I’m frightened today for
the ivory-billed woodpecker
because he
is a beautiful affirmation
in the face of
degradation and waste
and as such is
a good excuse for
doing nothing

see, they will say
after every binge
there’s still a half-full bottle
somewhere

I’m frightened
for the ivory billed woodpecker
because it’s no coincidence
to some people
that there may be more
in Cuba

the passenger pigeon
and the Carolina parakeet
sit in a Manhattan loft whispering
that the ivory billed woodpecker’s
sold out

the bison hits his cell hourly
and tells him reemergence
isn’t all it’s cracked up
to be

and the scientists
will argue about his feathers
reclassify him
and make him as real
as the posters they’ve fingered
for years

someone
pinch me
I’m dreaming
says the researcher
that can’t be
it is
it can’t be

meanwhile
the bird
pretends he doesn’t know
he’s been extinct
and knocks on a few more trees

hello I’m back
hello it’s me
I call myself
levorantioreloakackackor
what you call me is irrelevant

I am frightened for the
ivory-billed woodpecker
because
he is no longer as historic or tragic
as we prefer our myths to be

Tonight at QVCC: Where Your Mouth Is

A benefit for the Central Mass. Food Bank

Features Patty Keough, Regie Gibson, Tony Brown

Suggested Donation: 15 bucks / 10 with Student ID

Quinsigamond Valley Community Center is at 16 Greenwood Street, Worcester.

Open doors at 7:30 — show starts at 8:00

+++++++++++++++++

A personal note:

Show the fuck up and put your money where your mouth is! The whole idea of this series to get away from the notion that art is best involved with change and social support strictly as a form of commentary. Here, the work is in service to something specific, once a month.

So come down to the new venue and show your colors.

I couldn’t do it.

I went down, opened up, and went home. I was just too tired and had work to do for school.

And now, it’s bed time. Someday there will be an update of substance, but not tonight.

Please consider coming out to the Where Your Mouth Is benefit tomorrow night!!!! Come see Regie Gibson! Come see Patty Keough! Come talk through Tony Brown while you’re waiting for the other two!

Seriously — would love to see you. Come by.

If a poem’s essential truth can be rendered as a haiku, it should be.

Examples:

1. The Waste Land, by T. S. Eliot:

April, etc.
Hurry up please it’s time. Blah,
blah, blah, blah…shantih.

2. The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock, also by Eliot:

God, I’m getting old!
It’s so hard to get laid! Plus,
my fashion sense sucks.

3. The Charge of the Light Brigade, Tennyson:

Into the valley, six
hundred rode, cannons, thunder,
blunder — so what’s new?

Yes, it works for slam too!

4. Superheroes, by a bunch of guys from Dallas:

Look! Up in the sky!
Stereotypes! Gay,
black, redneck, baybee!

5. Mission Statement, by Tony Brown:

Our mission is to
string words together until
it sounds like thunder!

6. Like Lily Like Wilson, Taylor Mali:

One mind at a time
gets changed, over and over
and over again.

Now YOU try it!!!! I’ll be in class today all day, so I’ll expect to see your assignments tonight.

There are places
in the world
where we would both be
unremarkable,
as full of unknown potential
as anyone else —
but not here, and not now.
Now is the only place
where we could be
astonishing.
Here and now are danger
and safety;
here and now are they the same thing.

Consider that the difference between
drowning and swimming
is the difference between surrender
and finding faith in Hell.
Consider that this is the moment when
the surface is broken.
Consider this sudden, awful
sense of grace.

How deep is this ocean
we’ve chosen to swim!
Who are we now —
are we above or below the water?
What is this place
where we’ve chosen to be?

For what they offered, though, it’s pretty close.

So: later edit. Thank you, insomnia…

Missed in the quiz:

Jazz: Which would have included high influence from Ornette Coleman, Anthony Braxton, Thelonius Monk.

Folk: Also high influence. Ani, John Gorka, Joni, Bill Morrissey, Leo Kottke, John Fahey, Nick Cave. I suppose Richard Thompson might fall here as well.

Old School Blues: Where the hell are the Blues?! Robert Johnson, Blind Willie Johnson, Freddie King, Hubert Sumlin, Blind Blake.

Also — When I think of my rap influence, I wouldn’t say it was high; I also missed groups like Public Enemy, BDP, Disposable Heroes, etc.

Signing off for the night (again), I remain,

T

and nothing else.

Your brain: 120% interpersonal, 80% visual, 140% verbal, and 60% mathematical!

Congratulations on being 400% smart! Actually, on my test, everyone is. The above score breaks down what kind of thinking you most enjoy doing. A score above 100% means you use that kind of thinking more than average, and a score below 100% means you use it less. It says nothing about how good you are at any one, just how interested you are in each, relatively. A substantial difference in scores between two people means, conclusively, that they are different kinds of thinkers. Matching Summary: Each of us has different tastes. Still, I offer the following advice, which I think is obvious: Don’t date someone if your interpersonal percentages differ by more than 80%. Don’t be friends with someone if your verbal percentages differ by more than 100%. Don’t have sex with someone if their math percentage is over 200%.

We attended a friend’s Seder tonight…postponed for a day because some of the family was on the way home from Florida. We do this every year; we’re usually the only non-Jews at the table.

For some strange reason this year, there were more non-Jews than Jews at the table.

