Rilke was wrong; it’s not we
who are terrible,
but our wings.
In life, I always slept
on my back so I could look up
all night and imagine this place;
now I’m stuck
on my belly, and all my dreams
are about from where I came.
Monthly Archives: February 2009
Angel’s Lament
Gigs and such
OK…
Monday night, Mar 2, Duende will be at the Stone Soup reading, Out Of The Blue Gallery, Cambridge, MA. 7:30-10.
Tuesday night, Mar 3, Louise Robertson will be at GotPoetry LIve. (Be there. Excellent poet, so come down and listen.)
Monday night, Mar 16, Duende will be at The Dirty Gerund, Ralph’s, in Worcester, MA. 8-whenever.
More to follow….
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tuesday will be my 49th birthday. Those of you who know me know I don’t make a big deal about my birthday for personal reasons; celebrations are quiet, and to be truthful, I don’t think of my birthday as being all that worthy of note; it’s not usually a day I’m "happy" about.
I don’t want to be presumptuous, but please, please, please…no cascades of "Happy Birthday" posts that day, k? They make me very uncomfortable.
Thanks in advance.
Content and Process
Some time ago, I came to a conclusion that pretty much all human activity — from the art of poetry to politics, from love to hate, from public speaking to private communication — can be best analyzed through an examination of two factors: content (what is being conveyed) and process (how it is conveyed).
Good content can be sabotaged by bad process; good process can disguise bad content; people sometimes argue at cross purposes because they’re focused on different aspects, etc. I won’t belabor the pursuant points.
What I’ve realized recently is that at my age, I want someone to surprise me more with either variable than they usually do, and it’s getting harder and harder to do that. I expect fewer surprises from content, because it’s hard to come up with new content in life. I wish I saw more surprises from process.
No particular trigger for all this; just thinking about a lot of things.
One for the old-school Wormtown crew, especially the WAG vets:
Any thoughts about a good, solid place where we could revive the old Works in Progress/Open Stage series? Maybe monthly to start?
Unemployed Model Maker Seeks Position
I got home early
this afternoon
from my unanticipated
last day
on the job.
My mother,
who’s fought the creep of dementia
for a while now,
was startled
when I came through the door.
She looked me in the eye
and couldn’t speak,
having at last lost my name
the way I lost the burrs and edges
I cut from incomplete miniatures
one at a time
eight hours a day
five days a week
for fifteen years,
perfecting
the visions of men
who had to look down at a paper
to address me
when they told me
to disappear.
Poem For The Unrelenting Past
A river
has banks that close it in,
canyons along its length perhaps,
coves, eddies, sandbars, drowned trees.
It can be marked on a map.
It can be named. It can be dammed,
at which point the old path
is hidden but at low times
it may be seen, mourned,
recalled.
But mostly, it flows. Swiftly now, slowly now, it flows.
You may swim in it again and again,
but a river is never
the same place twice. A trip upstream
sees what is, not what was, and never
what could have been. All you can ever do
is swim in the river
now.
Random thoughts for the end of the day:
— No poetry tonight.
— Worked on writing, submissions, and work stuff all day. More to go, with an imminent break for cleaning.
— Taking a quick break here for a little bit o’ Kill Bill, Vol. 1…a movie I enjoy for its undertone of the Love of the Blade that rivals my own, more than for the story.
— Oscars tonight; I usually catch a little of it, more to be able to talk to others about it than from any real interest. I saw one movie in the theater last year, "Dark Knight," which mostly left me cold. I’m just not into movies anymore, really. Hollywood’s pretty much of no interest, and its self-congratulatory annual orgy of boredom is more interesting to me as a cultural artifact than for anything it purportedly stands for. I watch movies to kill time; what I watch is of little importance. Background, mostly. Filler.
Violet Turtle
A violet turtle,
rarely expected and even more rarely mentioned,
bellies his way up the path
to the place where you will meet him
at a spot that physics, if worked
diligently enough,
could predict to the exact minute.
Fortunately, your brain doesn’t allow for that.
If it did, you’d either rush to meet him
or step off the trail entirely
to hide from him, and miss
so much.
