I’m unafraid now
of this urge to be
empty. Simulations
of men are everywhere
and I can see that inside
them there’s air and
not much else.
So from here on in
let it be known
I don’t want
to talk to anyone
who doesn’t know
that he’s also a shell —
a husk open and clean
as a closet.
Category Archives: uncategorized
fragment: surfacing
Note (revised)
good morning
everything’s
quite astonishing outside
and cliches on the radio
are stirring me
for the first time in
i can’t remember
how long
good morning
a grand morning
a stunner of a day ahead
walking around stunned
is on my calendar
which is on my desk
next to the unpaid bills
i’m still in bed
but i’m working on getting up
good morning
a grand day
a worth a grand day
worth a million bucks day
and something tells me
it’ll all be spent
i’m working on getting up
trying to get up
thinking of haze on the meadow
starshine and wood
there’s none of that here
those are some other guy’s
beautiful mornings
that million bucks says
a good morning’s always
followed by afternoon
followed by dusk
and then night
i’m working on getting up
before that happens
good morning
i guess it can’t be helped
it’ll be here and then be gone
my getting up gets it on its way
one leg at a time
my mother used to say
up and at ’em
my father used to say
good morning
i turn the radio off
spread myself across
the whole bed
pull the covers
way up over my closing eyes
get on with
the good morning
the best i hope
to ever have
Fuck. Me. Now.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070420/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_neighborhood_barrier
I love the part later in the article about how the strategy for Iraq is all about reconciliation. This orta do it.
Regarding the VT Gunman in the News
NBC said the package contained a rambling and often incoherent 23-page written statement, 28 video clips and 43 photos.
It was given to State Police but contained little that they didn’t already know, Col. Steve Flaherty said Thursday. Flaherty said he was disappointed that NBC decided to broadcast parts of it.
“I just hate that a lot of people not used to seeing that type of image had to see it,” he said.
Oh, I dunno. Personally, I kinda think that’s a good thing.
People all over the world regularly watch friends, relatives, children, parents, neighbors dying. They see dismembered, starved, sick, smelly, disfigured people live in front of them all the time without the benefit of the television filter. They see the bombs, the random gunfire, the tsunamis, the hurricanes, the sewage in the open channels of their streets carrying dysentery and cholera to them, the AIDS virus depopulating whole countries before their eyes. We don’t get all that upset about their having to see it live.
I really have no problem with this video being shown to a desensitized nation that spends more time worrying about Sanjaya than starvation. Maybe that nut in the video ranting about how his obsession with the insensitivities of the rich was leading him toward mass murder might make one person recognize a similar disaster in the making, and take steps to stop it.
As always, I have a certain level of sympathy (admittedly very small in the this case) to anyone dealing with a mental illness. And without justifying what he did, I can say that I’ve felt that way myself, often, about the shallowness of some folks with money. When I went to prep school I hated the rich kids and the legacies for their easy materialism and callous disregard for those of us not to the manor born. I get where this guy was coming from.
He was obviously, recognizably crazy; it was identified well prior to the events; people who knew used their judgement well or badly or to the best of their ability and made their choices as to how to deal. This happened.
It will happen again. We live in a world that combines great good with great evil. Get used to it. You can’t escape.
And while you’re waiting, watch the video once or twice, and remember it’s a real person in real pain who’s really, really, unbalanced in his anger toward something that is worth being angry about.
Home from Toronto
finally got everyone’s voicemails — couldn’t retrieve them while I was up there, due to some technical glitch. i wasn’t ignoring you. not that anyone said i was, but just in case anyone felt that way.
be advised that i’m not answering phones, email, or any other stuff tonight — tired, overwhelmed, and just need to hibernate and regroup.
more in the am.
Bizarre
I just woke up from snoozing with the TV on to hear Floyd Westerman Crow, a Lakota actor, shilling for a pain remedy of some sort (something like Ben-Gay, I think) called “Lakota.” “Try Lakota,” he said. “You have nothing to lose but your pain.”
Then I heard the computer ping out a mail alert. It was for a piece of pharmaceutical spam from Adelbert Patel, and the subject was “pork.”
Based on this I expect that any day now I’ll receive a piece of spam for “White People” headache powder from Ethelred Gupta. The subject will be “smoked sausage.”
I fly home this evening. God, I can’t wait.
