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.
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.
We have no access in our apartment right now and haven’t for about a day and a half. Won’t have it again till Monday PM at the earliest.
I’m at the Hut at the moment. Yay for free wireless access.
New poem to follow in next post.
In the first week of August, a small independent publisher I won’t name (but whose bona fides I have checked) will be bringing out a book called “The Snakes On A Plane Scrapbook” which compiles “the best writing about the movie from the Internet,” and which documents the effect the Internet buzz has had on the producers during and after the making of the movie.
Guess which poem’s going to be in it? This one:
i’ve only ever seen the first star wars movie.
i’ve never seen any of the x-men movies, and probably won’t.
only saw the first matrix movie.
don’t own a comic book. didn’t buy them as a kid.
don’t read fantasy or SF literature. don’t read much fiction at all, in truth.
have played D&D exactly once, and only long enough to know I wouldn’t be doing that again.
never been involved in any other kind of LARP.
don’t own any multisided dice.
i own one action figure and that’s of Sigmund Freud.
have never owned a video game console of any vintage.
do not currently own or intend to own any video games, or play any such games on my computer.
I was peripherally involved in an online RPG once, but only so I knew what the hell everyone around me was talking about.
never played lazer tag, paintball, killers/targets, etc.
never been to a rave, taken X, or completely understood the appeal of Daft Punk. (I suspect I’m not alone on that last one.)
don’t particularly like NIN.
have never downloaded music, legally or otherwise.
don’t own an iPod, don’t intend to (I detest headphones, earbuds, etc). I do have satellite radio, though.
all this is by way of saying that i am swiftly reaching a point in my life where i will no longer know what anyone around me is talking about.
then again, it’s not like they currently understand me, either.
It’s late, I’m sitting at the keyboard with a half-done poem, and the Smiths are on the radio.
If I wasn’t 46 years old, I’d swear I was 25 years old.
much later than I should be…
Spent a goodly portion of the day digging and planting flowers down at my folks’ house. i had to shlep a large amount of soil from my yard to their yard to do it, and I’m sore and tired as a result — you’d think I’d be sleepy, but no.
I need to put some heavy guitar time later today…a little behind on practice, plus I’ve got a bunch of songs for myainsel to rehearse.
More writing to be done as well — and I’m getting a little nervous because I haven’t got anyone to sign up for the online workshop yet. Lots of “interest” but no “action.” Since it starts on June 11, I’m concerned that I’ll have to cancel the class.
On the other hand, I do have two job interviews next week — one for a fulltime job in Boston that sounds interesting and involves working for a pretty cool company, and the other for a contract position (finally) here in Worcester. I’m psyched for the second and mildly intrigued by the first — still don’t want to go back into fulltime corporate life, but the position’s interesting enough that it might attract me anyway.
Other than all that…it’s same shit, different day. Uncertainty and fear coupled with a sense of possibility…story of my life.
high
low
skreek of alleged tone
wormhole of blank joy
silver charge of beat behind
(I was born too late for prophecy)
reach into shadow and draw from it
porphyry and gneiss
spanish moss from haunted trees
(I am unspent and not even close to power)
drill long liquids into dark
rockets singing on their path
snake of earth gobbling its tail
moorings hammered into atom space
god of war ahead bursting aloud
a blue science of filled vaccuum
(I am unworthy of this roiled air)
these challenge salted pagan revolutions
orbit on turn of equally circular breath
blessings on these children of explosion and fire
blessings on advent of free radicalism
blessings on an a yet unrung bell
(I am wider than I was)
By David Rothenberg, from the Summer 1997 issue of Parabola Magazine:
“The greatest and most enduring music sounds new and familiar at the same time. It should defy division into one thing or another. The whole song that you hear must be impossible to describe, a shadow of words, an outline of the truth.”
my evening of debauchery consisted of:
2 beers at Ralph’s, accompanied by the urge to stand up and yell at one of the bands, “YOU GUYS SOUND LIKE “LIVE” WITHOUT THE HARDCORE STREET CREDIBILITY!!!!” There were also WAY too many kids celebrating their college graduations. Grrr…
followed by —
2 beers at Vincent’s along with a reasonably competent blues band and unexpected conversation with a couple of old guitar buddies I hadn’t seen in years;
followed by —
breakfast at the Kenmore (the Irish Omelette — filled with cornbeef hash and cheese…mmmm…)
followed by —
um, sitting here at the Mac.
I came home aftr three hours out and I wasn’t even tired…I was just fucking BORED with everything. As I said earlier…Grr.
and yet, I’m antsy for something rowdy to do tonight. Which I’ll likely find and end up doing.
We must always remember that I have a serious mental illness, and am heavily medicated. This explains so much of my idiocy.
it’s 1:47 AM and i just checked NASCAR.com to see who has the pole for Saturday’s race.
(it’s Scott Riggs, in case you care.)
dear lord…i’ve become a NASCAR fan.
let’s swap icons. i’ll use your face, you use mine.
ought to confuse the hell out of a bunch of people come nationals.
Dark Matter 