Steve OrthWhere

Steve Ortheagles

Steve Orth

Steve Orthdare

Steve Orth

Steve Orth

Steve Orth

Steve Orth

Steve Orth

Steve Orth

Steve Orth

Steve Orth

Steve Orth

Steve Orth

Steve Orth

Steve Orth

Steve Orth

Steve Orth

Steve Orth

Steve Orth

Steve Orth

Steve Orth

Steve Orth

Steve Orthpaul ebenkamp

LONGTIMELISTENER,FIRSTTIMECALLER

Isawanaturedocumentaryaboutnatureingeneralcalled

OfEverythingOnlyanInfinitesimalPart'sNotElsewhere,

insetwithkneecapsshatteredbyanemailthesearetherisks

wetake.

Wakeup!

It'sTuesday,Idon'tknowwhatdayitis,holdthatthought,

onsecondthoughtdon't

Lightdilatessothatitcontractssomewhereelse.

Walkusthroughit,theaudiencebegsthedreamingspeech.

Arelungsconsideredguts?

Isanearadigitoralimb?

I'msittinghereinsweatpants,fusedtothepresent

butnottoitstense,inallowanceandeffort'ssanguinelack;

theremaybelotstotoggleback

andforthabout

butcometothinkofit.

"Thoughthespeciesisinme,Iamneutral"(StephenRodefer).

Suchflex!

POEM Between boredom and shock we oscillate gods and I lodged inside the phrase end to end with attraction and resistance suppositions and same pages a glowing green exit sign busy at its frigid vigil posits through another sort of pointlessly gorgeous coastal afternoon, music by James Ferraro blinkered and ratchety from a lifetime of NorCal cannabis and the lame doom of state school student debt excesses of ellipses distinguish you whose drones opened wide a mouth to whisper this boxing phonemes from hot cogitations licked insanely by daylight through senile and skin-tight distances the finest life is turned into insipid fiction pretty quickly cloudless blue upper place wherein sun disappears everywhere the universe is fine it has its place is all Im saying a piece of coffee linking me to sleep

(this tender heart) by brittany billmeyer-finn

1. as my tongue breaks through the rim different objects gather a field of meaning the same field of meaning or how things matter more writing what I think might be healing this participation & this work to meet & to be charming my own combination of insight &

awkwardness toxic approaches makers of objects obsessing about this & then suddenly unsuspecting an impulse some stopping I call out for the Subject

the tattered couch facing the mantel painted a light grey the fabric blinds & the TV in the corner our heads at either side our feet touching in the middle whirling chance becomes visible & then material & then heavy this ownership of thought a weapon against a sea of transparent forms or just bodies & might my body have been

there? translucent form the interplay with the ground neither a place nor an activity nor a body of work

something seemingly indistinguishable until it is in the streets afield from the origins no combination adheres identities to the cramped feeling amidst the materials of the object

Steve Orth

Steve Orth

Steve Orth

Steve Orth

Steve Orth

2. a bundle of mugwort from a friend

a stick of sage from an altar a broken crystal from my pocket & three tarot cards: 1. for letting go 2. for validation 3. for reaching towards directed towards myself I fuck up again & again

& in some way this is affirming a value system of my emotional state of the political gain of intuitive practice that small rituals hold the space & me

I blame the moon for everything these small details of everyday life what interference feels like an erasure a catharsis hollowed out language stark under the rubbing the stain of it on the ridge of my hand the surrounding possibilities for touch a series of hauntings or perhaps a systematic haunting

my childhood home was grey each brick the walls the tattered couch the fabric blinds warm in my mothers tongue how I mold around her skin it is almost that

invisible traces the new spaces of retreat of assemblage when this identifier draws a blank reiterates a hierarchy engulfs a refusal I ask what can I prevent? but because we have the conversation again being indecisive this willing flatness or we stand together simply 2 bodies in a space alongside the other we are compatible our

compatibility begins apart we are incompatible our incompatibility begins together

3. & how I told you that your poetry reminds me of something Lyn Hejinian writes in her

essay Rejection of Closure how Lyn Hejinian once held open a door for me my hands were full & her essay was folded up in my back pocket I did not tell her but we laughed about something else I make a bullet point list marking my response to your project & I hand it over to you &

wonder where the body went why it seemed to disappear or escape perhaps we will be closer after I dig for this reading this book it begins with failure

the question does not come to mind it just sits among the muted state until some sounds come through the window I may or may not be alone again to pull on my reluctance to allow it to show itself here how vulnerable it is to remember how much this never changes

unspoiled I wait for it to turn

Steve Orth

Steve Orth

4. there is a sound as the avocados fall from the tree & hit the pavement I would have heard

it if the wind hadnt been so strong the rotting avocados roll along the slopes of the parking lot of my apartment on 33rd St. in Oakland & sometimes I try & go back to the same place towards the objects towards a field towards simpler terms towards the limits of gathering

