The three incomparable C's

Yesterdays market smelt of small children and Sno-cones
Flowerscent had to compete so it stayed to the outskirts
Nodding and smiling to all people I knew
I had three incomparable C's laid out on the stoop
Tried getting through to the hospital
and oblivious dads parked squalling infants in my face

Fall Tanka

'09 Fall Morning Linked Tanka


Rush through Sunday’s door
into clamouring church bells
slick, sharp, wood fire smoke,
rains scent, curl into my head
chilled drops spangle wrought iron

Neon foliage
each tree standing candle like
support peachy dawn
meeting steel purple cloud bank
rainbow bisects the darkside

Hey Danny Boyoyo redux

The problem with publishing my poetry here is that it changes.
It's been close to two years since I first put this up. Now it's different, possibly better. I hope the link (in the title) actually works. It's my first time trying this...

More po-try

True To Life


Feed the cats
Feed the plants
Feed the people

Feed some different people

Feed the people
Feed the cats

Feed some different people

Pick some plants
Feed the people
Feed the cats

Rinse
Repeat

When in doubt, dumb doggerel will do

Put Another Nikolai In

The working day starts sundowning
grab a vodka latte shake
at Tatiana’s Tiki Carnivale
& Lava Steamed Clambake.
Beyond abandon, city streets
somewhere out, past grittin’ smiles
but not too close to “somewhere green”.
It’s really just a couple miles.
Galloping calliope sends
merry horses round the bend.
Tilt a’ Whirl exudes an
Aqua Velva/ Tigress blend.
What is this we’re sensing?
Follow the crowd down the midway.
The soundtrack to a T. McGee,
those scratched records that your parents played.
Tsars have sacked the pediment
tom rolls plough through solar plexus
Ultra-manly bass noise
surfs woven waves of Gretsch’s.
Guys and dolls are grooning
Jack Nitzsche tips the wink
add dulcet organ whinging
all driving you to your next drink.
Back home you strigil snake oil
maybe lave your brain with art
cast fluffy, virgin, laundry loads in
the swelling temple of your heart
Like he said, the bourbon’s warm now
knuckle sleep out of your eye
another steamy, working, morning
when seven thirty four rolls by.

Shucks and sucks

I am writing a paper, between today and Friday. It gets all, you get none. Even my earworms are all just me lately, so no loss there.
I am, however, verging, all up on, my 1st, vanity press, chap style, poetry book. So that probably gets next priority, probably over us.
Oh, and parties, I have decided that I am, w/out fail, going to every single party, dinner and lunch I am invited to this year. So far one lame party and one, fun happy hour friends band viewing, down, 8 parties and dinners, 3 anticipated lunches to go. I am in DESPERATE need of socialization. I am so very striking some hot iron before the bucket dip.

So it was Magazine all along

Having spent the last 22 years under a complete misapprehension, that there was a song I needed in my life called Permafrost by Celtic Frost, I have, at long last, been set to rights. You may blame UBU for drawing the scales from my eyes. Commence fault finding now.

Permafrost
By Howard Devoto

Thunder shook loose hail
on the outhouse again
Today I bumped into you again
I have no idea what you want
but there was something I meant to say
As the day stops dead
at the place where we’re lost
I will drug you and fuck you on the permafrost
There’s not much I miss
I’m far too forgetful for that
Sugar’s sweet some of the time
it’s hard to keep some things in mind
As the day stops dead
at the place where we’re lost
I will drug you and fuck you
on the permafrost



PS As usual, alcohol is much to blame for my addlepatedness

I think

I officially quit Poetry Club. I am really convinced there is a funk there. Some kind of reverse snobbery thing. Go figure! Snobbery at POETRY Club?

Sleep Tight

I have what they call in the biz, fairly good sleep hygiene. Well ok, there are few knots. I wake up too much during the night and I do “stuff” in bed other than sleep. But when it comes to waking up, I’m a champ. I almost always wake up within a 45 minute span right around 7 am. No matter how late I went to bed (up till 3am anyway) or how drunk I got last night. That’s right baby, I got smashed last night. Woke right up at 7. Took a couple ibuprofen and I’m now having my cuppa tay.

See, really, at heart, I’m a big old drunk. It’s just that now I only let that girl out every four years or so. I love getting drunk. I’m not so fond of the three to four days it now takes me to recover when I get as drunk as I can though. Which is why last night was a total baby drunk (despite the seeming enormity of 17 glasses of champagne and a shot of fantastic vodka). As soon as I realized I was smashed I went home and made myself puke. In the old days it would have been time to start really drinking.

I never had such a penchant for drink until I used it to get off a much worse habit. Then I really hit my stride. I think what is so appealing about it is, that all the other drugs make me think really, really, hard. Alcohol makes me really, really stupid. When you live with a crazy busy, chattering, incessant, monkey mind it is really fun to essentially flip a switch and turn it off occasionally.

