Saturday, July 25, 2009

Larix U' Thule

Sitting on the bed sometime ready to die,

not really









Hurrying to the gymroom to run 3.45 miles, black kid already with afro sitting on concrete porch playing by himself | under the window where last week I saw a naked girl getting flash photographed & how she smiled & touched the glass I did not even slow down | the afro child talking to himself or to the object he is holding that I can not recognize from anything

He says something to me in my passing and the only words I hear inside them are 'Michael Jackson'

& in hearing that much & how his eyes are I go, Oh yah, with the short A sound the way I have suddenly affected in recent weeks, only realizing post-answering that he has asked if the figure pictured on my shirt is Michael Jackson & no it is a woman with white skin and red lips almost showing her tits

(long story, how I got this shirt) (not really long at all)

& he watches me approach him briefly with the shirt on & then think better of it & I go on & he is not there when I come back sopping & the lights in the apartment there are off

The pool today was very busy, people were large or small, I stood behind the bars










Last night the man in the bar with forearms big as three of mine with the skin head and the tattoo of flames where there should have been hair, who under whatever could not stand up & instead toddled through the bar leaning on whoever was right there

grabbing Chris's ass & Alex's ass & air humping at a forced huddle group hug, taking whoever would let him by the hand & somewhat barking & to Chris, "It feels good" "What feels good" "(incoherent)"

Alex (my paraphrasing): "There are some kinds of people who you can see who have just been through the thing, & there's nothing you can do to stop them."

On his chest Alex with the tattoo of Jeff who we realized has been gone now 8 years









The fruit juice that was in the refrigerator last I looked is not there either | & there are all these books inside my house

I don't know I guess I feel pretty good

If I ever had the chance to buy a machine gun cheaply I would lay it on the floor of here in the most difficult place to walk around

& leave the bullets in the oven







Open the book perpetually beside my bed, pick a sudden sentence, try to imagine it as an advice:

"Every proposition must already have a sense; assertion cannot give it a sense, for what it asserts is the sense itself. And the same hold of denial, etc.

"One could say, the denial is already related to the logical place determined by the proposition that is denied."





& the second book beside my this year sandwiched underneath the other, another sentence sent in:

"He is cured by faith who is sick of fate."

8 comments:

Alex's Subject said...

what, is this your excuse for why you didn't get a tattoo today? You need to confront that Alex dude with flames coming out of his head.

Ken Baumann said...

I agree with Catgut; what, distraction?

C'mon. I go and get a Wittgenstein tat and you can't pull the trigger on the big bandana'd man in the sky? deep cosmic paaaaiiinnn

Peer pressure/love

http://www.hitrecord.org/danshowrec.php?rec=4843

gene said...

is that what you're getting? an homage to dfw. if so, i say fuck yes go for it. you already know i am. and to all those vaginal fucks who talk shit about lit or text tattoos, you'll often find them un-inked. a good tattoo is a good tattoo, period.

plus if you're having second or third thoughts, just think about how many people in our lifetimes truly bobble our heads and change our perception of things? three, four, maybe five at best. two of my top marauders are barthelme and dfw. and both will take up significant space on my body via ink soon.

catgut taco said...

When I was waiting for my tat, there was these drop-ins, three chunky African-American girls, wanted tats. They didn't know what they wanted, just a line of poetry with the word "love" in it. I think she settled on "love hurts." Another wanted a lion on her ass. They tried to conceal her behind a curtain, but I could see enough to make out the cottage cheese on her ass. You would've been in your element Nachos.

oh, btw, they make tennis strings from catgut. At least they did in my day. I was at U of AZ studying physics when DFW was there playing tennis. That's as far as my homage will go.

Get it, man, and move on.

BLAKE BUTLER said...

still waiting for the mood to hit. we'll see

i want to see the catgut photos.

Ken Baumann said...

p.s. you've got to get the Pears/McGuiness translation of Tractatus

BLAKE BUTLER said...

where dat is

BLAKE BUTLER said...

oh, derek, just saw tattoo on blog. damn wow.