I’m fine, for those of you who’ve asked. Thanks.
I’m staying away from TV and radio and heading into the old job to lay some flowers at the memorial.
If I’m on here at all again today, it’ll be much later.
Notes on another night w/o adequate sleep
Well, at least I got a few hours in tonight.
I recently found an Internet station called SKY FM — all modern jazz, and by that I mean the good shit — in the past hour I’ve heard Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, and Thelonious Monk.
If I’m gonna be up, this is a good station to be up with.
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The following poem expresses the opinion of one poet. It does not necessarily represent the views of all poets or their affiliates.
WHY THE MUSE IS A SADIST
why did you wake me up? i was
so joyfully dumb, lumpy and dreamless
on the flat bed when you insisted
i get up and talk to you.
so i’ve turned on the laptop
and I’ve been waiting. what is it
you want to know? i know
you’ll make me sit here all night
until i figure it out, so
offer me something — a hint,
a sign, even a direct question —
and i’ll snap to it.
what was it
that made you think you could
set me here in front of a blank screen
and say nothing? if there’s something
i’m supposed to make clear for you,
tell me — i’m all yours, there’s nothing else
to be done now, i’m ready, my hands are on the keys,
i’m as angry with you
as i am breathless to find out what you want.
then, if you’ll let me get back to sleep,
i’ll do everything else i must tomorrow —
earn a living, make friends, save myself.
and after that, i promise
i’ll come back to you and take down
everything you tell me. i’ll be all yours again tomorrow night
if you’ll give me back the hours you stole tonight,
because, seriously, i just want to sleep now. there are things
more important than poetry, you know.
I’ve been sitting with the guitar tonight…that makes me pretty happy…
I’m trying to work up some reasonably competent second and third postion chord changes for a new song I’m working on. This sudden burst of songwriting is kinda weird, as I’ve written about four songs in twenty years.
Maybe I’ve been working up to this. Maybe it took me this long to be ready to do this.
Not questioning too much. Just enjoying it.
Continue readingNASCAR
I’m watching the NASCAR race tonight.
I’m going to the race in Loudon NH next weekend.
Am I the only NASCAR fan in this crowd?
Addendum: Gotta say it — I think snobbery and elitism keep a lot of people ignorant of the appeal of NASCAR. I know I never even dreamed of watching a race until recently.
In the earlier post I mentioned a headache.
Please change “headache” to “migraine.”
My eyes hurt. Going to hide in the dark. Bye.
Continue readinghere’s a little viewing tip:
CNN will be streaming their real-time archive of the coverage of 9/11 on their site on Monday, starting at 8:30 AM. So if you want, you can relive the whole thing just the way it happened.
I won’t be watching, but I can understand why someone might want to see it.
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In other news, I have a headache.
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Just finished reading the Bob Dylan interview in Rolling Stone. I hadn’t picked up RS in a long time, so it was interesting to see the rag. It seems to have improved from the last time I read it.
I tend to agree with Dylan’s approach toward his music, where he says that he doesn’t listen to his albums and thinks of them as documentation more than as discrete works of art. I kinda feel that way about my books — I get focused on the next thing almost as soon as I’ve finished one.
An example: the set I’m planning for the shows on 9/24 and 10/9 (the Jim Poems, accompanied by Faro on bass) is really exciting and I think it’s going to kill (especially the ending), but in reading through the poems I’m already seeing a next set that continues Jim’s story, and I’m starting to get impatient to get these performances out of the way so I can “move on.”
This stands in direct contradiction to my own frustration with poets who don’t get up to read “unless I’ve got something new.” While I read new stuff all the time as part of the editing process, I think it’s critical NOT to abandon older work in favor of the fresh. Poems continue to resonate and change after they are “done.” We bring new things and experiences to them, and the reading of them changes (or at least, it should).
We have such a narcissistic streak — we think the latest and greatest stuff we just came up with needs to be heard immediately. Robert Bly once said that the urge to be excited all the time, to experience novelty, is a form of narcissism, and I agree with him. Life isn’t always new and exciting, and neither are we.
As I said, though, I’m as guilty as everyone else. I fight the tendency all the time. I try to balance the amount of new and old I do in open mikes and features. After all, the old poems are likely new to SOMEONE in the audience, and if you wrote them well enough, they should stand up.
I am tired of:
— poets who self-promote endlessly in a really ego driven way
— vicious posts to e-mail lists that end with “one love”
— people who believe winning a slam = being a good poet overall
— ridiculous claims as to personal popularity
— my own envy at those who succeed through such petty crap
— in fact, I’m just tired of trying to be myself in a scene that seems to thrive on masks
Continue readingStill angry
I’m still angry with the world, but it’s moving toward a deep sadness now.
It’s hard to deal with a situation where there are no clear rules, and where the conflicting emotions all run so deep. All you can do is feel your way toward something like peace.
It’s even harder when you are a peripheral player and don’t know how to support the people going thru the worst of it.
I’m fine, by the way…it’s not a situation that involves me directly. It’s not 9/11 related. It’s just something I want to help with and I’ve got no personal resources to help the people involved.
Crikey! I’m a pop culture hero instead of a joke on South Park!
