homestar runner. downloading music. harry potter. lemony snicket. project runway. no desire for a iPod (i can’t stand headphones of any sort, never have). don’t like comic books. hate text messaging. don’t use the camera on my cameraphone.

i don’t do any of these things. tried most of em and found them dull.

when i think about all of these things i don’t do, or won’t do, or could care less about one way or the other, i begin to see where some of my detachment from the slam community is rooted…i am beginning, through age and lack of interest, to have little connection to the cultural underpinnings of a lot of people.

it’s not that slam poets don’t aim for the universal. many of them do. it’s just that the launching pad they blast off from is very different from mine. the references, symbols, etc. don’t hold my attention because i am dismissive of them, because they either mean nothing to me or i actively dislike them.

my problem to solve, mostly; but i think i will just resign myself to letting my work be my work and find its own audience without worrying about this too much. and if a good poem mentions strongbad, so be it.

i’m somewhat better — still achy, but the fever’s passed; still coughing but no more blood.

still can’t do most simple exertion, including talking, without coughing. and going into the cold air outdoors? like sticking a knife in me.

but gimme two more days and i’ll be golden. i know me and how i heal.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

i have been listening to the discussions about Ariel Sharon a lot these past few days.

i recall a time when he was vilified as a butcher for massacres in Lebanon.

i am thinking of Yasser Arafat, Anwar Sadat, Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon, Menachem Begin, and various Nobel Peace Prizes.

did you know that Mohandas Gandhi was rejected for a Nobel by the Prize Committee because his career had shown shifts and turns and inconsistencies?

funny about humans. you can always count on them to be human, by which i mean that they are made of contradictions. and you can also count on this fact: that those contradictions will be recalled when recall is useful, ignored when ignorance is useful.

i live.

and i think i’m better. a little. just woke up so it’ll take some moving around to be sure.

The MC5 by themselves might clear my sickened body.

Keeping my fingers crossed for Stooges next. Or Pere Ubu’s “Non-Alignment Pact.”

And yet, “Johny Hit And Run Pauline” by X shall work as well.

Purrrrrrrrrrr…

ETA: HOLIDAY IN CAMBODIA!!!!!!

now i’m coughing up blood.

i think of this as progress, since i wasn’t coughing up anything earlier.

just waiting for the lungs, now. i figure once they’re out i’ll feel 100% better.

taking ambien, then going to bed.

EDIT TO ABOVE:

For all my concerned friends…thank you.

Here’s what’s happening…I’m seeing a lot of pink with some brighter spots of red. It’s not every time I cough, and I have to say these coughs have been BRUTAL — the least exertion will bring them on, including talking, rolling over in bed, or benchpressing a refrigerator.

My sense is that if i see it get worse i’ll do something, because i think it’s likely a result of two days of vicious coughing. right now, i’m letting it ride.

I will keep you posted if i make a different decision.

T

the compulsion to update here when there is really nothing to say is amusing.

i have spent most of the day sick in bed with the exception of getting up to watch “Spirited Away” earlier when i was feeling really sick from lack of food. all i’ve had today is a bowl of cereal.

the movie was pretty good.

now i’ve said almost everything there is to say about the occurrences of my day.

are you not entertained?

slept all day, hydrated, and still feel like CRAP.

if anything i feel worse.

ugh.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

awful poetry doesn’t bother me. awful poetry that gets defended as “sincere” or “important” without regard to its craptastic nature does.

i just read a couple of poems at gotpoetry.com that made my head bleed. i think i’d like to say something, because i think the guy has some talent; but i expect to be ignored. maybe that’s just my crap going on as opposed to his. still gotta think about how to do it.

if you want a peek, go to “http://www.gotpoetry.com”, hit the forums, and take a look at poems by (cough cough) “ELEMENTS OF UIZM.”

sigh.

someone explain to me how i go from feeling great to terrible in five hours.

coughing, fever, body aches.

dammit.

blue_thundering. May you receive all you hope for in the coming year.

if you go to http://www.cnn.com and look at the “MORE NEWS” section, you will see a video link entitled:

“Watch Husband, 99 and Wife, 87, run from wildfire.”

i am surprised this didn’t appear in the sports pages with billing like that.

thinking of several options:

1. the words “rise above” on my heart.

2. the words “join together” on my heart.

3. the words “rise above” and “join together” tattooed, one phrase on my back, one on my chest, with links of a chain on etiher side of each phrase, as well as links of a chain added to either side of my current tattoos, the word “mestizo” on my left arm and the word “poet” on my right, to symbolize the linkage of these concepts in my life.

4. the words “take your pain up front” tattooed upon my right forearm.

5. the words “leap and the net will appear” tattooed upon my left forearm.

6. a picture of Taz on my inner right thigh. along with an american flag. and an anchor. and your name.

any thoughts? i’m a word guy all the way, so the fewer images, the better.

our necks are on the line
for our
roustabout politics
demotic art
scarred and willful affairs

but in a morning from a reagan movie
we refuse to give up

we open doors and toss
condoms into the yard
watch the cameras flash
we open doors and toss
the empty baggie into the yard
watch the dogs attack

we could run for hours with such dogs behind us

if men can kiss men in public
and settle into the unseen cross hairs
they shall
if amazon women can do the same with amazon women
they shall
this is the manifesto of the wrongful life

we will wake up and put the fear of no god
into them
we will hold a rave for jesus
offer a novel approach to public oral sexual favors
but never grant a lobbyist access

i will personally drop and give a thousand petals
of some flower no one recalls the name of
even though it grows everywhere

push back
stretch your neck out
paint the line on it for them
paint it in the brightest color you can find
let the sword fall
we are better off headless in the presence
of such talk as they offer

and lover i will wake up and see you
regardless of where my eyes are turned
this is the nature of this war
that our soldiers live grander lives
than the enemy army does

because our lives are the weapon we have chosen

can’t sleep.

at all.

need something less drastic than ambien. thinking bourbon.

boy, am i unemployed this morning.

hey, this station
just played bob seger
and funkadelic
back to back.

i think
my suburban childhood
just melted
like snow on asphalt.