Some of my oddity should be revealed here…

in order on shuffle:

It’s My Job — Jimmy Buffett
Gouge Away — Pixies
Fall Like Rain — Eric Clapton
Across 110th Street — Bobby Womack
By Myself — Tony Bennett
Immigrant Song — Led Zeppelin
Bathwater — No Doubt
Lean Back — Terror Squad f. Fat Joe
Grey Ghost — Mike Doughty
Wish You Well — Bernard Fanning
Boys Don’t Cry — The Cure
If I Was Your Girlfriend — Prince

I think I’m going to be inspired to a poem by those titles — I won’t end up putting them word for word in a poem, but I’ll use them as associative jumping off points for a piece I’ll post in a day or so.

Billie just came on singing “Lady Sings The Blues.” A good time to close my eyes, I think.

For obvious reasons…So dkeali_i and I will not be featuring there. Reschedule in the works.

all my poems deal in dichotomy. i qualify and sort. i break down and dissect.

if there were a chance to create from wholeness, i would hope to have taken it by now.

that’s not entirely true — there are some poems that seem to have a unified vision, some clarity of purpose. but for the most part i deal in the spaces between the stitches holding our wounds together.

just like me. you are what you write. and i am the piecemeal man.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070312/ap_on_fe_st/the_church_of_pi

Two things to remember:

— no looking at the sun

— stay away from the power tools

A bird lands outside
but vanishes before I can see
what kind of bird it is.
It’s just gone — no flying, no falling.
All the other birds are gone soon after.

Dawn bleeds up across the East.
All morning I miss hearing the birds.
All morning people talk,
stop talking, start again.

At the library
I hear someone wailing that
words are falling out of the dictionary.
They can’t even say what words they are.

I watched a word I used to love
fall onto the floor and become lost,
wingless and tongueless in the pile.

The ants are picking them up
as if they were birdseed
and taking them
deep into their hills.

It’s better not to know
what they do there.

Welcome to the morning
when we can be afraid
without knowing,
and we dare not learn
enough to mourn.

Ignorance is our sole blessing —
we can’t mourn,
tear our clothes and roll in the ashes,
when we cannot say
what it is we are missing.

I’ve noticed this before, but…

The danger in writing an associative poem that takes big metaphoric leaps is that you always feel the tug of trying to make the leaps more obvious and smaller, so the audience/reader is less uncomfortable working with the piece.

The need to ALWAYS be immediately accessible cuts across more than poetry in this culture — movies, books, television, even the need to always have a phone on you and to access e-mail at all times. People are forgetting that fifteen years ago few had cell phones and no one had Blackberries.

Everything shouldn’t always be accessible to you, and that includes meaning.

There are times when I want people to struggle to get my work. Not always, but sometimes, and more often than even I always recognize.

Contradictions

After my recent diatribe about comics, I have become engrossed in “The Preacher.” Got a copy of Volume 1 for my birthday from someone who thought it would be up my alley anyway. He was right, and I’ve plowed through Volumes 1-3 this week. Jonesin’ for #4.

Music

I read Volume 3 before bed last night to the accompaniment of the new Stooges album, “The Weirdness.” Fucking LOVE IT. Not even in a nostalgic, ah-I-remember sorta way — it’s a tough, excellent album of punk-rock-sneery goodness. Plus, Mike Watt on bass.

A Reading

As if to capitalize on all this…I’ll be over at That’s Entertainment, the comics/record store on Park Ave in Worcester, to be part of the “Look! Up In the Sky!” superhero anthology release reading at 2:00. Be there or eat Kryptonite.

Duende had a great feature in Bethel, CT on Wednesday night. After a LONG drive (coming from Coventry RI and the worst directions I’ve ever gotten from an online service), we made it in plenty of time (glad we left a little early).

The set we did included only one Jim’s Fall poem, “Jim Loses His Grip.” In order:

Getting Ahead
Adolesence (aka “Overnight Elroy”)
Do You Know What It Means
Jim Loses His Grip

These all were bass accompaniment. Then:

Faro’s bass solo
Me solo (“Milk Water Sugar Bread”)

Then, a switch to guitar:

I Need A Guitar
Revisiting Roses and Violets

Back to bass for the closing:

Snakes On a Plane

Afterward, we had a nice question and answer session with the audience, which is a regular part of their reading.

The open mike itself was pretty good too…although I’m still mystified by the itsy-bitsy spider poem. (Had to be there.)

Thanks to the yeoman efforts of a_solitaryman we have a live recording of the night. Thanks also to frequegrl for trucking along for support.

Faro and I have been working hard on a variety of pieces, and I think we’re ready to turn the “Jim’s Fall” CD into a full length. We’re likely going to be re-recording it soon and getting ready to add a bunch of new stuff — look for it soon, and certainly while we’re on tour.

Sorry I missed the Women’s reading last night in Worcester — it would have been my fourth reading this week and I was about poetry-d out. I will attend the reading at That’s Entertainment tomorrow, though…

Over and out for now.

because
we like our lettuce
crisp, cold
and white.

because beef
is always what’s for dinner.

because we believe
we like Mexican food
because we’ve made tacos.

because we couldn’t tell
an Apache from an accountant
if we heard them but we still think
we could.

because we miss
riding and roping.

because we haven’t
killed a whale in a while.

because caribbean cruises
don’t take us too far from home.

because it’s ten miles
from here to work
and the train is so
dirty.

because
the night time is
the right time to
turn on the lights
and stay up till dawn.

because some of us
will never have
to learn another language.

because grillz, rims,
scooters, nines,
leathers, bedliners, cowboy hats
and headwraps
are so much fun to sell.

because a desert holds
bones and bike tracks for a long time
without decaying them.

because
lakes look like postcards.

because
we don’t have to go anywhere because
it’s all right here.

because we can sleep when we want.

because
fairytales always say
“…happily ever after”
only after someone’s been
dismembered by red-hot
pincers.

We’re an American Band…

well, a duo, anyway.

If you’re in the neighborhood of Bethel, CT, come out and see Duende (the dynamic duo of Tony Brown/Steven Cafaro) at the Molten Java Coffeehouse tonight at 8:00. We’ll be doing a full set including a lot of new material and more of Faro’s incredible music that now includes his nylon-string guitar as well as his bass virtuosity.

Or something like that.

This is something of a tuneup for our spring tour. More on that later.

Love to see you there…