Dark Matter

My dear friend Seren was wonderful as a feature. Great erotic stuff, especially the series of short poems she included accompanied by guitarist Danielle.

The open mike was dull as dishwater, frankly. I’m getting too old to sit through stuff like this.

The open suffered most because of twenty four readers, only six were women. Women are writing the most interesting stuff in the scene right now, and they aren’t showing up amid the testosterone barrage that is the Asylum of late.

I hate this. I haven’t been in for a month and it felt like a horror show. I need to read somewhere regularly in order to edit my work, and SPEAK doesn’t happen often enough for me to make it do that duty. The Asylum is home, always will be; but I may need to relocate for a while.

More on this all later.

I’ve seen you pull coins
from the eyes of the dead
to pay the parking meter.

I’ve seen you and the hemlock vendor
chatting idly by the door
to the stadium.

I’ve smelled a hint of cyanide on your breath
just before you popped a mint
and smiled weakly back at this life.

Until now, you had always skipped that denouement
to get to the wake, where people
congratulated you on how great you looked

in your someday best and painted skin.
So now when we pull you from the water
and see you bloated here and shriveled there,

now when it’s clear that this time
it’ll be a closed box we’ll sit around
to speak of you; now I have to ask:

did all that dress rehearsal make it easier
to go down to the lake this last time,
or were you as scared for yourself

as we always were for you? Did you wonder
what we’d be saying now, or did it all pale
to white light as you sank away?

I have to say, this is not the way I thought you’d go.
I expected us to laugh bitterly together
at all those attempted escapes one day.

I may yet laugh
at you, at us, at this —
but not soon, and surely alone.

I’ve been buried at work today and yesterday so I’ve been relatively scarce here.

Your comments and best wishes on my birthday are truly appreciated. I know I kicked up a fuss about my not celebrating it…and I don’t really; but the generous impulses of my friends were a welcome discovery this afternoon, and I would never want to deny that spirit with crabby behaviors.

I love you all and thank you sincerely.

Inside me are two bones
that form an arthritic clock.
I can tell you that hours pass
because I feel them
grinding against each other.

There are watches under
my fingernails that tick
so loudly it’s no use
snapping my fingers.
A good sense of rhythm
is no camouflage for
the way I’m
winding down.

One day before sunup, I will tear myself apart.

When I twist and snap the bones,
I’ll lose the need to sleep.
When I take my hands off I’ll realize,
once they’re gone, that not hearing the watches
makes me want to hold fewer things.

When time is finally silent
I’ll be older, younger, smaller, grand
as a suspension of belief —

I’ll be frameless,
rapidly slipping across this place
like a breeze,
not ever here to point at directly,
known only
by how things move around me
right now.

As it seems to have crossed people’s minds:

Should I shave my beard? Why or why not?

As it seems to have crossed people’s minds:

Should I shave my beard? Why or why not?

The razor sits on the sink. A few strokes
might open up something hidden
since I was a teenager; then again,
nothing might be there anymore.

There’s a redwood
in California that manages to stay alive
with no foliage, even though it’s hollow
from its top down for over a hundred feet.

I don’t know how much of me
has vanished inside,
but the evidence seems to suggest
that being hollow might be the least of my worries:

see, that naked tree
is three thousand years old,
and it’s alive,
but it’s done growing.

I turn on the water anyway,
splash my face and lather up.
It might be hopeless, but if not,
nothing ever thrives without a little light.

The Lebanese government is resigning.

Boy…these protesters must have been spitting the kind of hardcore, muthafucking shit that Monte Smith was talking about.

I was listening to BBC this AM as they interviewed a Lebanese protester.

She was talking about the uprising against the government and said something like, “…the opposition is in the streets and our objective is to topple the government.”

And then, she said:

“They will learn that the revolution will not be televised…”

And I got goosebumps, again, for the first time in years.

Things I’ve done you probably haven’t.

