office in New York. It was fluorescent, not just the lights but everything, and there were no books or magazines. You had to talk to the government through a large Plexiglas sheet, and there was a sign on it that said NO EATING, like a zoo. The office is on Beaver Street, so animals were a theme.

After waiting for about 15 minutes a woman waved me in and talked to me for another 20 in fragmented sentences. She curtly asked me to quit clicking my pen. She asked me for a different phone number than the cell I offered her because, she said, the city of New York cannot make long-distance phone calls. I could see the sky through a window, it was very gray outside but the snow had stopped. She went to make a photocopy and I absent-mindedly checked my e-mail and I had an acceptance from Amphibi.us, an online poetry journal. I walked in me and walked out me, but a different me, a published poet me. The fluorescent cooked me like plaster, in the most brilliant, beautiful, living art I have yet experienced.

we are all little boys and little girls

Yesterday was my Kid A reading. It was really amazing - Cake Shop was packed out and pretty much everyone I know in New York City was there, plus a couple people from out of town. It was definitely the largest group of people I've ever read in front of.

My assignment was to write a poem inspired by Radiohead's song Motion Picture Soundtrack off the album Kid A. The song is a part of who I am, and I wanted so badly to do it justice. After listening to the song for the 10,000th time this year, I came to the conclusion that it's essentially a love letter to suicide, a tale of the battle between the good and evil forces that plays out in all of our lives.

Here is my poem. Thanks to everyone who came out yesterday. Sometimes it is like the movies.
---

we are all little boys and little girls

1.
I had a discussion with a friend
over monitors
about Freemasons,
who is one and who isn't.


I said I didn't know what
the big deal was.
People always say artists sold their souls to the devil at a crossroads
to get the talent they have,
whatever talent might be.
He said,
who knows.


Instead,
maybe they sold their souls to God
in the back alleys of their minds.
Because eventually the road ends,
and it's either death or nothing.

People start to believe things they said they'd never believe.
People curl into themselves under sweat-soaked bedsheets.
People tousle the clouds under their feet as they walk upon high,
on rooftops so gilded,
they strip soles of humanity.
People smoke cigarettes and flick ash into the fire.


2.
I have measured out my life with IM boxes.
I have cried onto my keyboard,
drawing myself into a cube with tears running a river through Qs, Rs and Ts.
I have confused names and old faces and
I have forgotten who I am.


I have imagined defenestration
and masturbation
and a different nation,
one run entirely by machines,
leaving people like me
to capacitate and then undo their demons,
all while in their pajamas
or maybe never getting dressed at all.


3.
I am a Freemason.
You are a Freemason
And you and you and him
and his yellow dog too.
It's one of those things
we can never disprove so it may as well be true.


God is a Freemason.


4.
The fall is nearly as thrilling as the high,
and it’s a cheek turned to God.

Because eventually the road ends.
All the parts you thought made you
shut off at once.
The grinding halt reverberates off slick bricks,
the rooftop blown off.


You're left barefoot and childless.
Loveless neon signs vibrate through whiskey glasses,
wooden stools steal your shirts,
people tell you things but you can't remember.


You remember when you used to hope,
but the feeling is distant
like a city you read about in a book but never visited.


5.
I think you're crazy maybe,
but worse yet I think you're dead.
Every day is a memory of the next.


I have seen you beg for your soul,
stirring it around in a bucket of shit,
over and over to the tune of a harp
that's strung with the hairs of the people you loved
who didn't love you back.


6.
At the end of the road,
there’s a sign.
It is the same in all languages, at all times,
and it reads:
What do you live for?
What do you live for?
What do you live for?


7.

