A recipe for GoatHead

Nocturne - 17 Pygmies (Song of the Week)

Here is my recipe for a sugar-free Goat head: 

1. Goat Head

2. All-Spice

3. Beef Tallow

4. An herb for freshness 

5. A bed of juniper

6. one misogynistic sous-chef

7. one, two, or three feminist ones crafting inside

8. A college town full of tools 

9. An important, difficult, and important conversation. 

First, buy the goat head in Vallejo while your Mom is in town, and put it in your freezer. Wrapped in a thin plastic bag, to scare your room mate.  Wonder why you decided to cook a goat part again because the last time you fretted so much over the dead carcass you got no sleep at all. 

Then, keep the goat head in your freezer for a week while you do schoolwork, call friends, and bike to and fro Oakland countless times. Plot the homemade pit you will make out of crumbling bricks.

Take the head on a balmy almost-fall Sunday, put the plastic bag with the head in a cardboard box with other provisions, and drive it to the house where you used to live. Take it out on the dirty counter, and remember when you cooked the Goat whole in April. 

Are you better now? I think so, it is, after all, a head, not an entire body. Remember to calm down, and that the head doesn't need homemade flatbreads or gravy, but will be good just on its own. That simplicity is its essence. 

Wonder, who will eat the eyes? 

Put a pot of boiling water on. Go out into the yard, to pile bricks with your misogynistic sous-chef for this pit. Agree about how flammable grass is. Get frustrated because maybe your goat head pit will catch on fire. Get frustrated because no one seems to care about the Goat head because last April you cooked two whole bodies, and that was much more impressive and everyone was happier then anyway. 

Walk back into the kitchen, ignore the boiling water, stare down at the linoleum counter, and think about the last time you cooked a whole goat when you met someone you love. Keep staring for a few moments until the water boils over and shocks you awake. 

Unwrap the head and throw it in. Look at it's teeth. The last goats were headless, and you couldn't see their eyes. Feel bad, because the part already smells strong and carnal, perfuming the kitchen. Wonder again, why you are doing this again. 

Make a small t-shaped wooden thing over flammable grass, next to a classic California craftsman (your old house). Seems risky.  

Wonder, will anything catch on fire? While your misogynistic sous-chef, who is resembling more and more a strong and ample imp, finishes the pit for the goat head. Do all of this really fast, accelerate your movements. 

After removing the head from the water after some ambiguous amount of time, decide not to go with your friends to Blue Bottle because cooking a goat is no time for fun, something died. Take the head and put it on the counter, still steaming. 

Has memory hit you again? The whole goat carcass floating in the water. The coffee rub you put on it. The approaching summer.  The friend who doesn't talk to you anymore. The house you don't live in. The rest of the body parts you are missing. All the love that has changed. 

Channel your fear into the meal. Come to, and remember, you forgot the juniper. Charcoal won't do, the head must be sweet, supple, and perfumed. Pick up your imp by the ears, throw him in the car, and take off to scavenge for wood. Drive around the single-family homes of South Berkeley, heisting wood used for unfortunate front yard landscaping.  Collect what looks like a juniper from overhanging front yard trees.

Come back, but not come to. Pile the juniper and wood in the brickyard pit and underneath the fish. Light it hastily. Change into an extravagant strapless dress you purchased online. Fix your hair. Text your then and now love, despite all that has changed. Accelerate your movements. Hug your friends. Kick your imp. Pick an herb for freshness, stick it in the mouth because an apple won't fit in the Goat's clenched jaws. Render a pound of beef tallow, because the head is dry and people shall have gravy. Powder some all-spice on top head, 

God this is so much worse this time. 

Walk outside, almost tripping over the dress. Fling the head on the flamed juniper, and watch as the college tools show up to eat it and the Hawaiian roles from Costco. Christ, last April was bright. Watch as the sun sets behind the adjacent house. Feel the yard grow cold and dark. 

Sit in your chair, next to the flaming pit, as people surround you, feasting. Eat three Hawaiian rolls, but feel disgusted by both the fish and the head. Lose your phone. Get a little drunk. Lose your head, hope, love, peace. Space out. Sit and chew. Then stare out into the pit and 

Forget the fish, the fire, the goat, the water, the place, the time, and remember a lake; Remember a lasting content. Not in goat. Not in showing and telling an ability to handle and cook big animal bodies. Not in showing or telling anything. Just laying on a hot stone rock next to cool water. Remember owing nothing to these animals. 

