movie review haiku
by jonathan hayes

watched 'eden lake'
and let me tell you
they went on

the wrong vacation

splat 30

Light, informal, & human
--ted berrigan

break the day as the heat fades

window open to the slight breeze

what’s the name of the plant that smells like summer?

if a genie would appear i’d wish for a rollercoaster

there are more than a few who’d rather sit and wait

when night is so comfy like an old pair of chuck t’s

timor mortis conturbat me

the news

geof huth reports on his and tom beckett's collaborative interview/reading in buffalo, ny last saturday here

dig it

splat 29

super heavy day to round out
so much industry as in
HEY RICH COME NOW
as if i could compel and entrance
instead i saw a rooster try
to cross a busy road
flame-red comb and a stance
that had as much of
brando when asked in
THE WILD ONE
what you rebelling against
and he says what you got
that when i think that
the medium is the message
i wonder why my inner tv set
gets so much snow

splat 28

before i could learn to surf the summer heat wave of a friday night 10:30 pm it happened again. stroll thru the parking lot toward safeway supermarket and see what you get. so there i was amid the hipsters, drunks, the hospital workers on break on the nightshift. i come out of the store clasping my purchase with very tired hands. i hear a voice, a man who’d been mumbling to himself as i went in, sitting outside the exit door. he says, hey man, anyone ever tell you look like richard gere? naw man, i answer, never heard it before. oh shit, he coughs, it’s richard gere!!!! i heard him as he continued to guffaw those three syllables as i reached my car and i think that if this happens again i’m gonna have to write to hollywood and see if richard gere can start composing poems with my name.

splat 27

lands’ end like the rough lunar
landscape

but no
a few beers sunburnt tattoos

chlorined eyes
and the inexorable fact

of you
yes bud you in the middle

of existing
behaving that maybe it is

a
beginning

splat 26

come to the stations of my difficulties
italicize its exuberance
upon discussing the poems
and our existence

a bear
who looks all cute and cuddly
appears to demand
a bit of petting and a little cooing

the poems
but should you approach
such cuddliness
without humility

would rip
your arms off
in its benevolent
indifference

splat 25

if my life were to be a tv show I’d rather it be the leonard nimoy hosted 1970s era in search of. . .

cue the music
title cards for the intro
            crystal skulls
            bigfoot
            easter island
            stonehenge
            bermuda triangle
            ufos
            amelia earhart

and just the right disclaimer that the following is a tale of conjecture full of weird wonder based on the merest of half-believable fact

the literary life

'I'll tell you about fucking life in the golden west, literary life in the golden west. While we're downstairs sitting zazen someone got in here stole everyone's wallets out of their jackets. There's no literary life in the golden west. That's fucking literary life in the golden west!'

quoting philip whalen in the poem 'On Time' by michael rothenberg

splat 24

hey mourning dove
you learning to fly

kick it in our garden
as yr momma squawks

on the telephone wires
i say peace

but i know we’re fucked
in the head

as you learn
yr wings

and i take my
dumb-ass to bed

splat 23

sitting down to watch the terminator [1984] and the after-effects of the cold war might be still invisible particulates hanging in the air of all we wished for to come out on top just to see those towers explode then fall as if they were a scene from the film but no such luck they were real and the cyborg became the guvanator of california as we emerge blinkered and blinking in the cold dead light of these new dark years

splat 22

go outside to see where my heart leapt
no more like exploded like a cannon
from my chest search static buzz
if only if only to repossess and reprogram
the brain the circuitry misfires
again search below above i forget which
find the hammer nails the tongs
to pull out the soul hoping for that ufo
alien abduction find instead hanging among stars
the white flare of the searchlight of the police copter

splat 21

the helicopter searchlight in the garden
think on the nature of art
you want the poem to
answer you?

be content and calm
if possible
if not take it anyway
think of the final day

as if it were today
when light and dark
are of equal measure
when the breeze is just so

and you might like it anyway

splat 20

Clean house cut lawn
Stop at fry’s
Buy bobblehead
OPTIMUS PRIME

Stop at beer’s books
Pick up a copy of
THE WORLD’S MOST HAUNTED PLACES
Make an exercise