I live for a newspaper pressed into seedy cement on the street in Harlem.
I live for nights spent with strangers on SoHo benches.
I live for my mother, who said you can always come home!
I live for saltwater seeping into my skin as I step onto the floor of silent seas.
I live for must, and do, and will, but never should.
I live for the guiding light of glow in the dark stars stuck to the ceilings of our skulls.
I live for muzzles butting mirrors and stretching to their ends.
I live for a saxophone in a subway station squealing syncopated sadness.
I live for reflections in rocking cars, breath beating upon bombs planted in our bellies.
I live for my disembodied spine dancing in the dark to an invisible drum.
I live for church organs and choirs and stained glass thrown across my chest, broken.
I live for visions and revisions and reversing my decisions.
I live for the smell of your incense, your insensitive hands throwing me against the wall.
I live for the fucking Freemasons.
And I live for myself,
The only person who will never leave me,
Because I won't let her.
The law of their God is in their hearts.

i will see you in the next life

My love affair with Radiohead's song Motion Picture Soundtrack began in January of this year. I bought the album Kid A online and was sitting in my room on E 118, listening and writing. As soon as the song came on, I stopped what I was doing and sat straight up in my bed. I started sobbing, and sobbed and sobbed. The song struck a very real chord in me, it felt like it had actually come out of me instead of coming from outside. It haunted me for weeks.

You can hear the original version of the song here.

The song played an integral role in the writing of my first short film, Love Sand, and earlier in the fall I was asked by Melissa Broder to write a poem inspired by it for her Polestar Poetry Series. The reading is Dec. 5 at Cake Shop, and there's a possibility that Love Sand will make a real-life premiere there - I hope some of you can make it!

Premiere: Love Sand

On a late-night stroll through the LES en route to St. Jerome's this summer, Zachary asked me if I would write a script for our friend Haley - an actor transplanted in NYC from L.A. for the summer - that he would then shoot, direct and edit into a short film. I was sort of taken aback by his request, as I had never written a film before and had no idea how to do it. But I said yes, and asked if he had an idea of what sort of film he wanted to do. He said no, I could write whatever I wanted, no guidelines. Thrilled at the opportunity to create something without any rules, I played the phrase "no guidelines" on repeat in my head until the first scene came to me, while I was walking alone one night on Bedford in Brooklyn. The rest was largely inspired by Radiohead's song "Motion Picture Soundtrack" off their 2000 album Kid A, which had a deep impact on me during the winter months earlier this year. Love Sand was born.

We filmed it over the course of a weekend in June. It was an incredible experience. The filming fell together so beautifully and easily - we had 10 people come together and lend their talents for no pay to make it happen - that it seemed like it was meant to be. Zachary and I sound edited it on a Friday night over burgers and fries in his bedroom in Harlem. The entire thing was edited and uploaded using his four-year-old MacBook Pro. The film's budget was less than $10 - for a pack of cigarettes used in the third scene. Time is a more valuable currency than money.

I'm so excited to present Love Sand to the world now. Although the time it took to conceive and film the project is relatively small, I consider it to be the product of a year's worth of experiences. 2009 was one of the hardest years I've ever had, and I went through some things I had never been through before, and while I learned a lot, I was essentially destroyed. It's an incredible miracle to be able to take a year of my life that, at the time, seemed like it was comprised of pointless devastation, heartache and hopelessness and to have a group of super-talented people help me bundle it up into a singular work that gives validity and even beauty to those experiences. I now see 2009 for what it is, at least in part: the year that gave me Love Sand.

Sometimes things just fall into your lap and happen so easily that they seem to somehow spin your life in a new direction, and I think Love Sand might be such a thing for me. That's yet to be determined, but at the very least - the project is extremely close to my heart, and I feel proud of the finished product. Zachary put together a beautiful website for the film, and you can also watch it below or here. If you watch it on the Vimeo site, it's in HD, so you can blow it up to the size of your screen and the quality is the same. Pretty amazing!

Love Sand from LBO Productions on Vimeo.

A big thanks to everyone involved and especially to Zachary for doing so much work on the film, and for asking me to write it in the first place, for having faith in my words. And thanks also to anyone who takes the time to watch it - your thoughts and ideas are more than welcome.

I will see you in the next life...