Fuck Steve Irwin and his need to dominate animals. I never liked the guy, and I find his death by a relatively innocuous animal to be more than a little poetic.
However, he long ago said he wanted to have his death shown, if it happened and was filmed during one of his adventures. He wanted people to understand the nature of what he did, to know that he died doing what he loved, and to underscore that interactions with the natural world carry a level of uncertainty and danger.
I can respect that. So let’s see the damn film and quit being so squeamish, y’all. It was the man’s express wish.
While we’re at it, I think Americans need to see a little more actual, closeup death on their TV screens and a little less sanitized stuff. Let’s make ogrish.com the background to Katie Couric’s newscasts from now on.
I’m kinda hating on the world tonight, for a reason I can’t divulge, and I don’t care who knows it. I’m in a Robinson Jeffers kinda mood. Blow the fucker up and I’ll be happy to fry with the rest of creation.
This is just to say
There will likely be other poems written about Hurricane Katrina, but right now the only one I ever need to hear again is “34” by Patricia Smith. I’ve heard it twice…damn. DAMN.
EXCITED!!!!!!!
Tonight, at Gotpoetry Live…
pswordwoman, aka Patricia Smith!!!!!
If you’re close by, be there. If you’re not, catch a plane and get here.
8 Governor Street, Providence, RI, 7:30 or so (sign up goes up around 7:15 or so). I expect a full house.
YAY!!!!!
Even more progress on life’s journey
After recently finding myself in a reverie about how “these kids nowadays” have never truly understood the beauty of the packaging and the art on old LPs, I have officially decided that it’s time I start calling myself “curmudgeonly.”
While the world mourns Steve Irwin
here’s another freak death for you to consider:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/09/04/canada.afghan.ap/index.html
nine days
In nine days it’ll be five years.
I know attaching specific emotions to arbitrary time frames is irrational, but it’s also human.
I find myself thinking, once again and not for the last time, about that first plane and how my seven co-workers might have felt. I hope there was a moment of peace and acceptance at the end, if only for a split second.
I think about how they eventually found the remains of at least one of them, and how the family fell out about whether accepting their return was important after they’d “buried” her already.
Acceptance…an odd word, but it seems better than “closure” to me. I think this wound/door will never close.
I think I’ll go back to the memorial garden at work on the Monday and visit.
As I wrote that, I became aware of how the events may have contributed to my desire to leave — how I dived into delivering the “grief counseling/travel seminars” at work in the days after, even though I couldn’t shake my own grief and anger.
I am still angry at them back at work for never understanding how I felt; how the event had shaken my delicate balance of depression and rage. After all, I didn’t “lose anyone.”
But I took the calls from family members that morning. I ran around making sure my close friend Katie wasn’t on the plane (she changed to get frequent flyer miles at the last minute). I stayed for hours calling old associates who’d moved on to tell them what had happened — some of whom were in NY that morning and were thanking God that everyone they knew was safe, until I called them…
I was one of many who sang “Puff the Magic Dragon” to Neilie’s daughter at her funeral, and I’m the one who still can’t hear that song.
Most of all, I’m the one who learned that despite our long rift, Tara had sent her sister to me for advice because she respected me so much. And I’m the one who knew that and never stepped up to tell her how humbled I was by that.
I know — all is forgiven, and I’m not someone who suffered as others have suffered.
But I still think of these things. I still toss and turn.
And no one tried to help me at work…I was just expected to suck it up and do my job. Which I did…
I did.
NOTE: For those of you who’ve responded, I haven’t written back individually, because I think it’s easier to say collectively: Thank you for your thoughts. Musings like this help me; knowing you’re reading and responding helps me too, as I hope it may help you.
Remembering the Palm Gardens, 1981
What Ed at the door said was true: they were all tired, all the time.
Tired from pushing themselves through double shifts
on behalf of houses, children, better lives —
whatever they had to have.
Half the dancers were former high schoolmates
so there wasn’t much mystery about why they were there.
Half the reason we came was to pay to see
what we’d once tried our best to see for free.
“Brandy” used to dance
to the most radical rock songs she could find.
I saw her dance to the MC5 once. She made me believe
the revolution will be a miracle of taut thighs and dissociation.
You push a commodified body
against the pulse of commodified rebellion long enough,
something begins to happen.
The ones who watch them don’t usually see it,
but I never met a stripper who didn’t understand
the balance of power in any give and take relationship.
What it took to gain power, what was inherent,
what could be assumed, what was the coin of the realm;
all was there in the tall shoes and the soft tummies
of the dancers who didn’t speak
until you’d set them up with a drink or a couple of dollar bills,
who then told you everything in high brisk voices laughing now and then
at some drunk who’d gotten crude with them earlier in the night.
I’d sit there secure in the knowledge that they’d never say that about me.
After all, I only went there for the sociology and the irony
and I told everyone that, even when I couldn’t stop staring
at Sharon from my math class who whipped my ass in every test,
at “Brandy” and her hip-pulsing anger, at Ed
whose scars and meathook hands welcomed everyone
to the Gardens, even at myself in the mirror behind the dirty bar.
NOTE: This isn’t remotely finished. I’m just tired of looking at it for now. Critique welcome.
NOTE THE SECOND: Nah, it’s done.
Dark Matter 