Dark Matter

-I-

There once was a man from Nantucket,
Who kept several snakes in a bucket.
Said he with a smirk,
“A cage didn’t work.
After several escapes, I said, ‘Fuck it.'”

-II-

There once was a man from Nantucket,
Who reviled football player Jim Plunkett.
The guy said, “That bum
Just sat on his thumbs.
And now these Pats are champs — who’d a thunk it?”

-III-

There once was a man from Nantucket,
Had a pipe that was too clogged to suck it.
Said he with a giggle
Giving the stem a wiggle,
“Dude, there’s so much resin in there…wow…somebody gimme a paper I can wipe it on, this stuff is sweet…no, no, roll one anyway, this’ll take some time…and put on that Phish tape from the Maine shows…”

I still love
every lover I’ve had
I swear

but a fog settles
on my blood
thinking of all of you

at this point you are
mostly mist
to me

I wish I still knew all your names
I wish I still recalled more than a moment
of what we were like together

I claimed to love you all
I claim to love you still
I can’t even see you well

there’s a shadow growing around me
as if a dam that holds back horror
has started to leak

can I truly be a man
if I never remember every one of you?
or I am just playing myself

like an old actor at career’s end
with too many speeches delivered
to recall any one in detail

I pray it’s true that actors are not
responsible
for their characters’ deeds

for if so then
I may be absolved —
and yet, there’s this:

who, exactly, am I then, this hack actor
without portfolio
standing here dreading night?

and who was that who was saying
he loved you? who was that holding you?
who was that man I was pretending to be?

Beat to hell, but happy.

I sat down with my advisor and discovered after going through the transcripts of my previous checkered and too often interrupted college career that if I complete all my courses in the major, I’ll still need to take enough courses to make up…

15 credits.

Two sciences, two arts, and inexplicably a intro psych course…because every psych course I’ve taken has been high level on an instructor’s permission. Those count as electives, but they still want the introductory stuff in place.

I mean, hell: I took a course at Harvard on moral development and the linkage between psych and religion that was taught in part by Joan Erikson, and our last class was at her house with her and Erik Erikson too…but I need an Intro Psych course. (Psych majors, commence drooling.)

Aw, hell, I don’t really mind. I’ll see if I can CLEP test out of it.

I apologize for all the detail…but you know something? I’m really, really happy to be talking about this stuff again. In fact…I might actually just be happy.

And I’m not even gonna qualify it with a self-defeating remark.

In 40 minutes, I will officially be a college student again.

Are there keggers for weekend intensive older students?

And are the casual sex and stoned all night conversations about Escher prints still standard behavior?

I can’t wait to penny my roommate into the room, or to mark the food in my pint-sized fridge against depredation.

More likely it’ll be like Animal House if the animal was a three-toed sloth.

Wish me luck.

Ossie Davis, dead at 87.

I recently caught a bit of the Kennedy Center honors, where he and Ruby Dee had to stand and acknowledge the crowd acclaim. You could tell that being in the same box with George Bush was painful for them both, but especially for him.

I will miss him.

how difficult it is for me to not be spending much time at iWPS this year.

I’ll be up on Wednesday after SPEAK, taking Thursday off to play with y’all, MCing a bout on Thursday night, and then I’m gone until Finals night — working Friday, class Friday night, class all day Saturday, and I can’t even play much Saturday night because I have class Sunday AM.

I miss you guys, and I know it’s likely that with school becoming a more intensive part of the next couple years, I won’t tour much or get out around here as much, either.

I’ll be 47 when I get my degree. 3 years from 50. Damn.

Well, we’ll always have LJ.

Think any of us will still be in slam in two years? I know I won’t, though I’ll always be a poet, till the day I die.

But I do wonder where the rough beast is headed. It certainly seems to be slouching these days.

Eight years old. There is
a giant moonlit boot outside my window.
I jump down onto
the instep, climb the laces hand over hand
past the ankle onto the silk stocking, then
discover fine hairs to hang onto as I
move up the leg.

At eight I have no idea
why I’m climbing the giant, or
what I’m climbing toward.

At twelve I get a clue
but it weighs me down so much
I keep slipping back to earth and
I have to begin again.

Tonight another boot sits there tapping.
I want to get past the presumed target.
When I reach the chest, I’ll raise a thumb and lunge
through the skin.

I’ll cling for years under the skin.
I’ll forget how to climb.

When (once again)
she cuts me out and
I fall like blood
splashing onto the toe
of her boot,

I’ll be eight years old
before I climb again.

I’ve run into a person here on LJ who’s looking for info, video clips, etc. on women slammers, rappers, and poets for a paper.

Her LJ name is shockfactor and you can respond in my comments section. I’ll have her friend me and contact you through that.

For the record, I’ve sent her already to bullhorn, livepoets, and gotpoetry.

Thanks!

