i got up at noon.

i’m back in bed.

bleah.

from chicago, city of the big travel delays.

tiiired. more tomorrow, i think. but it’ll be later since i’ve got a bunch of meetings all day, which sucks.

got some good poetry from the whole thing though…

going to sleep with sleater-kinney,
T

1. currently drunk. after dinner, went back to the bar when i couldn’t sleep and continued my, um, meditations.

2. just completed consumption of a lovely Cohiba cigar, as a substitute for the one i didn’t have at NPS.

3. time to sleep, and yet it seems silly to do so. life is so full of wonders…

regards from chicago,
T

PS: i still have an extra Cohiba here. anybody want one? (looking at you, javabill)

i was meeting with tonight didn’t show up till 6:45.

so much for palatine.

i ate dinner, had a drink with them afterward.

sleepy now. must lie down and prepare for later insomnia.

night all.

airplanes.

i’m in Rosemont, IL, home of O’Hare Airport.

i’m here to do two solid days of boring coaching work with two trainers who really don’t need me to be here.

i’m signing off now to perform my job function or have a beer, depending on whether i run into the trainers or the bar first.

i’m staying in the lap of corporate semi-luxury at the doubletree suites hotel.

if i get lucky and a cab ride is not prohibitively expensive, i’m headed out to Palatine tonight to see scottwoods feature at the Palatine Slam.

and that’s a wrap. later, children of the mic.

http://www.fvza.org/index.html

that’s some fucked up shit right there, that is.

i just woke up and turned on the radio. the radio station i have on for my morning awakening (i tend to put on a station i can’t stand to wake me up, so i don’t lie in bed listening) just went directly from Led Zeppelin’s “Achilles’ Last Stand” to a twofer of Rush: “Suburbs” followed by “Spirit of Radio.”

my long hair magically turned into a mullet, and i became convinced that the battery compartment of my laptop would be a good place to hide my weed.

PS: now they’re playing stuff by gavin rossdale’s new band, institute. for some reason, they remind me of another band.

god save me
from spending all my time
listening to the jam
when i should be daydreaming

that band makes me feel
all grown up
even when they are singing about
teenagers

i will leave my parents’ house
peg my pants and cut my hair
if anyone sees me who used to know me
i’ll tell them i’m in disguise

i’m going spying in the house of old —
listen to the band, pop pills and touch
myself more than i want to — but i’ll be happy
listening to the jam makes me want to be happy

even if i’m not happy

aurorabell. I’ll do this for the first seven respondents only.

1. Reply with your name and I’ll respond with something random about you.

2. I’ll tell you what song/movie reminds me of you.

3. I’ll pick a flavor of jello to wrestle with you in.

4. I’ll say something that only makes sense to you and me. (This possibly will not apply to all).

5. I’ll tell you my first memory of you.

6. I’ll tell you what animal you remind me of.

7. I’ll ask you something that I’ve always wondered about you.

8. If I do this for you, you must post this on your journal

off the wagon again
drunk on insulation again
behind walls full of cactus
built from nails made from a stiff neck

damn you, mean man
poor boy of mean thoughts
stink of mean eyes
hair mean and long as memory
inside mean as a stripper’s pole
outside mean as a hiding

spit an agenda at your lovers
darken your corners with leftover blood
pour chum in a baptismal font
hope that sharks rise from somewhere down there
grey fins circling around

if mean boy looks in a shrunken mirror
he will not fill it
if mean man breaks it
his luck won’t change

call him out of his fortress
and he disappears

Total number of books owned?
at least 750-1000.

The last book I bought:
Two books–
Lay Back the Darkness, poems by Edward Hirsch
Strike Sparks, selected poems of Sharon Olds

The last book I read?
the Edward Hirsch listed above.

5 books that mean a lot to me?
wow.

News of The Universe, an anthology of poems edited by Robert Bly. Unique collection of poems that attempts to highlight the broad range of mythopoetic exploration of the larger intelligence of the world (this book is impossible to describe — just go get it).

Foucault’s Pendulum, by Umberto Eco. The book the DaVinci Code was stolen from. If it wasn’t so patently obvious what a shitty job Dan Brown did, I think Eco would have a case for a plagiarism suit — that, and the fact that Eco’s novel/meditation/essay on the creation of meaning and the insane power of belief is so much more than a simple conspiracy theory book.

1 Spark, by Tony Brown. Don’t laugh — I mean it. I think this chapbook from 2000 was the best single coherent piece of work I’ve created to date. I chose poems that I thought best represented a theme, and i think that even though the poems were from several years’ worth of writing, they really connected together well. That chap’s been my benchmark for what constitutes a well-done collection of work ever since. I will exceed it someday, but that will always remain the place i did it first.

Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino. Oh, the faces of a city. I have no idea of how to best explain this small book of short prose pieces — interchanges between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan in which Polo describes cities he has seen on his travels. That tells you everything and nothing.

Gyn/Ecology, by Mary Daly. This is the most important book for me on this list. A discussion and ruthless dissection/damning of the destructive legacy of patriarchy — and the single greatest work on the power of language to carry meaning that I have ever read. You’ll never read the same way again after reading this book. I mean that. (As a corollary? Let me also add Daly’s Wickedary for further reading on the topic. Matter of fact, let’s toss Beyond God The Father in too…but Gyn/Ecology hit me at a critical moment in my life, and I was never the same after that.)

Quaker Meeting tag — respond if you are moved to do so.

a blank slate
fell from the roof
and struck me
in the back of the head.

i woke up after being dead
for a long while
and pulled myself up,
first one knee, then the other,

and then keeled over and
staggered up again,
then reeled over
to a convenient stump.

sitting there,
i had the irresistable desire
to write something about
my shattered head

but i found that after all
i felt too good to bother with anything
right then, other than to say
OW, and rub my wounds, and look around

for a stick or something i could use
to scratch on the slate later
when the pain was a memory and i needed
to make something out of it.

so don’t give me a hard time…woke up to pee, now headed back to sleep.

first off: give imsonshyne a hearty happy birthday!!!!

then, just wanted to do a quick update…

sunday:
boston show at the rack: nonexistent. no promo, no crowd. passed out flyers with thisrabbit and allan_inc and still no crowd.

ah well. it was in a bar that features ersatz amateur yuppie pole dancing, so whattya want anyway?

middleboro show: this was great. a lot of older folks and a lot of kids at an all weekend arts festival in a little almost Cape Cod town. a group of older poets, including me, did a group feature on themes of remembrance and healing. lots of fun, and nice to get out and see a lot of the not at all usual faces.

the asylum. what can i say? this is the home plate for me; if i miss here it hurts a lot. the home venue is always the hardest to play, and i wanted to do it justice…i think i did, and i did it with almost entirely a new set — the oldest poems i did went back only 18 months or so. my previous post give the set list.

it’s time for great changes. this sealed it for me…

it was also time to say goodbye to Debbie Middleton, who will be in her new house outside of Albuquerque in less than two weeks! Bye Deb…hope to see you sooner rather than later.

today: long day at the office. tomorrow: the same. i won’t be updating much if at all…so if you’re in the area i remind you AGAIN that buddy wakefield will be reading in Uxbridge on Wednesday. dammit, come support our efforts to bring art to the small towns…

over and out. thanks again to the people who turned out everywhere to support me and all the others who were out doing it to it yesterday…