Both Ricardo Montalban and Patrick McGoohan, actors who played characters associated with mysterious islands, died today.
And here I sit working on the poem I posted yesterday called "Islanders…"
Daily Archives: January 14, 2009
Bohemian Rhapsody
The dishes in the sink are growing weeds
so I’m blogging about Gaza
The money’s falling out of my wallet
so here’s a little news about actors
The trees are full of longhorn beetles
and I swear I love the smell of my old socks
The smoke eater’s out of commission
and my head’s wearing headphones without me
The ferret needs to come out and play
so I’m sitting with a book near the window
and contemplating jazz as God-metaphor
I stick freeware in my ears
so I don’t hear the doorbell
There’s a lottery ticket lungfish crawling on the dirty kitchen floor
looking for the next pool to enter
There are a lot of global evils to vanquish today
They’re making me hungry for a perfect cheese
served with a microbrew
on an overdone gas bill
I’ll eat it with relish
while nodding off to classic rock
in an assuredly postmodern sort of way
while wading in shallows
deep enough to drown in
Murder Ballad: The Zipper (2nd revision)
When you die
you are given a choice
on how you will be reincarnated:
not
"animal or human,"
but
"animate or inanimate."
I chose the latter and
bang,
I’m smiling tonight,
every chrome tooth showing
all the time whether my mouth is closed
or open. It’s satisfying
to be protecting this,
concealing this awful wrecked face
from his wailing next of kin,
so they don’t have to confront
how useless their son of a bitch relative
was and still is.
It’s going to be a long cold ride
from here to the morgue.
I’m perfect
for the job: I was this cold in life,
and dark as the stiff plastic
I’m clutching now. My burden
is leaking blood and I’m uncaring,
knowing it’ll all be over soon.
I wanted to be a guitar
but at least I get
to play one exquisite note
three times.
How many guitars
get to say they’ve played a man
from death to forgetting?
I’m a rockstar
at last, if only a one hit wonder:
when they’re done with me,
I know they’ll burn me up.
Next time, I’ll be a fly.
Once you’ve found your calling,
you stick with it.
Ambition
They say
the universe is still expanding.
I can’t always be bothered to check.
One of these days
I’ll sit down and say,
"That’s enough.
Let someone else find
the leading edge."
I should have said it by now,
I tell myself. Something keeps
me watching the stars, trying
to detect their flight from me.
In one second, I think I see it,
in the next, I’m sure I can’t.
I watch us dying for plots of holy land
real or imagined, for thoughts
triggered from visions of perfection.
I think we’re all beside the point.
We’re all just human, impossibly stupid
under the blown-out dome
of space. It’s improbable that we’re here,
insignificant that I try and tell my story
when it’s exactly like every other story
ever told: I want love, immortality,
power over my surroundings,
warmth in cold and cold in warmth.
Always on the wrong side of the moment.
If the universe is expanding,
I’m the center. Farther away from my limits
every time the clock moves.
One of these days, I’ll say,
"enough," and it will be. It may be enough now
that I know that. There was never anything
to be created here that hasn’t been created already
in the rush of light and dark toward…
what’s out there, beyond what we know? Oh…
settling down to watch.
Head colds/body aches
suck. I’m feeling better but slept most of the day…sorry to have missed Cowboy at GPL . Hope it went well tonight.
Dark Matter 