Friday, December 31, 2010

new year's eve 2010, 55 degrees

New Year's Eve 2010

[Damen Avenue above Huron Street]

Thursday, December 30, 2010

we delivery

We delivery

[Chicago Avenue west of Winchester Street]

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

rat's alley

Club

I think we are in rat's alley
Where the dead men lost their bones.


"The Waste Land," T. S. Eliot

[Damen Avenue below Division Street]

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

cashed

Cashed

[Damen Avenue below Chicago Avenue]

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

smoke and steel

What Mr. Sandburg said

Pearl cobwebs in the windy rain,
in only a flicker of wind,
are caught and lost and never known again.

A pool of moonshine comes and waits,
but never waits long: the wind picks up
loose gold like this and is gone.

A bar of steel sleeps and looks slant-eyed
on the pearl cobwebs, the pools of moonshine;
sleeps slant-eyed a million years,
sleeps with a coat of rust, a vest of moths,
a shirt of gathering sod and loam.

The wind never bothers … a bar of steel.
The wind picks only .. pearl cobwebs .. pools of moonshine.


"Smoke and Steel," Carl Sandburg

[Lake Michigan east of Lake Shore Drive]

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

strange cats

Katzen

"You will always be lucky if you know how to make friends with strange cats."

[Winchester Street above Thomas Street]

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

booth one

Booth One

[Pump Room, Ambassador East]

Monday, November 29, 2010

Saturday, November 27, 2010

mira!

Mira

[Michigan Avenue below Chicago Avenue]

Friday, November 26, 2010

water towers

Water Towers

[Chicago Avenue at Michigan Avenue]

Thursday, November 25, 2010

harold's

Harold's

[Milwaukee Avenue above Division Street]

Sunday, November 21, 2010

choco

CHOCO

[Ukrainian Village]

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

you

You

[Michigan Avenue below Chicago Avenue]

Saturday, November 13, 2010

blot

Bitter

[Damen Avenue below Chicago Avenue]

and so

And so

"Πληροφοριών έχει γνωστοποιηθεί."

[Damen Avenue below Division Street]

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

you've seen him

you've seen him

[Damen Avenue above Thomas Street]

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Monday, October 25, 2010

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Friday, October 22, 2010

Thursday, October 21, 2010

his awkward armor

Heavy weather
yet another film
of Bresson’s has
the aging Lancelot with his
awkward armor standing
in a woods, of small trees,
dazed, bleeding, both he
and his horse are,
trying to get back to
the castle, itself of
no great size. It
moved me, that
life was after all
like that. You are
in love. You stand
in the woods, with
a horse, bleeding.
The story is true.


"Bresson's Movies," Robert Creeley

[Chicago Avenue east of Damen Avenue]

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Saturday, October 2, 2010

hands

Lois Weisberg

Maxim's, Goethe Place east of State Street. At a presentation by Paris Review's Loren Stein and StopSmiling Books' JC Gabel. Lois Weisberg folds her hands.

Saturday, September 11, 2010

how you made them feel

Secret squirrel
Singles

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

~ Maya Angelou

[Leavitt Street below Augusta Boulevard]

Friday, September 10, 2010

advertise 666

Advertise 666

[Chicago Avenue west of Orleans Street]

Friday, September 3, 2010

neon, rain



[Chicago Avenue west of Damen Avenue]

Thursday, September 2, 2010

elevated



[Lasalle Street above Lake Street]

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

varying reasons blooming

Separate
I did differed from I do differed from I can’t.
I couldn’t then as now make anyone happy.
We all more or less were bleeding. Which differed
from blood on all our hands. Held behind our
backs, varying reasons blooming each their own
stern logic. Time passed, returned, flirted with
seconds as it watched the days. And you watched,
didn’t you, everything, from the first illicit wink.


"The Golden Bowl," Michael Snedike

[Damen Avenue below Division Street]

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

tower

Tank

[Above Chicago Avenue west of Green Street]

Monday, August 2, 2010

crack in everything

Starless

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.


~ Leonard Cohen

[East of Damen Avenue above Augusta Boulevard]

Sunday, August 1, 2010

not everybody will do

Bleed

I am lonely, yet not everybody will do. I don’t know why, some people fill the gaps and others emphasize my loneliness. In reality those who satisfy me are those who simply allow me to live with my ”idea of them.”

~ Anaïs Nin

[Milwaukee Avenue, Wicker Park Fest]

Saturday, July 31, 2010

take on me



Take on me, take me on
I'll be gone
In a day or two

Oh the things that you say
Is it life or
Just a play my worries away
You're all the things I've got to
remember
You're shying away
I'll be coming for you anyway


"Take On Me," A-Ha; cover by Cap'n Jazz, 31 July 2010. Six photos here. (Or you can see their version from... 15 years ago?)

[Milwaukee Avenue below North Avenue]

Saturday, July 24, 2010

cat in the rain



"I'm going down and get that kitty," the American wife said.
"I'll do it," her husband offered from the bed.
"No, I'll get it. The poor kitty out trying to keep dry under a table."
The husband went on reading, lying propped up with the two pillows at the foot of the bed.
"Don't get wet," he said.


"Cat in the Rain," Ernest Hemingway

[Chicago Avenue east of Damen Avenue]

anyone lived

TIme, gentlemen
anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did...

stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)

one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was...


"anyone lived in a pretty how town," e. e. cummings

[Chicago Avenue west of Winchester Street]

Friday, July 23, 2010

rats ripple across

Rain

Rain the rats ripple across, five—a family?—in five minutes time, flooding streets marked by lumbering lightning.

[Damen Avenue below Division Street]

Saturday, July 17, 2010

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

baby

Lost dog baby

Baby, you gonna miss that plane.

