I.

I stand up, brush the earth and grass and sunshine

from my knees. If only we could see the stars

at midday, if only the galaxy mixed with the spires of pine

of this forest, tar

mixed with salt and the venom of time.

I can feel the breeze tracing out its rivulets.

II.

The world, the whole world, is laid out in this garden

Everything important to me is here

the cracks in the slate paths, fallen leaves, hardened

and rattling, the ants in their stupid, ragged lines,

the crumbling bark and the itinerant birds

calling their intertwined destinies to each other.

III.

I have decided that my room does not want to be a room

anymore. Each wall is shot through with tiny fissures

I can hear the beams folding themselves like limbs.

I've begun to prepare a pyre in the center of the floor:

(ordinary things, nothing bold) orphan socks,

spent bottles, copies of some books I am better off without.

IV.

I can only recall disjoint bones of our conversations now.

I've picked them over

all the sinew and flesh is gone from them

I can't even remember what the skeleton looked like, 

assembled. It's the kind of thing that I wake up thinking

about, wondering if I dreamt about it.

V.

They fought all the wars already, our ancestors

did. There's nothing left for us to raise arms over.

Their battlefields are parks and museums, our schools

bear the names of old warriors and older murderers.

The swords are not plowshares exactly, 

but they are rusted and useless. I abandoned them long ago.

VI.

I learned when I was young

that everything can be a solemn ritual,

letting my blood drip from my mouth,

tasting the dew before it binds itself to the ground,

the morning itself,

cold and crystal and silent.

Scholastics returns after a hiatus of about a year and a half! It isn't a perfect mixtape, but I've dedicated about as much time as is warranted to it - it's too nice of a day outside. Unfortunately, if you don't like hip hop, blog house, or radio pop, there probably won't be much for you here. (But listen anyway! Who knows, you could be surprised.) Conceptually, the mixtape is divided in half, with the first half being dedicated mostly to backpackers and conscious rap, and the second half being radio pop fluff. A parental advisory is probably warranted as well, especially for tracks 8 and 12.

1. Liquid Swords (GZA)

2. Electric Swords - (music: GZA - Liquid Swords, words: Aesop Rock - NY Electric)

3. NY Heartless (music and hook: Kanye West - Heartless, verses: Aesop Rock)

4. Get With the Times (Cool Calm Pete)

5. Runaway Too (music: Clipse - Mr. Me Too, words: Ludacris - Runaway)

6. Battle for Beef - (music: Cannibal Ox - Battle for Asgard, words: Mos Def - Beef, GZA - Publicity)

7. What Goes Around - (music: Books On Tape - Unidentified, words: Nas - What Goes Around)

8. Ignorant Ladies - (music: Beyonce - Single Ladies, words: Jay-Z and Beanie Sigel - Ignorant Shit)

9. Womanizer Rink - (music: Wiley - Ice Rink, words: Britney Spears - Womanizer)

10. Maneater Autodrive - (music: Kavinsky - Testarossa Autodrive, words: Nelly Furtado - Maneater)

11. Countach URAQT - (music: Franz and Shape - Countach, words: MIA - URAQT)

12. Danger Kids - (music: Danger - 11h54, words: Ghostface and Raekwon - Apollo Kids)

13. Miami Horror - Make You Mine

 

The tern cut a thin circle from the sky,

all feather and wings and call.

It weathered the light, it wore its flesh

and its flight loosely as it curved

over the horizon, out of sight.

I imagine that it does not know the patterns it follows,

does not remember that it followed the same path

not a year ago, that its memory cannot trace

that same thin circle, loses its place in the seasons,

the annual reckonings, in the home of grounded sticks.

I dreamt in splinters and slivers that night,

carry through the day the notion that I can

follow in its wake, answer

its one note question with my own.

Seven days it took to cross this fiction,

measured in sheaves of seconds, quivers of hours.

I retain the suspicion that there is no melody

that I have not yet heard. I unfold my hands and spread them,

in front of me like a map. I wear this flesh loosely.

He takes off his shoes first, as usual. He carefully unlaces them, the better to put them on when he is through; it is a ritual, after all, not codified stupidity. The socks he places next to them on the ground, their laundry machine purity dingy against the unbleached fresh snow. It is as he unbuttons the fourth button of his outer coat that he feels the first real tremors of cold, as the residue of warmth from his house and the socks are washed away by the tiny eddies of air wrapping themselves around his feet and splashing against his ankles. He savors them, these first overtures, as he gently shrugs off the parka, looks thorugh the trees at the empty white sky, the sun devoured and scattered by the featureless clouds.

