Love's Bitter Mystery

Telemachus

2008-05-11T22:31:00.001-07:00

01: stately, plump Buck … - 01:00:40
[mp3@64kbps - 29.1MB]
Read by: Hugh McGuire

Kinch In Black Denim
by Jeffrey Paggi

You drunken lug,

bellowing in your fishbowl,
perched on a barstool.

Clamoring for your chance
to curdle cold syllables
in a fit of soft consonants
and lazy vowels,

you would dip your mitts
into pockets of memories,
& scoop like television
commercials haven't soured
& spilt the milk of human kindness.

As if you could grasp the pulse of your reader
with those outmoded opposable couplets;

You thumb their wrists & wrest for water,
your monkey hands just wrenching faucets:

And brood on hopes and fears no more,
and no more turn aside and brood,

love's bitter mystery seems not
known to all men like salt and breeze,

but like a map wove out of words
allows no final chemistry of stars,

no transmutation of the scent
of wax, rosewood, and lilied breath

into a song that paints Mom's mystery,
with bitter brine and Kingly guilt,

has melted from the sky to sea, has killed my King
and whored my mother, passed through nature

to eternity, now wind, now breeze,
that dances with you on the beach,

now nothing, like Athena's ship,
a beat up used sedan, a yellow school bus.

[A portrait of a Buck Mulligan-type, delivered by a young and wild poet.
Many Joycean & Shakespearean allusions.]

Nestor

2008-05-11T22:30:00.005-07:00

02: you, cochrane, what city sent … - 00:34:37
[mp3@64kbps - 16.6MB]
Read by: Kara Shallenberg

Social Studies
by Jeffrey Paggi

Show the school children

an educational video on the maternal habits
of orangutans. Mothers stay with their
children for eight years. Tomorrow
is the field trip to the science center.

The voice-over narrates the facts:
"Adolescent males usually break ties
with their mothers, but adolescent females
return frequently to spend time around their mothers."

Potential sets like yogurt: fabled by these daughters of memory,
a boy daydreams while the video plays.

I see his head begin to fall, but do not nudge.
In his daydream he hears his mother's whispers
seep like wetted ash out clouds and fall like
melted wax. The ocean receives the boy's
mother's whispers, but the boy is scared.

He realizes why he is scared when he looks out
at the horizon and sees the ocean falling off the
side of the earth. All his mother's whispers leak.

The boy begins to wet his pants, and whimper,
"Momma, momma, momma."

Wake the boy. After he cleans up, give him
popsicle sticks. Tell him, "build an arc.
The ocean is your map. Your voice in the sail."

The Sea fails to notice
the widening tear in the horizon.
As if the blue of the ocean,
and that of the sky
were seamless.

Proteus

2008-05-11T22:30:00.003-07:00

03: ineluctable modality of the visible … - 00:47:10
[mp3@64kbps - 22.6MB]
Read by: miette

from Quarter The Day
by Jeffrey Paggi

I. GREEN

Wake Sunday, for morning is “quarter” as noun; each of four equals; March, the cruelest month, & May; eggs-fried-hard on toasted-ambition; six more quarters on the counter for coffee, Wake to couch cut-grass for an hour, for her hair opens to the nectar of dandelions & blue morning glories.

The steel-blade says,

—Elope with me!

to the grass-blades & in this way, with the odor of stale gasoline,
the lawn receives spring’s maiden buzz-cut.

Bird-noises drown in the mower’s motor-meows. Everyone clings to someone else like a compound-word, & pollen is the hyphen. Even the bees, of which there are many, thanks to a fresh-nest-resting in the rafters of the old-shed.

I quarter the lawn. I cleave the grass with kingly phlegm building in my throat.

She is not sleeping. She is the fir in the oak grove.

Calypso

2008-05-11T22:30:00.001-07:00

04: mr. leopold bloom ate with relish … - 00:43:25
[mp3@64kbps - 20.8MB]
Read by: Kristen McQuillin

Calypso
by Jeff Paggi

She will conceal—in stately glances,
wind-swept poems, and mixed drinks—
the moments of a younger poet,
who now runs to outdistance the disappearing universe.
She will hide them in a new sheet, among magazine clippings.
Seven years before the return, before he will return
to a life kept waiting among the reeds and willows,
a life that whispers promises of nocturnes to a setting sun,

here they are near the beginning. Aloof.
Unimpressed with the mythology of the affair,
uncertain that anything exists
beyond those seven years. In
Medias Res,

Was Atlas so cruel?