"Before Sunset," Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke

[Chicago Avenue west of Damen Avenue]

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

the greenness of love

Crying of Lot 49
>My personal poetry is a failure. I do not want to be a person. I want to be unbearable. Lover to lover, the greenness of love.

“Stanzas, Sexes, Seductions," Anne Carson

[Damen Avenue below Division Street]

Sunday, July 4, 2010

task of a lifetime

Momentary

I will do anything to avoid boredom. It is the task of a lifetime.

~ Anne Carson

[Thomas Street west of Damen Avenue]

Sunday, June 27, 2010

wait under the weed

The Tipping Point
Let the snake wait under
his weed
and the writing
be of words, slow and quick, sharp
to strike, quiet to wait,
sleepless.

—through metaphor to reconcile
the people and the stones.
Compose. (No ideas
but in things) Invent!
Saxifrage is my flower that splits
the rocks.


"A Sort Of Song," William Carlos Williams

[Damen Avenue below Lee Street]

Sunday, June 20, 2010

blue skies

Dusk


Blue days
All of them gone
Nothing but blue skies
From now on


"Blue Skies," Irving Berlin

[Damen Avenue below Division Street]

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Saturday, May 15, 2010

human being after human being

Contrails
There is despair, contemplating humanity, if you're looking at all the violence and unnecessary death. Then, you see that human being after human being is living life. And there is joy in it, because in existence there is also great joy. If you spend your whole life being depressed about life, you're wasting it. That's the wisdom of my old age.

~ C. K. Williams

[Chicago Avenue west of Damen Avenue]

Friday, May 14, 2010

i had to do some business

Passage
The usual. I got up in the morning. I read the paper. I drank a pot of tea. And then I went over to the little apartment I have in the neighborhood and worked for about six hours. After that, I had to do some business. My mother died two years ago, and there was one last thing to take care of concerning her estate—a kind of insurance bond I had to sign off on. So, I went to a notary public to have the papers stamped, then mailed them to the lawyer. I came back home. I read my daughter’s final report card. And then I went upstairs and paid a lot of bills. A typical day, I suppose. A mix of working on the book and dealing with a lot of boring, practical stuff.

~ Paul Auster to Jonathem Lethem in The Believer

[Chicago Avenue west of California Avenue]

Thursday, May 13, 2010

holes in paper open

After interviewing John C. Reilly

I don't find solitude agonizing, on the contrary. Holes in paper open and take me fathoms from anywhere.

"The Unnameable," Samuel Beckett

[Rush Street above Chicago Avenue]

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

being an ideal form means I don't move a muscle

North
People, I'm beautiful! I'm a dream made of stone!
My body, upon which my lovers each in turn
received their bruises, was put here to inspire
poets to sing the eternal music of the spheres!
Aren't I inscrutable? Like a sphinx on my throne –
my heart: a fist of ice; my skin: white as as swan.
Being an ideal form means I don't move a muscle.
You will not see me weep. You will not see me smile.
Poor poets: having once known my exquisite body,
they lose themselves, poor lambs, in fruitless years of study –
if only I could blink! My eyes shine – & so I,
with mirrors cunningly arranged to magnify
my beauty, hypnotise anyone fool enough


"Beauty," by Paul Batchelor

[Chicago Avenue west of Damen Avenue]

Monday, May 10, 2010

crammed into the confines of that space

Stores
What I remember is this: at one point in the evening, I wound up standing alone in a corner of the room. I was smoking a cigarette and looking out at the people, dozens upon dozens of young bodies crammed into the confines of that space, listening to the mingled roar of words and laughter, wondering what on earth I was doing there, and thinking that perhaps it was time to leave. An ashtray was sitting on a radiator to my left, and as I turned to snuff out my cigarette, I saw that the butt-filled receptacle was rising toward me, cradled in the palm of a man's hand. Without my noticing them, two people had just sat down on the radiator, a man and a woman, both of them older than I was, no doubt older than anyone else in the room—he around thirty-five, she in her late twenties or early thirties. They made an incongruous pair, I thought.

"Invisible," Paul Auster

[Ukrainian Village]

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

i thought of matchsticks

Lamina
>Anyway. I got the books in the post yesterday. I felt nothing looking at the book. Nothing. The books look beautiful. But I felt empty. Like these books were a refuse of my past, and them being printed and packaged and made into commodity objects is totally separate from why I created the work. I am looking forward to having new readers, that dialogue. But I looked at the books and I thought of matchsticks, yes that’s what I thought of, matchsticks. Maybe because the books are paper. And I thought of burning them, like Artaud writing about poems, meant to be read once and then burned.

"Frances Farmer Is My Sister," Kate Zambreno

[Chicago Avenue east of Rush Street]

Saturday, April 17, 2010

flags

Ashes of American flags

I would like to salute
the ashes of American flags
And all the fallen leaves
filling up shopping bags


"Ashes of American Flags," Wilco

[State Street below Randolph Street]

Thursday, April 8, 2010

kindness and unkindness

Set-ups
Look to your life.
Rest your kindness
and your unkindness
now, and listen: I know
what makes your heart
clench coldly
in all weathers,
I know how it feels
that it always will.
Bear that. Look to your life,
to your one given garden.


"Garden," Sam Willetts

[Chicago Avenue east of Winchester Street]

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

ignorant of death

My lil frien'
To be immortal is commonplace; except for man, all creatures are immortal, for they are ignorant of death; what is divine, terrible, incomprehensible, is to know that one is immortal.

~ Jorge Luis Borges

[Damen Avenue below Division Street]

About Me

Chicago, Illinois, United States

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