EDIT: Here’s a followup from the aforementioned researcher:

Good deeds rewarded. Thanks, all.

I skipped the State of the Union address tonight.

I did it deliberately, and I don’t care.

In fact, I have decided that I pretty much don’t care at all, anymore.

I surrender.

I’ve got more important things to do than snicker and froth at the Head Pig.

I know already he’ll piss me off, and that I don’t like him and don’t trust him.

When I say I surrender, I mean just this: the battle has to shift elsewhere. If the things I love are going to ultimately survive, they won’t survive because we elect a Democrat, wrest the Congress from the Republicans, defeat the Christian right, or forge a new relationship with the UN.

So, I surrender that formal battle to others. Enjoy, thrive. Play hard.

I do not intend to speak of “politics” here again. Social observations, certainly. But policy discussions? Personality discussions? No.

I do not intend to speak of activism, or of causes, or specific actions.

No more.

My war is elsewhere, these days; and that’s where my energy will be.

1. i’ve been in a meeting all day. didja miss me?

2. i’m home now working on a paper for school.

3. i’ve got a second poem in the giant series cooking. stay tuned.

4. the CD for iWPS is back on. it had been cancelled but new arrangements have been made. details to follow (when they’re finalized).

over and out till later —

T

The Squared Circle

Ladies and gentlemen,
your attention, please.

In this corner, your giant.
And in this corner, the other giant.

It’s one giant in a mirror.
No, it’s not.

It’s a fake giant and a real one.
Or, no giants but in ourselves.

Here are the rules:

When your giant strikes, cringe and shout praise.
When the other giant falls, dance as if you were on fire.

When the other giant strikes, close your eyes.
When your giant falls, it’s your fault.

If you think there’s just one giant,
speak in tongues until the mirror cracks.

If you think one giant is a fraud,
be sure which one it is before you bet.

If there’s no giant, why are you here?
You must have heard something.

Rounds begin and end when a giant’s boot
stomps a referee into the mat.

Knockouts? Don’t be ridiculous.
A decision’s not official until some of you are killed,

and if during the fight someone next to you says
stop, stop the fight, the giants

are the only ones
who aren’t dying,

you are to smite that person
with a rulebook until nothing more is said.

This is the fight that the rules have made,
let us be glad and rejoice in it;

shake hands, come out swinging,
and quickly forget which giant you are,

or whether you’re a giant or a spectator, and
whether that makes any difference at all.

a random number
of my thoughts
will escape me
tonight and run

off to the
skateboard park where
they’ll beat their
little asses raw

on concrete and
it’ll be the
best thing, really
because I haven’t

kept up enough
with my end
of the bargain
to toughen them

enough to be
warriors as needed
for battle or
love or even

planning strategy with
my neighbors over
stopping the skateboard
park from ruining

our property values.
you’d think I
was their father
or something the

way they expect
to be punished
for being free
enough to play

on their own
in the very
source of my
misery, skating with

the freakish kids
who play there —
cracking jokes at
my expense, probably;

roughneck kids going
where they aren’t
supposed to be;
my thoughts, exactly.

Felt well enough tonight after a long day working on various projects to hit the Asylum. I was in Providence at the Post Office at 6:05 and was in the Hut by 6:40….not bad, eh?

(By the way, local folks: if you weren’t aware of it, the Providence PO is open 7AM-9PM weekdays, 10AM to 6PM Saturdays and Sundays. Handy for last minute mailings.)

Jon Wolf’s doing an excellent job keeping the joint moving — 24 open mikers without rushing too much in an hour and a half. He’s really coming into his own as a host.

We’re getting some EXCELLENT quality stuff in the open. And only a minority portion of it is “slam stuff” — by which I mean the — well, you know. I don’t even need to describe it.

I think one of the things I love about Worcester is that we’re SO not dependent on the slam around here to keep things moving. We slam only once a month, bring in slam and non-slam features, and still have a packed house, usually SRO, almost every week.

I read “the abandoned orchard” (which I have revised and I think I’ll repost it — it’s the one that references testicular cancer) and “Radioactive Artist”. I do love that poem, no matter how old it is. Sometimes you’ve got to go back to them and learn how to make them breathe again. That way, they don’t grow stale.

After, it was feature time — mskittieface and edzeppelin came in and did a very tight tradeoff set of good work. I’m having a brainfart at the moment or I’d go into more detail on more of their pieces; will say I enjoyed Kat’s pro-choice piece and Eirean’s closer about the power of a given poem.

We then sat and gossiped with thisrabbit about the unsavory habits of certain touring poets (tonight’s features not among the list). I name no names, and you can’t drag it out of me. Take comfort — if you’re reading this (and it’s a public post), you’re probably not on the list.

And so to bed. I’ve got a longish day tomorrow and much to do — still working on the paper and such.

Have fun, or whatever you kids do nowadays.