Category Archives: uncategorized
Today
was pretty much a total waste — was off my feet much of the day with this injury. I really wanted to go to NYC to see Roger’s new show and see Mindy Nettifee and Amber Tamblyn’s feature afterward, but couldn’t justify the ride and the walking with my foot this way.
I should have gone to see Heather at B and N, but the foot was hurting badly in the early evening.
The stretching exercises I got off the Web are helping, but I think it’ll be a day or two before it’s back to something like normal.
Did force myself out late tonight to buy a heel support and dry some clothes — my dryer’s not heating at the moment.
Worked on a couple of poems — mostly stuff for the show in October — nothing new, just starting to look at continuity and flow.
And…that’s all folks…
Tag Team Poem /Trip notes
We have a permanent forum on Gotpoetry where there’s a running challenge — someone posts a short poem, and the next poster (or posters — no reason multiple folks can’t try it, of course) has to post a poem, not necessarily related, that begins with the first poem’s last line. That last line has to then be the first line of the next poem, and so on. Theoretically, it goes on forever…
Sometimes, the resulting poems are just silly, and of course you’re always trying to challenge whoever posts next. Sometimes, the results are better than silly.
This is one I posted just recently:
You’re a big-fat-Barry-White-looking motherfucker.
You’ve got more gut than an Indiana trucker.
You’ve got more hair than a dog in a fur coat,
and it sounds like a bullfrog’s caught in your throat.
You’re a big-fat-Barry-White-looking motherfucker.
That God-like voice lets you reel in suckers
who think you’ve got something to say worth listening to.
Oughta be a law against abuse of that tool.
You’re a big-fat-Barry-White-looking motherfucker.
Your name is Tony. You were born out of luck, sir.
You will learn before long that you end up alone.
When that voice of yours fails you, can you ever go home?
In other news, yesterday AM I did something serious to my foot and can barely walk. This made for a lovely training session of four hours on my feet and a six hour drive home yesterday.
All signs (according to what I find here on the Magic Web) point to something called plantar fascitis, which requires rest, heel support in the shoe, and stretching exercises to get better. At least it’s not surgery. But no NYC trip for me today — sorry, all.
I did get a lovely lunch with aurorabell out of the trip, though…so that’s good.
Show on the way: statement of intention
On October 6, I will be doing a show at the Perishable Theatre in Providence.
It’ll be a Duende show, and I’m planning to use a bunch of the new stuff I’ve been posting lately as the basis for the show, along with a couple of older pieces I think will fit the theme.
It’ll be called “Americanized.” I plan to create a roughly 45 minute set of poems set to Faro’s music that will examine what it means to be American right now, in all the glory and pain of the term, with the contradictions intact.
It’ll include a chapbook release and a new CD.
It’s ambitious, it’s scary, and it feels like the right thing at the right time.
Americanized (second draft)
Under my Americanized skin
I’ve got a dog soldier and a fat Neopolitan cop
keeping track of infractions.
Under my Americanized eyelids
the marble graves of my hope
are rolling like blues tombstones.
Under the meat of my lower lip
an Americanized raspberry of justice delayed
burbles at odd hours like a soul revue bass line.
That’s my Americanized heart
banging like kitchen help when the party’s over.
I’ll gather the leftover wine and we’ll pioneer something, or kill it.
And those are my Americanized nostrils, flaring
at the scent of the dying cotton mill and the rising pretense
of coffee served in Italian vessels of pure paper.
This Americanized face of mine, beard-bruised and faux-tender,
hangs open-mouthed before the choices of ease and waste.
Don’t be dismayed at all the gold in my pores —
the Americanized man in me says: it’s fine.
I never want to wipe
this skin of mine naked again,
don’t want to see the gold start to disappear,
don’t want to see Cortez under the shine,
dont’ want to see how Americanized his rotten old smile’s become.
Do you know me? There’s a wee battle
in me. I recognize you, your own war,
the memorials we share.
I’ve no clue
about the methods of our dog soldiers and cops
until I see them in action, and I try never
to see them in action. Americanized as they are,
they own their invisibility, pass it between them
even as they hate each other’s histories.
They play their games,
knock each other off and punch back in
next morning to redeem and continue.
Instead of that, just give me the usual something, and give me death too,
an Americanized death of course, bristling with confident stickers
and steel tubs of beer across the rehab hall from the President.
The fat cop and the dog soldier will lift their heads up out of me.
Death always gives our contradictions something to do,
gives them a pose to assume — as if to say:
here is the family portrait;
here are the brothers in arms
who campaign under the skin.
Mirror Over The Desk
When I sit down to write
in an unfamiliar room
and there’s a mirror over the desk,
when I can see
that same old raccoon looking at me,
shaggy thief with his paws full of
things worth saying, things I can’t get at
and that would be utterly different
if ever I could hold them —
I almost die laughing, choking on the words:
old bear,
there are so many places like home.
Ok, finally
off to Harrisburg, PA for work. Took me long enough — I’m at least an hour benind my most pessimistic schedule.
Back tomorrow night.
Gotpoetry tonight
Well, our feature never showed up…but since Maze Forever was in the house, we had an instant backup, and a hell of a backup he was — as was his road partner and fellow poet, Ocean. Terrific set.
We also had a spotlight from Team Providence which also got the room rocking.
A good night.
Off to Providence
for Gotpoetry Live , with Rainmaker (from NYC) and a spotlight likely from Maze Forever.
Thought I’d leave you with this — can’t recall if I ever posted it here; it’s older.