I do not see it the field to be invited into these rooms

to turn my back to these rooms wanting to run out of these rooms to charm these rooms to empathize with these rooms to dig a hole for these rooms

facing each other I suggest an orientation taking some & not others I must ask you to imagine this & where do you find yourself I turn back & the reconfiguration settles the previous object present in my hands I dont ever remember using it my memory fails me the failure of the whole story

one has occasion to make an imprint a series of crisscrossing or dotted lines in varying widths fully in the pattern of each of its parts perhaps that of herbs of trees of leaves of wood of rocks of minds of roads & rivers the sense of wonder sometimes called the elastic skin possessed by the Subject which is particularly bewildering that attempt to discover

some way of preserving it too changeable to appear to any large extent in the earthly hand

Chill Pill

obey nadapile drive supersizea black baseballhop a fencedig the shindigkill off the ino algorithm for lightningcrossunder appealhands of the fur clockmetallic windwar whoreget benton religionabstract cata constructdropped calldialectical silencesure coachpast livesgarage sale songsmistake soulfor stylestreaming tapemath slutpower moveDonkey Kong Jr.bridal tidesand in the suitmental sunburn crazy sexwith context we are starting to fallfor one another

Steve Orthsampson starkweather

In the shower, in my mind, I was writing a sprawling, intellectual but sincere and at its core, humanistic essay on RoboCop, called On RoboCop in which, letting down my paranoid guard about writing any definitive or critical prose rooted in time, anything un-liquid, I explain my obsession or constant return to RoboCop as a metaphor, especially for ( ) Poetry(ies). RoboCop is on par with Shakespeare in its scope and in being of its time, and I suppose in its field, it examinesI hate that wordit enacts, or reveals death (mortality), HOPE both a paradoxical faith in technology (future) but also suspicion and frightening reliance on>>>> politics, class, corruption, culture, violence, the self, techno-spirituality, love, honor, loyalty and dissent or I guess what Im getting at is more the double edged metaphors of money, drugs, family, the city (infinitesimally), power, freedom, will, and I dont know a better word for itaction, which metaphor cant touch, there is truth to the saying that the camera (an invention intended to replicate the human eye) loves action: movement: physics: transformation, a form of narrative, tension, an opposite re-action its human nature, the thing is I hate action movies, but in RoboCop action has meaning, depth, consequences, most of all, and this is perhaps why I love RoboCop as a default metaphor for poetry, or the possibility of poetry, is that it implies a certain intention, a certain AIM, and that is what defines poetry or art, or at least is the property that jumps out to me as its distinguishing quality, as if everything else around it is carved away, allowing it to take the form it must. On another level of course, as the exhaustive list above attests, its the comprehensiveness, the universality of life that the themes and subjects suggest, much like an interview, or maybe it was a poem, in which Dana Ward was explaining poetry through an anecdote in his book, where he finds himself in the dreaded airplane situation or scenario where the person next to you finds out you are a poet (or writer, but fuck that!), and asks what do you write about, or better yet, whats your poetry about or like, (which even I am guilty of, sorry but coming from another poet this turns from a nightmare into one of the most profound and beautiful questions ever posed), anyway, the point is Dana explains how his answer is of course a kind of bait, he says, love, death, politics, fucking, friendship, guilt, pain, joy, loss, forgiveness, etc., you get the picture, or at least thats what hes hoping the dope he just met on the plane will get, hell blurt out, oh I get it, its like LIFE, therein enacting the inverse of the title of his book, This Cant Be Life, stolen from Jay Z only naturally, which maybe only now I understand, as the title is like the dope on the plane, who even after having it all laid out (in life) (by the poet) (in real time) he still doesnt get it, he doesnt, couldnt distinguish (Zizek quote here) the fine line between the poetry on the one hand and the life of the poet on the other (are attached to the same fucking body!!), anyway, my point is, in the shower, in my mind, the essay Im writing about RoboCop is really about beauty, and not even Im sure I know what is meant by beauty when I say it, but thats why I dont write essays, and fuck it, I dont write poems either, I write poetry. Dead or alive, youre coming with me.

