A bird lands outside
but vanishes before I can see
what kind of bird it is.
It’s just gone — no flying, no falling.
All the other birds are gone soon after.

Dawn bleeds up across the East.
All morning I miss hearing the birds.
All morning people talk,
stop talking, start again.

At the library
I hear someone wailing that
words are falling out of the dictionary.
They can’t even say what words they are.

I watched a word I used to love
fall onto the floor and become lost,
wingless and tongueless in the pile.

The ants are picking them up
as if they were birdseed
and taking them
deep into their hills.

It’s better not to know
what they do there.

Welcome to the morning
when we can be afraid
without knowing,
and we dare not learn
enough to mourn.

Ignorance is our sole blessing —
we can’t mourn,
tear our clothes and roll in the ashes,
when we cannot say
what it is we are missing.

I’ve noticed this before, but…

The danger in writing an associative poem that takes big metaphoric leaps is that you always feel the tug of trying to make the leaps more obvious and smaller, so the audience/reader is less uncomfortable working with the piece.

The need to ALWAYS be immediately accessible cuts across more than poetry in this culture — movies, books, television, even the need to always have a phone on you and to access e-mail at all times. People are forgetting that fifteen years ago few had cell phones and no one had Blackberries.

Everything shouldn’t always be accessible to you, and that includes meaning.

There are times when I want people to struggle to get my work. Not always, but sometimes, and more often than even I always recognize.

Contradictions

After my recent diatribe about comics, I have become engrossed in “The Preacher.” Got a copy of Volume 1 for my birthday from someone who thought it would be up my alley anyway. He was right, and I’ve plowed through Volumes 1-3 this week. Jonesin’ for #4.

Music

I read Volume 3 before bed last night to the accompaniment of the new Stooges album, “The Weirdness.” Fucking LOVE IT. Not even in a nostalgic, ah-I-remember sorta way — it’s a tough, excellent album of punk-rock-sneery goodness. Plus, Mike Watt on bass.

A Reading

As if to capitalize on all this…I’ll be over at That’s Entertainment, the comics/record store on Park Ave in Worcester, to be part of the “Look! Up In the Sky!” superhero anthology release reading at 2:00. Be there or eat Kryptonite.

Duende had a great feature in Bethel, CT on Wednesday night. After a LONG drive (coming from Coventry RI and the worst directions I’ve ever gotten from an online service), we made it in plenty of time (glad we left a little early).

The set we did included only one Jim’s Fall poem, “Jim Loses His Grip.” In order:

Getting Ahead
Adolesence (aka “Overnight Elroy”)
Do You Know What It Means
Jim Loses His Grip

These all were bass accompaniment. Then:

Faro’s bass solo
Me solo (“Milk Water Sugar Bread”)

Then, a switch to guitar:

I Need A Guitar
Revisiting Roses and Violets

Back to bass for the closing:

Snakes On a Plane

Afterward, we had a nice question and answer session with the audience, which is a regular part of their reading.

The open mike itself was pretty good too…although I’m still mystified by the itsy-bitsy spider poem. (Had to be there.)

Thanks to the yeoman efforts of a_solitaryman we have a live recording of the night. Thanks also to frequegrl for trucking along for support.

Faro and I have been working hard on a variety of pieces, and I think we’re ready to turn the “Jim’s Fall” CD into a full length. We’re likely going to be re-recording it soon and getting ready to add a bunch of new stuff — look for it soon, and certainly while we’re on tour.

Sorry I missed the Women’s reading last night in Worcester — it would have been my fourth reading this week and I was about poetry-d out. I will attend the reading at That’s Entertainment tomorrow, though…

Over and out for now.

because
we like our lettuce
crisp, cold
and white.

because beef
is always what’s for dinner.

because we believe
we like Mexican food
because we’ve made tacos.

because we couldn’t tell
an Apache from an accountant
if we heard them but we still think
we could.

because we miss
riding and roping.

because we haven’t
killed a whale in a while.

because caribbean cruises
don’t take us too far from home.

because it’s ten miles
from here to work
and the train is so
dirty.

because
the night time is
the right time to
turn on the lights
and stay up till dawn.

because some of us
will never have
to learn another language.

because grillz, rims,
scooters, nines,
leathers, bedliners, cowboy hats
and headwraps
are so much fun to sell.

because a desert holds
bones and bike tracks for a long time
without decaying them.

because
lakes look like postcards.

because
we don’t have to go anywhere because
it’s all right here.

because we can sleep when we want.

because
fairytales always say
“…happily ever after”
only after someone’s been
dismembered by red-hot
pincers.

We’re an American Band…

well, a duo, anyway.

If you’re in the neighborhood of Bethel, CT, come out and see Duende (the dynamic duo of Tony Brown/Steven Cafaro) at the Molten Java Coffeehouse tonight at 8:00. We’ll be doing a full set including a lot of new material and more of Faro’s incredible music that now includes his nylon-string guitar as well as his bass virtuosity.

Or something like that.

This is something of a tuneup for our spring tour. More on that later.

Love to see you there…

Serving notice.

