I’m reaching a point of no return with some stuff in my life.

Hard to describe; sort of a turning point. Sort of a revolution in the planetary sense; sort of a drag on the forward motion that makes a top stop its skittering across the floor and come to a standing spin versus a traveling one.

Some reasons exist, but they aren’t important. Reasons exist to facilitate the explanation of movement or lack thereof; they don’t make anything happen. If you are into Voudoun, you’d know that zombies exist without having to ask how they exist. If you live in America, you know that television works without knowing how it does its job. That’s the beauty of reasons; they are completely independent of things themselves, they explain or not, and everything still continues.

At any rate, I’m sitting at work with my legs Lithium-jittering and the cholinergic yawning of the SSRI in full bloom. I look like a sleepy spastic to anyone watching, and the reasons don’t matter.

I’m not fully satisfied that everything will be alright.

Tops fall unless they are whipped incessantly.

I do not know how I keep spinning. That there are reasons I’m still spinning don’t matter; the trick is to forget, over and over, that in another time I’d already be gone.

Forgetfulness and busywork make excellent whips.

Everything is unimaginable until you give up looking for reasons.

The theme is “electricity”.

Please come. I may not have anything to say tonight, and I could use the support.

I started this sometime ago and never completed it.

Consider this an exorcism.

WHAT SHE SAID

What she said
before she pushed me aside
was that she was, at last, happy.
While I was pleased to hear that – I am not a vindictive man —

I regret to say that I still found it easier to snarl about it than
to recover from learning that
it was nothing to her that I had been crazy for
half the time we’d been together. I can’t blame her.

Who really gets that the whole point of
the condition is that your resources are the last thing
you can call on when you need them because
they are over there behind a wall and you

can’t even see them,
let alone reach
them? After awhile,
you figure out that happy

is for others. You figure out that stable
is for someone else, and you learn that
the ones who are stable think this is simple to fix
and the ones who are happy suspect that it’s your fault you’re not.

We’re just different, after all. Just different.
We were different. I was sad, she was happy. I was still in love,
she thought she still loved me. I was doomed, she had
promise. I am going farther away than ever,

and she gets to stay behind.

HOKA HEY

is what the movies say
the Lakota cried out
before battle – it means “today
is a good day
to die” – and maybe
that’s exactly
what happened

but here’s a question:

whose deaths
do you think
they were thinking about?

I have watched us
miss the point
over and over again
that any battle fully joined
requires
that you die
beforehand

and perhaps this is how
we have learned to kill
so casually
efficiently
easily

and why we love
the smell of
blood

HOKA HEY

is what the movies say
the Lakota cried out
before battle – it means “today
is a good day
to die” – and maybe
that’s exactly
what happened

but here’s a question:

whose deaths
do you think
they were thinking about?

I have watched us
miss the point
over and over again
that any battle fully joined
requires
that you die
beforehand

and perhaps this is how
we have learned to kill
so casually
efficiently
easily

and why we love
the smell of
blood

I’m liking this process of writing these off the top of my head, and putting them out there for immediate comment. It’s sorta like hanging fresh sheets of paint before knowing what the picture is of.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Night
sometimes leaves
wounds that never
heal. Broad daylight can carve you

too. Dawn and dusk hold their own
dangers. Face it:
nothing is safe, nothing is
comforting. You might as well

give up on growing old, as it
happens so rarely. In fact,
pretend you’re already dead.
Pretend you’re not American.

Pretend the clothes on your back
smell of napalm. Think
of imperialism as a flavor of the
month at the local ice cream parlor,

and scoop yourself out a double dip.
Buy jewelry from Mexico, henna from
Egypt, hash from what they tell you is Morocco
but is more likely Contra Costa, California.

Give up your television, praise your musicians,
wave a burning flag at the cameras, run home
to your parents when the flames get too close.
This is your world. All that danger you claim

to despise? It’s your breath. All that money
you claim to fear? It’s your blood. All that bullshit
you claim to reject? It’s your bullshit.
And owning your bullshit is part of growing up.

Night wounds you, yes; day carves you, yes;
everything is always fatal in the last reel. But
you were born here, you were made here, and as
bad as it is, bite down on it like tinfoil and love it:

it’s the only way
you’ll ever find
the heart
to make it disappear.

