part of the sickness

my head feels like two heads

heavy,
i sway like ocean weight
buoying

someone
described his
eyes as "buoyant"

i, i
questioned the wording



it's part of the sickness

when everything else
is pouring out of me
why not songs?

words too,
and damn, i'm vocal
my new years resolution
is to shut
the fuck up

right after this line,
i swear
one more
take and
i can
hit this

high note

untime

Untime
My hands are
Inaccurate sundials
As a measure of
Comfort
I want to die
Jaywalking
Street coffin:
Remembered as a dent
in a European import
Driven by an
Immigrant
Memorialized in
Pressure washed
Asphalt
Patched with
Melted tires

I am tired.

Turn

I have seen the way
Water makes flat
Your hair
In that spot
That gentle
Curve
Between your shoulder blades
Where the sun
Smoothes every morning
As you turn
Your face from the window

I have heard you
Quavering, sing
Mellow and soothing
Smokey and hushed
A song for
Remembering
On green sheets
Wrinkled and ruined
Humming in
My ear

I have felt your
Breathe in
Quicker and softer
Brushed hair
From my
Forehead
Picked you from
Between my
Teeth
Made soft your
Blurry eyes
With heat

Gripped you in
My mold
Twisted between
Your delicate ribs
As you turn
Delighting
Slow between my
Fingers

We’ve wrung
Each other’s tears
Coaxed
Out in smiles
Dried by dry lips
Beeswaxed and cracked
Promising
Promises

Rubbed tender
Our sorest
Remembrances
Smoothed out the
Wrinkles in water
Nibbled at our
Hanging free flesh
As we fold
Together
Into the mystic

multi touch table (interface final project)

i spent most of my days and nights over the last month sweating over making this crazy touch screen table. i used the software max/msp to convert audio into shapes and used a finger tracking software to take the finger movements on the table and convert them into triggers that make more shapes and effect the shapes on screen.

the box is 18"x25"x19" with a screen area of 17"x24". i used really nice Appleply birch veneer plywood (3/4"), a clear sheet of acrylic (3/16"), a sheet of vellum coated with silicon sealant for a wider surface area when touching, a small usb camera (converted into an infared camera by taking out the visible light filter and replacing it with a bit of used film strip), 64 IR leds around the edge of the acrylic, a 15V power supply, and my laptop to run it.

some process photos:

polishing the acrylic to a sheen with sandpaper and dremel polisher.

connecting the leds in groups of 8
finished wood working
detail of slot for LEDs and acrylic to fit into
acrylic and leds in, wired up to the power supply

my sleep body

See-saw my weight

Like the alcoholic

Volume content

Makes corks

Stain chartreuse

Smudges on the

Edge of the bathtub, like

Maroon coffee cup

Full

Of coffee

Vanilla candle

Melting on the

Edge of the bathtub, like

My hands

Melting on the

Piano teeth

March me upstairs. You can’t see nearly as many stars from your observatory as you can in my hometown. We could drive to the top of Figueroa Mountain; you could watch the moon rise over the peaks there. I don’t think UFO sightings are funny. Well, they are funny, but not “ha-ha” funny. You either have had the experience or not. It’s scarier when everyone else is seeing the same thing.

Both fuming, coughing

Exhaust

You tied yourself to

The bed

(for warmth)

The mirror reflects

A rainbow

On the pillowcase

At the right time of day

I lay

Facedown

On top of your body

(for warmth)

The mirror reflects

A rainbow on

Your hips

My knees fold over

Your knees

My nose

Melting on the

Edge of your

Ear, like

My hands

Melting over your

Skinny wrists

Please, stop apologizing. That is the point anyway, isn’t it? Do what you have to do. Thank you, thank you, thank you…I remember clearly, there were four of us, in this tree. There were three or more separate lights. They would move in erratic, slightly geometric patterns, then swoop down real close to the horizon line, then zoom way up and away nearly out of sight before coming back. One was changing color like a psychedelic LED in the sky. All of the sudden they disappeared together.