Steve Orth

Steve OrthROBOCOP

Steve Orth

Steve Orth

Steve Orth

Steve Orth

Steve Orthdan fisher

Steve Orth

Steve Orth

From BODY WORK Brenda Iijima If you were tantalized by that sex interplay

symbolisms not always present but erections are erections the bolder experiment takes to overcome this experiment, the basic premise of bare life drudgery of animal existence when converted to human terminated either by touch or verbally the Ganzfeld Effectdeprivation of stimuli stare-glare, white wall possible edifice effect (museum, prison) they escorted me into the deep thicket of the forest and tied me to an ancient pine treemy wrists were bond as well as my ankles and a confining necklace of vertebral arteries, vines and veins parasympathetically though this resembled torture as I was left to fend in the night air of inner sanctum roaming creatures in the space of being and event they thought of themselves that way until engulfed in the conditions of the forest, matted enteric, metabolic convergences

Not every titillation results in orgasm polysexual foray through underbrush

raptors under pressure, fatal feelthere are 150 pairs movementmarking out/making marks/not indelible, lucidly fluidly charged proximal to a generative survival motifidentity suspension outside the semiotics of human languageself-apotheosis jangle the tendon plume fuck foam single celled netherside bicameral then bioengineering the problem of evil and the symptomatics of the site yet when approached by the lawn there is awe the sacred enclosure of property standing here waiting to be handled cant mastermind the everything then to try and fuck the stick bark hardship this sentence is for someone specific

Steve Orth

you speak of responsibility we wrote a planet of that no want of worry

Walk again to Veterans Memorial on Brown Street

body rigor mortis

changes in the muscle tissue after deathcells deprived of oxygen rigidify symptomatically as cognitive dissonance informs posture there is an invisible kennel around my body what industrial farms use to house animals bars grow into skin, sure death I lie prone like an oversized hormone saturated sow about to be tased farrowing crates/gestation crates cannot turn throughout lifespan artificially inseminated deprived of sunlight/grass to roam around on eco-terrorist if one were to film this scenario and care pitiful and pathetic who cars pass as usual, as per usual their directional seem uni

Having walked from Site K where 55, 000 gallon drums of the substance was unloaded onto the land to this memorial past Hillside Cemetery contemplating toxicity and extroverted cruelty

On one side against gravel and the fumes of emissions heels locked into L shaped spikes the neck is thick and no longer malleable belly up and twisted into painful knot needed this time to relinquish all claims dogs were upon me, as were the dead now is time to roll over if the restraints permit to be tasted on the heels of death, mortifying ambience

Tough meat, tough to relive the tensions and locked position

night is coming on and the old folks will need me evermore still being this hog in bondage while staring at stone structures a squirrel climbs a last elm in the grove by the 19th century markers tough to meet the meanings like this lingering and becoming the choreography was merely the complex of excavating time to the scene making way, recording in cellular proximity a dinner plated corporeal form is not audience

now and again consumed the remediation site is down this road called Brown Street brown premeditating brownfield and/or superfund brown of flourishing microbial life, falcons wings, tree trunks brown of intelligence evidently diminishes in contact with aromatics such as these seriously, Monsanto, how much crap do you make the companys first product was the artificial sweetener saccharine Brandon Browns poem where he dtourned genetically modified corn to the bone of the crop so that we morph briefly into a gestation phase taken by new substances a preparatory act of war of which corn is always implicated 2013: Monsanto purchased San Francisco-based Climate Corp for $930 million

timed to bowel movements, you dont want to be off

Steve Orth

TIME

Spit up, sit up, endless terror and frontierof the body unfolding, sunand bone, bubblingforth, affrontto all things steady, he thinks hell skipcrawling. Hes falling.Its -25F and hesstanding on the radiatorlooking at the snow-buriedcars, nobody holding him, it, this body that keepsgrowing like a turnipall winter, turning milk into the root of all thats sudden and lurchespast ecstasy into despair and back. Pausefor a breath people in a hurrycant feel. Four frontteeth like a cartoon beavercollapsingtoward the cats tail. Maybeits time to child proof, to scrub winters black mold from the cracksin the wainscot, time to pull the anthologiesoff the bottom shelf. But does he get biggeror does the world shrinkbefore him? I mean we keeptaking it away. On his nine-month birthday he eatsbright orange pieces of shredded cheese, chokeson a clementine, snowfalling, filling in the path from the back door to the garage. Its -40Fwith the wind chill the morning

Steve Orthchris martin

he finally crawls, lured acrossthe nursery by a neon monster pencil top, the kind you winwith skee-ball tickets.All week we surround him in the wonkyquadrilateral of our outstretched legs, feet touching, formingthe enclosure where he falls back and forth, youto me and meto you. We secretly fear he likes the falling down dance too much, so much hell never walk, but I lovehow he practicescollapse. Unfolding, bubblingcrawling, falling, standing, lookingholding, growing, collapsingtaking, filling, fallingforming I there and you here and the nucleus our desires strewn over the difference, which is nowa person. Let him falland fall in this leg-sheltered fieldwhere we too stumble and learn freely, foragesong from tragedy, lightfrom loss, fall into evening, morning, the nextday, mercy. A person.