The parka stands upright for a moment, rigid for the impression of a wearer, before it crumples sideways with a slight crackle. His zippered jacket comes off quicker. It is here that he must always consciously force himself to keep his pace steady, to remember his purpose, as the cold passes through his shirt like oil through a sieve. The joy comes then, too, from his now tingling feet, trilling up his spine, his body answering with a trembling shudder. The delicate time has passed now, and he feels no difference on the surface of his skin as his shirt comes off, and his chest and arms taste the raw air. His dulled fingers wrestle with the top button on his pants briefly before falling back into rhythm again.

He breathes deliberately, his whole body breathes as he steps out of his pants, then out of his boxers, his breath appearing then disappearing like a chimera or a mystery, or life itself. The trees, they are now sacred somehow, silhouettes and monuments, he almost feels as if their tips are within reach again. He pulls the skin apart at the top of his sternum, and it splits easily to the bottom of his abdomen, the two flaps hanging at his side. He is shivering now in earnest, and his ribcage expands defiantly, a trace of blood tracing his thigh, then his shin. The joy comes almost between shivers in a silent call and response, arpeggiating down the length of his arm, to his fingertips. He can feel the air both in his lungs and on their surface. The clearing is a smaller place now, as the snow begins to fall again, his body more than naked, raging against winter.  

EDIT: Farewell, Peter. We hardly knew ye. Alas, you did not possess fries, nor did you maintain possession of a shake.

why then does the silence gouge?

the heft of it, the weight,

the seething light, the tearing absence.

there are those who have lived and died on less than this.

the coats hung like hammers in the closet,

the floors polished to a sheen like a heirloom weapon

at once sterile and ancient, oiled and mouldering;

these are both instruments and reasons.

brass speaks to gunmetal and pewter,

more of a whisper than a shout, telling the old fables;

the stillborn lion, the graying fledging,

the habits and consequence of our rising and falling.

the twists, the shock, the pirouette and feint and shimmer

they are all there, familiar as leather

I cannot help but think that this will not fade,

that this is what is true, that I can't help but bow my head

and follow along with a finger, underline a section

or occasionally fold back a page, but remain as helpless

as some downed animal, panting and choking on dust,

nostrils flaring and eyes shimmering. 

Your angels are as hard as silk,

arrayed around the room like marble shadows

skin like vellum, faces a vaseline blur,

an incomprehensible shimmer,

it is hard to think of anything

other than this:

a steadied hand and no hallucinations

anymore.

it is a waste of time

to be afraid of the inglorious destruction,

their cool, vicious embrace,

how everytime you think you're well

you know it's pure hyperbole,

an attractive impossibility.

the reasons as are as apparent and inscrutable

as an ancient, knotted coral reef.

the voices rise in an updraft of flint and cashmere.

Amy Adams

Juliette Binoche

I have tried to answer “why,”

I have and halve,

Until I’m left with the vestiges of an assumption.

Or when the dew ends somehow in dryness,

thickened with sawdust and midday.

And I will soon forget the suffocation of hunger,

bone on steel, everything I heard here.

I cannot make a way  for you to get here,

the fare is paid in buffalo nickels and haystacks;

only parcel out the distance

(as the crow or raven flies,

undeterred by the shifting currents of air,

unencumbered by levity and certainty)

with the length of my arm. 

I can only say "it is so,"

and uncurl and stretch it into my memory,

laundry on a drying line.

let us leave this place, this acrid empty place

ravenous moonscape, this Mojave, this Sahara,

this Death Valley with its wheels within wheels of dust,

which gives up hollow papery carcasses

as a token of its love. we can only be lost here.

there are no maps for this wandering unmarked trail.

we can only walk in wavering spirals,

covering and uncovering our own footprints.

hold my hand, my wrist, the hem of my shirt,

even though I can't lead us, I will lead us,

by the nape of my neck, by the way the sky unfurls

and the clouds twist in the wind, by the compass of straw

I hold here in my hand, by elocution, by echolocation

by calling and recalling our names against the night,

by the hard glint of stars, by the sheets of darkness,

by the sextant I can make with my fingers.

it doesn't matter really how we'll escape, we'll escape,

we'll unveil our eyes and see clearly,

read the runes on the palms of our hands,

we'll blossom propellers from our shoulder blades,

fall beneath the earth and follow the secret rivers,

sail a ship through the sand, we'll escape from here

build monuments from paper mache and yarn,

cannonade abandoned buildings with a fusillade of of seeds

tear down all your idols and bury them nameless

we will preach sermons to the wind, write our fables with a finger in the dirt

unfetter the wonderous and leave caution dangling in the breeze,

circumscribe a circle around the circumspect never to enter again,

and plant a forest of saplings upside down, 

so their leaves anchor the earth

and their tangled roots web the sky

we will do what our hands find to do

and we will do it with all our might.

This is time as a cistern. The street signs are estranged friends and dillettante guardians; I don't look at them much these days. These are the things that are important to me; the crushed and eroded concrete on every other rounded street corner, the doodling vagaries of the paths leading into the hills, barely following their natural contours, neon downtown, bold and glistening, a trembling illusion, a subverted oasis, a permanent mirage.