Are those broken lines of your

Wednesday whispers prayer,

or cinema. Blast

the wind from my lungs, the wind

that swept your skirts on those

dry village mornings, and left me

doubled in breathless pain.

Lotus-Eaters

2008-05-11T22:29:00.002-07:00

05: by lorries along sir john… - 00:50:16
[mp3@64kbps - 24.1MB]
Read by: Gord Mackenzie

SUBJECT: To keep it up
Maria to Hank Blossom

"He opened the letter within the newspaper.
A flower. I think it's a. A yellow flower with flattered petals. Not annoyed then? What does she say?" - James Joyce, Ulysses, pg 77

hey watup qt? thx 4 the email u sent last night. 2 bad u didn't lik the other email i sent u. why did u attach that .pdf file? that was not cool. i'm gonna hurt u ;). when i said u was a bad boy it's cuz you a real freak. what does that even mean though, right? let's meet in person u big freak.

Maria.

PS. does ur girl wear chanel #9? i just wanna know.

Hades

2008-05-11T22:29:00.001-07:00

06: martin cunningham, first, poked … - 01:23:05
[mp3@64kbps - 39.8MB]
Read by: Gesine

Fear of Death Poem # 2

by Jeffrey Paggi

My grave is:

afraid of the monsters
under the bed.

My grave is:

the shadows falling on my notebooks,
empty beer bottles and overfilled ashtrays.

My grave is:

in between the dust on
my mother’s baseboard.

My grave is on the floor:

the hair in my uncle’s barber shop,
peanut shells in Yankee Stadium,
summer vacation dandelions in sidewalk cracks.

Aeolus

2008-05-11T22:28:00.001-07:00

07: in the heart of the hibernian … - 00:57:49
[mp3@64kbps - 27.7MB]
Read by: Kirsten Ferreri

(See the News Feed on the sidebar also)

To The Older Woman
by Jeffrey Paggi

Become coffee stains curling
on pearled countertop.

Become lingering scents:
corn syrup, turpentine,
tobacco, tarmacadam.

Become a mired drift,
melting to the water table.

The becoming, and the coming back
to what was once seed and will
be absent indeed;

You do not have to be good.

You merely have to be.

Who holds your mail
when you spend a week
at the shore?, fixing the yard
for the summer renters?,
because:

April is in love
with snow today;
grass peaks, like
her green eyes,
from the white.

She stopped by,
fed the dog, watered
the hanging plants,
& got the morning times.

The Lament of the Impatiens

Today the sky would not speak,
& still we sang to her,

The tall trees sang in chorus
Promises to yearn for her sun,

To stand as straight as the lunch bell,
drinking light like a sink with an open drain.

But still silent she stood,
grey as the wood used to build

the deck we’re sitting on,
aged and faded from the last years weather.

And though we are dappled with a pied love born last spring,
The wind and the rain speak today,

autumn shall soon leaf our world again,
and though we spoke words of love to our sky,

through spring’s coarse showers and sweeter sun,
and summer’s moons and its lunch hours,

our song was too soft for the sky to hear,
like lazy nothings from a languishing lover,

that quiet before they reach love’s ear,
and will soon be whispered to another.

Lestrygonians

2008-05-11T22:25:00.002-07:00

08a: pineapple rock, lemon platt … - 00:46:26
[mp3@64kbps - 22.2MB]
Read by: Annie Coleman

08b: grafton street gay with … - 00:43:21
[mp3@64kbps - 20.8MB]
Read by: Annie Coleman

from Quarter The Day
by Jeffrey Paggi

II. RED

Furthermore:

Quarter-noun as room or lodging. Lunch-quarters.
Because the scent of dogwood petals makes my eyes moisten, at noon I seek beer in shade.
(Also because the mulch heap sweats, & the hammock sings to the bicycle-chain.)

She sags beneath the weight of the leaves of last autumn, yet to be raked
when the snows snuffed flames in carved pumpkins. I rest between yesterday's lightning
& tommorow's thunder as she brews like coffee in between the lilac & the oak.

Still I say,

—Oh, To stand as straight as the lunch bell! To drink light like a sink with an open drain!

Ess Muss Sein. Greater intimacy with a turkey sandwich. I must remain awake,
& return to the yard.

