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Interactionality

Usually poetic conversations between authors and texts.

A Wolfman Librarian's Dewy Pessimal System

12/26/2023

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WOLFMAN LIBRARIAN
​AND THE TREMBLING PAIR OF ACTOR HANDS

​By Filip Marinovich

Tell me this grove will protect me
From World Trade Towers Lightning forking the brain
(Mine Mine)
Why are there trains under the grass
And my butt is wet

Why do you constantly interrupt yourself
My rhythm is the rhythm of interruption

I walked down Wall Street tonight and it felt
As if someone was walking inside me
Another person taking steps for me
Fuck you who told me I couldn't write
September Eleventh poetry I'm moving
To Eleventh Street I'm breathing again
The world will become a new City
People will hug in the street Elizabethanly
We will invent a new language together
Queen Elizabeth will return from her coven
Covent Garden and all will sing opera La Boheme
on the steps of the Federal Building joining hands

Why are there trains rumbling beneath this grass
The Love Interest Woman will not die of T.B. at the end
of La Boheme the snow will go away
and we will find it again in our pencilcases
when we awake firstgraders sweating the first day of
first grade and Happy Birthday William Carlos Williams
September Seventeenth Two Thousand and Ten
How old would you be today what would you say
about the towers would you believe me if I told you
the unburied dead of Wall Street one of them
walked in me took my steps is this my flesh
peripheral vision greenery wolverines gnawing at me
and vomiting me up a new man with powers to heal
Wolfman Librarian Wolfman Wolfman Librarian Wolfman
Welcome to the world to heal Happy Birthday
Librarian Wolfman go to heal
Now Wolfman Librarian go to heal or else
lose all your fur and emerge pink
with a pus groaning along your collarbones--
Aliens! but not from the video games--The Alien
you are is here can you hear him you are him
Wolfman Librarian you are her you are not a man
            a Wolfman or a Librarian

You are a woman
Welcome to your first assignment of
healing the whole world
listening to all the cries of the world
KUAN YIN BODHISATTVA
no you aren't her you are a manifestation
of her are you you are
Wolfman Librarian wake up
you want to know why there are kerosene torches
by the fountain ask one ask the flames ask
the flames lie down and nap and find yourself
after years of searching napping on the grass
the subway rumbling beneath you
seven earthquakes have happened and
entering from the left               Snowman Ice-age
How cute of you to bring in The
Snowman From The Machine Snowman Ex Machina
to wrap up the ending               but I just cut his head off
with my frisbee. Bill, happy birthday, Dr. Owl,
Do you believe Don't you know I felt a spirit

of the unburied Twin Towers dead
walking inside me on Wall Street and I could not
wake up for long enough to tell you
I must pause and nap
My Wolfman paws tearing apart the notebook
given to me by the librarian gone fishing
I'm not listening I'm letting the talk dead
through me The dead talking to me
remove my eardrums and replace them
with earbuds Walkman Disco Fist
throbbing in my head I release you
and get my eardrums back
The peripheral greenery wolverines
are eating me and vomiting me up
onto a mound where pieces of me
are sucking at each other and sticking together
to form a new man with the power to heal
everybody even with his trembling actor hands
Wolfman Librarian, a man is walking inside you
who jumped from the South Tower 54th floor
who is he he just jumped again you are
jumping together
                        SPLAT       NO NO NO

you are scaring yourself too much
Wolfman END OF HORRORSHOW Librarian
you look very suspicious in your big beard
and grey backpack are you a suicide bomber
No I'm Wolfman Librarian HEAL IN MY GLOW.

A saxophone player blows NAIMA
by John Coltrane on the Twin Towers side of
this park. He plays me home
just when I thought I would have to
listen to the dead forever.
But I'm already home.
But I only know it because of
his saxophone.

The wolverines are gone
sitting on the grass how do you feel
Like the trains rumbling beneath
my feet are turning leaves.

That’s nice but how do you feel now
about preferring nothing, having no opinions.
That’s just a lot of Zen shit.
I love my companions, that's all, I'm Wolfman
Librarian and I'm a woman

Don't let this dick fool you.
It is a pen I fuck with
The dick is just there for show.
NO NO NO
Fuck now Wolfman Librarian Fuck Me now
Wolfman
                      Aria Aria Aria
                       fuck me now.

Peripheral greenery wolverines are eating me
and vomit me up into a pile
where I become a new man
Wolfman Librarian
To heal. To heal. To heal.

           Wolfman Librarian,
                      heal thyself.
                       Know thyself.
                         Self Self Self
       always changing, is time itself
        Then who are you with this
trembling pair of actor hands? I don’t know.

