quote unquote

 AGAINST THE POLICE
 
My entire Oeuvre is against the police
If I write a Love poem it’s against the police
And if I sing the nakedness of bodies I sing against the police
And if I make this Earth a metaphor I make a metaphor against the police
If I speak wildly in my poems I speak against the police
And if I manage to create a poem it’s against the police
I haven’t written a single word, a verse, a stanza that isn’t against the police
All my prose is against the police
My entire Oeuvre
Including this poem
My whole Oeuvre
Is against the police.

--miguel james [translated by guillermo parra]

from my front porch

i can see the police helicopters circling
their bright cyclopian eye of
surveillance
the protest at the state capital
& our country
of the people
for the people
by the people
the anger & the rage
the clouds of tear gas
the riot of flash bangs
& rubber bullets

tell me again, my love
'who broke the world'

holy shit

reading the cantos by pound on the john
my fingers break thru the paper

windows open wide to a cool spring breeze
a garden spider on the screen of my laptop
only one us of will make it out of here alive

fatherhood in the 21st century

                                                 means trying to explain the psychedelia of 1970s McDonaldland characters to your 15-year-old

who was Mayor McCheese or why a big purple Grimace representing milkshakes was named after a facial expression of disgust 

what's in a name

a couple of days ago i wrote about the student poets of oceana high school located in pacifica, ca.  i said that i really dig their individual names; so representative of the cultural & ethnic diversity that makes my beloved state such a great place to live.  i also said that i also like my own name because it also represents the diversity of my own heritage & culture[s].  but the name richard lopez is so common as to be something invisible.  as a writer i love the sound of words & so there are some names that are much more attractive to my eye & ear.  still, i've never tried to change it even tho i experimented with the spelling a ala paul celan did with his own surname, & i never took a pen name even tho i played with the idea to add the adjective 'little' in homage to the great rocker little richard when i started sending my poems out in the world.

beauty, by all measures, is subjective.  what i find attractive another person might think silly.  & vice versa.  still, i keep my eye open to the name 'lopez' in art & culture, pop & not.  i'm obsessive that way.  some things stick in the mind.  like the punk band LOPEZ that i found in the bins of the late great sacramento based record store The Beat.

The Beat shuttered about 7 or so years ago, a victim of our digital age.  i loved the store & would often stop in on my way home from work.  The Beat was the record store for independent music, other than the deep catalogue of Tower Records [another great record store founded in my hometown & another victim of out digital age].  The Beat was the place to get punk records, & to purchase tix to punk shows.  the shop had grown from a little corner on h st to a large emporium on j st.

i miss it.  digital live is great.  finding stuff in a half second is pretty freaking cool.  yet i miss the adventures & discoveries of going in to The Beat to find perhaps something you were not looking for & didn't know you needed until you pulled it out of the bin.

that happened one of the few last times i visited the store before it closed for good.  i was going thru the bins and found an eponymous cd by a pacific northwest band that i never heard of LOPEZ.  the disc was about three bucks & i turned it over in my hands several times.  i recall the cover art was just the band members in a car.  & nothing else.  i liked their name, for obvious reasons, & i wondered why the chose the name LOPEZ.  as i said, i would often visit The Beat after work & for some reason i put the cd back where i found it & went home.

why didn't i buy it if the cd was only a few bucks?  i dunno.  perhaps i thought i would find it later if i really wanted it.  i have a bad habit.  often i won't get the thing i most want even when i can afford it & it won't cause any harm to me or my family members.  like this eponymous cd LOPEZ. i do what i can to not behave this way.  i am not much of a material guy.  i love books, music & movies & increasingly those things are converting to digital.  yet, i love the physical thing so even if i can download pdfs of books by the late great poet bill knott i cherish my published hard copies of his books.

but i didn't buy LOPEZ.  i couldn't find anything about the band either online.  no bandcamp, no youtube, no twitter.  there are a great many artists & musicians with the name lopez that i have found but nothing about a punk band from the pacific northwest.

until tonight.  i haven't looked for a very long while but anna & i were sitting on the couch looking shit up using our phones.  i told her about my finding LOPEZ cd at The Beat but have not been successful on finding anything about the punk band on the interwebs.  we continued watching a series on netflix & looking up random shit via our phones.

then a little while ago i do a quick google search 'punk band named 'lopez' & i find this blog post about the band.  holy shit.  this is the band i remember from so many years ago.  the thing about the internet is that it is a repository for all of culture.  eventually it will be remembered & /or archived on the 'net.  & so it is for this band.  i still haven't heard their music.  all i know is that they are a punk band from portland that have adopted LOPEZ as their band name.

names are important.  i would ask why use a surname as the band name if i were interviewing the band members as this blogger interviewed the band members.  i should've got that cd when i was able to.  perhaps i thought i'd have another chance on another visit to The Beat.  or i defeated myself as i described above when i held that cd in my hands debating to myself to buy it.  but i am happy to have found something about the band.  at least i didn't hallucinate them into existence.