By popular demand, I made the matzoh balls again; for some stranger reason than the last reason, they were superb again. Somehow I seemed to have developed the knack for this…Deb’s MOTHER told me they were excellent. That’s what I’m talking about. (Of course, she made the soup, so that had a lot to do with it.)

As always, I got to read the opening part of the Passover story. I treat it like a performance piece, which goes over well.

Drank a little Pinot Noir afterward which I am certain was not kosher…then again, I suspect that neither Maker’s Mark or Don Julio’s 1842 Anejo Tequila are kosher and there was a lot of both floating around.

And that’s why I wasn’t at the reading this week.

Seen
from behind
and overheard
on a Boston street:

she reached into her purse
and left money in an old man’s hand.
Her friend said it was a waste because
he’d only use it to buy wine.

It’s not my place to judge what he will do,
she said, only my place to choose
how I will act. What I will do
is act as it seems I should.

Small words of one syllable
picked the lock on
my hope and it creaked open
just a crack.

This is who
we really are underneath
the pale rigor we wear
most of the time.

I pray
I am this worthy
whenever I face
an open hand.

I will learn when to speak
and when to fall silent,
for doors are closing all around me
and words can’t do everything.

I say, if there’s hunger, feed it;
if there’s war, fight it;
if there’s pain, soothe it;
if there’s hate, love it.

Seen
from behind
and overheard
on a Boston street:

I wanted
to cry, but instead
doubled back
to where the old man sat.

1: You have been, unfairly in my opinion, compared to buickpoet? How do you feel about such allegations?

Who the fuck is buickpoet? I’ll cut his ass. Unless it’s a woman, then I’ll propose.

Seriously: Buick stopped making truly poetic cars years ago. I’m untroubled by such slander.

2: Does it ever get you down when you remember that the world actually ended when solipsist Allen Ginsburg died, and we’re all just kinda being stubborn dicks about it? Or do you subscribe to the radical Fredian philosophy, which states that the world ends when solipsist Fred Willard dies? Explain?

Well, as Allen once said to me, “You paid more money, so I’ll sign your book first.” (That’s actually true.) Based strictly on that, I’m leaning toward Fredianism. He’s never been crassly commercial to me.

3: Saudade: Hi-Falootin Emotion or Tasty Mexican Sauce?

I’m a big fado fan. We’re going for the emotion, hi-fallopian or not.

4: I am drinking lemon tea. Are you? If so, why not? What, you think you’re better than me…punk…

I am not. I don’t like it. Fuck you, and your little dog, too. And that goes double for me.

5: Are you slightly scared that a young poet nicknamed after a ho-down instrument has asked the four questions that cut down to the gooey center of what you may call a ‘center’?

I actually play the banjo, though not very well. I think that really says it all.

The Where Your Mouth Is benefit gig next week with me, Regie Gibson, and Patty Keough has moved from the Sprinkler Factory (the WAG, the Abbie Hoffman Performance Space, 38 Harlow St, etc.) to the QVCC.

For more info, go see myainsel‘s blog for details.

I’ll plug it more later but I’m gettin’ lazy right now.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

Is anybody else having trouble getting into gmail? I have an account for gotpoetry.com stuff, and I can’t seem to sign onto the site at all tonight.

— Sis is out of the hospital. Diagnosis: schizo-affective disorder. A thought disorder involving aural and visual hallucinations and other Fun Psychotic Stuff. We’ve been talking regularly and I think she’s relatively stable right now, but recovery/stability are relative terms.

Welcome to the ward.

— My own condition: eh. I’m beginning to notice some of the long-term effects of bipolar illness — cognitive breaks, short and long term memory disturbance, and my favorite, the Suddenly Forgetting How To Talk in the middle of sentences symptom. On the other hand, I’m not making bizarre accusations or freaking out all over friends, at least not at the moment. Like I said: eh.

This long term stuff is only now getting researched, so I may volunteer for a study. Eh, again.

— Had a preliminary, tentative conversation today regarding the possibility of some form of limited disability/reasonable accommodation stuff here. This is confronting beyond belief. I’ve always worked from the inside of my brain out to the world; thinking that I might lose that is pretty sobering.

We’re not talking Alzheimer’s here, although the physiological effects are in fact similar — plaques on the neurons, cell loss, etc. — and there are plenty of things I can do to keep myself sharp (omega-3s, hydration, exercise, mental stimulation like puzzles and surprise, creative pursuits!), but nonetheless…eh. Eh.

I fear I’ll never be able to maintain work/school/poetry at the same level.

Some of it is likely age, too. And that has its own fears. I realize I’m much older than most of the poets around me, and it’s starting to tell. Aging out of the scene and little to fall back on as to performance venues, and little energy to create my own.

You know…eh.

— Anyway, testing my limits: bringing a guitar to the WAG for the open mike tonight. Might sing just to scare myself and others. Might just wuss out and do poetry about knifefights and suicide.

Say it with me: eh.

Can I just say that I’m surprised there was no reaction, one way or the other, on the Icepick poem?

Spring is in the air, and all I can smell is fresh clean earth and new-mown grass.

This makes me nostalgic for…NYC. For taxi fumes and fermented garbage, for unexplained puddles of guck and freakish outbursts that are ignored by the other passers-by.

I think I gotta get myself a gig or two down thar.

The Icepick Grip