Scylla & Charybdis

2008-05-11T22:25:00.001-07:00

09a: urbane, to confort them … - 00:50:59
[mp3@64kbps - 24.4MB]
Read by: Hugh McGuire

09b: buck Mulligan rapped… - 00:42:43
[mp3@64kbps - 20.5MB]
Read by: Hugh McGuire

Three Hours On Route Seventeen
by Jeffrey Paggi

Of course a young man in university of course Chaucer

and Wyatt of course Shakespeare.

Of course Milton,

But stuffed animals and dirty diapers and

bedtime stories . . .

Of course Pope and Swift and of course yellowed pages,

and labyrinthine library staircases,

But baseball mitts, home-run derby, and

training wheels . . .

Of course Colerige and Keats, of course the coffee

stains on notebook pages, of course staying

up all night all day to trace lines underneath

lines in annotated texts, of course Blake and

Wordsworth, and Radcliffe before, of course

Modern Language and Chicago, of course

running from brick building to

brick building,

But barefoot boardwalk beaches, car seats

and child locks . . .

Of course Eliot and Pound, of course “A Retrospect,”

of course “Tradition and the Individual Talent,

of course Stein and Stevens, of course

“Unconscious” and of course noHistory,

But sleigh riding and snowmen, lullabies

and father’s day, summer vacation

dandelions in sidewalk cracks and

evening games of backyard

Dad and Son catch . . .

Of course poems and revisions, of course liprings and

pink hair, of course Science Fiction and of course being

“Away at school,” of course video chat and of course

missing you losing your first tooth.

But one could do worse. I don’t have to apologize

For the babyseat anymore.

Goodnight, sweet prince,
and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!

These phone calls hurt,
but life as a construction worker
would break my back.

The Wandering Rocks

2008-05-11T22:23:00.000-07:00

10a: the superior, very reverend … - 00:45:21
[mp3@64kbps - 21.7MB]
Read by: Hugh McGuire

10b: the lacquey by the door … - 00:45:37
[mp3@64kbps - 21.8MB]
Read by: Hugh McGuire

Sirens

2008-05-11T22:20:00.002-07:00

11a: bronze by gold heard … - 00:44:42
[mp3@64kbps - 21.4MB]
Read by: Kara Shallenberg

11b: never would richie … - 00:55:18
[mp3@64kbps - 26.5MB]
Read by: Kara Shallenberg

no way #23

by Jeffrey Paggi

graysky cutgrass blues
(blow these)
dandelion seed pool-boy daydreams
across the (paranoid backyard).

blushing mixer drinks more
paint thinner than pear juice
more strong silent than group sex.

same sex
same sense
same self
same sulk
same situation.

you her him and whomever else
and me and her.

same selfless
nightmare/daystallion.

same weightless rainbow.

same pretense.

i once stayed up all night all day drinking
photographs of wheatgrass dusty canyon complete set
topps
’88,
’87,
miracle boys in summer sweatsuits.

say what they said to shoeless joe
say “no way,”
say john cusack sleepover, fix the tracking,
track the specimen, welcome to the...
guns shooting rose bullets,
late eighties divorce papers come
but,

no way.

I once drank 3 coffee jugs
and jangled 3 mugshot glasses

past
rapid eye movement I
wrapped. Eye move meant I
present.

no way.

A winter rose,
sepia tone,
burning in your
thrift store
frame.

Cyclops

2008-05-11T22:20:00.001-07:00

12a: I was just passing the time … - 01:09:06
[mp3@64kbps - 33.1MB]
Read by: miette

12b: here says joe … - 01:37:23
[mp3@64kbps - 46.7MB]
Read by: miette

Smell My Wet Dirt In My Hands

by Jeffrey Paggi

Meet me at six or seven
(or later everyday-
when the skyline's
pollution-pink)
and tell me
about your new girl
while we
walk down
Mesier Ave.

I still smile
when my parents
hit me; this spring
will be one
mother's-day-maple-tree
too many
that we've planted under this pretense.

Nausicaa

2008-05-11T22:17:00.004-07:00

13c: canon ohanlon put … - 00:27:17
[mp3@64kbps - 13.1MB]
Read by: Robert Foster

13d: wonder how is she - 00:26:08
[mp3@64kbps - 12.5MB]
Read by: Robert Foster

My First Memory of a Public Erection

by Jeffrey Paggi

Fog is an effect

of Becky, a fellow actor in an Episcopalian Youth Group's

haunted-house. I was twelve. We waited, under
the cover of the brittle leaves we had gathered,
while looming audiences rolled in for a scare,

we were unseen as the guide told them of ghosts,
& when the fluorescent light quit & the strobe began
we pounced, our glow-in-the-dark against our crimson.

