art at the mall

the arden fair mall back in the 1980s was the dirt mall of sac. sac has a fair number of malls then and today but arden fair was something special in its decrepitude. that is, until it was refurbished in the late '80s and it became the primo destination for shopping in the greater sacramento area. it was remade into a double-decker delight of the mind and eye, all designed to get you to buy a lot of stuff.

okay, i like malls. maybe i have to turn in my marxist card now. is it possible to be relatively non-materialistic and still enjoy malls and the things they house? in my case, oh yes, especially the arden fair mall now that it is no longer the primo shopping destination for the greater sacramento area. that distinction now belongs to the roseville galleria located in the outer-borough of roseville, california. roseville is its own incorporated city but like say city of industry outside of l.a. we, or i, consider the burgh ourter sac, a suburb of sac, if you will. roseville citizens might get all up in arms about that but come on, we are connected by a series of massively huge and efficient freeways and the cities nestled beside sac all blur together like one big sprawl.

but back to the arden fair mall. what i really like about this mall is the public art installation by the late joan brown. brown was a member of the bay area figurative movement of the late '60s. the art is smack in the middle or hub of the mall and features a large blue tile pyramid that the kids all love to climb on and surrounded by fairly totemic animals that are tiled on the floor, each flattened in a kind of broad hand that was brown's signature style. unfortunately brown died in 1990 in a freak construction accident while she was working in india.

it is a work of delight that i have loved going on 20 years now. and that it might become just a memory. i need to take a camera and document the piece for i've been told that the arden fair mall might be up for another makeover that would endanger brown's art. might get rid of it outright. i've no idea who commissioned brown the first go-around but that person or persons should be thanked for having some seriously good-ass taste.

brown i think had a comic book crudity that was married to a searching spirituality. her work reminds me of philip guston, only much happier in ways where guston's paintings are seething, corrosive indictments. i think that's why i'm so attracted to this piece. i'm not an expert at all of brown's work. just a happy admirer of this public work. click here for an interactive feature hosted by sfmoma.

this list belongs to nicholas

I brushed my teeth

I watched scooby-doo

I've eaten three circle cheeses

I looked at daddy's books

I'm ready for bed

bad words

as the father of an inquisitive 5-year-old i need to be attentive of my actions and my language. the kid is a sponge and has now repeated phrases and words that are too obvious in their crudity and embarrassing to print here. well, kind of embarrassing but not really. i guess. are there bad words? or is the way words are employed matter more? any reader who ventures here for just a couple of posts, or speaks to me in a relative comfortable setting, knows that i love those words that are often censored and censured from a modest selection [like network tv] of public life.

which leads me to wonder: could there be such creatures as bad words? i tend to think that words are not bad but how words are used. not that there aren't any seriously serious loaded words out there but i recall a post by geof huth [too lazy right now to search for it for linkage -- trust me, okay] where he rebuts an assertion that the word cunt is too offensive for him to use. can't remember huth's exact phrase but it went something like he couldn't abide such limitations.

yesterday at lunch bad words, like fuck and shit, became the topic of conversation. the majority of my lunch companions agreed that bad language is awful to use. i said, i don't think there are bad words but inappropriate ways and circumstances language can be used. even the word sugar can sound like a death threat uttered in a sinister and awful tone. conversely the word fuck said from the right person in the right moment of intimate candor can be the sweetest utterance.

i love language and live inside the world of words in all parts of my life, as a poet, as a father, and at my day job. as a, to use a dated term, man of letters double and triple negatives and slang can sound more poetic than shakespeare. i told my dining companions that language is a system of agreements and other than say syntax those agreements have changed in the past and will change in the future.

what i think i need to do as a father is teach my child that words are not bad but the most glorious pieces of physical and intellectual life. how you use them makes all the difference. the same words uttered in love can also be spit out in hate. invectives are not diction but are made in tone and meaning. words do hurt, make no mistake about it, but they also are greater vehicles for peace love and understanding [said in deference to declan mcmanus and nick lowe].

if in the beginning there was the word then in the end will be a word as well. i can just imagine what that final word might be. if there is another cataclysmic event such as an extinction-level meteor striking the earth i think the person or persons who look up into the sky and sees that giant fireball plummeting toward land i think the final words might just be oh shit.

politics

i've written earlier here, probably several times, that i'm not a political writer. it has taken me years to get over my art pour art attitude and become what i suppose might be called a post-romantic. the poet is neither plural nor singular but both and what happens in the body politic happens to the body as well. the poet is not some lone genius suffering in the garret for the greater good of art. poetry is the language trying to express itself and then move beyond expression. politics is language too.

