the articles of herons.

is the H silent in heron?

could it be an heron instead?

are there infinite possibilities

for the articles of herons?

now, imagine with me please

a figure more elegant than a heron.

i saw one from my car today

gliding, gliding, flapping, gliding.

i'm sorry that i fail to come up with

seventeen ways of looking at a heron.

i tried to reach out it from my car window.

it is a broken window; i could not.

so i started speaking about herons

in my car, alone.

look at that heron!

what a nice heron.

heron's say what?

YOU! heron.

i counted dozens of ways

to say heron in regular conversation.

i do fancy a heron after lunch!

what say we heron out of here...

a heron is inherently poetic.

have you read the latest heron?

i pulled over to see it

still circling above, around, around.

it hovered above me with no consequence.

and i began to scream:

HERON ERON HERON

ERON HERON ERON

it responded to neither.

this heron had no meaning.

how awful a creature must be

if one must speak its name and never be heard.

-----------------------------------------------

i do really hate birds, though.

i have situated myself in the present and will not leave like a churchgoer waiting for bread

old woman in the car in front of me,

no one understands your vanity plates.

you will die soon.

and soon they will not matter.

i live with you.

when i came home today

you were made

of chalk

i could not understand.

you were dusty and white

i could

break

off

your

fingertips

and write all over the walls

how funny would it be to

snap !

your nose off

and make you a sphinx

not to mention my bowling average

would improve eightfold

by simply hugging you

i could hoooooooold and caressssss your cheek

but you would make my hands dry,

ostracized.

and i thought of our lives together then

how a simple rearrangement of atoms

made you so god damned tiring to be with.

ART! that is what i should make you

put you in the garden

watch the birds rest on you

however, the elements consume elements

and (you idiot) became one

i'll keep you in the bedroom then.

but then i thought

how awful the sex must be

with a man made of chalk!

i couldn't think of why you were chalk

i thought you had died

and

(in shock)

i didn't know what to do

or who to call

so i left you in the living room.

i went to work in the morning

hoping that you would

come back to life (like chalk does)

no longer elemental

soak up some water

AT LEAST BECOME CLAY!

but when i came home

you were still

white

and

brittle

and then i really could not understand

why you were made

of chalk.

YOU!, heron.

pitchfork, i shall read you
like a bible.
one day,
i shall resent you
like a catholic child.




my car smells like fish.





my mentor is leaving. i'm a bird out of the nest now.
the egg has not even begun to hatch yet.




also, a playlist for the week,

• younger us - japandroids
• niobe - caribou
• goth star - pictureplane
• hyph mngo - joy orbison
• solitude is bliss - tame impala
• the screen - atlas sound
• sun was high (so was i) - best coast
• something in common - free energy
• hilarious movie of the 90's (manitoba remix) - four tet
• papermill - madvillain

good night, jury.

good night, judge.

good night.

good night.

good morning.

1994 Volkswagen Jetta en Route to Jackson, MI via. Eastbound I-94, 4/17/10 19:44 EST

I smoke in your car as the gears shift,
startling the cigarettes from their ashtray.
The sound is loud in the old interior,
The smell is old in the loud interior.
Yo La Tengo is playing, the treble is too high
and I can only hear the right speaker.
“I wish,” you pause the music,
“I wish I could find a man who loves this song.”
You hum “Gentle Hour”.
I am quiet, watching the cars move past us.

I should slap you for saying that,
falling for men who play your songs
and sing them to you in drum circles
around campfires and smoking mad dank.
They look like the lead singers of your favorite bands,
crude and dirty emulations of what you want.
I glance out the window, thinking
about how in the hell you can rationalize
anything that you just said. Ira continues,
crooning about things I clearly don’t understand.

I think to myself, I love this song, I am a man,
but I am not a man to you, apparently.
The trees create a background for the side mirror
that is broken, angled sharply inward at you.
You’ve dyed your hair, painted your eyes.
You drink and smoke and pop pills.
You are driving from my house
which you came to uninvited
and dragged me out of bed to buy
Tums at a Meijer over twenty miles away.

I should slap you so hard right now
for every reason listed above.
Yet, you are driving this piece of shit
and the treble is wailing like a child now.
The trees wave to us, but you don’t see them.
You are focused on the road, the song,
and on me, who will be entertaining you tonight.
We are best friends, and yet I cannot be this man,
the one who can sing you songs about intimacy,
something you never had with me.

o, dear.

playlist of the week:

• only pieces - here we go magic
• starter - boys noize
• where is away? - luke temple
• odessa - caribou
• olympians - fuck buttons
• do the astral plane - flying lotus
• used to be - beach house
• f.x.n.c. - the samps
• sylvia - the antlers
• have one on me - joanna newsom
• canada - treasure

exhibit 21. we will all be here one day.

there was this fox they caught outside of work the other day

there were all these cops and people watching

they had it on a string

children watched it writhe in the restraint,

giggling.

i saw a robin pulling a worm when i left that day.

i felt nothing.

that squirrel is digging a hole.

exhibit 20. i woke up to this today. it is probably the sexiest song ever written.

aside from that, lp8?

younaiveboyyounaiveboyyounaiveboyyounaiveboyyounaiveboyyounaiveboyyounaiveboyyounaiveboyyounaiveboyyounaiveboyyounaiveboyyounaiveboyyounaiveboyyounaiveboy

FUN FACT

a tick can be removed within 36 hours of it's biting. doing that will lower the risks of getting lyme disease to nearly zero.

sound off with open up our eyes by the silent years.

skeleton; me.

skeleton me.

skeleton, me.

skeleton: me.

skeleton me.

like hands coming up from the earth

and cradling, never forgiving, never understanding

just cold and reminding.

nathan would publish poems, but no one cares so he won't waste his time.

exhibit 19. case in point

(c) nathan masserang prints (2010)

playlist of the week:

• the entirety of sleigh bells' "treats"
• summertime clothes [dam funk remix] - animal collective
• heaven's on fire - the radio dept.
• the gaudy side of town - gayngs
• sylvia - the antlers
• lust for life - girls
• flux riddim - mj cole
• i wanna dance with somebody - whitney houston
• life in marvelous times - mos def
• stay close - delorean

my first book will be titled

we have an army of babies, i don't think we are going to win this one & other poems

home for the summer. poop.

nathan hates kyle so much.

that is all.

nathan forgets that thing.

exhibit 17. "Albion rose from where he labourd at the Mill with slaves / Giving himself to the nations he danced the dance of Eternal Death" - Blake





is this what we've come to? squabbling over the most erroneous shit?




i have so many babies
so, so, many, many, babies
as if bradstreet had anything on me
i'm popping them out
they're all about
a mess, a jumble
a sheepdog
a necessity



exhibit 18. MY HANDS ARE COVERED IN INK




new missions: make something cool every day
everydayevery
eeeverrrydayy
daaaaaaayyyyeveryyyyy


swimming in babies, as always.

din dah

exhibit 16. merry chrishmish