When I’m drunk I turn into Brother Martin. This is what the Rom traditionally called their dancing bears. I am slightly obsessed with Brother Martin, he shows up in my songs and poetry on a semi-regular basis. That’s because he is me and I am him. Along with spiders he’s one of my totemic folk.
Here’s a piece of a piece about him:

Brother Martin waltzes on the boulevard
Brother Martin waltzes gathering a crowd
for shiny, careless, pennies wrested from the mob
Brother Martin dances to the cymbalom.

If you think about it, blogging is totally a Brother Martin-ish thing to do.

Can’t focus, need chocolate

• The student 'zine apparently now hates me, they print only one, of my worst poems, each time. I’m starting to feel patronized.

• Perhaps we shall hear the pitter of little patters? The vet has spoken that Little ghee likely needs a boy toy. We begin a searing and painful search this week.

• Thursday, Thursday, Thursday. Last day before holiday break. Christ you know it ain’t easy....

• I think I’m a senior Betty.

• Chilean Sea Bass. Lightly panfried, HOT PAN, after rolling in herbs, spices and flour then baked at 500, HOT PAN, for 6 minutes = Frickin’ totally fabulous.

• (A • C) ~ (C v A) write a truth table for that! (You only need 4 lines).

• Thursday, Thursday, Thursday. Kant vs. Mill in the battle of the centuries, @ the my brain arena, blood WILL spill. (Probably from my ears).

• The Eye Of The Sybil by Phillip K. Dick, soon to join Ridley Walker by Russell Hoban, in “The Best Things College Has Exposed Me To Hall Of Fame”.

Hey Danny Boyoyo

Hey
Danny Boyoyo


Viet Nam
a trailer full'a death
still running crazy
on booze and nightmare

Ran you right over
mashed you right flat
Flat old gas bag
your corpse became
when long weeks of August
finally deflated

You couldn’t live
two dimensional
picture
perfect
soldier
You remain
oh
so
three

To stand on your dirt
Is to feel those sharp edges

Writin' a rap

We’re doing a double dip tomorrow. There’s a party and Quatro Veda plays, then the 6 Foot Poles, then The Bottom 99, then Largebeat. So, Oliver and I will be doing 2 completely disparate sets. At least not back to back.

This is the intro I wrote for one of our darker songs (also shown). When you hear it with the lamenting clarinet with it, it really reminds me of when Klezmer gets sad.


“When I wrote this song in 2003, I had some vague hopes that the upcoming election would help make it irrelevant. It didn’t. First came Katrina, then hard on her heels the Sago Mine Disaster.
So, I’d like to dedicate this to the brave people still struggling for survival down in New Orleans, to those 6 workers dead in the dark at the Crandall Canyon Mine and the people who just died at the Gibson County Coal Mine.”

Pick and Shovel, Fire and Flame

To keep repeating history
Let them eat policy
Let them eat cake
To keep them on their knees
feed them on fallacies
how much will take?
To not acknowledge idiocy
greed and banality
is a mistake
Compounding the insanity
fake christianity
Who’d you forsake?

And still we die
from flames and fire
pick and shovel
wind and rain
Thirst and starvation dog this nation
ragged and driven
bowed in pain
We’ve become
awestricken, dumb
battered and numb
our hands are chained
And still we die
from flames and fire
pick and shovel
wind and rain

POTF #7

I Already Know


From the highway in Canada I saw a freakin’ huge owl
I flew by, it sat, staring out from it’s tree
What the hell was that about?

You never see owls anymore
Well, I guess I never did anyway
But I knew someone who knew someone who “knew” owls

Are the owls around and OK generally?
I almost never think about them
until David Lynch makes me do

The closest I’ve ever been to an owl pellet
Is when Green Gargantua eats up the night club singer
and makes one of her spangled gown

What is up with owls? What is this telling me?
Is this some totemic message?
Should I be worried about the owls as well now?