so much depends — 4/11/07
so much depends on them
the crumpled toyotas and buicks
bearing the kohl’s and tj maxx masses
of women who work for median pay
just to hold families together
and/or pay for saturday nights
so much depends on
the workaday pickups and vans
that shuffle the turnpikes a car length at a time
manned by the men who wear carhartts for function
just to hold families together
and/or pay for saturday nights
to earn their stripes in
the army
of the ignored
you depend on them
you who sneer at large eyeglasses and broad bellies
who swear to never walk the walmart aisles
who do not understand the necessity of shopping
at the only place you can afford any sort of glasses
the only place left in the half-rural towns
you’re buying into
the towns you’re buying out from under them
who put up the mansions on their grandfathers’ lands
who cheerfully toss your cash at the work of their hands
who do not understand how little of your money
goes into those hands
who would sneer at the smell of the dirt on those hands
who would never tolerate it on your own
so much depends
on the world where they live
which you see and sneer at
from the seats of your bluetoothed cars
from the seats of your business class flights
from the seats at the indie rock show
from the floor where you mock the old time rock and roll
that keeps the flame burning for some folks’ saturday nights
from the seats where you look up from professional screens
and imagine the pleasure of loving rap for its image
from the seats where it’s easy to pretend
you could rough it like them
slumming for a week or so
from the seats at the poetry slam
where you manage to muster a pitiable shake of the head
at a poem about class and indifference
so much depends
on not admitting a divide exists
or denying that the divide’s near impossible to bridge
without leaving some piece of you behind
so much depends
on the crumpled toyotas
the not quite late model enough hondas and saturns
the cars that struggle to pass you to get there on time
because there’s no flextime in a retail backroom
because there’s no daycare in a call center’s perks
because a car isn’t a way of life but a workhorse
because a paint job’s a luxury and a dent is a shrug
so much depends on
you not seeing yourself as remotely
a part of that mass on the highway
there’s a hell in every payment
you make on your life
and you’re not the one
who burns in it
Grrrr…
If you are trying to get in touch with me this week, you should know I have a very fucked up phone and an international inability to retrieve my voicemails. The latter should be fixed shortly but it sucks at the moment.
I won’t even get into the grilling I got at Canadian Immigration this afternoon. (Yes, I said Immigration. Not Customs. Long story related to the Canadian strictness regarding people who come to work in Canada from the US and whether or not we might be taking jobs away from Canadians.)
Grrr…
Tour recap
OK:
Baltimore: after a 1.5 hour shutdown of the NJ Turnpike, we flew into XandO and set up in lightning time for a good set — lots of nervous energy translated into good stage presence and big book sales. Paper Moon Diner afterwards for good food, good talk; we stayed with Chris August who helped us solve a potentially rough car problem and fed us well.
Newark: only venue where we did the entire “Jim’s Fall” suite. Small crowd but again, lots of merch sales and good conversation, both at the venue and the Eagle Diner afterward. (I love the Eagle, by the way.) Then, staying for the next two days with Nigel, Matt, and Hannah.
Also: I strayed and smoked a bit, but I’m back to being a non-smoker — no worries.
Wilmington: a stage, a disco ball, a bar — what more do you need? We did a good set if a tad mellow — our linkage between pieces and our comfort level onstage really gelled here. After that exhaustion and panic set in when we read that there was a potential of an ice storm in NE — briefly considered driving home at 1 AM, but thought better of it and left at 5:45 instead, in cats and dogs buckets of rain all the way up the coast.
To respond to our own critique of the show and the reasonable thoughts of Matt and Liam, we decided to get a tad dangerous for the last gig in Cambridge — on the way home, we developed (a cappella) a bass and poem version of “Punk” to give us another high energy dynamic piece. If you saw it in Cambridge last night, you were seeing it for the first time — seriously. We’d never even tried it before with the bass.
The Cambridge show — well, Adam Stone opened as only he can with the Trio behind him; Faro and I did the rock and roll poetry show and felt good about it (great acoustics and sound system, by the way); Iyeoka Okoawo was her sterling self and the band smoked; Marc Smith did some amazing renditions of Sandburg poems and his own work (LOVED the bebop stuff).
And if anyone wants to know what it’s like to perform onstage in a freeform poetry jam with Marc Smith, Regie Gibson, Richard Cambridge, Adam Stone, Iyeoka Okoawo, and Michael Brown, all backed by the Jeff Robinson Trio (Jeff Robinson/sax, Jerome Deupree/drums, and Blake Newman/upright bass) plus Faro tearing it up on the 5-string electric bass with all of us tossing in added percussion and stuff…
it’s not bad. Hell of a way to end a tour, I’ll say that.
Afterwards, off to Cambridge Commons with the gang to drink and shoot shit…and then home.
Now it’s worky-work stuff for a day or two then off to Toronto for a job.
Later, all…and thanks to all who supported us and took us in.
Home now for a couple of hours
before the show tonight.
Great gig last night — more later. Thanks Wilmington.
Kurt Vonnegut’s dead. I suspect he doesn’t care. Neither do I. His work’s still here — who cares about the man’s shell if the spirit lives on?
notes from my insomniac recliner…the tour so far
has been GREAT. Show in Baltimore was rushed (due to our late arrival, due to a 1 and 1/2 hour shutdown of the NJ Turnpike) but damn fine, with a great and enthusiastic crowd and a good set.
The Newark DE set was excellent; we were surprised by the arrival of a_solitaryman who drove down from Massachusetts to see us! Cool crowd and great poetry in one of my perennial favorite venues.
We’ve still got tonight’s set in Wilmington, and then the show on Thursday in Cambridge — word is a Baltimorean is driving up to see us on Thursday! WTF??? But how grateful we are…
I’ll do more detailed posting later in the week, but suffice it to say this is SO gratifying. Thanks to everyone…
Dark Matter 