I’ll be doing two shows in the next two weeks — both solo features, without Faro.
Friday 8/21 at the More Than Words Bookstore in Waltham;
Saturday 8/29 at the Nuyorican Poets’ Cafe in NYC as part of the Verses Series.
Click on the Show Schedule tab above, go to Reverbnation, and then hit the “Shows” tab, for details.
Would love to see you there…
The five purposes of close order drill are to:
1. Provide simple formation from which various combat formations could readily be assumed.
Look for their fear.
Slip your hand into it, make it
your puppet,
pull it close,
make it rigid,
make it dance.
The dinner table provides
the ideal environment for this.
2. Move units from one place to another in a standard and orderly manner, while maintaining the best possible appearance.
Speak to them
with great attention
to their faults. Do not fail
to hit the same notes again and again:
inadequacy, failure, shame at heritage
denied and betrayed…and ensure
that nothing of the conversation
will be heard outside that room.
3. Provide the troops an opportunity to handle individual weapons.
If you are focused
soon enough the words
will come from them,
tailored, well-pressed,
4. Instill discipline through precision and automatic response to orders.
and when they cringe
you won’t even have to watch
to know it’s happening.
5. Increase a leader’s confidence through the exercise of command by giving
proper commands and drilling troops.
Won’t you accept the salute,
the hands above their eyes,
shading themselves from the heat?
You have earned it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
* close order drill objectives, in italics, taken from USMC Website
Make up a word to describe
a sunflower’s turning toward the sun —
you’ll have to stand between flower and sun
with the sun at your back to do so.
You’ll tell me, then, that you can stand
to one side to watch, and that’s true:
but how will you know what it feels like
to be a sunflower if you do?
webcams will tonight be streaming
live images from inside the mind
of one travis benson, who has managed
to insert one in each ear and tune them
to a frequency of light he has determined
will allow the visual display of his thoughts.
before today, travis was a virtual unknown
who labored in a basement in some undetermined city
to bring his vision to fruition. only a handful
of esoterically inclined and fully wired aficionados
of the fuzzier edges of experimentation
have been aware of his work, as well as
certain governments who have sought him for some time.
in gray buildings on the outskirts of capitals worldwide
hired geeks stand ready to track him down when he comes on line,
as their masters imagine a future bonanza for intelligence work
if the technique works as rumored. the possibilities,
it is thought, will be endless: the passive voice of a spy’s mind
revealing all the intricacies of espionage, the names and places
of deadly deceits and plotted assassinations…at the same time,
artists have waited eagerly for this moment, hoping that tonight they’ll see
the threads of creativity exposed in the bright storm anticipated
in travis’ skull. what will be discovered in the crannies
of the genius who created this moment, a moment only ever before captured
in the illusory fragments of thought that until now have been deemed
masterpieces — the sistine chapel, the hulks of giant buddhas carved
into mountains, strains of gamelan and symphony, the words of writers
imperfectly reflecting what they were thinking?
at 2315 GMT, travis benson’s mind goes online
and screens go dark all over the world.
at first, the images are confusing: a forest of eyes.
a field of small birds feeding on germs. a city
where the streets are paved with chlldren’s bones.
an immense fall of leaden water salted with the hearts of mice.
as the viewers — millions of them, billions perhaps,
all focused on one travis benson — begin to sort through
what they are seeing, the images on the screen begin to shift
into a story of disjoint and ripple, unremediated rejections
and leftover resentments. in india, there are those who swear
they see kali charming them; american racists see nothing but black teeth
gnawing the arms of white women; a businessman in caracas
imagines himself in the grip of apes with scimitars. the pope,
secretly hoping for some proof of the divine, is startled
when jesus appears waving a wedding ring. a child in new york city
runs screaming to her mother demanding that new doll, the one
that dreams and beats and frets.
around the world, the people slowly reach in zombie time
for the switches. they go outside and stare up at the stars,
holding each other, talking of love, of family, anything
to erase what they’ve seen.
the artists turn back
to their canvases and keyboards,
painting and playing
hymns and wedding marches,
landscapes and erotic joy.
what the governments think
is classified.
and as for travis benson: what else can be said?
no one wants to know him anymore,
this ugly man who has done an ugly thing.
he disconnects
the cameras. he goes outside.
in the ensuing days
he will heal himself,
staring anonymously at the things
he’s wrought.
memory,
travis thinks, is a creature
of habit. it feeds in the same places
unless something changes…
and something has changed.
a frequency of light.
of lightness.
it’s cool outdoors for once
but the fan in my living room
is running anyway because
after days in a locked room
sweating the details with sad people
who are each sweating the future
as they try to figure out
how to get a job these days
now that their company’s closing
and after trying to help them
write resumes about things they’ve done on instinct
for years
trying to make them recognize what they’ve accomplished
with their perfect attendance and their good cheer
in the face of bad faith
trying to make them see
that they have done far more with their lives
than pack boxes and load trucks
trying to help them prepare to answer
jaded interviewers’ pointed questions
about their worth to another industry
trying to keep a smile on everyone’s face
(including my own as I earn my own pay
on the backs of their crises) and trying not to puke
as I offer multiple pretty versions of
“buck up little camper”
to people as scared as they can be
about being older and trying to get paid
and keep living in the new world
the way they did in the old world
after being asked by one of them
“so
if I do this right
I’ll get a job?”