Not Wolfman Librarian
Not Not Wolfman Librarian
I go I go I go
         to find a pile of healing snow
to jump into
but all I find is grass to sit on
with trains rumbling beneath
in the deep the unseen
Hades eating his own pomegranate crown
spanking Persephone across his lap
She's crying she's me
I'm crying I'm me
NOT Persephone or Wolfman Librarian
only me. It's sweet.
But you can't forget or escape death
by becoming somebody else.
But I'm not myself either
I'm time, not separate from anything else
The circular fountain, the antique kerosene torches,
The cellophane rectangle of a cigarette pack
reflecting light from grey sky on grass.
The sky's not grey. You look up: patches of blue.
Get new shoes. You need better traction to walk

through rain on slippery Manhattan streets
Wolfman Librarian of Manhattan
here to heal
The 9/11          11.9          September 11th dead
and play them home
with the trombone pieces
lodged in your throat
you are choking
cough it up
you vomit yourself up out of yourself and
wolverines in peripheral greenery
are here to suckle your red thread
until white milk bursts forth and
you sing together beneath the trees
wordless songs and learn to breathe
awake again. Now the sky is grey.
The patches of blue are going.
Only the water spirits are protecting you
by this circle fountain. Rise, thank them,
and move on.
The clouds are rolling through the typewriter sun.
I really am Wolfman Librarian
for the porpoises of this poem sunning on the rocks
by the fountain I put them there with imagination--

Not mine Not yours The property of
Nobody
And Wolfman Librarian
Librarian of the Sun
arranging burning libraries in the sky into one light of
knowledge on a ledge in the Kaukases
Eagle Eagle have another bite of me
Knowledge is better than pate'
and whatever I have to pay for it it's okay
even your beak in my liver is
lightning lightning
lightning even is my birthmark
My book this cloud evaporating
as The Sun reads it closely
a close reading opening The Cloud's anus miraculous
with his Solar Speculum
inside the humans are in utero
you can see by the way they're
screaming
in the shadow of buildings not there
even nine years later.
We will never heal. That's okay.
Our wound gives us something to do.
Dress it. Undress it. Have babies with it.

The firstborn is Wolfman Librarian
not daughter not son
but moon and sun and lightning
the train rumbling under the grass
and rising to walk before you pass out
is your only task right now.

If I had legs I would
But peripheral greenery wolverines eat me
and vomit me up and I am reforming
as a new man Wolfman Librarian
knocked down 7 times
Getting up eight
here to heal you
even if you don’t want me and curse me
here to heal you, Wolfman Librarian,
here to heal even you
yourself hairy and trembling with your
actor hands hearing every
distress signal from the three billion
broken sailboats inside.

The peripheral greenery wolverines
are eating me and vomiting me up
onto a mound where pieces of me
are sucking at each other
and sticking together
to form a new being
       with power to heal
          every being
       by hearing its word
            for help in 3 billion
                                   languages
    and listening to it
         descending glistening
          on wet wolf fur steps
 to heal everybody
   with his trembling Wolfman hands
     no more librarian
       only night now on
                                          on
                                           on 
                                             OM          OM          OM

Prompt: Take a job you've done. Not a career you've had, or a title you took begrudgingly, a task you've tackled because it's part of your nature/something you love to do. Maybe you love to cook but are not a chef. Maybe your garden is gorgeous but you're not a landscaper. Something along those lines. Give yourself the title you've maybe not earned but are certainly adjacent to. Write about that aspect of yourself in the third person. If you're feeling fancy, add an unusual adjective to the title: Surrealist Landlord, Intuitive Landscaper, Peanut Butter-Covered Detective, etc.

Evaluate that part of yourself from a third person perspective. What's it good at? How could it improve? What's happening around it that makes it useful or annoying?

This isn't what Marinovich did in their poem, at all. But that's ok. Don't try to rewrite something like their poem, but use their verbal ticks and echoey nature a inspiration. 
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20. Everything Is Free, Watertown, MA

3/20/2023

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Hummingbird feeders
Fragile things for a smash party
Shaker cups unused
Keyboard and mouse used but still working
Puffy Spider-Man stickers
Free prom dress New but didn't fit  Still has tags
Ikea style table/desk in very good condition
Toddler car seat lightly used
Lamp Shade is broken
Random cups and mugs All in good condition
Wood stain
Three big trays of chicken and veggies One tray of hummus
Smart LED strip lights (opened)
Black velvet yarn (A yard and a half?)
Calming collar for cats (Did not work on mine!)
Backpack
Laptop bag
Free 500 piece puzzle, four pieces missing
LARGE TRASH BAG FULL OF GIRLS SIZE SIX CLOTHES
Rocking chair (I was rocked as a baby)
Cola flavored CBD gummies (I was stoned as a baby LOL)
Various large and small costume jewelry necklaces
5 brand new pairs of XL Fruit Of The Loom briefs lightly decorated with cat hair
Scale, works, possibly too well
Placemat for doctors offices and nursery schools
Teddy bear Covid free A little dusty
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18. Erotic Poetry Is Dead