I’m liking this process of writing these off the top of my head, and putting them out there for immediate comment. It’s sorta like hanging fresh sheets of paint before knowing what the picture is of.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Night
sometimes leaves
wounds that never
heal. Broad daylight can carve you

too. Dawn and dusk hold their own
dangers. Face it:
nothing is safe, nothing is
comforting. You might as well

give up on growing old, as it
happens so rarely. In fact,
pretend you’re already dead.
Pretend you’re not American.

Pretend the clothes on your back
smell of napalm. Think
of imperialism as a flavor of the
month at the local ice cream parlor,

and scoop yourself out a double dip.
Buy jewelry from Mexico, henna from
Egypt, hash from what they tell you is Morocco
but is more likely Contra Costa, California.

Give up your television, praise your musicians,
wave a burning flag at the cameras, run home
to your parents when the flames get too close.
This is your world. All that danger you claim

to despise? It’s your breath. All that money
you claim to fear? It’s your blood. All that bullshit
you claim to reject? It’s your bullshit.
And owning your bullshit is part of growing up.

Night wounds you, yes; day carves you, yes;
everything is always fatal in the last reel. But
you were born here, you were made here, and as
bad as it is, bite down on it like tinfoil and love it:

it’s the only way
you’ll ever find
the heart
to make it disappear.

In order of finish:

Morris Stegosaurus (mstegosaurus)
Alex Charalambides (hairy_lamb)
Urban (the sole rookie)
Ryk McIntyre (on his first slam team since 1991)

Good slam with the usual Worcester Weirdness. And, Worcester’s first ever all male team.

Two slammers deliberately self-destructed in the final round:

Jon Wolf told the audience he didn’t deserve to be there and only got into the slam because someone else dropped out — so he begged the judges to give him zeroes (and 3 out of 5 complied, leaving him with a score of 8.0);

Dave Mac (penny_player) dropped “Sex is Funny” and asked the audience to just start yelling out words to improv from — he let that go on for a minute, then said “Thank You!” and got off the stage. He got a 6.8 combined score — lower than the guy who asked for zeroes! He told me afterward he thought the sound of all those words being shouted out was beautiful.

I love the Worcester scene for its refusal to take this at all seriously.

Morris will likely give the full blow by blow later.

Got home to the aftermath of a power outage and no ISP service till this AM — so those of you to whom I owed e-mails — sorry.

life does funny things.

Thsoe of you who know my poetry ought to snicker at this one:

Username:
From Go-Quiz.com

Apparently, there’s now evidence that al-Zarqawi wasn’t the guy behind the kidnapping and execution of Nick Berg.

And even Fox News is reporting that.

Surprised? Nope.

Apparently, there’s now evidence that al-Zarqawi wasn’t the guy behind the kidnapping and execution of Nick Berg.

And even Fox News is reporting that.

Surprised? Nope.

Because I trust you, I’ll tell you guys that the new Zero Point Zero column that’s up now is an act of sheer desperation — drugs really caught up with me last night and I was unable to put more than a single sentence together.

This AM, feeling somewhat better, I chose to drop the column I’m writing on multi-part poems and their performance and simply reprint my column on political poetry and the sins committed in its name, along with some new commentary.

Seems lazy — but you know, what I say in the column about why I don’t mind doing occasional reprints is completely true — and it also feels timely.

Go check it out, if you’re so inclined. And feel free to leave comments there, too!

More later….

Because I trust you, I’ll tell you guys that the new Zero Point Zero column that’s up now is an act of sheer desperation — drugs really caught up with me last night and I was unable to put more than a single sentence together.

This AM, feeling somewhat better, I chose to drop the column I’m writing on multi-part poems and their performance and simply reprint my column on political poetry and the sins committed in its name, along with some new commentary.

Seems lazy — but you know, what I say in the column about why I don’t mind doing occasional reprints is completely true — and it also feels timely.

Go check it out, if you’re so inclined. And feel free to leave comments there, too!

More later….

from one thing to another…finished a class, talked a bit with some folks afterward, ran and got lunch, now I’m starting prep for a meeting at 3:00.

No introversion available today (MBTI type INTP), no matter how much I need it…

from one thing to another…finished a class, talked a bit with some folks afterward, ran and got lunch, now I’m starting prep for a meeting at 3:00.

No introversion available today (MBTI type INTP), no matter how much I need it…