When you meet, your attention
will be drawn to that perfect shell,
his brontosaur eyes, his morose appetite.
He will be steady and slow.
You’ll suspend disbelief for one second,
less perhaps. You’ll marvel at the revealed
nature of azure-red and steel-indigo. You’ll never
let a rabbit claim your life again.
Burying The Needle In Massachusetts
twenty five, coked out, driving away from my life
with my skewed eyes stuck on the needle
buried at 120 on state road 140 — the snakepath
from the cape to the stubby hills north of Worcester
south of the basalt shadows of New Hampshire
that are full of whatever Lovecraft adored
i strand the Firebird on a leafmold bank
and get out
there’s a puritan darkness under these trees
that still hasn’t lifted
and the inbred imp in charge of hating the different
still sits on the bones of the old farm walls
once you get past the Kennedy mask
and the self-congratulation inside 128
where the Cabots and the Lodges used to play at benevolence
this state’s as redneck as any media slander against the South
in fact there’s a quote from 2 Jeremiah
hanging outside the house across from where I’ve landed
"…your own sword hath devoured your prophets,
like a destroying lion"
some lay ministry of warning
carved with a router into brown stained wood
just like all the other
bed and breakfast signs around here
this state looks pretty as hell
in October from inside a minivan
or even from inside a muscle car
at 120 miles an hour
so people come and gawk from buses
stay over to buy trinkets and maple sap
then go back home to sigh and say
"we love New England in the fall"
but now it’s high summer
and all those not-yet-red leaves
are barely rustling under the moonless sky
they shade God and his devil and the ancient blood in the soil
where the colonists beheaded algonquin children
and brown people still keep to themselves in fear
whenever a boy grows up looking like he wants to break away
or maybe wants to deny how good and right the kingdom is
when he gets to a certain age they start to whisper
he’s gonna end up bad
not gonna make it
often he falls from the prophecies
but sometimes he gets older
and can’t escape the feeling that he’s lived too long
goes looking for the sword in the trees
and keeps offering himself to the lion long after he should have settled down
tonight i’m your boy, simba
i’m your snowfaced speeding bullet
and i’m stumbling into your face full of misery
give me the sharp and set me free
not too far from here
is redemption rock
where the natives once gave a hostage back
and later got themselves killed for their trouble
who am i tonight?
hostage or hostage taker?
colonist or colonized?
prophecy or prophet?
i bleed at the very thought of me
and i bet Lovecraft is thinking
of changing his name from beyond the grave
just because i love him
so i’m on the side of the road
and the car’s idling rough
as I kneel in the gravel on the pavement’s fringe
and listen as hard as I can for the lion’s roar
if you bury a needle deep in these woods
the local ghosts will use it to sew your shroud
and you’ll join them in being
just another sword to wave at unbelievers
i don’t wanna wreck this car
but if there was any light out here tonight
i’d find a shard of glass in the sand
and maybe then i’d take the snakepath of least resistance
turning my head back toward where i started
reminds me that every vehicle has a steering wheel
and a way out might be in no place you ever imagined
and i’ve got a fast car
so i get back in and turn around
i thought i saw a sign somewhere back there
that said there is a highway going somewhere not here
somewhere not in massachusetts
bury that needle
run the pride of horror ravening back into their dens
with an rpm scream and the high beams on
as fast as i can toward bright lights big city anywhere but here
i’ll be up for a while yet
there’s always two directions
to any road
let’s see what this baby can do
Stash The Liar
My best friend Stash
likes to say life around here
needs to be
"fiction-enhanced."
He couples that now and then
with talk about us being raised
"fact-poor."
The way he sees it,
his cock and ball conquest stories
and personal legends
about wild swings at bikers
are just due compensation
for having grown up
in gray houses
on sooty streets
in our dim little town.
"If you’re gonna live,
you oughta live big.
If you never lived big,
at least claim you did."
Stash sucks down
the High Life
and fingers the label
he’s peeled from the bottle.