How after the third or fourth group,
Becky turned to me, & reached out her arm
to brush a leaf from my face, rising off

[of falling autumn petals
preceding poetry's title;
its imaginary digressions
caressing my coming goose bumps.]

Therefore,tonight you can thank me
for the fresh fallen dew
steaming on your village streets.

Oxen of the sun

2008-05-11T22:17:00.003-07:00

14a: deshil holles eamus … - 01:00:19
[mp3@64kbps - 28.9MB]
Read by: pheo

14b: to revert to mr. bloom … - 00:55:05
[mp3@64kbps - 26.4MB]
Read by: pheo

Creating System 1+1>2

by Jeffrey Paggi

Endymion:

When you sing I weep backwards.
My fingers clutch at the cracks
and folds in my palms to
catapult attention to the
front room. Your
skill and science assail me.
I am not a still life.
I might be hard-boiled; throw me
in the pot. You are an ice glazed
bough, and
leaf the
stage.

Endymion:

When you dance I turn colder.
Just not in a spiral. For
June and her rib-cage were here.
Branches cracked
when the floor rose.
Endymion, you are away;
therefore, I peer in
your slumber.

What is that smell?

Moneta, dress down
and come over. The heart
heaves for silence. In that gasp
you appear, you apparition.
A minor muse in the garden.
a key for the winter, and then
turn for a lover.
You sent her an hour?

Endymion,

When you laugh I play fiddle.
For ten seconds longer,
he sat in the hammock.
A lazy revival. The wind entered
later. He fought for the roses.
To smell and remember.
To stain books with borboun.
They rose for their
stranger. A rose and a dagger.
She left with another.

Endymion,

Come here.

I would have you stand once,
that sober could linger. A rose
for the filing.

You're hardly my Lover.

Circe

2008-05-11T22:17:00.001-07:00

15a: the mabbot street entrance… - 00:54:39
[mp3@64kbps - 26.2MB]
Read by: Anita Roy Dobbs

15b: GEORGE FOTTRELL: (Clerk of the crown… - 00:51:52
[mp3@64kbps - 24.8MB]
Read by: Anita Roy Dobbs

15c: bloom explains to those near him… - 00:34:48
[mp3@64kbps - 16.7MB]
Read by: Anita Roy Dobbs

15d: ELIJAH: No yapping… - 00:41:48
[mp3@64kbps - 20.0MB]
Read by: Anita Roy Dobbs

15e: RICHIE GOULDING: (Bagweighted… - 00:30:59
[mp3@64kbps - 14.8MB]
Read by: Kirsten Ferreri and Max Porter Zasada

15f: BLOOM: (Pigeonbreasted… - 00:52:02
[mp3@64kbps - 24.9MB]
Read by: Various * (see full cast list below)

15g: SIMON: Think of your mother… - 00:55:50
[mp3@64kbps - 26.8MB]
Read by: Various * (see full cast list below)

from Quarter The Day
by Jeffrey Paggi

IV. BLACK

Night is her spring dress.
Lilacs & truth.
Quarter-verb.

[Range over or traverse (an area) in every direction.]

Love through the screen-door quarters our home. The last time, lilacs laughed at our plans.

—Love, I am sorry. You came for me. Your knuckles on my door. Nine knocks, torn dress, three tears. In the flower-bed outside the living-room window. Nine gnomes, not laughing. I am sorry. I fled. I flew. I am flying. Not for laughter, for soil, for shade. Nighttime. Shadows lengthening. Bivouacked in the brothel. The children came out their porch doors at sundown. The streetlamps made them gods. Their shadows made you come. I am sorry. I was at the hardware store, buying a shovel. May your children smell lilacs, and theirs, and theirs.