Sleepy w/ journal poetics
Watch the boy
In the garden
Hunt for bees

splat 19

Come open
To a confusion
Polls open
To close
Twittering
The mass
Burying
Meaning
Under a
Theory
Where should
The compendium
Turn now
You’ve opened
The spigot
Out runs
The reservoir

today's soundtrack

1)

a family of mourning doves had made their nest at our home
the momma and poppa tried to fledge their one young
took apart the nest and made him fly out

it was too early and the young one huddled in the garden
we worried he was injured or sick so when i took two steps
toward him he flew to the other side

while momma and poppa hovered nervously on the overhead phone lines
later the young one took off in a burst of flight
but in panic at my second approach

we made an artificial nest out of a wicker basket
filled it with the twigs and branches of their
old discarded nest and hoped for the best

tonight we returned after a long day at work then shopping
to find both momma and poppa and their baby
on the overhead phone lines as she fed her young one

we took a few pics then they flew off to the night

2)

last night nicholas and i were walking home. our usual route involves a stop at a local gas station so i could buy a soda and nicholas can pick a treat to eat on the way. the street we walk is very busy with lots of foot traffic, street people and vehicles hurrying on their way. between the gas station and an adjacent parking lot is a dirt meridian that is home to a fire hydrant, and a couple of gas lines. nicholas likes to look at the steel pipes. we stopped, i took a sip of soda, when nicholas asks me, what is this. i look down and see that he is holding a hypodermic syringe. my heart almost burst out of my chest. i snatched it out of his hand and fling it to the ground. the syringe is old, dirty white plastic. i don't see a needle. nicholas tells me that there is a needle. i poke at the syringe and sure enough at the tip is a tiny, bent needle. i nearly choke in fear, grab the boy by his hands and asks him if he was poked. nope, the kid says. are you sure? i look at his hands, fingers and arms and find no prick of skin or any blood. i then check myself too for any pricks. i find none. i look at the syringe again and surmise that that was a junkie's tool that finally broke and was absently thrown away. i've seen a diabetic's needles before. i've seen a junkie's cheap works too. i walk home almost dizzy from relief and fear.

3)

for the past few days this song's been looped in my mind. i think it's a summer song. it's so laid back and chill and catchy. i can't shut it off.

splat 18

98 degrees in the shade
                          long walk to work
ma soif as rimbaud sd
cricketsong                     dogpiss smell

step into the cinema of the mind
summer’s arrived

splat 17

Don't expect miracles; you may be both a boy and a girl.
--tom savage

Get the new pink
Go try on wedding dresses
When asked who you gonna marry
Answer why not everybody
& if this is poo-pooed
Tell them that they're too realistic
Too sour & that cupid shall never
Sniff out their tail
& never bite them on the ass
Not answer the poem
Or take a bead & shoot between the eyes

splat 16

k visited today. told me about a trial where the accused stood before the bench scratching his ass, looking blank. he was never told the charges against him. think i’ve heard this one before, i sd. ah, k cooed, but how this one ends will be a doozy. just glance at the news & you’ll find enough guilt to go around. at that he laughed, shook a pair of handcuffs, & helped himself to another beer. then i showed him the door.

also do not miss

tom beckett's poem another shadow?

&

these photos of jim mccrary with david bromige, and mccrary's recent readings in portland and seattle

splat 15

journey thru the interior / the heart’s thump turns a dog’s bark

i have a fly idleness / as still / as motionless as wings

surface as smooth as marble / as thick as a plank

i heard my name in the waiting room / there is no other me

i am stalled like an elephant / gored by want

it stood still / time / watching her ass walk by

the street was crowded / there was no other me

pastiche cried the vendor / i heard the word pastry

do not miss

the ed baker feature over at lars palm's blog

&

the pics of THE ETERNAL CO. reading in boulder, co. posted over at kevin opstedal's blog here and here [that is one bad-ass airstream trailer]

splat 14

Driving NorCal flat valley ag land

Set up camp eat cheese & baguettes
Lemonade

Wholly summer

Holy summer

Give to it what you will

Rolling clouds

Thick mountain range

Of fields & fields of lavendar

splat 13

dear catullo:

woke up this morning the usual way -- if i still smoked i’d have lit up -- instead -- rather -- thought of you & yr poems & wondered if you knew what or whom you were writing for -- yr manuscript had been purportedly lost for hundreds of years -- not that you knew that or even cared -- it is easier to graft my own self to yr poems -- is that the nature of translation? -- & say that the that we are writing for is the large unknown -- i think you’d laughed yr ass off at that -- still i am writing to you -- o horny one -- in this -- our -- continuous present