My sleep body

Is much heavier

Than my

Bone vessel

Residual weight

When waking

Sometimes, I’m pulled

Down

Stone in

Water, like

My hands

Melting on the

Edge of the bathtub

Without without

"i am not afraid to not know what i am afraid of"



"How can it not be poetry?"
Why, I never!
A gesture,
Pause



Longer pause




"How I Am Not What
I Have Been"
in movement
with emotion
without

Without without
The sound whistles
out of your
Chemistry
Bodily rhythm comma
Beautiful source (no comma)

Pause

How to talk about it
without without
Talking about it
Does it have a
Sound
Where is its
Place
Do you feel it when you
Sleep

Writing in water
Makes ink float
Cloudy like
Water smoke

Bodies in water
Float in bodies of water
Stroke
Gentle, with the tongue
Tipping on your
Fingers
And counting there, too

New words make
We knew, have
Held
Can hear
Have been
Still dream of
Bodies in water
With emotion
without

Praise for Richie Lee

Praise for Richie Lee

Marbled, Hope sings

“Louise Louise” sweet

Animals on earth

Praise for the morning

Candle-lit yellow

Matches

Your yawning tooth slanted

Peace

Prickle, pierce, pair

Soothing warm water

With flame

Pluming half-light seizing

Sizing shadows extending air

Catches breath as you

Catch your death of cold

Makes hands to shake

Makes smiles fake, flaking

Plaster coated plain clothes

Officer

In the office, in the air

I sing along

Please don’t turn

Your eyes away

Just close your eyes

And see

Marbled morning

Smoothing

Praise for

Richie Lee and for

Contributing

Half-time swinging

Close your eyes

Louise

Sliding

In time

O.G. Red Dog

Rights?

Fortnights in mud

Beggars wager, swagger

Trip

Red land taken by force

From Red Dog’s Indian Ancestors

Iroquoi, Sioux, Mosquito

(he’s the chief of each)

With no family left

No pure blood left unspilled

Spoiled by quotas and commissioners

Paid to play

Number by colors.

Some hues are not desirable

In an American painting

We royally prefer:

Green-green-gray

Fleshy-white-pink

Navy-blue-bruised-violet

Collar-starched-opal

Blood-soaked-desert-beige

Whitewashed.

Keep your

Tear trailed dirt shade

Boot stomped patterned red

Black on black ski mask cut out

Away from our

Glossy magazine spread

Eagle balding.

-----

O.G. Red Dog

Informed me of his

U.N. issued raincoat

With ID, two hundred

And the tape was amazing!

He had walked all of Frisco

Every neighborhood,

Telling everybody

Speaks nine languages

All the time recording,

He didn’t break a window

And resting in my driveway

Listening back,

The pigs took the vet downtown

Without hearing

How he’d just returned from his station

How the tape recorder belonged to United Nations

How he had received his duster

In service to his

Land of the free.

Watch the crowd thinning

From gas guzzling vultures

Trained to kill and leave

Decomposition

To the least composed.

Stone's Throw

new gold leaf ep, 6 new songs. free download at bandcamp.

"keep an eye" remix

my buddy space ghost just remixed my single, "keep an eye on my dreaming." take a listen and go download all his groovy space tunes.

Second Ticket

Reprihensible--a sort of pleasure
When leisure leans back into leather
Coushioned soft from gravity spikes
The feel of ease at the sound of key strikes
Warming hands on a relaxed spine
A lack of space (what’s yours or mine)
A pregnant pause, a talk or two
A look of longing straight and true
A golden frame, a misplaced button
A healthy dose of care for nothing
Ask about my tell me ‘bout your
Touch my hair and strike up sweet scores
From dusty cardboard, needle scratched
“A Case of You,” a joint, a match
A comforter-cum-winter coat
The toe, the knee that rocked the boat
The second time now in the dark
A foggy glass, a bright blue spark
Some crooked teeth, a metal cap
A second ticket on the dash
It’s a sign, I’m sure (perhaps)
You fall asleep so fast

my mazzy

oooh my god, finally, new mazzy star. fifteen years in the coming, gorgeous new single "common burn," backed with "lay myself down." they'll be touring early next year and releasing a new album after, beyond excited.

merzbau

Kurt Schwitters (20 June 1887 – 8 January 1948).

"Schwitters worked in several genres and media, including Dada, Constructivism, Surrealism, poetry, sound, painting, sculpture, graphic design, typography and what came to be known as installation art. He is most famous for his collages, called Merz Pictures.

