Vessel Log: 2009 02 07

: with a few punches to a keyboard I can move merchandise, like books, across a continent or over an ocean. Getting guilty with A.C. Newman and Cranes. The dirty clothes, in fact, did wash themselves, hang themselves and the boxes of burnables did make their way to the genkan. And the couch moved, revealing an electrical socket I either never knew was there or had forgotten about. The phone’s face reveals a long line of digits.

Vessel Log: 2009 02 06

: remember this morning through sake: it’s Friday, this ringtone is ringing. A new tie of woven black and blue UniQlo fabric. The simplistic difficulty of elementary grammar. Buzz of celebration Yuki Matsuri but the temperature is in the very low Celsius. Drawing pictures, writing capital letters on recycled newspaper. Follow the cravings of the body, all of which includes fried foods. 7-11 and the long purchase towards a plane ticket to Tokyo for March. March along iPod-less, the August loud speaker commercials have yet to change. Our town is selling airwaves. Cobble together a February poem, read it aloud to an iTunes soundtrack. No douchebag Bluetooth sinners here. Now the skeleton is cartilage and the mind evolves from crawl to jog while the New Pornographers ring, ring, ring the sh*t out of this new year. One glass of sake and the world is your enemy, your oyster.

Vessel Log: 2009 02 05

: possible to sense the person sitting next to you. Are thoughts multilingual? Able to traverse thousands of years of linguistic evolution to flow from neuron clusters, through colliding nitrogen and oxygen particles to a new set of clusters? Perhaps there’s something wrong in thinking so biologically. Test scores, the median, the mean, the average. Shock and awe when kanji is written in white chalk on a green blackboard. Very amusing. A surprise package of coffee and peanut butter. Thank you, Jose! Your note is the best of all. Your happiness is pan-Pacific. Afraid of plane tickets. Could hear her shoes scuffling over the icy asphalt. I’m more Six Feet Under and less Nip/Tuck.

Vessel Log: 2009 02 04

: isn't enough coffee to clean-sweep the fog. This lack of visual clarity inspires hypochondria. Hunger is less biological as it is hypocritical. They say they love me, blow kisses, and they help snap me into place. I am loose shoelaces, ill-planned patterns, and too many carbohydrates. Mikan, mikan, lay down your anchor and swim to shore. Studying language; reading, writing, copying. And last time I knew/ she worked at an Abbey in Iona/ The sun loiters after school. She said “I killed a man T/ I’ve gotta stay in this Abbey”/ But I can see that star/ when she twinkles/ and she twinkles/ and I sure can/ That means Grocery shopping for colors rather than sustenance. Today it’s orange (salmon, pepper) and green (lettuce, cucumber). The front door rhythmically clicks. It’s not going to write itself.

Vessel Log: 2009 02 03

: I enrange the days, stare into the wood and want to paint it; the whitened bark of the background and the dark shadows of the foreground. You can sense the silent lack of silence as it pushes against your face. Or… maybe… yeah, maybe.

“What we are setting out to do is to delimit the work of art, so that it appears to have no beginning and no end, so that it overruns the boundaries of the poem on the page.” Barbara Guest, Forces of Imagination, “Wounded Joy”.

The return of Jayne Anne Phillips. Sign the contract for another 12 months of separation and disentanglement.

Vessel Log: 2009 02 02

: The Hiroshima Poetry Hoax. Araki Yasusada. I’m a fan of literary hoaxes. Like JT Leroy. Everything we read is suspect; the newspaper, magazines, blogs, books, encyclopedias. We live in an age where “crisis” is a buzz-word and deception is another phrase in the formula. I smell rosemary. Never take a movie recommendation off a facebook status. Spaghetti leaves the kitchen like a crime scene. Some movies show disregard for extras. Like cartoons where cute creatures live in extraordinary cities; you never see the workers, the builders, the cleaning crew. Just the leisure class of Crayola paint and mouths half the size of a circle.

Vessel Log: 2009 02 01

: J. was an hour early for the Hokkaido Farmers’ Orchestra. The snow reflects, an evolutionary trait for survival. Double action. Cuts absorption of energy, blinds its enemy. Meet K. and her friend T. in the lobby of the cultural center. Sitting front row I watch shoes, some tapping; poised; buckled; polished. Swelling music. Stringed instruments, horse hair bows, dancing conductor. Choir faces. A man who smelled like burning wood, a former teacher, asks to speak with us. “Many Japanese soldiers died in the Pacific due to starvation. We need to study our history.” “Yes, we all do.” J. and I walk to soup curry. The warmth of Seize the Day, the spice in the soup makes walking on ice and its fragility a souvenir. Kindness of strangers can be disorientating.