I have tamed the menagerie and reduced it to cages, classified it into domesticity. This is some kind of tenuous immortality, the way the noise is endorsed by the silence, the desert ceding its own essence, the foothills like altars upon which lie mixed offerings; pine and fir and pine and fir distilled into the homes of the hermetic wealthy.

Wisdom here is an oracle written in the sand with a finger, a mandala revised by the whims of the wind. And the way it is lit; both by the buildings festooned in lights and the moon, which turns the sand into a mirror, which sees in it its own wicked, blasted surface.

Fred: we're down in the polls, Ryan 

we need to get this campaign back on track

I don't think people are buying the moon cities

Ryan: look, Fred 

moon cities are inherently ANTI-SOCIALIST

they do not want to SPREAD THE WEALTH AROUND

Fred: sure

I mean Joe the Plumber and Cindy the Waitress and Steve Sixpack can see that

but these URBAN ELITES

are threatened by our small town VALUES

which are embodied by our MOON SMALL TOWNS AND VILLAGES

still, though

I think the MEDIA FILTER is preventing the American people from hearing our message

[this portion of the conversation is redacted to prevent it from falling in the hands of the liberal media]

Ryan: Fred, the moon cities will be inherently TERRORIST-LESS

Fred: but Ryan

what about the SPACE TERRORISTS

who were bred by SCIENCE in association with PAGAN EUROPEAN SOCIALISM to not need fresh God-given AMERICAN air

Ryan: we certainly wouldnt want a FRIEND OF THEIRS IN THE WHITE HOUSE

if you know what I mean

Fred: any real AMERICAN would know what you mean

because you're speaking the language of the PEOPLE

Ryan: the people in the moon cities must be able to DEFEND THEMSELVES

they don't just CLING to their guns, THEY KNOW HOW TO USE THEM

SHOOT THEM DOWN FROM HELICOPTERS

Fred: THAT'S what we need

more PATRIOTIC funding

for SPACE HELICOPTERS

Ryan: we need a president who is not afraid to PERSONALLY SHOOT SOME STUFF

Fred: LIVE FREE OR DIE

Ryan: LIVE FREE OR WE'LL KILL YOU

Fred: FREEDOM: IT'S NOT A CHOICE

Ryan: you're either WITH US or you're with TERRORISTS

Fred: you're either U.S. or you're a TERRORIST

Ryan: building moon cities is a cornerstone of CONSERVATIVE POLICY

Fred: the HERITAGE of our founding FATHERS

who faithfully listened to DOBSON

Ryan: we need people DEDICATED TO FAMILY

and SMALLER GOVERNMENT

Fred: LARGER FAMILIES, SMALLER GOVERNMENTS

that should be our new theme

Hockey Imam

Bible Spice

Caribou Barbie

Iditabroad

Gidget

VPILF

Princess Mooseburger

Fertilla the Huntress

this is the fall of troy, like olive oil, like a plague of frogs, like a bursting boil,

like a sodden fog stretching its leprous hands, porous veins

this is a sordid fable, disordered, mottled brown and taking on water,

an altar to an tar pit overgrown with dust, lurking in memory

in reverie, in the clever corners of history this is a lever to the new world

a bridge over the supernova and apocalypse, over the collapse, paved with

stone and blood and the grime of years and yearnings this is simpler than time itself

standing alone and unmoving and undevoured by fate and argument 

this is an anvil of glass, the impossible and the inevitable, the end of explanations

the thing itself

The following things need to pack up their things and get out, for they are fired effective immediately, and no we do not wish them good luck in their next ventures and business opportunities.

Potholes, for ruining formerly smooth roads.

Formerly smooth roads, for not standing up for themselves.

Cars, for consorting with potholes and formerly smooth roads.

Twitter, for being constantly down.

Michael Jackson, George Lucas, and Harrison Ford, for misplacing their talent.

Miley Cyrus, Keanu Reeves, and Hansen, for never having any talent.

Taurine and guanine, for not conspiring to give me huge muscular tentacles and superpowers.

Botts dots, for consorting with cars and formerly smooth roads.

Not dating, for being too arrogant to drop the "not".

Dating, for not collaborating with enough people.

Muslin, for being too flammable.

Muslims, for sounding too much like muslin.

CERN, preemptively fired for destroying the world on Wednesday, since we won't have the chance to fire them after the world has ended.

Drew, because he was pretty much asking for it.

The internet, for being too dang big.

Aspartame, for being so fake and artificial all the time.

The paths govern themselves, hemmed in with brick and lace.

The details are sopping sweet with molasses and syrup

and I have turned the nails and hammered the screws down,

for this dream must be seamless and airtight.