Going forward, I will neither pretend to care about nor enter into deep discussions of*:

— astrology
— vibrations, auras, lucid dreaming
— yoga ( yeah, I know, I know — but I’ve got my reasons)
— angels
— vampires as lifestyle role models
— pirates as lifestyle role models
— comic books/SF/fantasy (there may be specific instances of exception)

*In conversation, I will be polite but I will not lie about my lack of interest or my disbelief in these subjects.

In addition, I do reserve the right to use any or all of them as examples, images, or subjects in poetry as I see fit, because that’s the way I roll.

to everyone who’s been sending me birthday wishes.

I don’t want to sound unappreciative, but you should know I don’t make a big deal of my birthday. It’s not a source of wonderful memories, so I’ve kinda gotten into the mode of mostly ignoring it.

That said, your thoughtfulness is appreciated in spite of how I feel.

Add into this the fact that for the last two days I’ve been pretty incapacitated with a vicious stomach bug and you’ll understand why I’ve been keeping a low profile. Haven’t really eaten for two days and while the frequent trips to the bathroom appear to have stopped/slowed, I still feel like a train hit me.

So while I have been reading all your posts, there hasn’t been much to say and I’ve been under the radar, where I expect to remain for at least another day or so…

Congrats to all on babies, car recoveries, roller derby appearances, successful readings, and more as is appropriate. Have fun. STAY HEALTHY!!!

…waiting for my flight home.

I’m in the Varsity Grill. Dr. Phil’s on four TVs and ESPN is on about eight others.

And none of them have the sound up far enough to hear…because Fergie is on the sound system. Which is making for some interesting and disconcerting sensory dysfunction as it seems like Dr. Phil is going on about his London Bridge even as Rome is burning.

There’s probably a trenchant political poem in there somewhere, but I just don’t feel like looking for it.

I can never sleep in hotel rooms — not on these in and out nights. It usually takes me a couple of days to adjust to a new room when I’m there by myself, and that’s in addition to my usual insomnia…

so you get to listen to me ramble. Or read my ramblings, more to the point.

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Every time I fly into Dallas, I find myself singing Jimmie Dale Gilmore’s “Dallas” in my head, humming it at odd moments while I’m in town, etc. “Did you ever see Dallas/From a DC-9 at night…Dallas from a DC-9 is a beautiful sight.”

Strangely enough, Dallas is one of the few cities I’ve been to that I don’t think is all that beautiful from the air at night.

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

Listening to iTunes on shuffle on the plane, I heard two different versions of Thelonious Monk’s “Ba-lue Bolivar Ba-lues Are” back to back. Both are recordings from a night at the Jazz Workshop, one each from the two sets they played that night. The takes are different enough that it didn’t become monotonous (not that Monk ever becomes monotonous to me — I jump back and forth between Monk and Ornette Coleman as my favorite jazz artists). That’s one of the reasons I love jazz so much — the freedom that artists feel to reinterpret their work. It’s encouraging and frustrating to me as a performing poet — I wish more of us felt that it is important to not “freeze” performances.

I heard a poet at the Lizard Lounge last night use the word “love” in a poem and he pronounced it exactly the way Buddy Wakefield always says the word “love” when he hits it at the climax of “Convenience Stores.” I really, really want to hear people be original in performance. When I start to see myself “freezing” a rendition of one of my poems, it drives me batshit crazy, and I try to retire the poem for a while or actively look for a new way to perform it.

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

And while we’re on the subject of the Lizard Lounge…I had a great time there last night. I just wish it wasn’t such a long drive home and that it was an earlier night in general; I could get into being there far more often.

Iyeoka Okwaowo was AMAZING. Performing with the Jeff Robinson Trio, she sang as much as she did poetry and seamlessly blended the two. Best feature I’ve seen in ages, and I’m a fan of hers anyway.

I did “DIY” with the Trio during the open, and I had a fun time trying to take a poem whose performance is pretty “frozen” after all these years and work it differently to make the piece work with music. I have to thank Faro for that — our collaboration is really opening me up to new ways of looking at my work.

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

This afternoon before going to the airport, I got into a hot and heavy argument with one of my neighbors who took me to task for parking in front of his house and hindering the plowing of our street. Granted, he parks across the street, they didn’t plow last night, and I wasn’t even directly in front of his house, but it didn’t stop him from taking me to task for not having respect for people who’ve lived on the street for 35 years.

On another day, I would have ignored him or mumbled something apologetic, but the stress I’ve been feeling lately just popped and I ended up trading high decibel F-bombs with a 70 year old man over a parking spot. Not my finest moment.

He’s one of the guys who puts crates out to save his spot. It’s not illegal in Worcester like it is in Boston. It ought to be.

Again, I wasn’t in his spot. He had his car in his usual spot. I’m not sure what set him off.

Ah, winter in New England…

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

If anyone local or otherwise is looking to go to the show in Cambridge on April 12 with Adam Stone, Iyeoka, Duende (that of course is Faro and me), and Marc Smith, I’ve got tickets to sell — come see me.

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

And now, I think I shall try to sleep. In Dallas, which from a DC-9 is a beautiful sight.