and having every single one of them
go silent
as they looked to me for some
certainty
after a few days of that
i need this cool air
blowing on me
sitting
shirtless
tieless
and all alone in my room
I don’t know anything for sure
except that it feels better
here
than it did
there
where I couldn’t answer
“yes”
If I had
owned a gun,
if I’d had one at hand
any of the times I’ve wished for one,
if I had kept my little Browning
instead of trading it for acid,
if Dad had let me keep
the 12-gauge Ithaca,
if I had decided to take the .22
with me when I left home,
I’d not be writing this
now.
Which is a comfort
to some
but not to me, who hesitates
with a knife and can’t decide
on a pill, who is too heavy
for a rope, who floats and swims too well
to drown, who cannot abide
the idea of a long fall to hard ground.
If I had a gun
I’d surrender to its swiftness.
If I had a gun
I could make it do the work I can’t.
If I had a gun
who would stop me?
If I had a gun
there’d be no more “if,”
only
“when.”
close my eyes
for me, would you?
i can’t stop looking
and I should.
shut my mouth,
push the jaw hard, break it
if you have to. i’m drawing
too much attention to myself.
it’s not that i mean to be
such a spectacle, it’s just that
falling jumbles your control.
the knobs whirl,
the switches reverse, the dials
spin uncalibrated through their cycles
and i don’t trust them anymore.
you would think i’d have enough experience
to right myself, but experience
isn’t always enough. sometimes
it gets in the way of getting a grip
on an unfamilar disaster. it makes me imagine
i’m strong, when strength
is the last thing i need right now.
what i need is to float and allow
myself to be pulled in and set right,
but i’m too married
to what i know to let that happen
right now, so if you can,
smack me like a television
or a static-pumping radio.
get me right. move me out
of the sunspot storm. give me
another chance, even if it just holds off
the inevitable for one day.
i can take it. i’m used to dislocation
and pain. it’s just that right now
even i know i look awful
and am not working right.
i just want one more shot
at self-correction. close my eyes, my mouth.
return me to my regular upright position.
— for Willy DeVille, 1950-2009
In 1978, in a dorm room
in Providence, Rhode Island,
on a narrow bed,
in the dark except for
the blue dial light
of a stereo receiver,
a perfect moment
was played out to the sounds
of Mink DeVille’s
“Mixed-Up Shook-Up Girl.”
She wore
(for a moment)
new pale blue lingerie,
and I was the one who was
mixed up, shook up,
so strung out
I didn’t know what to do,
since my only reference points
were the hustled moments in back seats
that had come before this.
Then we moved together —
and oh, how we muddled through,
what a sweet mess we made of the discovery.
It took hours, thank God,
for us to figure it out.
Willy DeVille, I heard today
that you’re
gone.
I’d forgotten you
and your slick suited street heart till now —
how could that have happened?
Thank you, Willy,
for that night,
for how easy you made
the right thing feel,
your simple touch on a sharp-picked triad
showing me how to move when movement
was the only sense I needed,
telling me that all I needed to do
to begin
was to tell her out loud
how much she knotted me up,
and then to forgo pretty speech,
to move, to sway, to fall and rock,
to cradle her,
both of us lost and then found in blue,
the blue dial of the receiver holding
the rest of the night in place for us;
thank you, Willy.
For you I’m picking triads
on a dusty Spanish guitar tonight,
trying to play a song
I haven’t thought of in ages.
Gratitude is due tonight
for the way you turned
a dorm room, a narrow bed,
and a blue light into
some Manhattan romance,
for the way you turned
a girl
and a boy
into sweet ghosts
beginning to haunt the edge of love —
the two of us knowing nothing of it
before that moment
when we heard that song
and we started,
at last,
to learn.
I am a colony.
Thousands of millions of citizens.
Paths through the crowds.
Silent, hard dwellings,
softer plazas where they mingle.
All you see when you look at me
is the flag they have raised.
Last night,
insurrection.
Tossed and tossed all night.
Later, the voices
of huddled mourners by blood pools,
whispering, weeping.
Then the sun rose
and the city started scraping
itself together.
I hear a beggar
suddenly knocking
at some door
in here.
We have to do something,
goes the cry across the streets.
A crust of bread,
a song,
a lover:
something must be done, one
who is starving
starves us all.
I got out of bed
scratching my head:
what should I do today?
The way I roll
I come hard as a dagger
and leave stains behind.
How I love to cut! How I love
to see the world divide before me!
I roll (I tell myself)
like a doctor on a boil,
a demolition expert clearing eyesores,
a big man being big.
I roll, roll
like the walls of a tornado up ahead.
Or maybe like I’m chasing it, big man,
big daring man, rolling up on the wind.