Schwitters also dramatically altered the interiors of a number of spaces throughout his life. The most famous was The Merzbau, the transformation of six (or possibly more) rooms of the family house in Hannover. This took place very gradually; work started in about 1923, the first room was finished in 1933, and Schwitters subsequently extended the Merzbau to other areas of the house until he fled to Norway in early 1937. Most of the house was let to tenants, so that the final extent of the Merzbau was less than is normally assumed. On the evidence of Schwitters' correspondence, by 1937 it had spread to two rooms of his parents' apartment on ground floor, the adjoining balcony, the space below the balcony, one or two rooms of the attic and possibly part of the cellar. In 1943 it was destroyed in a bombing raid. he built it again in oslo; It burnt down in 1951 and no photos survive."




a small response book, rearrangeable tunnel structure:

makin books

a wave

I met a wave last night
Face on
Confronted her
Ambivalent swelling
In the dark
Among more gentle forces
Rolling in the fog:

Dammed trappings
Aural flow, canyons
Melting
Ice trays sliding,
Scolding displays
(of affection)
Turbines churning, continuously
Recycled
Scum greening
Silt lines in
Swimming pools
Every season
Baptized cool, dripping
In drought

The wave passed
But not before
I felt the current
Roll me
Like a marble
In a game
Of chance,
Split me
In two
And send me swimming
In opposite directions





-----

andalucia

Andalucia when can I see you
When it is snowing out again
Farmer John wants you
Louder and softer closer and nearer
Then again
Needing you, taking you, keeping you, leaving you
In a year and a day to be sure
That your face doesn't alter
Your words never falter -- I love you

I'll be here waiting later and later
Hoping the night will go away
Andalucia Castles and Christians
Andalucia come to stay
You were lost, once before, on a day much like this
When you'd made up your mind not to come
And I couldn't persuade you
Or wait till tomorrow -- or pass the time

bar scene

The slob puts down his drink
For just a second
To pull taut the string between
His teeth and the young lady’s brain
And whispers into his whisky.

An important man,
Masked, but recognizably important nonetheless
Has come to deliver a message,
But it is soon understood this important man
Has no mother tongue.

Wildly gesturing: Long winters, stampede,
A great weight, a hiding place—
The barman’s coattails light up!
He shrugs his jacket to the floor,
It comes alive, personified

In a panicking fury, furled and rearing
“Just fine, just fine,” murmurs the young lady.
Says, “Second hand smoke, I’m blowing it,
I’m blowing it.”
The stage light yawns,
Low and blue on the slob, now at the microphone

He once more puts down his whiskey
And whispers, slow, finely drawn out
Carving tactile shapes with his vowels,
Interpreting the important masked man’s story.
But the flames are licking the bar,
And those who have not already fled
Never noticed any of the above.

albatross

old-skool fleetwood, no gurls allowed

gold leaf hype + nonsense poem

there's a really sweet write up about my new single on deepsees tumblr, he reviews a lot of really cool hard to find music from all over the internet.


---

Jaws of way which ridge is risen
Isn’t amorphous, bent back steel
Zither threw shapes mapped quiet
Leaner, brittle pond
Inkspot pillowcase annexed now now
Now oil, wick, tallow

Two shoes moon, through
Tissue crinkles grinning mad and
Phosphor-cloud loop wiring
For you or only once, come
Come from square waves
Being stayed winking dawn moves
Nine lives to love,
Worms on the loom, loom looming
Upon an eastern waltz in the background
Cherry pit gravestone rolling
Grey, anon.

Hark and sing laughing stream
Barely coaxed wax part breaking
Render storm salmon in wood grain fashion
Hell bent lettering soothe say you
Fallen on should solder ringing
Unclean opal for molar marks
Long and long wicked fruit
Straw handed window fog text
Nested almond crescent sun
Pooling like lips gather silences
In shoestring tethers
Smoke, perforations made
Curved.

Brilliant white mesh reflection
Remarked, struck with
Vibrations—held breath in jest/ingest
Cello water bathing the hours free
From ticking seconds match
Strike sharp, white and black keys meander
Holy one two ambiguous
Repose, engraved glass
Surfacing here eye tilt eerily
Yawn. Hovering hanging
Sewing a ladder wry strung,
Warm earth swallowing sung
Hidden den, done then Mother,
Dark wine, young will stalk phrases and skip
Merrily open out over our
Placements.
Shiver bit quell the mold
Knuckles drawn melt gracefully in
Age, moment’s trick
Sagely yellow
Know/No.

