Took off for the day. Left phone at home. It was an excellent feeling.
Category Archives: uncategorized
Alpha Barbie roars downstairs
One of these hours, I’m going to kill everyone in the downstairs apartment.
(note: the Alpha Barbie refers to the stream of small, thin blonde women who are in and out of there constantly. There’s one who is a constant among the crew; we call her Alpha Barbie. Woman cusses like a storm trooper.)
Flag Song (yeah, there’s music)
I burn the flag
(my flag, your flag)
the way I light a grill
(your flag, my flag)
hoping something good comes of it
and I hope I get my fill
you burn your flag
(this flag, that flag)
the way you look at me
(what flag, our flag)
I feel my skin igniting
I wonder what you see
Chorus:
which country do you live in
is it where I make my home
is it where the churches run on time
and the buffalo sell phones
which country do you live in
how many can you name
can you shuffle them until you deal
the one to take the blame
that man burns a flag
(small flag, bright flag)
and he goes on home to bed
(red white and blue flag)
sleeps in his man’s loving arms
and travels in his head
Chorus
join hands around the flag
(dark flag, wet flag)
and wipe your tears away
(battle flag, casket flag)
lower it from the hangman’s pole
forget what you had to say
Different Americas
When I was a kid I was a Boy Scout.
As a Scout, I learned something called the Flag Code, which was established by Congress as guidelines for the display and treatment of the American Flag.
I’m not making this post to suggest anything like a personal shift in politics — I just want to illustrate the differences between what so many people think patriotism is and what we’ve technically codified as the “proper” way to celebrate it.
If you’re so inclined, take a look through the Code and see how many violations of this are being perpetrated by today’s “patriots:”
It’s another example, to me, of how there are many “myths” of what it means to be American — and how many of them are based on incomplete or incorrect information.
People forget that Mother Jones and the Wobblies are as representative of American history as Ronald Reagan and the Young Republicans.
Dissent is an American tradition. Opposition to immoral policies is as American as…well, apple pie. Organic apple pie, of course…
I’m up
Thank you, Ambien and herbal supplements, for giving me a decent night’s sleep within the usually assigned parameters of when said sleep should occur.
With all the extra time this morning, I am finally downloading and printing various financial and legal documents necessary for the divorce.
It says something to me about the rightness of the situation that I am not especially tense, upset, worried, nervous, unhappy, wistful, or otherwise emotionally roiled as I do this.
In fact, my only serious emotional reaction is that the necessary websites are all too complicated to be believed. You’d think the Massachusetts Trial Court Division might take a little better look at making their site user friendly…
then again, if they did we wouldn’t need lawyers, would we?
On another note, Tornadoes’ last home game tonight. Anyone in?
New LJer
Please go give a warm welcome to frequegrl, who is just joining LJ. She’s near and dear to my heart.
Welcome, Missy!
Sometimes I listen to my poetry and all I can hear is an echo. Someone wrote and spoke the poem before I did. So much for speaking my truth to power…all I do is echo the truth someone else spoke before me. I’m a parrot.
Dumb cluck bird
don’t let him anywhere near
a notebook.
Any word he says is likely stolen.
He saw the shiny and lifted it,
tucked it under his wing.
Watch your poetry —
I’ll take it and pretend
I believe in your truth.
No point in continuing this, i’m just a copyist,
the blanker the page, the better.
Does it mean I’ve led a sheltered life
that I had never heard the term “fapping” as a euphemism for masturbation?
Finally
The new Zero Point Zero column is posted, in which I urge poets to stop writing so much.
The Zero Point Zero Regular Column!
Very much more than Nothing!
Animals
I walked toward the drugstore door
where a skinny man
in a worn green plaid shirt
and dirty bagged-out jeans was standing
unsteadily near the trash can.
“You don’t know shit,” he said,
after catching my slight recoil at the way
he spit large into his palm
and ran his hand through his hair
to flatten the strays that had come loose
in the wind. “Don’t look at me like that, fucker.
“Nothing works better than spit
on my hair. If I wanna
spit in my hand and wash myself all over with it,
why the fuck should you care? We’re all fucking animals, ain’t we?
How’s it any different than what a cat does,
or a dog? And are you gonna tell me you wouldn’t lick
your balls if you could? Course you would.”
He lurched away from me
into the store on whatever errand
had brought him here. I stayed the hell away from him
once inside, where I picked up my prescriptions,
bread, a lemonade for the ride home.
I almost hit a stray cat
before entering my street. He scooted across the road
and sat down once he’d made it and started in to licking upon
his matted white fur. I watched him for a while
before getting out to go inside.
I have been thinking about them for a long time now,
that drunk and that fleeting cat: their quick wet swipes
over their hair, maybe lingering for a moment or more
on some part that feels good, trying to cover up
how frightened they were by the close approach
of what might have been death, might have been scorn,
might have been an assumption that survival
isn’t enough by itself. We’re all animals,
he said. We just do what we do.
city
1.
i’m going to stick a chrome pipe
in my culo
so people will think i’m an escalade
and maybe look at me when i walk by
2.
the stone embedded in the pavement
holds a trace of everyone who’s walked there
my feet have never touched it
i float everywhere and i don’t know
the ground below me
3.
jimmy’s deli
once owned by jimmy nordstrom
now owned by virapa patel
still sells butter for six dollars a pound
but at least his cigarettes are cheap
4.
the neighborhood bar
is a gentleman’s club
aka strip joint
and the entertainers
aka as vicki
alice and
the other vicki
change faces every so often
leaving their names behind
clumped on the floor
who knows what animals they were
in their past lives
perfect in their camouflage
or leaving tails behind them
as they fled
5.
if this city were a banana leaf
i’d cover myself in it
and drowse in the heat
walking down a street past asian markets and
suddenly this city is a banana leaf
but now i don’t believe i could sleep here
something there is here
that doesn’t love
me
i press my hands to the walls
of the thrift store and think
of the worn jeans inside
that hold the forms of past owners
men and women who shucked them off
in familiar places before familiar faces
not everyone gets naked in the city
some of us walk ten inches above the stones
dressed in someone else’s clothes
smoking butt after butt
jealous of the running lights and huge rims
moving obvious and rude
past the nameless in the night
reggaeton (revised)
cracking along
with corduroy rhythm
with lyrics i don’t understand
that nonetheless promise me blue hips and red nights
with danger and regret in equal parts
that sound like guns tucked in a waistband
with smoke and dull stoner haze coupled with rum
that sits on the tongue a reminder of young couplings
with chingaling harmony and urgent slipbeats
that tell me there’s a woman out there for me
if only i get up and move
toward her and away from the couch
from the small room
from the air conditioning
from the peace and quiet
when peace and quiet roar in my ears
when comfort feels this much like fear
man
i gotta go
Paging Orlando poetry types
I’ll be in Orlando on a job on the nights of Sept. 19 and 20th (Tuesday and Wednesday). What’s up?
In a moment of complete silliness
I have decided to go see SoaP a SECOND time in the same weekend.
ocvictor, myainsel and I will be attending the 1:40 show at the Acropolis, AKA the Shoppes at Blackstone Valley.
Please feel free to join ussssssss. (I’ll get tired of the hissing thing eventually, I promise, but bear with me for a bit.)
Dark Matter 