the age

it was a long day. busy as fuck. i left the office late and started walking thru midtown. it is 6:00 pm and night had settled over the city. j st was packed with revelers, shoppers, a new ice skating rink tucked on the street between my favorite newstand, the newsbeat, a collection of gay clubs, and newish restaurants.

my favorite time of day when the chill in the air and the darkness is illuminated by signage and street cars. i run into my old friend richard hansen. we walk together down j st toward our respective homes and families. we are almost the same age. oldsters now. i tell richard that there is a pleasure in aging. tho my ancient brain couldn't remember what kind of pleasure.

i'm sure of it. i look forward to becoming the old poet. not for wisdom or even the alleged benefits of seniority. i can use an accumulation of experiences for my writing. besides, i'm an autodidact and a slow learner. i need as much time as i can get in order to make more discoveries and experiments.

richard and i laugh like kids. i worry about getting cantankerous as i grow old. it's a cliche, sure, but one grounded in anecdote and personal observation, some people just get so bloody unpleasant as they grow older. is it a lifetime's accumulation of disappointments and the cold relief of reading the papers everyday with its fresh sources of horrors of the world and bad news?

i worry about that, too. i want to cultivate wonder but grounded in the quotidian messes of our lives. no, i don't mind getting old. i was young once. now it's for others to have their turn. they shall be older soon enough too. maybe i need to study more yeats who wrote poems about growing old. perhaps i should not worry over much. perhaps i should at that.

on language

once upon a time, in a former incarnation, an old boss called me a potty mouth. shudders!!! not because i do have a mouth that would make a truck driver and/or sailor blush did i feel admonished by my former boss's phrase, but because the words, potty mouth, sounds, at least to my ears, like it came from my old 3rd grade teacher.

i confess to being such a thing. what can i say. i love language. all of it. including the gamier bits. problem today is that nicholas is all eyeballs and ears and i have to watch what i say around him. he's let slip a few choice morsels that are both repellant and funny. a couple weeks ago his teacher took me aside to tell me the funniest thing she'd ever heard in all her years of teaching. i won't repeat what nicholas said, but this woman, a very sweet person, told me that she had never heard that sort of language from a 4-year-old boy and tho she admonished the child for his choice of expression she also had to keep from laughing so hard.

that's just the thing. i believe there are no, or very few, genuinely bad words. there are insulting and hurtful phrases to be sure. language by and large is hurtful thru its intended users. even a rather bland and benign word, such as sugar, can be uttered with such force and venom by the speaker as to leave the hearer reeling.

one of my favorite lines of verse is by robert vander molen and goes like this:

that fucken fucker's fucked.

i marvel at the flexibility of the word, fuck, how it is an object, predicate, and even an adjective. a word that is operational by its very utility. it is an old word, maybe not as old as the language itself, but the word fuck has been around a long time. and in this line the word becomes part of the action and not just an idiomatic flavor of the speaker.

i have a thing for so-called bad words. last night anna and i watched role models [2008] starring paul rudd and sean william scott. not a perfect comedy but one that i enjoyed because of its colorful language and its sweet nature. nearly every sentence was salted with some expression of questionable vintage. however, the story of two 30-something goofballs who are redeemed by their relationships with troubled children, who all spoke like sailors, was very watchable because of the language married with a sweet temperament. it's what i dig.

if bad words are wrong then i don't want to be write.

peace

maximinalism

i was asked tonight, lopez, you talk so voluminously, why do you write these tiny poems. my answer: i don't know but to say that i'm attracted to the short form. my eye is automatically attracted to short poems. lately i've been digging the nyc poet vincent katz and how that dude gets the maximum out of so few lines and images simply blows me away.

yet, without getting all boo-hoo about it, i think my poems lately suck big donkey dicks. not satisfied with the sound and look i'm trying to achieve. there are some poets i read with utter amazement, like katz, who challenge me. i've not felt up to that challenge.

not that i'm conceding defeat but is not writing largely an exercise of futility, of failure. success is measured in how well you fail. not that i should be really giving a shit about all this. there is no money, fame, or prestige in poetry. duh. you all know that too. but like my life, sometimes i'd like to be a better person. same goes for my writing. i'd like to get to it a bit better.

hmm. . .still, i think the short form is hard-wired in my brain. it would take some major surgery to change that. the one change for me tonight in my monthly writing group is to present a poem without a movie reference in it. that was duly noted by all present at the meeting. as for my propensity to write in a few lines or images, and to step out of those habits, that'll take some work. am i up to the task? as the bear asked the rabbit, does shit stick to fur.

direction

be
when awake
dream as / sleep

travels with cavafy

the mind is porn
after-images
no longer tell

it is like what is
the emptiness
of the theater

a warm hand
strong shoulder
going home an idea

* * *

hotel durant
tempt-ation is lust for the uknown
--john weiners

dig the good trip man
explicit shapes of light
dappled on moss and redwoods
against an idea
of peace park
come get yr freak on
head for
telegraph ave
a hit of blotter
soundtrack provided
by an suv pounding
the grateful dead
why you dude
with the tie-dye
and thinning long grey hair
tied together
in a loose knot
look around
look good buddy
did ya think
you'd live this long

dreaming

somehow anna and i got stuck on a plane heading first to australia then to new zealand for no reason i can fathom

mark young was sitting across the aisle serene and grinning

i took his hand and asked why so happy

--i'm going back home to new zealand at least for a little while

why are we on this plane i asked

--just for the ride i suppose

quote unquote

You are a poet but your difficult theme is happiness.

--mark mcmanus

at the end was the word

i make no bones about it. straight up: jim mccrary is the shit and even tho i can almost hear him say in his whisky voice, lopez, knock this crap off, i'll say it just the same: mccrary is not only a dear friend but one of my teachers in our world of words.

his stance in living in the word while not giving a fuck about careerism, the way his lines and images crackle like the frames of a great film, but with some speckling and a few jumps and burn marks on the celluloid, his dedication to the craft, and his humility of spirit, make him, and i say this with a straight face, a great man and poet.

i say it and say it loud. the dude makes me glad to be alive and reading. so after being forced into a retirement brought on, i think, by the present dire economy mccrary's as fecund as ever. witness the batches of poems he published on his blog resisting poetry and try to resist these goodies. then click over to here for a profile and interview with the poet.

spread the word

dinner at costco

without making this sound like a plug for the chain warehouse retailer -- it's an establishment you can lose yourself, both figuratively and literally, the place and its plethora of goods on sale are huuuuge! -- anna picked me up after work for our weekly trip. we needed the usual things.

one thing led to another. the time was later than earlier. dinner was the subject of conversation as we began the long journey across the enormous parking lot, across the vast sea of vehicles. there's a foodcourt at costco with a very limited menu but one that offered slices of pizza. a lightbulb flashed over my head. another thing led to one thing. three slices of the greasiest cheese pizza and a fountain drink were ordered. the slices were ginormous. we sat outside in the cold and dark. california cold, not wisconsin cold. just a bit of crispness in the air. our favorite time of year and one of my favorite times of day. this is the life poetic here at casa del lopez/bronson. the evening ended with me and anna watching a disc of the vincente minnelli helmed vehicle for judy garland meet me in st. louis [1944], a fabulous movie about the life of a family in 1903. one thing i always do in period pieces such as this picture, and also older films too, is try to place myself in its timeline. for example, i was born in the late '60s, so if i were born a hundred years earlier i'd be too young to be the father but too old to be one of the kids in the flick. so where would i sit?

finally, a shout-out to poet michael lally who underwent brain surgery yesterday. read his beautiful pre-surgery post here. here's too a speedy recovery and a return to the word.

peace out