so it happened since sunday night's healthcare reform vote that proserpina in BLAST, my almost daily poetry writing project, is a bit more political if still a little circumspect in her temper. as for BLAST i think it might become my next chap but first maybe as a pdf that i'll circulate then later fetishize in paper form. it'll consist of short poems of about 20 or fewer. we'll see.

enough about that. on the healthcare reform bill i think ron silliman has one of the most lucid analyses i've yet to read on the subject. you can read it here. i also think that what is driving the tea-baggers is fear of a darker complexion of the united states with english spoken in many accents. the united states, the world as a whole, is brown and certainly the dominant surnames here in california are hispanic. and the fear of a second civil war that silliman concludes his essay is i think spot on. that fear might sound like paranoia but to poo-poo it by stating that that can't happen here is far more frightening because that invites complacency and complacency or outright diffidence can be manipulated by those who wish to remain in power and try to maintain an illusory idea of what the united states is.

i'm quickly out of my depth here. i'm puzzled by the vehemence of the working people i know against healthcare reform. surely it is a step in the right direction. i imagine once this becomes the law of the land and people realize the benefits of universal healthcare will be a sacred political fact, like social security and medicare. as for the cost of universal healthcare [and i use the word universal even tho i know the bill as it is now written is far short of this ideal. i am hoping that this small step toward a wider coverage of people shall lead to greater reforms and expansion] i'd rather pay for some one's hernia operation or radiation therapy than buy one more drone bomber. would it were a choice, make mine medicine for all, not bombs away.

i know a poet, the late thomas mcgrath, who was once black-listed during the mccarthy era who wrote magnificent political poems. mcgrath died in 1990 after living mostly in rural north dakota. he'd have made a great poet-blogger and i believe probably would have written some fantastic verse in this new violent political age. i'd read his poem 'A Momentary Loss of Belief in the Wisdom of the Common People and a Curse on the Bastards Who Own and Operate Them' at an anti-war rally just before we went to war with iraq. tho this is a poem against war mcgrath's vituperative concluding lines are an apt end for this little rant.

Politics is the continuation of war by other means.
And now, you celebrated American jackasses:
You still want war?
Go let a hole in the head shed light on your darkling brain --
Remember Vietnam?

Go and be damned!
But don't count on me for nothing you righteous stupid sons of bitches!

recent youtube video tunage

'if you were here' [live at liverpool] -- thompson twins
[tho i think the thompson twins suck for the most part this song that concludes john hughes flick sixteen candles simply haunts me]

'heroes' [live aid] -- david bowie
[this live performance is incandescent]

'?' -- piana
[does anyone know the name of this song? it is heartbreakingly beautiful]

'nice weather for ducks' -- lemon jelly
[this tune and video by the british electronica duo is so bloody joyful. makes me happy every time i see it]

'good to go' -- my sad captians
[this british pop band crafts damn catchy songs that recall the structure and harmonies of the beach boys. i don't know if they've released a record in the u.s. but when i went to the beat looking for a cd a few weeks ago i couldn't find me one. i guess to get their tunes i'd need to spring for one of them fancy machines called an ipod and download them off the net. but call me old-fashioned, i'd like one of them shiny plastic wheels that bands used to put their music on, instead]

'machine gun' [live at toronto] -- slowdive
[slowdive is an awesome band. i could kick myself, and i do, for not paying attention to them when they were alive and active and perhaps missing an opportunity to see them perform. better late than never and this is a singular performance of a radiant song]

'won't get fooled again' -- the who
[this song concludes the who's concert film the kids are alright. i dig how townsend keeps trying to turn the knobs of his amps up as if somehow he could get his guitar to sound louder than a nuclear blast. if you aren't shaken by the time the keith moon cuts into the keyboards preparing for daltry's primal howl then you might want to head to the e.r. cuz you probably got no pulse]

'comfortably numb' -- pink floyd
[the original members of pink floyd reunited to perform for the benefit concert live 8 a few years back and the result is magnificent. what i love about live performances is watching the audience and members of the audience are so in synch with the band. also, roger waters is so captivated i just dig watching him as he sings gilmour's parts outside the range of the mics just for the love of song]

that's about it. these are the songs that have been in rotation the past couple weeks for no other reason than just because.

