On a Pedestal

“All girls cannot be perfect 36s, with bodies of mystic warmth and plastic marble effect, colored with rose and a dash of flame. Of course not,” said Audrey Munson, model for the gilded statue of Civic Fame atop the Municipal Building in Lower Manhattan, installed 1913. She lives on as Columbia Triumphant in Columbus Circle, in the Fireman’s Memorial on Riverside Drive, in the figures of Brooklyn and Manhattan now flanking the entrance to the Brooklyn Museum, and as the personifications of Asia, America, Europe and Africa on the portico of the Alexander Hamilton Custom House at 1 Bowling Green. She began as a chorus girl on Broadway and appeared nude in a 1915 film. After attempting suicide with bichloride of mercury in 1922 Munson was committed to the St. Lawrence State Hospital for the Insane in Ogdensburg, upstate New York, where she died in 1996 at the age of 104.

Cry In the Dark

Campaign 2016, cry in the dark # 487-1 (recorded in my daybook): “Paige and Meredith. Your thighs are soft and supple, your bosoms rosy. And you, Mallory, with the marshmallow skin. And Megan and Chloé and Madison and Skye. From Boulder and Portland and Loveland and Champaign-Urbana. You volunteer for Bernie Sanders and debate whether to deface your snow-white bodies with fashionable tattoos. Do I count for nothing? An agéd Hillary supporter with delusions of martyrdom by snowfall and rose petals, a political youth avalanche that buries my mouth and nose under idealism and college-age female flesh. I scent victory! Yet at the same time I suffocate in the rarefied air of dreams. Where is the beef, Bernie? Show me your toolkit for breaking up the banks. Are you a carpenter or a chiseler? Is the motor that drives your “political revolution” more than just a turntable spinning platters at 45 rpm in a 50's jukebox, in a sweetshop where coeds jitterbug after school to the groovy sounds of the latest protest song? Political showman and youth-revolution impresario, generator of campaign contributions and fake crowd electricity, stop teasing me with your cashmere-sweater chorus line! I have work to do. I must write, I must write another letter to the Times. The planet’s ecosystem is failing, crumbling about our heads like an avalanche, like an avalanche of college-age female flesh. God save me from the coming electoral storm.”

I weary of such pathetic cries in the dark. Board of Elections, deliver us a nominee!

(Written on the eve of the New York State primary.)

Beaver Pelt Gulch

Moist, damp, rainy in your thighs.

What a shame. All earth’s brown, earth-smelling sex shorn off. Beaver pelt. Her florid bottom. Moist ravine carved in the earth. Tangled thicket down under the railroad tracks. Smell of brown water, brown tadpoles, brown catfish. I condemn the defoliation of women, clear-cut hillside, despoiled and pillaged wilderness of sex, development, progress, razor burn, fashion police, totalitarian new-age mammals, hairless, bloodless, without milk.

Latin vigere: to be full to bursting. Of young persons, high-fed horses, etc. To be plump, fresh, vigorous, in full health and strength. Weedy, unkempt, reeking of sex. Flowing, stinking, sprouting from every crack. Unlicensed unregulated nose posies. Outlaw seed, a rusted trestle, No Trespassing riddled with bullets. Sally Mann. Gelatin silver print. Wet plate collodion. Old South decrepitude. Death lurks in the timbered foothills, carpeted pleats and valleys, steamy folds of dirt. Earth’s tired seams where life is foaled. Bald elevations naked to the sky. Armpits and snakepits of the world. Dark tufted recesses inaccessible to man but pleasing to the gods.

Tuck yourself into a crotch of the earth, soft beaver pelt of dreams. Let me nestle in your death cushion. Bit by Betty's big brown beaver.

24 Viral Events That Testify to the Boundless Ravishing Wonder of the Universe (Delivered to Your Inbox)

1. The first teleprompter to be used by a U.S. president (Dwight D. Eisenhower).
2. Inside a cotton candy factory.
3. A closeup shot of a snail consuming a water droplet.
4. A space shuttle flying through the air while being carried by a 747.
5. Ivy that grew on the side of the building into the shape of a tree.
6. A packet of Japanese Kit-Kats that are meant to be baked.
7. Long hair that goes past her feet!
8. Several crabs everywhere.
9. What a cruise ship looks like when it’s still in construction.
10. A man achieving a headstand on a frozen lake.
11. Flowers frozen within ice.
12. The inside of a dissected Abrams M1battle tank.
13. A ball made out of binder clips.
14. People crossing bridges in India at the Maha Kumbh Mela.
15. Amazing sculptures made out of drywall.
16. The stalk of a tomato grown out to look like a headless human.
17. A mushroom growing on top of another mushroom.
18. What a soda bottle looks like before it’s blown out.
19. The residue of black paint mixed with white paint ended up making a tiny black forest.
20. An airplane nonchalantly on the road.
21. A wind so powerful that it is affecting an entire tree.
22. A haunting imprint left behind after a corpse was buried in the same spot in the sand (?).
23. A school of tadpoles swimming underneath lily pads.
24. What underfloor heating looks like.

Boy and Earth

The blouse of clouds that hide her beauty's form
Obliterated by a summer storm
She stands nude to the horizon. This is what
Set all things stirring once in a boy’s gut.

Imogen Poots

Imogen Poots. Imogen Poots. Imogen Poots. Imogen Poots. Imogen Poots. Imogen Poots. Imogen Poots. Imogen Poots. Imogen Poots. Imogen Poots. Imogen Poots. Imogen Poots. Imogen Poots. Imogen Poots.

To My Friends, Season’s Greetings. To My Enemies....

                                        Eggnog spiked with marine spar varnish,
                                        Jackhammer soup with barbed wire garnish,
                                        Bowls of depleted uranium candy
                                        And mildewed wallboard from superstorm Sandy.
                                        Every smokestack belches forth
                                        The blighted curse of the dying north
                                        And the haunted scream of the melting glacier
                                         —Wracked by pain beyond all measure—
                                        Summons ISIS’s violent crew
                                        To mutilate and torture you              
                                        And veil your wife and cut off your head
                                        And make jihad in your marriage bed.