dailies

i had asked for a name

make it generic

make it bleeding heart

make it so that when you go to look

there are trees there is forest

red dawn [1984]

i didn't watch the oscars last night.  i didn't forget about it.  i just have no interest in hollywood glad-handing and corporate accolades.  i used to watch the oscars when i was a kid.  the awards show mattered a great deal to me especially in an era without VCRs because if you wanted to catch bits and pieces of movies you had to watch awards telecasts like the oscars.

so no; i didn't watch the oscars.  instead i flipped open my laptop read some blogs, read some poems, and looked at a few music videos by the 90s era band toad the wet sprocket.  oh say what you will about toad the wet sprocket but they had some very tuneful, very catchy songs.  i have the single 'something's always wrong' playing on continuous loop in my brainpan right now.  if you don't think it's catchy go listent to it right now.  i'll wait.  now you have it stuck in your head too.

i did watch the latest episode 'I Ain't a Judas' of the walking dead directed by fx maestro greg nicotero.  it was one of the better shows of the season.  and i'm hooked on a new show broadcast on BBCAmerica, wild things with dominic monaghan, who is best known for his role in peter jackson's trilogy lord of the rings.  monaghan posesses a geeky charisma as he galavants thru jungles and caves of the world in search of all kinds of dangerous bugs and critters.  one thing monaghan professes, and i believe him, is that nothing in nature is ugly.

and now red dawn.  it just started when i began cleaning the house.  the cleaning took longer than usual because i couldn't help myself watching this flick.  preposterous!  a bunch of small-town colorado teens take on the soviet and cuban armies.  and win.  yep, pure cold war curiousity.  and yet director john milius takes his brat pack -- patrick swayze as the leader, c. thomas howell too, lea thompson is in this as well, and so is jennifer grey of dirty dancing [1987], and can't forget charlie sheen -- thru a system of exploding set pieces of pure adrenaline.  the movie is just that watchable. 

but why was it made in the first place? because it was the fucking cold war and this is goddamn america!  who better to beat back an invading horde of pinkos than red-blooded american kids.  even the music is martial.  lo!  milius saw it was good.

i haven't seen last year's remake starring hunky chris hemsworth.  that dude is one solid brick of a man.  he's no swayze but hemsworth is a believable foe of all that is not american.  i'll have to save that adventure for later.

dailies

the handwriting on the cardboard sign

outside the bar on 12th st

PLEASE DO NOT PARK YR SHOPPING CARTS OUTSIDE

dailies

some say to go west from the west you go east

asia is not out there but here

so many familiars made strange

no longer do i look for oscar

what prize is the prize of life

that's it that's all

when i stub my toe it hurts me and my toe

my arms flail when i stumble

some say my stumbles look like hell

some say i do it real well

some say i look like a bit part played against dean martin

dailies

took a walk west but found myself east

dailies

read in a review with no one to hate

i can love everyone

you got the hippie shakes she says

cavafy's old soul scrapping for a little light

and if everyone is a lover

what about odi et amo

seek without finding search for no thing

you are the man with x-ray eyes

a love song for bobby long [2004]

most movies suck.  it's incredible when you think about it because even cheap movies cost tons of money to produce market and distribute.  you would think that if a boatload of money is dropped on a production then the producers would damn well make sure that production was a good one.  movies are a business right and only the best gets asses in theater seats.  but for nought.  because movies are lowest common denominators.  that's why lately there has been a spate of films rated PG-13.  that is the demographic producers are trying to woo.  so we get superhero movies, fantasy witch films, lame horror features, and romantic weepies all stripped to the bare minimum on complications and plotting.

that's why i've not been going to the movies lately.  i've not even seen indie fare that are the critical darlings.  and my fave genre, horror, is utterly adrift on a tame sea.  it is not a good time for cinema.  or maybe i'm just getting old and jaded.  who knows and who cares.

still i have a soft spot for movies.  particularly this number under review.  i wrote briefly about this john travolta vehicle last fall.  i watched it again this afternoon as i was channel surfing.  a love song for bobby long is not a good movie.  it is rather silly, shallow and emotional.  it is beautifully photographed and well-written.  the acting is good tho not terrific.  and yet travolta plays long, an alcoholic ex-professor living in a run-down house in new orleans with his younger protege who is also a booze hound, with charismatic gusto. 

then again i'm game for a movie that quotes t.s. eliot, tennessee williams, arthur miller and scads of other writers.  the house is filled with books and the characters are obsessed with books.  long and his student lawson pines lives are interrupted by the arrival of the daughter of long's deceased lover.  pursy will is played by scarlett johanns0n who looks too healthy and regal, really, for the part of will who comes from a florida trailer park.  not to impugn florida trailer parks but i think johannson was miscast.  even so she puts in a fine performance even if the director, shainnee gabel, is too quick to pull out emotional stops then find the deeper spirit of pursy will.