He’s been sitting here
for twenty years
and none of us believe
a word he says about
all the good times that happened
"this one time" in
"this bar I usedta hang out in,"
because we were here the whole time
and we could swear he’s never moved,
but sometimes we can feel the wind
from that mighty blow he laid on the Vandal’s chin,
and sometimes, our fleeting hookups
seem indeed to be the bucking frenzy
that Stash described again for us all
just last night.
Stash lies to us.
We know he lies.
Bless him.
Otherwise,
how could we ever
go on?
Your daily Moment of D’oh….
Men objectify women in bikinis…
That in itself isn’t all that surprising, but this line got right to the sixth-grade dumbass in me:
"New research shows that, in men, the brain areas associated with handling tools and the intention to perform actions light up when viewing images of women in bikinis." (Italics mine.)
Yeah, I know. Totally lowbrow of me. But after the day’s efforts, it’s just juvenile enough to make me snicker…
recap of last couple of days…
–Landed new contract to do outplacement counseling/workshops at companies doing layoffs. Business, say the folks I’ll be working with, is booming and no let up in sight. Good for me, I guess; the idea of getting a profitable chunk of business off of the misery of others is a little off-putting, but I can’t afford to turn it down right now. At any rate, I’ll be doing something to help people in trouble, and that’s a small saving grace.
No, I won’t be the guy doing the layoffs themselves.
Other work is starting to pick up, too, after a long wait. This is good. I have been a little desperate wondering what needed to happen to get things rolling again, and have been working every networking connection I have for weeks now…
— Decent Duende gig last night at GotPoetry Live. No rehearsal time, so we held off on some of the tougher new work; still, a good set.
Set List:
Celia (newly recorded, although we’ve been doing it live for a while now)
By The Numbers (new; first live performance)
The Last Word (second live performance — the poem better known as "Let’s Fuck"; we only did the first half of the newly recorded version which includes a segue into "Revelation")
Meditations On A Black Excursion
Classic Rock
Faro’s solo (a gorgeous melodic piece on bass — tech troubles with guitar sound made this an all-bass set)
Me solo ("How To Become A Phoenix," which I think we’ll be recording)
Jim At Home
Snakes On A Plane (first time resurrecting this one in a while)
Next gig (which will be different and I hope includes "Get Up" and the full "Last Word/Revelation") is at Stone Soup, Out Of the Blue Gallery, Cambridge, on 3/2.
— Worked today, a training class that was like pulling teeth. Second day tomorrow; I’m not looking forward to it.
How To Be A Phoenix (revised)
first,
you need the right lighter,
a zippo, no fancy engraving, plain steel,
something that’ll stay lit
when you let it roll off your fingers
into the gasoline.
better still,
don’t bother with gasoline,
paint thinner, or anything like that.
there’s enough tinder around to get things going
and you won’t need to discard
a perfectly good lighter on your first try.
don’t start brush fires.
too much is at stake
for creatures who don’t deserve flame.
stay away from occupied dwellings —
until you’re sure
the occupants have the skills
and the willingness
to escape.
start small, with something unwanted
and shabby. try the roof of your daddy’s shed
or find a rotted corner on an abandoned house
that’s high enough off the ground to have remained dry
since the windows blew in,
since the winter came through.
lift the lighter, snap the cover and the wheel
and hold that thing against your choice
until it catches.
once it’s rolling,
put safe distance between you and the fire,
then sit and watch it go.
do this more than once.
do it hundreds of times.
you will be interrupted.
you will be caught.
you will be freed.
one day
(and I wish I could tell you
something to look for so you can be certain
you are right about this
other than to say
it is something you will know
when it comes),
you will be ready.
this time, you’ll be inside when it begins.
you’ll let the lighter roll off your fingers,
casual as a basketball.
o player,
you’ll be dancing
a pick and roll with the red opponent, screening
paths of fading resistance,
jumping ahead and over
what is coming for you…
now, you’re probably asking,
what is with all this random destruction?
this is not the phoenix path that was promised…
but you are wrong,
for when the phoenix rises from the fire,
it is not an unalloyed triumph…
the secret of the phoenix’s
tempered joy
is that the bird has learned
that in order to rise,
something must be
left behind,
there’s always damage
in the wake of rebirth,
and some collateral
must burn.
Dark Matter 