1. Met and talked for about a half hour with Frank Sinatra.
2. Smoked a joint with Jerry Garcia.
3. Been chased out of a frat party at Brown U for cold cocking JFK Jr. (I didn’t actually do it — my friend Hollis did. But I would have, if I’d been closer.)
4. Discussed euthanizing my grandmother with a nurse. She died on her own before we made a decision.
5. Was born in an Army hospital the same day Elvis Presley was undergoing a discharge physical on the same floor…which means that I was entering the building while Elvis was leaving the building. (Beat THAT.)
6. Performed with Suzanne Vega. (Actually, I suspect that’s not that uncommon in this crew.)
7. Sang with Fugazi at a show. (Well, was handed the mic and screamed into it what I suspect were not the real words…also, see above.)
8. Drank enough Absolut vodka to put me in an alcohol poisoning coma for a week. I almost died. (Moral: never, ever run out of orange juice.)
9. Quit a three pack a day habit cold turkey twenty two years ago and haven’t had a cigarette since. A cigar or two or three, yes; not a cigarette.
10. Was in a cult for three years in the early 80s. No, there will not be more details.

Things I’ve done you probably haven’t.

1. Met and talked for about a half hour with Frank Sinatra.
2. Smoked a joint with Jerry Garcia.
3. Been chased out of a frat party at Brown U for cold cocking JFK Jr. (I didn’t actually do it — my friend Hollis did. But I would have, if I’d been closer.)
4. Discussed euthanizing my grandmother with a nurse. She died on her own before we made a decision.
5. Was born in an Army hospital the same day Elvis Presley was undergoing a discharge physical on the same floor…which means that I was entering the building while Elvis was leaving the building. (Beat THAT.)
6. Performed with Suzanne Vega. (Actually, I suspect that’s not that uncommon in this crew.)
7. Sang with Fugazi at a show. (Well, was handed the mic and screamed into it what I suspect were not the real words…also, see above.)
8. Drank enough Absolut vodka to put me in an alcohol poisoning coma for a week. I almost died. (Moral: never, ever run out of orange juice.)
9. Quit a three pack a day habit cold turkey twenty two years ago and haven’t had a cigarette since. A cigar or two or three, yes; not a cigarette.
10. Was in a cult for three years in the early 80s. No, there will not be more details.

Taste, for me, is a word I use to describe differing levels of appeal.

Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis are incredibly talented trumpeters of great import in the history of American music. Undisputed fact, to my eyes.

Miles’s work appeals to my taste. Dizzy’s does not.

When I say that my judgment of a person is not a matter of taste to me, it has absolutely no relevance to anyone else’s sense of taste for that person’s work, and no disrespect is intended.

For those of you following this: I made a comment regarding a young poet in our scene that I wasn’t fond of his work, and that my discomfort is not a matter of taste to me. I should have been clearer, so I will be now.

I can see his potential, and I can see his talent. In fact, I may someday develop a taste for his work. But I can’t tell yet, because what I cannot see is that his level of development at using those things is equal to the task at his hand, and a disservice is done to him when he is treated as though it was.

I used other young poets as a measuring stick to show that it’s not just a matter of age and experience to my eyes that a person becomes “good.” There’s at least one 19 year old in Worcester I’d stack up against a lot of older poets for the time and energy he’s put into developing his chops. But I would never expect anyone to be “as good” as anyone else, or to be anyone except themselves.

Dos that make sense?

Now then: to the coda.

This is all my opinion; other opinions may vary, and be as well or as ill informed as my own. They are all valid opinions as they are based in the solid observations of solid observers.

I’m making this post in public penance for last night’s debacle. I sat up actively weeping for a while afterward, because I hate being at odds with people I love. There aren’t many of those in the world.

I’ve been told I contribute to my own loneliness. True enough. Shit like this doesn’t help me or anyone else. I know that’s true, too.