Keep An Eye On My Dreaming

new single. get hip, get with it

block sequence

smothered in the dark

undercurrent

wine!

moonbeam poster

this weekend

yr old ring

aiditoy dantaid

and the equally emotive dilla update. RIP everyone involved.

vovo

Vitus

They say I look like the living dead
They say I can't have much in my head
They say my songs are much too slow
But they don't know the things I know

I know I don't belong
And there's nothing I can do
I was born too late
And I'll never be like you

times when

in times when there is no
one to tell you how to do it
you may have to make
a big decision

and i won't waste another breath
on what i want to see
delivered

before you begged and left
your stead to keep a hand
severed
and how often you led your friends
to believe nonsense

but they won't waste another breath
on what they want to see
delivered

honey

new drone / ambient live vocal stuff

pearls

in time
your pearls shall become
your swine
red wine
still recalls a certain
summer night
july
brings so many visions
to my eyes
that i
had tried to push aside
that i
knew i couldn't hide

in time
the sun
will rise
over the valley
in time
the sun
will rise

in time
your pearls shall become
your swine
you're mine
in a vision that i have
some nights
divine
arc of a shoulder
as you look behind
in time
your pearls could
own you

moon sequel

marking time

a beating of the most quiet
and unconscious drum
is slowed and quickened by
heavy waking hands
weighted with rings of water
and half-remembered thoughts
re-imagined and re-remembered
and frozen into holy ores to pass down
to smaller fingers.

skin to ore & ore to skin,
the drumming does not end
as it did not begin
(marking time
marking time
marking time
two three four
stop.)













-----

severance

dutch, cloyne, older

more at flickr

summer reading

Moss

recollection of tenting

recollection of
tenting: termites &
endless ginger ale in
a two-star motel
as Clinton was defamed
and dethroned

while traveling
on an endless flight
to san francisco
after one week of
not getting stoned

over a dark sea
lit by another ocean
of flickering T.V.s
each tuned to a
different memory

under a spell
of haunted melody:
Mahler's "adagietto"
hits harder
with the elevation

waiting to brace
for landings
and for these damned
T.V.s to turn themselves
off

sometimes there is less!

i went to boston for a week to visit family. it was great, the bruins won the stanley cup and everything. but when i got home at 1 am this morning, i found a note in my tootsie roll change jar about how my roommate had an "emergency" and stole all my change! and probably some of my weed!


whateverrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

will to love

Baby, if I see boredom
in your eyes
I'll know my river has run dry
But I won't turn back
with that lonely tide
I bought that ticket
and I'll take that ride.

If we meet along the way
Please sway beside me,
let us sway together
Our tails together
and our fins and mind
We'll leave this water
and let our scales shine
In the sun above
and the sky below
So all the water
and earth will know

It has often been my dream
To live with one
who wasn't there.

but it's just the way you are you don't have to be afraid
the way you look at the stars and how you think that they were made
the motion will never stop turning the night into the day
you've gone away enough when will you decide to stay

my trouble with everything always is nothing's just right
just to figure out nothing could keep you awake half the night
not to know what you want is a terrible thing you should fight
you just sift for the face of the dark while you wait for the light

seagulls vs. real gulls

a man once told me
there's no such thing as "seagulls."
i told him,
"believe what you want to believe."
"what's that flying above you?"
"what do you actually value?"
"where did you get your name?"
it was given to you by a man
and a seagull's just the same.

walk on

sooner or later it all gets real

the stranger song

leonard cohen cover, second in a series

Today

a ukulele cover of a very dear song, "today" by jefferson airplane circa 1967.

Today (Jefferson Airplane) by gold-leaf

remnants

wipe away all remnants of codependence:
long hairs in shoes worn from walking the same trails
"so long"
a crow cries for a response
a crow cracks walnuts from a phone line
heat rises off the wires while the worn shoes sway
and all remnants of dependence are wiped away

synthesizers

Later Spring

gold leaf's got a new album. "Later Spring" was written and recorded throughout winter 2010-2011 in the bedroom. free download on bandcamp, feel free to donate to the cause. thanks for listening!

under my car

Saw you layin under my car, but you took it too far
Don't you know
Held your hand, as you, slipped away
Watched your eyes turn to grey tonight
Me, I'm alone
I'm just driving away, from the sight of you laying in death

happy easter

not as good as this record i found at urban ore the other day:


but pretty good.