splat 12

eros phoned today
to gloat over the
latest conquest

you should’ve
seen those eyes

eros sd

that hair

next i heard
the slosh of
tipple

and a quite cartoonish
maniacal laughter

splat 11

color the frame the sequence just begins

                              if the strip of film simply breaks

                and i am left undone

skipping thru the pages of

THE THIEF’S JOURNAL

you might ask where’s the script

                                            not now

          what if you had wings

and can make pigs fly?

          give me a break

                        you make me laugh till i cry

splat 10

imagine
donne
got his wish

imagine
an afterlife as
an endless placid

lake
with no end
and no

beginning
it would quickly
become so boring

you might
even be
tempted to slit

your wrists
no reprieve
but repetition

there is this
think
just this

the life
of work
will end

but the
works of
life is never done



splat 10.1

let us know found the school of the square cool

splat 9

at the end we wondered
what to call his work
we clasped it with giant paperclip
and settled on naming it
the collected good
even if the poems were
cranky and more than a bit uneven
for we could not separate finally
the life and the work

splat 8

1) tripped by the sense data the love
2) one extra saga the sage holy shit
3) enter the pixel become the touch
4) bend down track the ping
5) out and exit the sofa beckons

splat 7

hypnogogic daydream nation
afternoon summer breezy sunday
SCOOBY-DOO AND THE GOBLIN KING
lo 80s
let there be peace on earth
please

splat 6

chronicles of my life of rhyme
that in turn language
into dreaming the landscapes
of the beginner’s cartography

this is some of the shit that makes me glad to be alive

splat 5

this doesn’t mean the end of the line
is the end of the mind
                    duncan mcnaughton

watching the wachowski bros’ the matrix i can’t tease out why if the machines wanted abundant btu’s from live bodies as their prime source of energy they didn’t just plug in cattle who might not need a matrix at all to control their minds to achieve passivity

or if cattle do need an active mind and a purpose the machines could make a simple contruct of sunlight water and pasture

even if the machines insisted on humans as batteries [hero neo is called a coppertop, natch] why didn’t they just cauterize

the wiring of the frontal lobes so that humans would not need a purpose to achieve passivity but rather kept intact the brainstem for the body’s involuntary functions such as heart rate blood pressure and breath

thus the machines would come to signify the flower of flesh and blood

splat 4

fascinated by the unseen
what is here is is
that death is every
where a construct
where the construct
transforms a reality
what is here is is
i look for cryptids
watch the grainy super 8
frames of an alleged
monster in the pacific northwest
rather instead like those
meddling kids
from the tv show
i find reality
is a plural is
is the construct
again grounding
the continuous present

splat 3

crow bar
and saw
against the
iron gate
i have
reached
the age
when i’m
no longer
young
but some
one is
always
older
as the
poet
swore
every
day is
halloween

splat 2

driving hwy 80 to sf you could find roadside vernacular architecture
almost everywhere
e.g. a 76 gas station in dixon
with a 20 ft concrete t-rex pitted to the parking lot
a lure to get you to stop
CALIFORNIA CRAZY
as one book tells it but long long gone
to find neon vernacular
nowadays
you’d need a thesaurus and a treasure map to set your course

splatterings

this will make it the third year in a row where i write a poem a day during the month of june. splatter poems were first instigated by derek motion as a way to clear the build-up of poetic habits and utilize ginsberg's notion of first thought/best thought and o'hara's i do this/i do that poetry. certainly these are not original ideas. but what of it. i had debated to begin today but i think the exercise of writing a poem a day with little editing would do me good. i invite you to do the same as well. splatter words, images and thoughts. go ahead. sometimes you've got to say, what the fuck.



splat 1


to dive like the mockingbird
as she did this morning
past my ear
to protect her young

i’ve read they pick their threats
carefully
it was me she hated on sight
fuck           to be so singular

and focused           driven by instinct
instead i’m habituated by shaky hands
and fumbling steps
without enough grace

either for clown school
or star in my own dumb show
O Ornery One
to you is my treasure entrusted

you who yap
and want me killed
to you
i fuck up and fall