Remember simply and bravely, 

There’s not a rapture outside that captures the trembling within.

I listened to a podcast today about the beauty In chronic illness. That resistance can come from being bedridden, because you are already operating outside what society deems as productive. “We do not know our own souls, let alone the souls of others” (Woolf). Human beings do not go hand in hand the whole stretch of the way. Sickness is solitude. Sickness for me, ignites an unconiousness that chips away at all sense of attachment. Interesting, I think.  Then the podcast, which took place at Spitalfield farms in London, at a performance art exhibition, invited live-attendees to grab elderflower tea, broccoli bone broth and vegan brownies. Funny, I think. The second half was dull and illustrative, and I shut it off. I listened to this podcast on the elliptical at the climbing gym. I spent the whole bike ride down San Pablo feeling nauseous, but I did a very good job today not thinking about it. Now, I sit missing everything familiar. 

“The dream was marvelous but the terror was great; we must treasure the dream whatever the terror; for the dream has shown that misery comes at last to the healthy man, the end of his life is sorrow.” It is not sorrow, but loneliness. Not to be confused, Gilgamesh. 

[Here’s is what really makes me dizzy-in-words: eating at night, new friends, relationships, feeling like I have no exhaust; except when at 2 pm, after lunch I have the urge to all at once disappear into a blade of grass, have a bunch of sex or watch wholesome porn, and take a long, sunny afternoon nap. Now back to dizziness: my inability to drive or bike safely; the lamp; These big bad words; regifting; This lecture about takingupspace in the perceptionlandscape; duality, or whatever that means; my perception doesn’t matter; all I can be is a vehicle; Getting slightly drunk off a cider; gatekeeping; where I will live; who and what; the absolutely atrocious Jeffery Lewis show I saw this weekend; part of my teenage self that died during it; How much I enjoyed the new people I was with; And being cared for; how sweet; Being-able bodied and mind; my vast urge to be a line cook again; job full of incels insomniacs and very lonely people; with a crude and lovely sense of humor; my absolute disdain for Anthony Bordaine; The sexual tension with my therapist; ]

“Always to have sympathy, always to be accompanied, always to be understood would be intolerable” (Woolf)

 

Where do I come from? That’s what a lot of poetry is about; Maybe all of it; It’s collage. A lot of art only resonates when you see it’s done live; or the real-physical-thing. But poetry is music; which is mediated subconscious; which is memory, seems always;  And when does a play begin? Don’t you remember? I rack my brain for the who, what, where of what we did and how we felt and how the sunbent; the to be seen; to be is to be seen; My desire was red. The lake opened up; There was a landscape to sit in; to do nothing; I wrote almost not at all. 

Where do I come from? Some quaker crackers in Virginia. Some potato farmers in Ohio. Hardworking people, unreliant; bat-shit. Some of my ancestors, the Quaker ones, believed in nonviolence until they didn’t because it was the civil war.  Maybe pacifism is privilege. They kept with them the practice of sitting in silence; to feel the divine. It’s an innerlight, they say. I would like to one day, start my own form of a Quaker Meeting, because all the ones in the Bay are so old, fruity and self-righteous. 

“Nothing, I believe, can really teach us the nature and meaning of inspiration but personal experience of it. That we may all have such experience if we will but attend to the divine influences in our own hearts.”
~ Caroline Stephen, 1834-1909, A quaker cracker. 

They call each other ‘friends.’ I text my friends all the time, all the time. My friends and I danced so hard last night; Dance is silence, it is floor speaking; We couldn’t hear each other, but David mimed being a witch and I jolted. My friends are geniuses. When I felt sad, Maya took me into her fur gambit jacket and I was surrounded by sound; I forgot pain and all at once experiences all of it. There was a landscape to sit in; the river opened up; desire was purple into inner and outward light at the same time; My ancestors were proud and disgusted; happy with my black long sleeve shirt and long pants; Pain is quakerism; pain is inner life; pain takes me outta this ratrace; pain gives grace and gift; pain is the ability to think, create, and question; 

Fuck the healthcare industry for royally fucking me over; many other people too. Many women; Fuck the healthcare industry for giving inner-light, and distorting others.  Fuck a painful body. 

Here the dancer stops, to regain balance. The risk is always part of rhythm, from all raptures of within and without. 

 

“Now I remember, the play has begun,” — from all raptures of this body. 