Gibby is the king of awesome

I just got a comp with "Movin' To Florida" on it (which I pretty much bought it for). I don't know why I think this is one of the best songs ever, I just do. I haven't even heard it, in like, 20 years and it's been haunting me the whole time. Well I just listened to it about 16 times and here as best as I can tell are the lyrics-

Moving To Florida The Butthole Surfers

I’m a’gonna move down to Florida
and I’m gonna bowl me a perfect game
I’m gonna cut off my leg down in Florida
and I’m a’gonna dance one legged, off in the rain

Well they say that Sidney Portier was a blind man
and they say that LBJ was a Soviet Jew
I tell that when I go down to Florida way
there ain't no kind of sexual healing that I would not, should not or could not do
I say this right here

Well I’m moving down to Florida
and you know that I’m a’gonna have to potty train the Chairman Mao
And I’m gonna make the governor write my doo-doo a letter child
And then I’m gonna grind me a White Castle slider outta India’s sacred cow

Well I’m goin’ down to Florida child huh huh
and I’m gonnna build me the atomic bomb
I’m gonna hold time hostage down in Florida child
ain’t nobody, ain’t nobody gonna tell me what to do, stepchild

By this time I guess you figured out about Florida
Turn the muddy water inta’ vaseline stained
They be making tadpoles the size of Mercury’s in Florida
That be telling Julio Iglesias what to sing now

Well whoever said that Sidney Portier was a blind man
knew the same of Elvis Presley too
Cuz all the sausages that dance like Ray Bolger on the hood of a car in a traffic jam
Know just exactly what to do - right here

Well I be going to Florida
pole cats and dusty seminoles son
You know that I’m in Florida
just like Vince I walk (unintelligible)
When I went down to Florida I got hurt
So I took all the children down to Florida
then I started to get lonely gee
Well I’m never going back to Florida
That's why I’m leaving J W
When I settle down in Florida
I’m a gonna explode the whole darn Tampa Bay
Get that boy in Florida
to teach me what to do

Dale

The house is all lamp lit and warmed up with fire.
The new started furnace hums funny smells through the vents.
Mother and Mean-maw at the table slapping cards down,
obscure two handed games most friends can’t seem to learn.
She feels all the sticky marks, how the brush of wet wind
took up dried saliva, sweat and the seed,
gelled it to gesso, every stroke smeared her body,
changing her childhood, painting on a new face.
The heat and light press uncomfortable eyes and lungs
after walking through late fall, cold, dark, sodden mists.

Walls and windows are stretching, tilting off into shadows
at the edges her inability to focus or tell.
That this new her is pushing, spreading out from her center,
stomping her out to make her over again.
Around her, all around her, spins the drone of his voice chant
“ A woman now, woman now, awomanow now”.
Watch from so very far, while Mean-maw bitches up and down
about telephones, curfews and what are the rules?
That school busses are due, that things are to be done
in mornings that are never guaranteed anymore.

She can’t remain rooted, hunkered and hunching
cracking voice comes from somewhere shaped around lies.
The eye of the Mother stopped, shocking at strangeness',
introduced to the distances, then forgot they had met.
Subsequent receiving of foodstuff is the symbol
that agreeing and apologies are the safest of rituals.
With something sustaining finally filling her
the strong work of chewing releases some strain.
What’s left is familiar, the voices of women wash
over chattering, clattering, silver in sinks.

POTF #5

It was poetry club meeting day today. In addition to making it a very long day we free wrote as usual. Today’s exercise was write on “In Praise of ____”. Thus:

Praise for Spaghetti

You are my staple
My go to, my fav
My comfort food quotient
to you I give praise

Tired and stupid
at the end of my day
You are there at the market
and so easy to make

I love you, you soothe me
and remind me of Mom
Heaped up on garlic bread
all fragrant and warm

There’s always enough
and leftovers besides
Even better the next day
as “pasketti” refried

PONOTF

Pressing

The past flows like elder wine
which plucked cannot wither on the vine
the days pass out of mind
scatter to the winds of time

So it goes and the current
spins away every moment
So this life is gone

The fates for which we are the foil
are twists against which we rail
The prize for which we toil
Is glimpsed through the tattered veil

So it goes and the current
spins away every moment
So this life is gone

Just this moment POTF #4

‘06

5 ’o’clock brooding bands of September cloud skeins
Dragons writhe inky, boiling up from the tree line
Drive straight into moment framed lightening in windscreen
Sky transfers pigment to newly blacked street

Plumpy raindrops soothe bus roof, rain ripples mirrors lenses
Greys meld with pure ray colour bright spectrums
Fluorescent umbrellas dispersed by windows
Sugar shine distortions, the brief burst abated

POTF #3

To My Muse

You bricked me down
in that nauseous dirt
Hit on some Saints lines
The Mary's and Michael's

I said to my self GIRRRL
If you don’t climb this hill
you’ll be kicking yourself
in the ass till you’re dead

The tourists all stared
as I crawled to the path
down on my knees
where things frequently start

I summoned what will
broke through my wall
so I'm climbing that hill
You stay with me still.

POTF #2

Writing on word lists

Each year at this time
I wait almost spent
with winter I want
so much to be done

I hunker most rooted
frozen in months
in icy inaction
and waddings of snow

Films and blind curtains
my eyes in my headache
enforcing the darkness
devoid of big flame

Sick of the sussering
trapped in my cave
I wait almost spent
for the swans to the lake