I want us to be more tough minded as a community (as a community; that’s not aimed at anyone in particular) about the balance between the praise and the solid, non-personal but effective critique we offer developing poets. I try to do that; but that’s not a reason for me to be an arrogant, self righteous dickhead. (And I use the word “dickhead” advisedly.)

I don’t trust myself to know what I need to do anymore.

So to anyone offended last night; to anyone reading the thread who didn’t comment; to Ansel, if he’s reading this; and most especially to Dawn, who I am crushed about offending: please accept a heartfelt apology, and know that I’m going to do better.

Now, I think I understand why people think I’m arrogant.

And I’m not sure I care that much about it.

I’ll try to be kinder and gentler. Operative word being “try.”

In general, I think I’m a pretty good guy. I’m sorry if, on occasion, I am more direct than tactful.

I spend a lot of my life being tactful. Keeping my mouth shut. Trying to figure out how to say things in ways that make a difference without harming.

I care too much for this art we are in to lie about how I feel. Sometimes, my passion for the art leads me to hurtful talk, more bite than blow.

I am sorry for that; but who will say these things? Who is saying them? Who is saying them that anyone is listening to?

Performance poetry needs, far more than theory or better distribution structures, the courage to look mediocrity in the eye and say that regardless of the scores, mediocrity is mediocrity.

I keep finding ways to shoot myself in the foot on this one. I keep finding ways to blunder through thickets of thorns.

I care too much to be careful.

I am sick unto death with where we are. IWPS was a lovely day of relative health; I don’t see that it matters much in the long run.

I care too much.

++++++++++++++++++++++++

EDIT: Fuck it. I’m not a coward. You want to comment, comment.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about “hated genres of poetry.”

We include here the “Angry Black Male” poem, and the “Angry Woman” poem.

I would like to add mine, and I am terrified about doing it, because I suspect it will cause many people to hate me. I am terrified that it will be attributed to bitterness and age.

OK, I’m over it.

The genre?

The “White Boy Who Never Met a Three Syllable Word, Exaggerated Simile, and/or Twisted Syntactical Construction He Didn’t Like That Could Be Used To Disguise a Lack Of Things To Say On Some Mundane, Trivial, or Overdone Topic” poem.

Discuss. Or, conversely, just cuss.

EDIT:
My Perception of this as a “white boy” genre may be ill founded, or based in what I see most often; then again, maybe not.

Rock on.

I looked around the room at SPEAK tonight, listening to 15 people read their poetry and the poetry of others — not the poetry of slammers, but of other people from Dickinson to Cavafy to Bukowski (the first Buk poem I ever recall liking, by the way) to Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Themes developed as people read poems about the mortality of their parents and folding clothes (yes, images about clothes folding popped up here and there). There was a dynamite retelling/remix of the tale of Sisyphus, and a strange religious poem about wingless birds. (Those of you who follow the cast of characters of SPEAK can probably guess who read that.)

I heard great poetry. I heard people working through poetry in progress and asking for suggestions. There was laughter and all sorts of mayhem, too. And a lot of silence as people read.

This is what I wanted, what I thought of after we reorganized when the Cafe closed. A quieter, focused place of people sharing their work with no sense of show or artifice. A reading in a town of 12,000 people that aims to allow people from town and beyond a place to do what they love with no pressure.

Jeanne, one of the locals, told me that she does taxes for a living and she couldn’t wait to get to SPEAK tonight because “it makes her feel human again.”

Yes.

And now…in the next town over, smaller than this one…another reading has started on the alternate Wednesdays from us, once a month…

That’s what I want. Make culture and its energy happen ELSEWHERE, in places other than the big cities and urban areas. I think they need it more, in the long run; these are the places people leave to go get this stuff elsewhere.

When I was a kid, there was no access to the things I wanted to do in town. This is what I wanted to do.

Thanks to all the SPEAKers who were there tonight, and every time we meet; we are the point of what this word business is about.

Changing the world doesn’t always require a loud revolution.