3/20/2023

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How blest the archer
yielding so fragrant a bow
full nakedness from flowery gem nakedness
figs spill with your yields

a paradise of shoes
like silk rug embroidery made for your body

men caught root in the white linen of your amber husk
coveted jewel of fluted bed

heaven's zone shines slick
under my labour
wide spread innocence buttons my america
bleaches more meadow than seed

split conch shells are mystic books

pricking thy hand with my mind

a spangled breastplate shakes me
from the edge of you
You - a great cinnamon animal
with cloves of suck

such beautiful waterfall
I enter as spring
the boulders of our flesh glistening
a sashes warm eggs
books’ gay coverings 
your stalk has is tir’d with his earthly soul
drift flung by to be free

thy cave in burlap sack 
unclasped
​and flooded with my tongue
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17. Description Of Symptoms

3/20/2023

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I tell my cat she isn't real
That she is a fifteen year long hallucination

She is not impressed
or would not be impressed
if she were real

My partner sits perpindicular to me
on the couch we bought
to test the strength of our relationship
He is doing a crossword puzzle and repeating the word
milky to see how it fits his tongue

I got out of bed early
so I could fall asleep on the couch
with multiple tabs open
​for affordable CPAP machines
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19. Dog Photo Break

3/20/2023

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It is Later Than O'Clock
I walk the circuit from my house to diner
                                                                       to park
                                                                       to dog park
                                                                       to the perpetually closed pizza place
                                                                       to the abandoned school
                                                                       back home

At the abandoned school
a man walks a curly mutt the size and color of winter

The dog stops and sniffs my hand
The man clicks something plastic and gives the dog a treat

The dog stands up
using my shoulders for leverage

What's his name I ask
The man says Mortimer
and Mortimer drowns me in tongue

He gets neither click nor treat
The man picks Mortimer up
though the dog is at least the same size as him
if not bigger
and walks away
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16. Only Masochists Use Voicemails In The Age Of Texts

3/20/2023

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Raccoons file their nails at the altar of garbage
while their opossum cousins screech treason and
                                                                faint like ​ingénues made of float glass
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15. Have Your Checked Your Butthole?

3/20/2023

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I know we are children
who refuse to wrinkle
despite bad backs and grey hair
and neither of us able to sleep properly
because every time our keys go walkabout
​                                          our cellphones fail to appear
before a court of overturned couch cushions and
                                     redistributed table pollution
one of us will ask the other
have you checked your butthole?
And the other will grumble and
                                         stare like a barely crackable pistachio shell
before turning their back and checking jacket pockets
​that the lost necessities won't be located in this time either
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14. How Long Does It Take Before A Ring Feels Natural On A Delirious Finger?

3/20/2023

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Have I ever loved
anyone who wasn't between sizes?

Our love sliding off between us?
Afraid of losing
a concrete promise of the future

I am too thin of knuckle?
           too thick of blood?

Nah

Too heavy of metaphor
Too euphoric of sense

You can't dimension the future with measuring tape or twine

​Your own phalanx a stranger in ill-fitting but comfortable clothes
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13. Old Dead White Men Break Up In A Nature Poem

3/20/2023

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Past the death
Immortal birds with
breezes birchen green
a drowsy numbness
the unseen heart
the alien corn
in glee along
the margin of
the singest dawn

Once I saw thee
drink and leave
weariness to dissolve
in seas of
perilous tears Grief
more than daffodils
musks the night
twists the heart

In what distant
cloud do I
wake and float
A fluttering tyger
of murmurous leaves

Are we hand
or twinkle of
clown waking the
deep vacant tomorrow?
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12. Cat Photo Break

3/19/2023

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My stupidest cat loves
to play fetch Usually
when I am too tired to want
to play fetch I throw her a straw
or a bread clip or a bottle cap

She will race to where she thinks
I must have thrown her treasure
and occasionally will return
with the proper prize in her mouth
But just as often I will throw her
a bottle cap and she will return
with a straw in her mouth
which I will throw and she will bring back
a sock I've never seen before

Beneath our oven is a hoard of chotchkes
left behind by the previous tenants' cats

Beneath our couch
​all the dumbest things I can't remember losing
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<<Previous

    Interactionality

    An ongoing conversation between writers and the text that they're reading.

    Adam Stone is reading multiple collections of poetry each week, and producing a piece of writing or a series of prompts inspired by the text. It might be a poem in the voice of the author. It might be a memory involving the person who suggested the book to him. He might steal the title of a poem and use it to create a collage about his oh-so-inspiring childhood.

    To help keep him accountable, he's asked other writers that he both likes and likes working with to join him in writing their own interaction or two. With their permission, some of their interactions will also be posted here, clearly tagged with their names.

    There might even be interaction between Adam's interactions and an interaction written by someone else. The only rules of this project is to read more poetry and create more art.

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All work on the Crooked Treehouse is ©Adam Stone, except where indicated, and may not be reproduced without his permission. If you enjoy it, please consider giving to my Patreon account.
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