* Full cast list for sections 15f and 15g:
Character identifications read by Chip
Read by: Kirsten Ferreri and Max Porter Zasada
Bloom read by David Barnes
Stephen read by Alex Foster
Kitty read by Kristin LeMoine
Florry read by Alessia
Zoe read by Catharine Eastman
Lynch read by Stephan Moebius
Bella, list of names, and sundry characters read by Kymm Zuckert
Marion read by Nikolle Doolin
Boylan read by Rainer
Private Carr read by Matthew Shepherd
Private Compton read by Seth Woodworth
Cissy Caffrey read by Kara Shallenberg
Maginni read by Hugh Mcguire
The Mother read by Cynthia Lyons

Additional sundry characters and background voices:
Peter Yearsley, Martin Clifton, Stephan Moebius, Kymm Zuckert, Ted Delorme, Hajduk, John Greenman, Tina Tilney, Annie Coleman, The Good Reverend Doctor, Mark F. Smith, Esther, Cecilia, Gesine, Anita Roy Dobbs, Kristin LeMoine, Catharine Eastman, Peter Eastman

Eumaeus

2008-05-11T22:10:00.004-07:00

16a: preparatory to anything … - 00:48:11
[mp3@64kbps - 23.1MB]
Read by: Gesine

16b: there ensued a somewhat … - 00:55:46
[mp3@64kbps - 26.7MB]
Read by: Gesine

16c: this morning hynes … - 00:57:36
[mp3@64kbps - 27.6MB]
Read by: Gesine

swamp thing; wappingers; god

by Jeffrey Paggi

or like that april you found the zip-lock plastic comic books buried in fresh soil under the smooth long stones lining the back of the evan's house on maple/mesier, 17, remembering your sister getting out of the car and walking down the hill on acadamy until we couldn't see her, then in the rain that night, running past the street lights and fire hydrantted blocks back past car headlit blurs on sheafe, smoking joints and selling gel-tabs to the little kids who shot squirells with bb-guns on hooker ave--just cause they couldn't afford the movies.

your sister and i were found swimming in the Chrosdenden's pool one august night; they were away on vacation, jersey shore or somethewhere; we'd sink into the heated backlit village every night a week straight, drinking boone's farm or st. ides, clothes on--me & yr sister never did anything like that anymore, ever since i got busted for selling those gellies, and she got fired from sears for sneaking in past hrs and partying, we decided to be just friends but we still took those summertime dips, mid eighties, you were still on training wheels and flying kites up on the hill at the junior high.

you never really cared much for memorial day weekend. you'd much rather climb the pine trees in between the houses on the block, or collect bottles and return them for jolly ranchers and airheads at the corner store. do you remember when i first showed you the trails? we'd ride our huffy 12 speeds till your father called our names from the house three blocks away, your sister--already almost 15 yrs old--with her boys down by the baseball fields, parked by the creek, hand up her shirt. i didn't ever tell you, but that was me who slashed your dads tires. i was fed up with the early summer rain, and overdosing on caffeine and heartache. he wouldn't let her go to some rock and roll concert with her boyfriend, and we began to play pretend: see i was the witty detective, and she was the femme fatale. for one glorious night while your dad was out on patrol, and you were at your moms, me and her had the leading roles.

Ithaca

2008-05-11T22:10:00.003-07:00

17a: what parallel courses did… - 00:50:40
[mp3@64kbps - 24.3MB]
Read by: Alan Davis-Drake

17b: what two temperaments - 00:57:24
[mp3@64kbps - 27.5MB]
Read by: Alan Davis-Drake

17c: how did the centripetal … - 00:52:32
[mp3@64kbps - 25.2MB]
Read by: Alan Davis-Drake

17d: what did the 2nd … - 00:43:51
[mp3@64kbps - 21.0MB]
Read by: Alan Davis-Drake

Penelope

2008-05-11T22:10:00.001-07:00

18a: yes because he never did … - 01:01:38
[mp3@64kbps - 29.5MB]
Read by: dwaber

18b: he was looking at me … - 01:08:19
[mp3@64kbps - 32.7MB]
Read by: dwaber

ode to a queen size bed # 23
by Jeffrey Paggi

Right away, you put me at ease,
put me to sleep,
with camel lights, and candle light nights,

silencing that ancient conversation
with yellowed newspaper articles, saying:
Write away, you put me at ease,

you take me down with burning hugs,
in piles of fallen leaves, & nightime pumpkins with glowing eyes—
with camel lights, and candle light nights.

I wake up in Sunday breezes and village
gravel—scraped knees, in dusty-silken voices saying:
Write away, you put me at ease.

Invading midnight-living room's diaries,
(some antiquated rusty oil-lamp dream,)
with camel lights, and candle light nights.

You; singing corner street lights,
and tree house star nights.
Write away, you put me at ease,
with camel lights, and candle light nights.