still, travolta as long is a marvel, i think.  not a great part in a good movie but the man is such a good actor that i think if he simply read the ingredients for a frozen pizza i'd watch with him with pleasure.  there are some good lines in the script and travolta has all of them.  especially in the last reel when travolta makes a speech using both cuss words and a bit of eliot's poetry.

it's the sweetness of the thing that has me wrapt.  even if the principles are boozy losers there is a nobility granted to them.  i have a fondness for boozy losers too that go hand in hand with my love of classical chinese poetry where wine and friendships are often celebrated.  family too.  because in this film we discover that as much as family is thrust upon us we create them too. 

but for my loathe of contemporary movies.  i'll get over it.  call it a lover's quarrel.  the 21st century began with bang of wonderful indie fare.  the horror genre returned to its primal roots.  for a while films were being made for adults.  i have hope for the cinema to reach ratings beyond PG-13 again.  something will be made to break the commercial mold movies are currently stuck in before it too becomes too commercial.  that is the tao of movies. 

dailies

proserpina makes a quick entrance then retreats

says see ya later in a few weeks

in the meantime we work in the garden

till fingers bleed and the back gives

i read the poems of stonehouse translated by red pine

my own hermitage is situated between wake and dream

tho consciousness doesn't care does it

it might all be the same

every spring cancels winter out

only to be made winter again

dailies

flowers red hearts and balloons

O the secrets of love desire and sex

gunn said to cupid you make

desire seem easy so it is

we watch desire unsaddle from a bicycle seat

or find hips in rhythm on the street

better still is that gaze from your lover's eyes

enfold you teach you

thru language its desire lines

when love thumps us on the ass

we wake to its call

with every fall is a rise

and every rise ends in a lovely fall

dailies

oh holy crap

to take

what's the hurry

dailies

life too squiggly for straight narrative

who knows as i watched a woman walk

in the middle of the street narrating

a life of paranoia and conspiracy

she was loud but not noisy

sense gone maybe

but the details were keen

this morning the blue light of tv news

spoke of a zombie apocalypse

i nearly drowned in my bowl of wheaties

dailies

stuck at work and remembering john forbes' poem

how moving furniture will do as a career

well i know how the bloke felt

to assess a life of chaps and fugitive publications

will do and is a good life

i am a citizen of the republic of letters

when i crossed the street this morning

a squirrel ran beside me

i can't speak squirrel

but it gave me this sideways look

as if to say whatever you are having

i'll have a hit of it too

dailies

hearing basho's frog

relax

just do it

Ten Interview Questions for the Next Big Thing


What is your working title of your book?

my book is titled dailies

Where did the idea come from for the book?

the idea originated around the concept of capturing the sketchier outlines of the quotidian in a series of drafts that simulated a movie in production where the shooting script is shot into a rough series of frames stretched to one or two scenes

i splice collage and edit the lines as i would edit the daily rushes of a working film

i publish every poem on my blog really bad movies

What genre does your book fall under?

i am a poet i write poetry

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Richard Gere

wonderful actor and devilishly handsome

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

minor acts of an unfinished life

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

self-publish or perish or publish

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

the poems that comprise my manuscript dailies are a continuing series

i've been writing them for maybe a year or two

i think these poems can be several volumes long

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

i’m a great admirer of poet Jose Kozer who also writes in series

i suppose my own efforts are an analogue to Kozer’s Anima

i also learned from poet John Bloomberg-Rissman who publishes his series In the House of the Hangman nearly every day at his blog Zeitgeist Spam

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

a deep and abiding love of movies and poetry

poets are brothers and sisters in a big messy cacophonous family i am inspired by my brothers and sisters of the word

What else about your book might pique the reader's interest?

if you like 1970s Irwin Allen disaster movies then you’ll love my book

true story made up

7:02 p.m. at the crosswalk waiting for the light to change on k st. this dude sidles up to me real close the red light is a long one something is a bit off about this guy he's way too close but then the light changes green and i cross the street my backpack feels off so i slide it down my arm and see that the zipper is open i look behind me across the street at the dude who has this puzzled expression wrapped on his mug for he who had hoped to pilfer maybe a cellphone or laptop got instead the collected poems of thom gunn    

the dream

awoke at 5:30 a.m. to let sophie the hound out for her morning ablutions then back to bed to hit the hay for another hour and have this dream i am walking downtown passing a bus stop that had just let out one or two passengers i am walking fast and the bus slows down for me as if i want to board but i shake my head no and the bus starts off when i find myself side by side with the wheel well of the right front tire and the wall of the bus stop until i am in the wheel well and i think okay the bus will soon turn on to the road but instead the sidewalk rises and i am now pressed against the concrete of the sidewalk and the steel of the wheel well and i realize that i am in serious shit when i wake up