we're all just basement babies
bibliomancy for the week of may 19th
the two of cups, and an excerpt from Sakutarō Hagiwara’s Cat Town:
Poetry always stands at the head of the currents of time, and most acutely feels and touches the feelings of the coming century. That being the case, the true value of a collection of poetry should be determined at least five years, ten years after its publication. Five years, ten years later, vulgar folk in general will catch up for the first time with the position where poetry now stands. That is, normally poetry is best when it is published sooner and understood later. We poets can only despise things like pursuing fashionable thoughts and adopting ourselves to things that are favored for the moment but shallow.
Poetry always looks down on vulgar folk, transcends the air of the age, and honors the most noble and clear spirit—that is utterly natural in its essence.
the aleatory
Being a poet is like the writer version of being a noise musician. Your shows are in unlit industrial spaces, basements, or bars where you are merely tolerated. At your shows, everyone else in the audience is also a poet, or they’re sleeping with one. There is no reason to do anything. There is no money. There is destruction and self-consciousness. There are photocopied covers and liner notes and a table full of merch that someone made in their bedroom. The people who make the sickest, darkest shit you’ve ever heard are usually polite-looking people in extremely faded black T-shirts. There are tones within the fuzz which some people can hear, and others can’t. The fundamental freedom of the noise itself relies on the fact that it’s been encapsulated in the most permissive category, the thing that sweetly meets the vulgar folk, the thing which is somehow both natural and as much a made thing as a chair or a tire or a battery: a song.
What I’m saying is I wish more poets had merch T-shirts.
the forecast
Raise a glass with someone. Look for vessels that will carry water. Plug the holes in yourself that keep you from being able to hold and transport your most valuable contents. Empty out.
writing prompt
Write a very short poem while holding your breath (and not a moment more)
a chune
“Abrasion” by Container
Sometimes I would listen to Container at the gym, watching people watching golf, and feel like I lived a secret life. Smugly. I don’t know why people want songs to mean anything. I’ve never wanted to understand anything. I want a tree house. I want to meet a hole in the air that speaks my name.
credits: small spells tarot deck by Rachel Howe
Cat Town by Sakutarō Hagiwara
Yacker by Container
dear diary, we finally made it into the new apartment, for real. “For real” means “with cats,” because nothing I do is real unless it is covered in cats’ wool. It feels good to he here—getting into fights with people at the Lake Arrowhead Stater Bros was clearly not sustainable for me, and I really like living someplace where I can get my hands on every spice and every vegetable. Goose can hear his old friends, the parrots, again. But it also feels strange. Our last night in the mountains was another one of those days where clouds move in on the peaks and everything is damp and blind white, and you can’t see a thing on the road. When the sun goes down, the fog turns instantly blue. We had a fire in the wood stove, and I watched Goose sit on the steps with his supremely satisfied Fire Cat face on, and I thought, I really am going to miss this. So I guess I do. XS