from the uncollected emails of catullus

i meant to send you this note
but saw this pretty chick
fucking her guy
naturally got distracted
instead of clicking send
sat here in my robe
doing my best to resist
with my very fibre
not to join in

from the philosophy of the poet sparrow

pay attention. do no harm. rejoice.

reading scooby-doo

well not really but i bought nicholas a new scooby-doo flick tonight and he watched it as i read a model year [coconut books, 2009] by gina myers. for some reason the background noise of 'those meddling kids' was a good counterpoint to myers' quiet, lovely verse. i can't tell you the reasons why. perhaps it's because i'm a scooby-doo fan myself and i just like the noises the franchise makes.

at any rate, myers has achieved a marvelous collection of poems that deserve a wide audience. that she is young, or youngish, is evident from pieces that deal with problems that are endemic to many young people just starting up with their lives: highly educated, underemployed, overworked and low pay along with worries about how one will make the rent and the bills.

yet despite sounding pitying myers' subtle handling of these subjects, along with the subjects of home, alienation, family and death, moves the reader toward a warmer embrace of living. here are poems of a kind of inner-exile that creates a tension in the speaker[s] to seek out family. perhaps that the tone myers uses for family is what i find so winning in this book. family is important to me, and i gather to myers as well for the poems move from the section of living in brooklyn titled young professionals in the rain where she catalogs those problems of the young and later returns to her natal state of michigan in the section called homecoming.

myers is a literary poet and takes from her reading what she can use. thus there is a sonnet using the first lines of poems by robert creeley, a poem titled 'rilke', and poems that work their way out of writers as various as marina tsvetaeva and barbara guest. the results are strong, mellifluous and somehow, at least to this reader, comforting.

myers concludes this excellent collection of poetry with the long poem 'a model year' that ends with the speaker's head hitting the pillow and coming to rest. a fine ending to a hectic year. take it from me this is first-rate writing. i've been a reader of gina myers for some years now after finding some of her poems at the old zine canwehaveourballback. this book is worth your attention. you can find out more about the book and how to seize a copy here.

hot pockets

we got the u.s. census in the mail today. anna wanted to fill it out and mail it back right away. cool. then she asked me, what do i consider myself.

?

am i hispanic, non-hispanic, white, what?

usually i answer that i am a typical californian. but the census doesn't have a tick box for that.

my own heritage is a rather mixed bag. i know for certain i am half norwegian. my grandmother comes from bergen. she fled norway soon as wwii was over and my mother was the first of her children born in the u.s. my mother's first language was norwegian. on my father's side i think i'd need a dna test to get a clearer answer. i know there is english, perhaps spanish, probably mexican. but no one knows for sure.

doesn't matter in my opinion. i made geof huth laugh once when we were talking about heritage. he cares very much for his surname and his own unique lineage. as for me i told him i don't really care. i am, i like to think, the person i try to make myself to be. my own name, lopez, is as common as dirt and perhaps that's as it should be. i think of myself as being fairly representative of a 21st c california, hispanic surname with a lot mixed in.

still, it's fun to create my own lineage. sometimes i am the kind that likes to eat hot pockets and watch professional wrestling. i've long thought poetry and comedy have much in common, timing, word choice, performance, the world viewed at a slant. take for example comedian jim gaffigan's essay on the subject of hot pockets. observe:

the mail

i hate daylight savings time. what sadist thought this up anyway? no, don't tell me, i already know. but losing an hour sucks hard. i shouldn't complain. tonight was absolutely lovely. proserpina stuck her head out and granted the trees to begin to bloom. it's warmish now, warm enough for t-shirts and shorts during daytime. the walk home was a pleasure tonight. tho i hate losing an hour having the dusk settle around 7:30 pm or so was nice. i swear people were singing in the streets.

so my mood was mighty elevated by the time i walked thru the door. it rose higher when i saw two packages waiting for me. now, i feel i've been remiss in not writing about some good things i've received in the mail lately. sure this is now a virtual, digital world but the joy of the physical object cannot be over-emphasized.

speaking of our virtual world i see our local blockbuster video store is closing up shop. i'm not one to lament the demise of a mega-conglomerate but it is the only video rental shop in downtown/midtown, and it is only two blocks from my house. isn't it ironic that the huge retailers, blockbuster and hollywood video, that made mom and pop video stores go belly-up are now floundering in this our digital age. i'd laugh but i like going to a brick and mortar store and pulling things off the shelves. and i really miss the old tower records/books/video. i really miss the old tower.