My Favorite Native Legends
my favorite native legend starts like this:
i once saw a man at acoma pueblo
replacing a pine post on his adobe porch
while listening to a battery powered radio
and doing noteworthy monty python routines
with a couple of his friends —
and then of course there’s the one that begins:
in a bar one night a friend of mine insisted
that at one time
tonto
was in love with the lone ranger,
and we’re not talking
multicultural brotherly love either;
but every time he tried
to make a move
the big guy said something like
“hiyo, silver”
and eventually tonto realized
he could do so much better
than a tightass frat boy
with a mask fetish.
and everyone howled and
someone bought a round for the house
and there were more stories but
i can’t remember those right now.
yes, children,
those are my favorites.
note the absence of Coyote and Crow
and that there’s nothing in either one about the Great Spirit.
note that the moon doesn’t speak to the hunter
and that no one’s bones call out to the beloved left behind.
if you want those stories
get thee to a barnes and noble.
i will praise instead
the micmaq man who walks the high structural steel
for a paycheck
and doesn’t drink it away.
i’ll tell you the one about
the old guy who looked like my father
who tried to pay me four bucks
to drive him from mescalero to a bar in alamagordo
and shook my hand when i said i was sorry but
i was going the other way.
let’s hear the one about robin chatterbox
and how she became a doctor. or the one
about the casino that paid for a new school.
or the one about the tv show
that pulled a shameful episode, or the one
about the meth lab that was prayed off the rez
by the old folks.
there are some good new stories out there
for you to tell your children if you’re willing to learn them first.
you don’t need to tell the old ones over and over again.
in the spirit of multiculturalism,
we can always borrow an old one if we need one.
for instance:
see the campfire over there,
the one someone left for dead?
see the ashes starting to stir?
goddamn, is that some kind of bird?
Interesting
Truth is relative Tony, and you don’t speak for all Native American people, do you? Your views are your own. In short, I don’t find this poem spiritual, I find it to be a rant. I also write about the Native American people. I believe my poems draw from the spirituality of your people. And is a kind of automatic writing that summons their very essence. It’s not commercialism as you say, it’s a deep belief in “tradition” of a forgotten people. It’s a deep spiritual connection. And whether your point of view differs from someone elses on these matters, it doesn’t devalue their spiritual awareness or connection.
— from a pained response to my poem “American History” on Gotpoetry.com
The same writer then posted several poems in response to my poem, which were better than a lot I’ve read but which still trafficked in … well, you can guess. Summoning the very essence of “my people” through a kind of automatic writing.
I thought I felt something…
After, she predicted that I’d find her poems stereotyped and offensive, and suggested that was because I’ve been too “Americanized.”
She was right, so I guess I am too Americanized.
ETA: Here’s a link to the debate. Just do me a favor, please — don’t pile on over there, ok? I’m interested as to whether I’m being too harsh, not looking for reinforcements:
Djuna Barnes
Anyone read and know her? Considered by some to be as great a contributor to English literature as Joyce, but I never hear anyone mention her.
some info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Djuna_Barnes
I can’t find my heavily annotated copy of “Nightwood,” still one of my all time favorite reads — thinking about it tonight made me realize I never run into anyone who even knows who she is.
Anyone?
I think I’ve been chryslerpoet for too long.
I may end up shifting the name soon. Not sure to what…but there are time when a major shakeup is needed in a past pattern, and that might be the shakeup I need.
That name’s a persona, after all…
Quick request:
If anyone knows of good, friendly, all ages venues for poetry in Kansas City MO, can you let me know? One of our young’uns at the Hut is moving there to go to college, and it would be nice to send her off with a place to go to once she gets there. Tonight’s her last night in Worcester, so there’s some urgency to this.
Thanks!
first things last
do not pretend
you haven’t grown up to be
one of those boys
who sits on the grass
at the highway rest area
counting thongs
and nudging your friends.
you have, because you are,
I’m watching you do it.
do not gloss over your snickering
when you are called on it,
when it is pointed out
that you only began to snicker
when a black couple pulled watermelon
from a picnic basket, especially when
the white couple next to them
did the same five minutes before
and you saw nothing. do not
play that game.
how did this happen?
all the things you should know,
things you should know better than — you’d think
we’d be past this by now — but here we are
and you’re not showing much progress —
so stop with the “dothead” cracks,
the defensive rationale for using the word
“bitchslap,” the “mustache ride” T-shirt.
stop calling everything you dislike “gay.”
and then there’s the predictable comeback,
after all it’s a free country,
you’ve got freedom of expression
all over your ticked off smooth little face
and you’re not afraid to use it. it’s just
talk, you say. you don’t mean it, really, really,
not like that, never hit a woman, just a joke, gay friends,
no racist bones, fuck you, fuck you, PC sumbitch
fuck you.
now I get, of course,
that the nuances of language are in general a mystery to you
and that you don’t know the difference
between “camel jockeys” and “dotheads”
just by the way I heard you use those words
five minutes ago
so I was never expecting much to come of this.
so, then, one favor only:
stop pretending
you aren’t the kind of guy who does this.
do not play the whistle past the lynching tree
game. do not tell me you never
saw a roofie in a friend’s hand
and said nothing. do not tell me
you never kept the awkward boys who didn’t date
away from your high school lunch table,
and don’t tell me you wouldn’t do it again.
do not tell me you aren’t the kind of guy
who flips off a confrontation over this shit
and laughs with his buddies all the way to the car
and does it again as soon as you reach
the next place you mingle with the rest of the world.
just tell me you’ll remember it
when you first hold your own son,
when he grows up and asks you to explain the way things are.
just tell me you understand that first things last.
tell me something
surprising. tell me
it’s gonna end someday.
Dark Matter 