once upon a time a poet tried to sell you jeans on TV

a brief, ordinary scene

on my way to work, between i & 24th st, deep in my stride, mind empty but for the tasks waiting for me.  she had all her gear on the sidewalk in a black garbage bag.  'good morning. love your hair.  slicked back & silver,' she said to me.  'thank you very much.  that is kind of you to say.'  'i have colon cancer,' she said.  'that sucks.  i am so sorry.'  'thank you for saying that.  i don't get to talk to many people during the day.'  

self-portrait with crow

 

california nite

 

lo-fi poetics: 4th of july

fireworks 

sounds like gunfire 

outside the window

it will go on 

till 2 AM or longer

ordnance of the holiday

while we make BBQ dinners

& roll up on our 

fixins & misgivings

listening to

'4th of july' by the great punk band X

again

that you repeat your last name

both syllables

allow it to roll on the tongue

the mouth-feel of a name

your name 

& what is your name

those two syllables

are they controversy or outlaw

a name by any other 

as the neighborhood explodes 

in the faux drama of exploding bombs

wars & not-wars

ongoing 

for your name is like everyone else

your name is american

saturday the 14th [1981]

 

finally!  i watched this flick & lived to tell the tale.  & boy!  as the bard sez, it is a tale told by an idiot full of hubbub & amounts to nothing.  still, call me loco but i enjoyed this parody of the classic monster movies of yore.  the plot goes like this: married in real life couple richard benjamin & paula prentiss play john & mary hyatt.  the hyatts inherit a haunted house from their dead uncle.  a house of their own, finally!  so they pack up their things, & their kids, debbie hyatt, played by kari michaelson, & billy, played by kevin brando, & move in.

but you see we find a vampire couple, waldemar, played by jeffrey tambor, & yolanda, played by nancy lee andrews, complete in cheesy pancake makeup & black capes, trying to buy the house before the hyatts can move in.  why?  because inside the house is a book on the occult that if opened can unleash monsters that will destroy the world!  but our vampires are law-abiding citizens that cannot stop the hyatts from moving in.  they can only watch the family while sitting outside in their car.

lo!  young billy finds the book, unleashing, you guessed it, monsters galore.  one of these monsters is so fiendish he cleans the house & does the dishes for the family!  horrors!  still, waldemar is determined to get that book & will sneak in the house as a transformed bat,  mary hyatt thinks the bat is an owl until she gets a pair of puncture wounds on her neck from waldemar & starts to act a little goofy.

meanwhile, the monsters do what they do best by scaring the younger hyatts.  one scene has a shark fin swimming in a bathtub when young debbie is taking a bath.  another scene is a monster in billy's room.  when billy calls for his father to rescue him the monster hides, literally, hides, behind hyatt pere so that each time dad turn around the monster turns too.  dad can't see the monster, so everything is a-ok.   billy is left alone in his room with a monster.

what the hell are we gonna do now?  how about throw a housewarming party on saturday the 14th, a date, according to the van helsing, played by severn darden, who was brought in earlier by the family as an exterminator for their bat infestation, when all hell breaks loose if the monsters are allowed to roam free.  van helsing needs both the book & young billy to prevent the world from ending.  

but enough of the plot.  if my summation of the plot lacks coherence well blame it on the script.  directed, barely, by howard r. cohen, & produced by julie corman of new world pictures, this is a flick that can be appreciated by the most masochistic of horror movie lovers.  like me!  all principals ham it up big time.  benjamin & prentiss are game & make the most of a threadbare plot.  tambor is, as always, a pro in whatever role he plays.  young debbie can really scream her head off which makes me wonder why kari michaelson didn't become a scream queen.  

you could do worse than spend an evening with this pic.  especially if your evening involves copious amounts of mind-altering substances.  i kid!  i kid!  or do i?  since this is a movie that calls to mind the mom&pop video store era where you can judge a movie based on its VHS box art.  the run time is a merciful 76 minutes.  the plot is incoherent & goofy.  but the leads are fun.  there is a twist too at the end.  not every bad buy/good guy are what they first appear to be.  you could do worse by watching this movie.  but you could do better!

peace!

recipe for my midlife crisis

begin by taking these old bones

& fit them with an old t-shirt with the Social D logo

a torn pair of cargo shorts

stuff those old hammer toes into a pair of red Chuck Ds

which are held together with duct tape & prayer

then put a pair of double AA batteries into 

an '80s Walkman & don't forget the Black Flag cassette

dust off that old Santa Cruz Yellow Dot skateboard 

the grip tape half hanging off the deck

with the Independent Trucks & Bones wheels

add a pinch of ol' punk 'tude

best to practice the sneer in the mirror

add them all into the stew 

mix well!

then check again the rates & deductibles for medical/life insurance

cuz getting on a board again at this ripe age

will kill you!

drive-in movie haiku

black flies hanging in heat

                 light between

the cars & the movie screen

lo-fi poetics: 4th st berkeley ca

with & for anna

day after the summer solstice people watching 

window shopping & the weather can't get much better

i watch the human comedy as if i were a non-player-character

but that would be wrong so i go inside peet's coffee

because i need to pee + i want a cup of ordinary black coffee

back outside we sit at the table as we figure out the rest of our day

slight breeze sunny the smell of freshly cooked food young people 

selling baked goods to raise money for their organization

while i notice across the street a pair of alphorn players so awful

that honking car horns would be better music

while a growing collection of grey-haired populists 

with their protest signs cluster on the street corner

& my coffee is so bad it is like licking a dead battery

seasonal by jim mccrary

y'all know i love jim mccrary as a poet, man & overall good/cool dude so here is a recently published chapbook of poems by jim by nuallain house publishers' micropress imprint neo-mimeo editions which harken back to the mimeo press revolution of the late 1960s of DIY poetics but for our present digital age.   in short, my kind of publishing.

for poetry, in my estimation, is better served by a gift economy in a community of poets.  poets, i think, are all brothers & sisters past present & future even if it may not be always a happy family.  especially in our era of late-stage capitalism where value is often the sine qua non base level worth for everything, human & non-human, in our civilization.  poetry belies that base level worth of late-stage capitalism where things & services & people are bought & sold.  

here is our brother in the international republic of poetry, jim mccary's chapbook of marvelous, harrowing collection of poetry, seasonal.  

peace & love