What on earth am I doing here?
seeking control of the wrong things.
… just seeking control
lost
in a stupid place
in a stupid, stupid place,
lost.
mtk, SF, 1996
what am I doing here?
12 Saturday Oct 1996
Tag Archives: 1995
writers, directors and actors
25 Monday Dec 1995
a riddle
22 Wednesday Nov 1995
Rigo 95: More Marlboro Men Than Maos in China …, *surface,1995
15 Wednesday Nov 1995
Posted in clips, conceptual art, journalism, press clips, reviews, S.F.
Tags
*surface, 1995, 95, architecture, art, fashion, Francisco, Karthik, m.t., magazine, mtk, mural, paint, Rigo, Rigo 95, San, thyagarajan, thyagarajian
This was a very disappointing edit and when it appeared, I was enraged. My name was spelled wrong – and it’s the third typo on the page!
The first is in the image where the images of his work are labelled, “(Rigo)” – which isn’t his name, and shows the overactive hand of the newly minted fashion magazine’s editors –
whose next immediate typo is in the HEADLINE – an extra apostrophe where it should be “Maos”. The piece is also edited considerably from what I submitted and the editors took liberties adding and removing text that changed the meaning of full paragraphs. But anyway here is how it ran:
I began a friendship and apprenticeship with Rigo after this November interview, in the year 1996, which lasted ten years.
Memorandum
31 Tuesday Oct 1995
Tags
1995, Karthik, Memorandum, mtk, poem
To: William P. Martin
From: M.T. Karthik
re: poetry
I don’t need an agent so much as an organizer.
geoffrey goldman, goldberg, goldstein, goldy gold …
The poems should be organized into categories. All the love poems together. The war poems and death poems may be trysted with the questions that tether life and death to infinity but they must remain separate from the personal reflections to friends (save elegies of course which may be included for their gravity)
Poems on the nature of fruits, plums and vegetables (not fruits) must not fall under their own category.
Poems about places which include foreign locales (places that aren’t home) should go together but ought to be subcategorized between personal home poems and foreign locale poems in order to separate identity from geography.
These too (2) should be together and all of the groupings should have titles although individual works may be left untitled. Parenthetically, only one kind of poem may stand alone (although it may serve to introduce or conclude)
cold, alone, aloof and barren of the sensation of taste
or of beauty
alone
shall stand the poems about poems
themselves
la vida es un baile
10 Sunday Sep 1995
And in the only manoeuvre known to us
the steps seem limp and lifeless
for some they are full of purpose
but for most they are darkly lit
footprints
cut from cardboard and numbered
to guide the unwilling feet
lonely in their pursuit of peace
to have the choice
to elect
to not have to lead at all
simply to have the peace of mind to
be able to follow or
even just to stand still
and quiet momentarily
and listen to the music
the beautiful music
palindrome, a poem
08 Friday Sep 1995
Tags
1995, Karthik, mtk, palindrome, poem
life is acheworthy
burning sometimes
and sugary
is time
noverything
feels
noverything
time is
sugary and
sometimes burning
acheworthy is life
shedding, 1995
25 Friday Aug 1995
we are born with millions of tiny hooks
cilia
they reach out from our skin
grasping and grapnelling
to anyone and anything
for influence
learning (in order):
mimic
critic
synthetic
at last we learn to comb our skins
clean
of hooks and hairs
so we might proceed naked
each day with our job
the happy business
of dying
late on the Interstate
10 Saturday Jun 1995
late on the Interstate
leaving the Crown and Anchor behind us
and not yet in the Continental Club
between KGSR and KUT
I heard you speak beyond your words
for just half a second
It was like the voice I heard in Kenny’s kitchen
that time
the disembodied sound of love
unrealized and pains misunderstood
for just half a second I heard it
my only real evidence of phantoms yet
and I told you I heard it
but that you could take my hand and walk away
How happy I was when you pulled my hand
my arm, my whole body
up and over
and tugged me running breathlessly
through Klimten fields
of dandelion
and tall, green, flowing grass
barefoot
sweet and naked
sweet Phebe
stripped of the clothes we wore
in that car
late on the Interstate
and the lipstick you applied
outside the doors
of the Continental Club
(for Julie)
Answering Machine Message
25 Thursday May 1995
God Soup
13 Saturday May 1995
we are all swimming in God’s soup
sometimes we like to splash the others
sometimes to dunk them
even though we know the spoon is coming
Sometimes we lay on our backs in God’s soup,
floating.
(on occasion we can catch His eye)
Sometimes we flag our arms at Him
hoping to be seen
and sometimes, in so doing, we sink
Wynona
10 Wednesday May 1995
Andy’s dog Wynona is a knockout chocolate lab with a great temperament albeit an obsession with fetching.
and she reminds me of the tiny, white hairs on the black legs of my jeans that betray your dog
who slept with me last night whiile we dreamed of being in bed with you.
What it would say if it could would be delicious. It would slip around your lips like fingers tongues and teeth and cry at its loss of identity. Longing for it and whispering just the one thing:
“Give it to me”
a mi madre
22 Wednesday Feb 1995
Posted in poetry
in the future poets will spend a long time learning another language first.
They’ll study grammar and vocabulary and rules and regulations.
They’ll watch television in foreign channels.
water
will splash iodized out of their plastic cups
Then
they will write
so somebody will listen
and they’ll cry at night
weeping whimpering mewlish (crocodile?) tears
into a stuffed pillow
begging the world
(or at least publishers)
for a TRANSLATOR.
mtk1995, Quito, Ecuador
tourismo (across the americas), 1995
26 Thursday Jan 1995
first we choke
we cough and sneeze as poisonous air fills our lungs
in the streets we learn to hold our breaths as buses pass
then we suck
on lozenges and candies hoping to soothe our parched throats
we are tired of tepid, plastic water
then we spend a day with the Indians
we eat fruit
we laugh and barter
but for a few books and a few dollar bills
we see how far we are
from the earth
and soon the agua linda tastes sweet
like strawberries from the California valley
mtk, Quito, Ecuador, January 26, 1995
(untitled), January 1995
17 Tuesday Jan 1995
Tags
1995, coinage, gibberish, Karthik, mtk, poem, portmanteau, san francisco, sf, untitled
would you be the one who holds my crundle of bastioning stoppards
when I am unable to go further into the gleamingly simple predicated suffixes
and hardened arteriole cavities of me
never
umpteen aged wrestling teacherdly cunts withered armlessly in time-tentacled illusiveates
cramming into stuffard-sized cratchets of nistik, mungley bramstoked prits
my own bringle of stolping camelized simmersoups was never englingly rude enoughage
sinjo slaythed the jargon
M.T. Karthik 