Steve Orth

Steve Orthkate robinson

Steve Orth

Steve Orth

Steve Orth

Steve Orthdavid brazil

Steve Orth

Steve Orthlindsey boldt

Steve Orth

Steve Orth

Steve Orth

Steve Orth

Jess$Heaney$intersections$in$the$impasse$

who watched boxcars boxcars boxcars sliding through restaurants toward lonesome electric port in expansionist nights who watched hanjin hanjin capital K line through firepits and jazz fog toward exponential domain data information, who drank gin and tonics, whiskey sodas in landlocked boats and waterfront hotels stranded amongst concrete freeways, who whipped kink on Jack Londons landlock dock in the 880, who sniffed blow, tied heroin, weighed bricks for rent, moved weed for cash, who worked corners and admired purses, who held company for security, where underground economy holds things in pressure lock, props up whats left without, sucks back some money that the structure sucks out, where cash is the hustle in economy white out imperial wasted on credit, using hand to mouth to scrape griddles, scrape bikes, scrap trucks, scrap tin, where cacti blush in lawns linked in metal fence, where crab grass catch rose bushes, who ride BART, red lights, bus, and bikes, who drive information, who group-play the game, who upset the set-up, who fucks wit it, who tag, who murals, who writes history, when students walk out, take over intersections, snap shots of cops locking their school gates, where demands for security are revolutionary against the state that swoons for an economy globalized by hanjin hanjin capital K, Clorox, shotspotter, Ceasefire, ATF, FBI, ICE, zarsion holdings LLC count on you me we to activate our bodies covered in skins scaled with histories spilling from our mouths towards ears spread wide between our eyes steady with the beating of our many-chambered hearts as they demand thru the megaphone real safety means no collaboration with immigration and customs enforcement, means better schools, real jobs. we demand. we demand. fuck the gang injunctions, fuck fuck the gang injunctions

Steve Orth

PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN

when an artist dieseverything becomes so likeless. Lake light a big drag, the rainannoying although wewe were parched. Threefarmers shake their headswimple down on haystalks sad, even theircabbages have teary layers. Its the yearof the horse not the worm but so farthis year has swallowedartists like an orca gulpsdown ten chum in onegob. Somebody won theSuper Bowl, they jump upand down, go home, sleepto wake, my veinshurt, lithe but a littlelifeless, blue as Kool Aidwhats easy to forgetis that athletic competitionslike poetry were inventedto war against deathagainst the death ofhow anybodys namemeans anything, its best to do this with a helmet onpoetry I meanwas invented as a logof leased ass, everyone

Steve Orthbrandon brown

Steve Orth

in the world knowsthe name Shamuthe Seahawks know itthe Broncos know itPhilip Seymour Hoffman knew itand it is for this reasonorca cum is thickand salty heroin of cums.

Steve Orthphilip seymour hoffmann

Steve Orth

Steve Orth

Steve Orth

DRESS

You go outHave all the funI will be hereHaving none

Steve Orthelaine kahn

Steve Orth

Steve Orthlaurence jones

Steve Orth"He tried to kiss me after eating my booty. Man you got a potty mouth."

Selections are honey. from After Sappho

im moving in two directions

a sauna in flux grasping at the body

fleeing up in the air a rope w/ no causal tiean agent un loosened

in limb & skin

what do i do o matrixto keep on living in this junkyard

i am a goat

i have become a goat

Anaktoria

Steve Orthsara larsen

for Alli Warren

Aphrodite deathless of poly-crown consciousnessZeus-daughter, wiles weaver, I beg you:do not break me like a horseOh lady. My heart.

but come here, if ever youcaught my voice (many) and caved,and came, shuttering behind you your dadspalace gold

steering your stallion chariot Helen-esque sparrows (such cologne) quick whirred you over black earthwhip-wings down heaven through mid-air

and made it. But you. Oh blissful,smile on your never-dying facesaying whats up with me this time and why this time again suffering do i call out

and what do i most of all want to happenin my desiring heart. Who am I to persuade this timeto lead her back to your love? Who, oh Sappho,wrongs you?

If she never responds, soon she will correspond.If she rejects your tender body, soon she will covet you voraciously.If she does not love, soon she will love you -even against her will.

Come now, goddess: unleash me from bittercare and all my heart beatsto accomplish, accomplish. You yourselfbe my Ally.

for Lindsey Boldt

here to me from Crete to this holy coven

this apple secret where we meet a grove

of like-i-said apple trees alters smoking with what you brought from 40th streetAncient Ways Larrys house.

frankincense

cold water babbles through apple boughs and sublime stink of rose es its quite dark with the sky all shaded out like this and among simmer ing leaves

enchantment drops upon

there is an oak land where drews ponies brew among us here bloom outspringtime flowers breeze

honey-like drips us

there, Aphrodite, take pour grace fully

nectar mingled with parties

for Laura Woltag

too you i white goat

drench wine

Steve Orthmarch 8, 2014

Steve Orth

Steve Orth