The way I roll
I leave mud behind me
on third story balconies,
knee-deep blood washing up on the undercarriage
of cars parked on the unfortunate streets
where I roll.
I tell myself,
man, you gotta do this:
roll huge, massive, correct,
large as a plague, all consuming,
trip-wire bomb maker
waiting to snake in
another exploded enemy…
yes,
I roll that way.
I tell myself that,
it’s the only way to keep from throwing myself
under my own wheels.
What was said
was in and of itself
unimportant:
there’s a pile of tinder
under every eardrum
waiting to spark.
So the curl of smoke
was to be expected,
the smolder should have been
no surprise…
except to the burning one,
who felt the searing at once
and (with no real say in the matter)
spread it out, letting it burn
out and away from its source.
“Scorched earth” — the words
have a ring to them.
A hot ring, a lovely ring
better than anything
anyone can say,
including what was said.
If I am fortunate enough
to be allowed
to explore you,
you have my word
that I will not make
the classic explorer’s mistake
of claiming you.
No flag, no shouted obeisance
to God and country
as I move forward
mapping the terrain.
Love is no
manifest destiny —
there’s no mandate
set before hand
to be enforced.
We have learned
the hard way — seen
too many vanish bitterly
into exploitation
and other follies.
No, if I am fortunate enough
to be allowed to
to explore you, to make
a home here — wonder of wonders,
to be prayed for fervently — I swear
I will always be your guest,
no imposition
of force or law will follow in my wake.
The truth is, I never liked
where I come from. I’ll send
no word back
of what riches there are to be taken.
I’ll stay here, I’ll dwell
solely on your terms. Become
one with you. Learn the customs,
Go native, as they say back home,
usually with a sneer in the tone —
I’ll be a better man for forgetting them,
because what did I ever learn back there
except a code of seizure and theft?
If I am fortunate enough
to be allowed to explore you,
to have those endless, breathless moments
of discovery, you have my word
that I’ll tear up the map
the minute I find a place
to settle
and just be here…
because you don’t need a map
of home, and Lord,
I want this to be home.
To say out loud
that you adore silence
is to lie.
Lies must
chatter all around
truth. Truth
stays silent
because it can.
There it is!
No, wait…
Let us now praise
the Cherokee grandmothers
who apparently worked overtime breeding
so that white people I meet
can claim just enough kinship with me
to feel less guilty.
(Or not. Maybe they don’t
feel guilty. Maybe it just makes it
easier to say something to an Indian.)
I am certain
that most of them
believe it’s true; the fact that it’s always
a grandmother and always Cherokee
makes me certain that it almost
never is.
Somewhere out there
in the red backlog of time
somebody started telling their children
and their neighbors and the townsfolk
that the Cherokee princess fell in love
with a stalwart pioneer and crossed
their tribes’ taboos to marry and bear
them, the true fruit of the new continent,
the darlings who capture the Natives’ plight
and hold it up for everyone to see, that touch of dusk
in the skin, that not-so-white
cast in the eyes.
I will not disabuse them of the notion,
they seem to need it.
But over their shoulders
I can see a black woman hiding
from a shadow in the doorway,
and I wonder what these eager people
would have to say to her
if they ever came face to face.
And while we’re on the subject:
When we take a drink, it’s just like you
taking a drink. Most of our tobacco use
is like your own,
but the sweat lodge? That’s still ours.
You enter as naked tourists,
and leave the same way.
And when you
place a bet…
you know, we really wanna thank you for that…
Long hair and leather look lovely
on some people,
childish on others.
Everyone comes to their own place
eventually, it’s true;
but owning a dreamcatcher
doesn’t mean
you’re entitled
to our dreams.
~~~ Repost of an old piece, in response to Jessica Simpson revealing that she is 1/16 Indian after being called out on using the phrase “Indian Giver”
Short-hearted Hank
broke his ankle last week.
No one in the neighborhood
stopped in to see him
though he laid up on his porch at first
with his big bound leg up on a milk crate
for everyone to see.
There were too many days this past winter
when he’d refused
to move his car to help our snowbound cars
get out of their narrow dugouts
while struggling not to slide into his bumper.
“Ya shouldn’t a parked so damn close,”
he’d bark from his warm window.
Hank’s just inside, almost out of sight right now,
his big-band music blaring
through that same window
while next door the Vietnamese guy’s eldest son
tunes up his Honda, gets that engine roaring
while his girlfriend polishes the shining rims.
When they’re done they’ll drown out Artie Shaw
with hip hop before they take off for parts unknown
as they always do, coming back long after midnight
if at all.
Hank may be the oldest resident here —
sixty-eight years in the same apartment,
says his sister who lives downstairs —
but that respect he insists none of us have for him
hasn’t been earned. Bastard —
but I saw the Vietnamese guy
and his eldest son
cutting Hank’s hedges this morning
before the street got busy
and all of us could feel ashamed by the gesture.
Short-hearted Hank must have seen it
but I don’t know if he said a word
to the interlopers, the neighbors
who will come and go in their time
like all of us around here do:
the forms must be observed, after all.
Dark Matter 