Keep it or lose it? I’ve been thinking about going back to the damn-near-shaved look I always sported before this.
Monthly Archives: June 2006
Anyone know the Irish singer/songwriter Damien Dempsey? I saw him on Saturday night and was pretty impressed.
I need a new tattoo.
What and where?
I have two small ones: the word “poet” on my right shoulder, the word “mestizo” on my left.
Any thoughts? I’m partial to words in monochrome, lower case, in Courier. Needs to be relatively work safe, too — I have no objections to people knowing I have tattoos, but when you’re working for yourself in the corporate world, you need to be somewhat careful.
When you’re not on the Web all the time
you really get behind on your friends’ list.
I know that’s an obvious statement, but it’s a little overwhelming — so you can assume I’ve missed the last week or so of all your posts, and I can’t possibly catch up…sorry. Anything critical I should know, hit me up backchannel.
brief update
off to an irish festival today with friends.
no one has signed up for the online course, and the dead line is tomorrow. i will likely have to cancel it. i’m sad about that.
live for the moment
linger in bed awhile
then lift myself
in the mirror i see
a red assed monkey
i stare at him for a long time
drink a glass of cloudy water
pick a shirt with no horizontal stripes
stick my feet into tight shoes
the prints left behind will be smaller than expected
think of all the meals planned and forever unmade
the bed lying tomcatted open to public view
my walls detaching from the ceiling
in all their blue flocked glory
point theory says
there’s a direct line
between bottles on the table,
blanket on the stool,
albums strewn at the whim of music,
and the way i stand
humming TV jingles in the half lit living room
there’s purity in
a clutter of symbols
ack.
still no reliable access at home.
i’m at the Hut posting this.
expect updates to be sporadic until such time that we get it fixed.
grrr.
vanishing
from here for a couple days — nothing big, just running away to recharge a bit. back by the weekend, I suspect.
Finally, back online. Not sure for how long, as the cable guy didn’t find anything specific.
I’ll take what I can get.
Worcester Finals, final results
The team is:
Gary Hoare
Eric Urban
Erin Jackson
Bobby Gibbs
Finishing out of the running:
Joe (Gigglez)
Ryk McIntyre
Sean Conlan
Dick Navis
No particular order.
Worcester Finals, second round
Judges are all over the place…I think every judge has given the low score at one point or another. We do have one consistently tough judge, but she’s far from the only one handing out low scores.
Second round and we’re still regularly seeing scores in the 6-7 range. Cool.
There was one poem that was revolting…and it got the high score of the night so far…ugh.
NOTE: Couple of judges changed for the third round.
Worcester Slam Finals
I’m blogging tonight from the Worcester finals.
Don’t expect scores or color commentary — I never pay attention to the scores until the end. But I’ll post the winners as soon as they’re confirmed.
This has been a bulletin from ESPN: the Extreme Slam Poetry Network.
“Rompe! Rompe!”
For the fourth time in as many days,
I wake up with no more sleep in sight for the night.
I leave the bed and sit shirtless on the porch,
omnipresent cigarettes at hand
to give me those moments of visible proof
that I am still breathing.
At this hour of the dark morning
there are, finally, no other lights on in the neighborhood,
and the last noisy kids have long since passed out.
The war in the downstairs apartment has calmed down,
no one is fist fighting in the driveway, the string of skinny girls
who come in and out at all hours has ended, and no clouds of reefer
rise up the stairwell to remind me that
if I had it to do all over again
I would likely do it the same way:
the same triumphs, all the mistakes,
the fumbling plays for love,
holding the gun to my head
while wondering what it would feel like
to just pull and go, the decision
to leave that decision alone, the sunsets and dumbass jokes
and the poems in piles everywhere I look.
I’m the same person I was when I was young and stupid.
I still like my music loud and simple. I still think kissing
is the best way to pray. I still hold my head down
when I walk by myself thinking of what to say.
I still like a beer, an occasional shot, a random toke or two,
arresting eyes and the curve of a perfect hip.
A car pulls into the street with hip-hop bending
its windows, and I recognize the words “Rompe!
Rompe!” I think it’s Spanish for “broken,”
and if it’s not, it will be for me, at least for tonight.
At my age, I finally know I’m irreparably broken,
broken
the way an egg is broken after the chick’s moved on.
I’m broken
the way the clock is broken, holding steady at one moment
which will come around again. I’m broken
the way a ripple breaks over a rock
it will eventually wear down.
In this dark hour of the morning, after the last kids
have fallen asleep, after the last cars have been parked,
all I have to separate me from everyone else on this street
are my raw lungs, my drifts of writing, my scars and tattoos,
my illnesses both transitory and permanent, and the fact
that tonight, I am awake.
To be awake at 3:30 is to be
smoking and cold and buried in thoughts
of all my cracks and chips, until I see my mending
in the light at the end of the cigarette:
to be alive is to be broken.
To get older is to understand
that every break leaves an opening.
To be whole is to walk through
the opening, and only then
to know which cracks to seal,
and which to let alone.
Dark Matter 