& that's the thing about digital life.  every era in our history of media, like recordings, photographs, & film, can almost always be found on some server somewhere in this world.  & that we are all connected via these servers & our devices.  from pdfs of our favorite writers to movies on streaming platforms.  we connect via social media, even if some of that connectivity is toxic [human beings will shit in their bed too.  don't ask me why, some just do].  it is a great delight to finally find some information about this punk band that i remember some years ago as i combed thru the bins of one of the great record stores of a bygone age.  what is their name?  LOPEZ

political poem

you've gotta be shitting me

middle of the night poem

rubbing my sleep-gummed eyes
                                          whoooooo!
                                          what a day

american high school haiku

after a long & enervating day at work, after my walks to & from the office, where i was witness to most people outside on the streets walking their dogs, going for a stroll etc etc wearing masks & practicing social distancing i was thinking yeah, we are not so bad, we can do the right things, then on my way home i couldn't believe my eyes, restaurants open for dine-in service, the eateries were packed with people, the staff were masked, & the tables were spaced apart, but these spaces are tight, & you can't eat or drink wearing a mask, so social distancing in these establishments are for nought, & the whole district was full of revelers partying like it is 1999, i wonder what the fuck are these people are thinking, the virus is raging, the risks are grave, & tho i feel the need to hang with my friends & go out to dinner & a couple beers, too, right now is way way way too fucking soon, i despaired at our species

then i got home exhausted, saddened, & angry when i find a small package from my brother from another mother jonathan hayes arrived via that wonderful american institution the united states post office, i open it & find all these booklets published by richard robert hansen' poems-for-all series,  these are haiku inspired by jonathan hayes' vernacular haiku written by high school students from oceana high, an alternative high school in pacifica, as a project led by their teacher, & contributor to ah: american haiku, dakota milliwee, these are so beautiful, the book design by richard robert hansen, the project, & the haiku, that my loathing of our species abates & i wept in gratitude that our human being has moments of grace like these young poets' work, & the beauty of the books they are published in, so that i must note these poets' have great names, i am attracted to names, perhaps i am because my own name is pretty plain, tho lately i am starting to like my name because it is the label i have for my own hybrid person, & i see that these young persons' names are so very american, representative of this nation's cultural diversity, the rising minority majority soon to be dominant in the united states, & that these young poets who possess cool names, who are the future of this country, & their haiku, my anger immediately receded & was replaced by a sudden irrigation of the eyeballs

quote unquote

man is least himself when he talks in his own person. 
give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

--oscar wilde

[truth: go into public places; wear your masks! motherfuckers! stay safe!]

in these uncertain times
for michael dennis
                                    when the virus is raging
like wildfire & the political structures are shaking
to amend the coming economic collapse & the overall dickery
of our species i will remember what the poet paul la fleur
said, to be a poet is not about writing a poem it is finding a
                                   new way to live  
i will do my best to live in these times without being an asshole 

extinction [2018]

i do like me some end-of-the-world type pics.  but somehow, or some why, i'd been avoiding this particular movie starring michael pena as ur-family man peter.  peter has a good job, tho i can't tell you what it is since he labors in some hi-tech factory doing, well, something, in a sterile white corridor.  he is well-married to a pretty & highly intelligent city planner, alice, played by lizzy caplan.  they have two adorable daughters.  the family live in the middle of a city not far from both parents' jobs in a fashionable hi-rise flat.  oh, the tech they use indicates that they live either in an alternate earth, or some time in the future earth.

but the problem is peter who suffers from nightmares so debilitating to affect his work & family life.  peter dreams that his family are slaughtered, he is slaughtered, &/or engaged in a violent rebellion.  against whom or what?  & that is the nub that made me want to throw my popcorn at the screen.  the twist is silly.  & perhaps even unnecessary if there were revisions in the shooting script.

i had figured this movie is another in a long line of alien invasion flicks.  the streaming platforms are agog with these apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic films.  some do a decent job.  some are unspeakable.  i am not familiar with filmmaker ben young who helmed this monsterpiece.  or the writers, or the dp either.  damn!  the concept of the action is a decent one.  even the twist that i dare not reveal for fear of spoiling it for you but also because i would like to excise it from my grey matter.  oh, to unsee what i have just seen!  for it is not what it advertises itself. 

perhaps i am a tad unfair.  young et al. do a credible job with the narrative build-up.  the special fx are pretty damn good.  pena, caplan et al. are game players in a cast of goofball dynamics.  & yet, the writing lacks clarity.  what could the filmmakers & cast do with such a script?  rewrite!  alas but no.

