so we do this instead…

How to Be Catholic

there’s a small statue
of a fire breathing nun
sitting not a foot
from my face, right in front of
the monitor.
i swear she looks like
my kindergarten teacher,
sister rose concepta.

religion
of my mothers, you keep me
snickering all night long.

friends of mine
got raped by priests
not one mile from here
at the house of affirmation.
we had learned about
the inquisition in school,
so we should have known
you had it in you.

religion
of my fathers, by jove,
you’ve done it again.

one priest locks a church against
vandals. another locks a church
against its parish. they all lock
the church against someone.
a pregnant woman
spontaneously combusts
as she kneels before
a mahogany altar.
a dying man spits
into the baptismal font.

religion
of my townspeople,
what could you be thinking?

never fear, i will hold my tongue,
i will remember
to be a good boy:

i will swallow this poem,
all of my poetry,
all of my dirty glory,
so that no one can see it,

and i will pretend
that it tastes like honey
and cry sweet tears for it
every time i pray.

more available time than i expected to have.

i’m making real progress in all this reading for school. which is good since class is friday/saturday/sunday, and then i leave for a week in beautiful fucking orlando FL which is one of my least favorite places in the world (arlington heights IL is on that list as well).

i’ll be at the national ASTD (American Society for Training and Development) conference for the week. doing a bunch of work on e-learning in the corporate environment — research and schmoozing, mostly. woo. i think we get tickets to shrek 3-d too. woo-woo.

nonetheless, i do have one high point next week: i get to feature at the Broken Speech Slam on thursday night, june 9, before i leave. so…if you’re near me in FL, come on down and say hi.

for more info: http://www.brokenspeech.com

see ya…fun stuff regarding changing views of the study of american history call me…

while at a friend’s house studying.

i’m reading a book by CLR James on american culture as it relates to the struggle between individualism and social integration. great stuff if a little heavy on the marxist interpretations.

my classmates, via e-mail, are peppering each other with questions about what the hell the book is even about.

gonna be an interesting class — especially with 6 fundamentalists out of 12 students.

i’ll be among the missing for the next couple of days.

see y’all later.

Weedwhackers rule.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/AUTOS/05/26/drivers_study/index.html

The fact that we came in second to Rhode Island is the only semi-surprise. And New Jersey taking third is no surprise at all.

There’s a reason they call us Massholes.

if I remember anything clearly
about us it’s this:
we went stoned to a carnival once
we made love on a grass bed
and the neon behind your shoulders
made me think I was loving the moon

if I could say this
to your face now
I believe you would be
astonished at the comparison
for back then
you did not like poetics
and were as practical
as an assassination

I’m tired
after all these years of wishing for carnivals
after all the meat and dirt of boundary and stink
I say this:
I don’t want to keep dreaming of how
I once made love to the moon
I want to wake up and smell the midway
the fried dough and the sweat of teenagers

I want to slap the gun
from your hand
and run

It was a good night.

I like those.

I want more of them.

I want more.

SPEAK was really good last night — everyone read great work, and we had a lot of fun amidst the darkness of the poetry (gads, it did take some depressing turns, didn’t it?)

Tonight is “Where Your Mouth Is” with Jessica Dalzell, Bill MacMillan, and Pamela Means. Proceeds to benefit AIDS Project Worcester.

And now…I go home to nurse a headache in the hope that I’ll make it out to this splendiferous benefit tonight.

I love most in myself
the things that have been crippled for years

the way I adore the twisted branch
on the maple tree outside my house

that does not leaf out until late in spring
and is the first to drop leaves in the fall

the twisted branch that I hold my breath for
every year hoping I will not need to cut it down

and it has never disappointed me
although it has frightened me

I love most in myself the twisted things
that recall their purpose at opportune times

when the way is risky
and there’s no turning back

I love these old tools
that sit in my hand so well

like a secret in the lines of my palm
or the secrets in another’s hand

With a bandoneon, a guitar,
and a simple brushed snare
playing behind them,
the man and the woman
slip across the dance floor
toward the cream-yellow patch
on the far side, away from the tables
of the artists and poets, away
from the lights and the half-empty
glasses, they move against each other
and together as if the night was
pressed solid against them, pushing them
together, their faces
twinned and close, they move across
red tile to the edge of the
sand, her toe hangs above while his
dips a little in,
her leg entwines his and disentangles
as quickly, and they circle the rim
as the music stays simple and pulls
them around together, sliding
against the possibility
of stepping too far into the danger
of the night, their hands moving across
their bodies as they dance away from the
tables of the onlookers and
pretend that
the hard floor is all there is,
even with the quicksand inches away;

but the music is lovely, and she
is lovely, and he thinks
he is close enough to lovely
to make it to lovely someday;

and they dance all around the quicksand,
tango far away from the other tables,
circle and turn together against each other
while the guitar and snare drum and bandoneon play.

Congratulations – you’re Serge!
Take Which MacMillan Cat Are You? today!
Created with Rum and Monkey‘s Personality Test Generator.

what I love most about
“ps”

is that it keeps up
the pressure
to not end
the conversation
and
ps:
it also
is
a whisper