all the same, i've gotten some good shit recently. portland-based poet james yeary sent a couple of his daybooks a couple weeks ago. yeary does the text and artist nate orton does the ink. yeary wowed me when i read his text the most recent otoliths. fascinating work and i'll do a proper review soon.

also jim mccrary's got a new chap out. this is serious don't miss shit, m ental tekst. i've read it three times now and i'll also want to write a bit about it in the very close future. mccrary fucking rocks, no doubt about it and this is high-quality meta-critical post-lyric writing. go to his blog, you can find it at the bottom of my links, and leave comments asking for copies. now.

and today i received gina myer's book a model year that i've been wanting to read now for some time. myer's is a very gifted writer and i look forward to digging in to her poems.

in the mail also was two chaps from kevin opstedal's blue press, hecho en venice by opstedal, published on occassion of a recent reading he did in venice at beyond baroque with duncan mcnaughton, and poaching the king's pussy in the dover wood by mcnaughton. these are short chaps that i read while nicholas was in the bath tonight and were just what i needed to clear the clutter from my frazzled brainpan. both opstedal and mcnaughton are as clever and as naughty as two veteran bluesmen hanging out in an after-hours club. in other words, this shit is good.

to get back into the habit of writing i've begun a series of daily poems called BLAST that were meant to be exercises in minimalism but have taken a life of their own as i explore rather loosely the proserpina myth. how she entered the texts i don't know but she is welcome to stay as long as she likes and i hope that these shall become my next chap.

i've been punched in the gut re: last month but feel like i'm learning to breath again. i feel i've dropped the ball and there is a writing assignment i need to finish for a collection of poems that i'll make public when i am done. not that i mean to sound cryptic only that this is not my collection of poetry and i don't know if the publication of the book has been publicly announced. so hang on, sloopy, okay.

finally, last saturday night at the drive-in i saw what i thought an enigmatic poster for a flick called hit-girl. looked like some superhero pic, and it is, but the movie is a twist on the genre where an ordinary kid becomes a superhero by willing himself to become one. the tag-line on the poster and the movie goes like this, i can't see thru walls but i can kick your ass. the movie is not called hit-girl, she is a 13-year-old superhero who along with her father, played by nicolas cage, does kick some serious ass, but is titled kick-ass and is based on a series of comic books about a boy who becomes a superhero. looks goddamned hilarious. the girl has one seriously foul mouth. i'm looking forward to seeing this. i've watched the trailers several times now. check out the red band trailer [you might have to log in or create a user account to watch]:

the happiest place on earth

a few make the claim that disneyland and disneyworld, esp. corporation disney, is the happiest place on earth. nah-uh. the happiest place is at the drive-in watching movies under a scrim of stars and eating foods and snacks that are so bad for you they make the blood coagulate to a sturdy gel.

as james wright said in a poem, i've eaten the first fruit of the season and i am in love. the first fruit is the first trip to the drive-in. it was warm enough today but when the sun dropped below the horizon it got pretty chilly. nicholas and i bundled up for the occassion. i am fortunate to share my love of the cinema under the stars with nicholas because the sac 6 drive-in theaters is still open for business while most drive-in theaters are just a whisp of a memory. the owners, west wind, have done a damn fine job of taking the old girl and loving her back to relative health. the place is still shabby but it is clean and the bathrooms, which were until a few years ago, unspeakable, are clean with working stalls and urinals. trust me, the old owners had let the drive-in go to seed where it was more than an expectation that the building and the sceens would just crumble into the dirt it sat on.

it is still early in the season and tho the drive-in is open year-round it doesn't get into full operating mode until the weather gets warmer. tonight nicholas had the playground to himself and i dropped a many few dollars into the video games for the boy to play. i need a witness, baby, for that boy was just beside himself with glee.

the movies? for me at the drive-in those are almost a secondary experience. the foremost is the ambiance. nicholas was on the swings when the films started to roll. the projection booth sits on top of the snack bar that is round in shape and is center to the theater's 6 screens. i suspected there is only one projectionist and my suspicion was confirmed, i think, upon seeing the screens light up in sequence. then i looked up at the booth and saw the projectionist in the window at work cueing up the reels and told nicholas to watch too. i wonder what the projectionist might've thought of a grown silver-haired man watching him with utter delight when he looked down and saw me see him.