& the denouement suggests a sequel can be easily added to the story.  i sure the hell hope not.  my constitution couldn't bear another iteration of this story.  one viewing of this one picture is enough for me.  but for the totality of the movie i accept;  i endured it so you don't have to. 

poem

do you ever get the urge to write
but you got nothing to say?

yeah, that's where i'm at right now
a feeling of great release

nearly at the end
without even starting

now for a little something to blow your mind

mask up, motherfuckers!  stay safe

 

rock is dead long live rock&roll

death doesn't do no holiday.  among the thousands upon thousands of dead in this fucking pandemic we lost a few good ones from other causes too.  florian schneider, founder of the great electronic band kraftwerk, dead at 73.  michael mcclure, one of the original beats & sf renaissance, dead at 87.  & today little richard, great rock&roller, died today also at the age of 87.

these men all lived full & long lives.  each one had some influence on my own development as a writer & human being.  but none more so than little richard.  i love rock&roll.  sue me.  i have many friends who adore other forms of music, such as german lieder, classical & jazz, who give me the side-eye when i declare my love for hardcore &/or yacht rock. 

i was pupped out of pop music.  it is part of my dna.  i grew up on punk rock which gave me a home & nourished my splintered working-class roots.  but before i discovered black flag, flipper, d.o.a, minor threat, social distortion, the dead kennedys et al. i really wanted to be a greaser.  yes, i was the kid in elementary school who used royal crown pomade for my dumb ass duck-trail hairdo.  i had a faux leather jacket that i stenciled THE LORDS on the back in homage to the fictive greaser gang from the film The Lords of Flatbush [1974] starring sylvester stallone & henry winkler.  & when i started writing, taken myself as a serious poet [in thought, word & deed] i had considered taking on the moniker 'little richard' in homage & deference to the man who sang lyrics as manifold, meaningless & ludic as the great dadaist poets. 

i adore early rock&roll.  little richard, who called himself the architect of rock&roll, has a secure place on my mt. olympus.  that voice, that way of hitting the keys on the piano, his massive sexual energy, chemistry & charisma.  he was the dude that could always get me to shake my toes. 

little richard's songs, at their best [rarely were they not at the first intensity], are timeless.  they sound of their era, yes, but even these songs that are close to 70s years old, are fresh & intense.  my god!  his voice.  how the hell did he not shred his vocal chords. 

there are better appreciations you can find for little richard, or florian schneider, or michael mcclure, than what i am saying here.  but i am not interested in writing an analyses of their art or a mini-bio of their lives.  rather, i am recording, especially for little richard, my profound respect & appreciation for their being alive & creating in my own lifetime.  no one is getting younger.  we start our journey toward death the moment we are born.  death in your 70s - 80s is a pretty damn good run. 

death fucking sucks.  it continues working even as we are made dizzy from these extraordinary times.  & yet, as the poet said, death is the mother of beauty.  i am grateful to be a witness to such beauty.  as i said above some may not think of rock&roll as high art.  but what the hell does high art even mean?  what is low art?  art is where you find it, & that is often in the heart, the sex, & the mind.  little richard hit it out of the park.

little richard is dead.  long live little richard.  

a bit of marxist rock&roll
 

looking out the window a pair of mourning doves
building a nest in the japanese maple
i adjust my mask

found poem

 

see this movie

this flick surprised the hell out of me it is so good.  i shit you not.  shot in 16 days on a budget less than your mortgage payments for 3 months the filmmaker writer & star of this pic done the miraculous: re-invent the zombie film that feels about right for our present pandemic moment.  now i know this flick was made way back when, about 8 years ago, but the world has changed for these two characters even if one refused to know it.  our world has changed because of covid-19 even if we have a few who refuse to know it too.  changed into what?  i freaking don't know.  i don't have a crystal ball.  yet, it is in the air.  these changes are afoot.  it ain't a zombie apocalypse like in this movie.  our society won't collapse.  and yet, i thought 9/11 was the moment when the world changed.  not to minimize that great horror but i think covid-19 might make even more profound changes to our civilization.  then again, maybe not so fast.  who knows.  but this pic is magnificent.  i watched it this afternoon & i didn't expect much.  it is a low budget horror film.  but man, it is better than good.  watch the trailer.  then seek out this movie.  you can find it on amazon prime.  you can thank me later.