Andy Warhol speaks to his two Filipina maids

[annani.livejournal.com]

Andy Warhol speaks to his two Filipina maids
- Alfred Yuson

“Art, my dears, is not cleaning up
after the act. Neither is it washing off
grime with the soap of tact. In fact
and in truth, my dears, art is dead

center, between meals, amid spices
and spoilage. Fills up the whitebread
sweep of life’s obedient slices.

Art is the letters you send home
about the man you serve. Or the salad
you bring in to my parlor of elites.

While Manhattan stares down at the soup
of our affinities. And we hear talk of coup
in your islands. There they copy love
the way I do, as how I arrive over and over

again at art. Perhaps too it is the time
marked by the sand in your shoes, spilling
softly like rumor. After your hearts I lust.
In our God you trust. And it’s your day off.”

Hold - Paolo Manalo

[annani.livejournal.com]

Hold
- Paolo Manalo

Through numbers at random
you found me, to talk fate:
how coincidence makes perfect

sense at midnight. Admitting
voice in the bedroom another
wake-up call, its urgency,

a distress code. In this cycle
repetition breeds familiarity.
From your end, the connection's

clearly for you, meaning,
it's all one way--need imposing
silence on my part, while the life

that leads you to end
your life travels from mouth to earpiece
all in one breath.

In the middle of night what excuse
would shut out the stranger
who has dialed me into a friend

whose only words can be yes and no
problem? Clearly these are desperate times.
By extension, your problems become mine

to solve. Conscience, however, permits hang-ups,
the only way to keep you in line.
Hang-ups versus hang-ups.

These are the limits of free speech.
You're allowed to talk only
on my own time--the length I'd give shell

with the beach's murmur to repeat sea.
Strange, but only when someone listens
does life ring true.

So each night when you wait for the moment to live
I wait for that moment to keep you
waiting.

Richard Brautigan, Pacific Radio Fire

[bellejarred.livejournal.com]

Pacific Radio Fire

The largest ocean in the world starts or ends at
Monterrey, California. It depends on what language you
are speaking. My friend's wife had just left him. She
walked right out the door and didn't even say good-bye.
We went and got two fifths of port and headed for the
Pacific.

It's an old song that's been played on all the jukeboxes
in America. The song has been around so long that it's
been recorded on the very dust of America and it has
settled on everything and changed chairs and cars and
toys and lamps and windows into billions of phonographs
to play that song back into the ear of our broken heart.

We sat down on a small corner-like beach surrounded by
big granite rocks and the hugeness of the Pacific Ocean
with all its vocabularies.

We were listening to rock and roll on his transistor
radio and somberly drinking port. We were both in
despair. I didn't know what he was going to do with the
rest of his life either.

I took another sip of port. The Beach Boys were singing
a song about about California girls on the radio. They
liked them.

His eyes were wet wounded rugs.

Like some kind of strange vacuum cleaner I tried to
console him. I recited the same old litanies that you
say to people when you try to help their broken hearts,
but words can't help at all.

It's just the sound of another human voice that makes
the only difference. There's nothing you're ever going
to say that's going to make anybody happy when they're
feeling shitty about losing somebody that they love.

Finally he set fire to the radio. He piled some paper
around it. He struck a match to the paper. We sat
there watching it. I had never seen anybody set fire to
a radio before.

As the radio gently burned away, the flames began to
affect the songs that we were listening to. A record
that was #1 on the Top-40 suddenly dropped to #13 inside
of itself. A song that was #9 became #27 in the middle
of a chorus about loving somebody. They tumbled in
popularity like broken birds. Then it was too late for
all of them.

Please Remember To Wash Your Hands

[childecleon.livejournal.com]

There are wolf thickets.
There are culverts full of bears.
There are alpine hares
that were lost children.

Do not talk to strangers.
Do not cross the road.
Make a ring of fire.
Do not play with matches.

There are migrant birds
that shouldn't be here.
There are people listening.
There are ill considered
consequences. There are
no answers to your liking.

There are precautions
you can take. Switch off
the lights. Remove
sharp objects on entering
the liferaft. Suck fish eyes
to stave off thirst.

There are many things
that do not come alive
except in the small hours
before the day makes it.

Wolf thickets.
Half silences.
The distance
between lovers.

-Sandra Greaves

Sexual Blossoms and Their Fierce Addictions - Sidney Wade

[orneryhipster.livejournal.com]

Yesterday's tulips in the crystal bowl
have begun to open, and already they've
partially exposed their pistils and stamens.
In the coming days
these petals will open in a brazen
yawn, their private parts thrust
into the shocked and fascinated
room. Very soon the whole
apartment will start to misbehave—
the fainting couch and ottoman will shed their raiment,
weirdness will graze the ceiling and raise
eyebrows in the carpet lice. With sex emblazoned
on the air, the afflicted chamber will swell with lust.
A hystericalectomy is clearly indicated.