but for the movies the first run was tim burton's turn at alice in wonderland, an interesting interpretation of the classic. cgi is so sophisticated that it is damn-near difficult to see the seams of the art. the movie sort of sags in parts, and is a bit more violent than i'd have expected -- it's not bloody at all but the red queen's viciousness is put in bold -- yet the great johnny depp is a miracle of gestures. that alone is worth the price of admission.

the second film was a romantic comedy starring kristen bell, she of the tv show veronica mars. i didn't catch the name of the film and it would take only a couple of clicks now to find out but no matter. the flick was so formulaic all the producer would need to do to get the script is to punch the boy-meets-girl theme into a software program and add the wrinkle that the girl gets entanglements thru the agency of a fountain in rome that caters to the wishes of forlorn lovers.

why we stayed for the second flick? because it was the drive-in! we missed nearly half of the movie already because we were at the playground and snack bar playing video games. by the time we got back to the car i thought, oh what the hell. bell is a pleasant enough actor and the ensemble was good-looking and game. and there was one pretty funny sequence that nearly redeemed the whole of the movie. don't get me wrong, i do like chick flicks, esp. romantic comedies, but this one seemed made only for money? really i don't know why it was made only that it exists and i have seen it. 'nuff said.

from the dept. of fucking sucks

found out today via alex gildzen that poet todd moore died today. the world has contracted this much more. a brief memorial is found here at saint vitus press and poetry review. a few more memories and pics are found at alex's blog here.

st paddy's day blues

after finishing the delicate task of making and setting the trap i placed it in the garden and waited and waited and waited hoping for a catch and a pot of gold when i heard the trap snap and saw the leprechaun scamper thru the trees then stop and turn toward me just long enough to give me the finger with both barrels shouting ME GOLD ME GOLD

email to jonathan hayes

i knew a few people who served in vietnam. one, the uncle of my first serious girlfriend, dave was an old hippie. he dropped out of college and his lottery number came up. he told the army that he was a pacifist and didn't want to serve in a combat mode. so the recruiter told him if he signed on for a couple more years he'd stay out of harm's way. dave was trained as a radio operator. stationed on a firebase. they were shelled by nva everyday. he could hear the incoming rockets just like the movies, a loud whine and you could gauge where they were going to hit by the sound. always in fear, until one day he's in the latrine, dave's a real nut for sci-fi and gobbled at least oh i dunno 10 novels a week when i knew him, and was reading his book when he heard the familiar yells of INCOMING and the whine of nva rockets. he thought fuck it, when you die you die, and continued reading his book.

all i have to do is dream

except they were weird ones

i've no idea what's behind them but there they were

i still remember these two from last night

a spider about the size of a dinner plate and looking like a tarantula

grabbed hold of my arm like an embrace

bit into my shoulder and wouldn't let go

i got the fucker loose without killing it then flash forward and i am

taking the eggs out it had deposited in the clean rectangle shaped wound

then a woman survivalist was teaching us how to eat dog shit

just in case of catastrophe

use lots of sauce like ketchup or worcestershire

a man and woman sliced up a turd and glopped it full of steak sauce

forked the seasoned pieces into their mouths

i wouldn't eat it and woke up thinking no matter how you sauce and slice it shit is still shit

pee-wee's big adventure [1985]

if shoring up fragments is the norm for our post-post-modernity than i must be one average mofo at the moment. i've not watched a full movie or read a book straight thru in some weeks now. i catch bits and pieces, fragments, here and there, my book reading is done in pieces, sometimes reading say a few poems here and a few poems there, or an essay at the back first and work my way to the beginning, until the book is finished. as for movies, and tv shows too, i catch scenes, moments, favorite parts, before moving off to do something else.

perhaps it is the life of a parent of a small child, a man who also labors all day and writes his fragments at night, like an old jazzman. maybe that's too romantic a detail. the pace of life quickens and i run to catch up. lately i've been thinking about the state of joy. i don't know what it is but when it is missing from my waking and dreaming life i badly so want it back. i believe some people live and do their work from an opposite state. sometimes for me too. joy is not always the force that thru the green fuse drives the flower.

pleasure indeed. for me it's absolutely critical for my mental well-being and if i'm not in a relatively calm mind then my writing, and my waking and dreaming life, is too fucked up for any one's good. particularly mine. so it was with great good pleasure that i caught a few bits of this paul reubens/tim burton feature last night when nicholas was in the bath and anna was in the other room. the word i'd use to describe this movie is EFFERVESCENT. every frame of this flick, goofy as it is, bursts with the joys of being. picture the scene in the biker bar when the boy-man gets the bikers on his side by doing a silly dance to the champs' tune 'tequila' or the ending when every single person pee-wee encountered in his quest to retrieve his stolen bike is at the drive-in watching the movie of his life as portrayed by james brolin. the drive-in! can burton have a greater homage to b-movies than that?

