got the beat

i like to think so but i never learned, and even completely hobbled, by my inability to dance. no rhythm at all. try as i might, and i've tried mightily, i can't move without looking like some spastic chicken in the midst of a colonscopy exam.

it started to rain last night and continued thru the day, and is still at 10:00 pm raining. which meant that the walk to and from work today was a wet one. i fortified myself this morning by reading a couple of poems from great american prose poems ed. by david lehman [scribner, 2003]. it was bernadette mayer's text 'visions or desolation' that knocked my socks off. this is a poem living large and in stereo. mayer's got this i don't know what that always makes me happy to be above-ground and breathing when i read her. mayer's poem comparing childbirth to lsd while wrapping the whole in the form of a rambling letter is my kind of writing. thusly fortified i was prepared for what the day may bring.

wet shoes. that's what i got. wet shoes. also got thru work then on the way home stopped at the central library looking for books by paul violi, mayer again, w.b. keckler and michael lally. no go. the library's has a few anthologies with some poems by all these poets but no individual collections. pity. did skim thru a few poems by kit robinson, a poet i've been reading more of lately, published in a thick door-stop mother of a book edited by douglas messerli.

heading back into the rain i went straight down j st. the street was choked with cars and pedestrians all running to and/or from someplace. there's this brand-new building with luxury lofts located directly across the street from the library. a lifestyle for the total urbanite. in the dark and wet i could see in some of the lofts and noticed most of their occupants were watching tv. big, huge flat screen tv's. nothing significant about that i suppose but i did wonder why all of the tv's that i could see were giant flat-screens. just the age we live in i guess.

down several blocks and located in the heart of midtown is the used record shop the beat. when i was a wee pup this was the place where i could find imports and indie punk bands and buy tix to punk gigs. the beat used to occupy just a little corner of a shop and over the years as it's inventories expanded moved to bigger digs and now sits on prime sac real estate.

anna and i have been groovin' to the french electro-pop band phoenix and i wanted to get anna their latest cd. so i stopped at the beat. my chuck t's were soaked and my glasses spotted from the wet. i've not been inside the beat in some months even tho i pass by it almost everyday. they've expanded quite a bit and now sell used tapes, dvds, vhs tapes, and comics on top of vinyl and cds. as i wrote in an email to another poet tonight, i've always felt i had an old soul. being in a record store with all the kids looking for who-knows-what band makes me feel like the old man out, what with my salt&pepper hair and my general mein of decrepitude.

times have changed. most kids get their music as digital downloads now. shoppers at the beat are mostly, not completely, but mostly dudes like me still looking to buy cds. i wasn't the old man out as there were many older dudes and dudettes inside. i'm speaking generally of course. i just didn't feel like the old man out. i found wolfgang amadeus phoenix for anna and picked up soulvaki by slowdive for myself. the latter album is about 16 years old now. and every time i listen to slowdive my esteem for the band rises even higher.

i'm turning a new leaf. trying to become a new old man. i still don't have the beat. can't dance worth a dookie. don't ask me to dance, because i might just do it, and you won't like what you see. i don't mind getting older. my corns can even tell me when it's going to rain. like now.