This is story told again and again and again [for Annie]

  The place is always Beulah, Michigan. The season changes, and so does the cast. Our roles change. The corn on the cob, and the warm beer, never do. It’s a white clapboard house. With a front porch and a weathered roof. It sits next to the little lake next to the big Lake Michigan. There is a worn-out piano in the corner. On it, we don’t play Bach or Beethoven. Just a solemn blues scale, pounding repeated chords, and the occasional Debussy. There is an unfinished attic, leaning, wood molted. The fridge is yellowing. The table cloth is colorful. The yard is overgrown, with lawn furniture put in the most perfect places. There’s a small grill, used frequently for any type of cylindrical meat. 

We are loud in our silent house. We are like pigs always squealing. The rotating cast dances around us in sweet succession, and some characters never change. The doors lock, so the ugly blond men of the world can’t scold our piano playing, or stomping feet. When we do go out, we are unkillable, untouchable roaches that scurry about in sweet flickers. Steal bread from the big grocery, and buy eggs from the small one. On hot days, we eat peaches on warm pebbles and take fairies out to islands. Get hands dirty with smoked fish. Wade into cool, clear water that warps the outlines of our legs. 

For months, I’ll go not thinking of this tale and place, and then it’ll sting me awake again. In that little town we are held living off our hands and goodwill. In this alwaysplace and alwaystime, we are jesters, losers, riflemen and fishermen. Epic, American Royalty. Well-suited in a place between our two coasts. Well suited in our once-found, and always-there, in-between. 

There’s thousands of versions of this story, and one day, my sweet Roach, one will come true, even for just a short while. Our beautiful Buelah house will always be held as a sweet pocket in my mind, next to you, the sunrise over Interlochen lake, and the sound of Sheharezade. 

On love and a halloween costume.

The whole way down telegraph today I listened to the Black Saint and the Sinner lady. I thought of cold, fall hands, with wrinkles that swirl and ebb. With grit under the nails /// Your hands run grey under the first sink water, and then clear after a few seconds. My visions seems to cloud, and then clear, cloud and then clear. 

Under the arching of telephone poles. The anger of old men. Buffers between Berkeley and Oakland in shakes and clear sky. You are like a perscribed burn. Dogs bark at the fences; I rush past. Don't miss this sung star strife under moonlight/ don't miss dancing either.  

Maybe a kid looks out his bedroom window on stagnant field of house and road near Defremery Park. a Sunday that sets in. He thinks of one moment when heart was wrapped full, and gets the chills,/ the detailed scene/ We are committed to impermanence. Sleep, eat, apologize, laugh/ then always filled with the unmet. 

Feeling of head on stomach/ of gaping bowels/ of climbtothetopof this stacked mess/ of escapism on escapism on escapism/  no,/ I will look at this solemn, here, piece of glass/ the sctraches/ the edged sheen over the park passing/ the cells floating through blue sky/ the flights of all the houses, and peoples passing and I will/ 

feel your pale hair/ and my friends good will/ as an alwaysupon ever/ the buried in dirt/ your dirty hands/ inconsolable anger of everyone/ inconsolable love/ gifts of now/ wrapped clean and clear in tomorrow 

xx, 

sleep well. 

don't yell at your friends.

scattered down the stairs. only roast meat at the pinnacle of love. only shout yes when, summer shortage, summer sword edge bleeds cold into fall. 

Don't pay no mind, to the confident rally cry of big men. it's like an infantry. Battle field, longtime, slow case cause. There's a sheep skull buried underfoot, and wouldn't you mind putting it on the door step of someone you hate so much maybe you love them after war. 

Just like that, stack these currented fragments, 

love to loss. 

dlswordswallowerdude

 ˗ˏˋ 𓅰 ˎˊ˗ 

derp derp derp/////

All my friends are swordswollowers. F21s cruising for a bruising. In the best place on Earth in all of time. 

 ⊹ ࣪ ﹏𓊝﹏𓂁﹏⊹ ࣪ ˖

Feeling cunty

David looks slim, and steady. We are all cunty around this table. Drawn into the eye of a hurricane in furry and storm. These words organize and shake, but we are no poets! 

The monterstera blossoms in the bathroom, and I take a vengeful shit under it, all the while thinking of an AI generated English speech by Hitler.  There's much nicer bath products this time, I am jealous of the Odele shampoo., I only have tea tree and it makes my head shake like these words. 

Loot your bathroom cabinet and then crawl into like a warm, fall cacoon. Around this table, we go back in time and tilt into a world of knights and armies. Stella is a dragon. I can not fathom schoolwork or an intellect, becoming more and more barbarian. 

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