it was just the thing i needed, for what that's worth, for me to shore up a few bits of my fragments. that's the magic of cinema and why awards shows and box-office receipts fade into the near-future leaving the movies to stand or fall and sometimes both at the same time. a great good pleasure of being alive.

oscars

despite my silent vow to not watch the academy awards i managed to get sucked in and watched the last 3rd of the broadcast. there is very little i dislike more than hollywood congratulating itself and i simply can't stand celebrity culture. at any rate, i was happy to see kathryn bigelow get the best director award. she is just that good a filmmaker. i was more than a bit surprised to learn that bigelow is the first woman to win the best director award. really?! seriously?! over 100 years of movie making and 82 years of the oscars and only one woman has won best director and that happened last night?! that's pretty fucked up. i hope bigelow doesn't remain a statistic and is the first of many women filmmakers to achieve the sort of prize-winning hollywood, and the movie-going public at large, love to death.

henry v [1989]

my brother is reading and studying the works of shakespeare, reading the plays, the study guides and watching movie adaptations. he invited my father and me to watch his favorite movie adaptation. which happens to be mine as well. so i headed over to his house and watched with great delight and admiration kenneth branagh's rendering of king harry.

i was telling a friend today why i love branagh's version of henry v. it is how branagh directed the film, how it is photographed, edited and lit. i love how he chose to keep the chorus, as played by the brilliant derek jacobi, in the film and keep him in modern dress. thus the scene is set and we get a kind of meta-filter of the story, a kind of storyteller's version of a movie, sorta similar to manuel puig's novel, and film version, kiss of the spider woman. we get the action thru the prism of a narrator and thus we are allowed to be outside and inside the realities of the stories, at the same time.

it is a brilliant move by branagh. i argued with my brother that perhaps branagh was making an anti-war film. the scenes after the battle of agincourt are ripe with melancholy. war is hell. yet my brother pointed out that the genius of shakespeare is to show us the complexities of human spirit, intellect and resolve. thus the deadly speech delivered by henry at the seige of harfleur is one of the most brutal ever delivered. there is no doubt that should the city not yield henry would have made good on his threats. but outside the fields of war henry is kind, clement and honest in his dealings among his fellows.

how could this be? branagh mines these depths with brilliance. he makes a great king henry portraying the monarch with such nuance that the senses of the viewer begin to tingle. especially when branagh delivers the speech on the feast day of st. crispin. i'll leave it at that.

behold:

the freaks come out at night

whew, just this last month kicked the shit outta us for reasons too complicated and too personal to list here. my reading and my movie watching and all sorts of daily rituals were thrown out of whack. not that i'm complaining. life moves at an incredible clip and sometimes the struggle to keep up can make you winded.

and but then today began with reading a little berrigan where i came across that quote i posted below. life sure is hard but it is a blast [as ernesto priego reminded me in an email, a blast both positive and negative] all the same. i'm reminded that sometimes, as our cat ernie tells us, you gotta stop and eat the flowers.

okay then the walk home was lovely. the rains have stopped for now and the clouds cleared to reveal a sky so blue and open that, as roger daltry once sang, i can see for miles and miles. the streets were packed with people enjoying the early spring evening. the grocery store and the tacqueria were jammed. it seemed, at least to this old coot, festive.

fuckin' a. praxis of life is poetry is life again. ain't it. at least for this old coot. almost old, i mean, half-way there. depends on one's perspective regarding age. but what the hell. even when i was young i thought i was old. the praxis of poetry is to make mistakes and keep on going anyway. the same goes for a life. i'm no longer interested in the well-made urn. i am fascinated by how the process of writing makes the poems and that that process is centered in how i live my life.

shit, all this useless beauty, as declan mcmanus once declared. indeed. and it is all i need.

quote unquote

"Earth's the right place for Love,"
he used to say. "It's no help,
but it's better than nothing."

--ted berrigan

the mondays*

does anyone ever say
to you

'sounds like someone has a case of the mondays'

no
no man
shit no man
i believe you'd get yr ass kicked saying something like that man



________________________________
scene from the film office space [1999]

the man in the back row has a question

wouldn't you say that art, all art, however one wishes to define the term, isn't art, particularly the practice of art, the discipline of happy accidents?