this song is for anna

a very favorite live performance of mine by any band &/or musician.  may we, after this catastrophe, again meet, love, sex, & dance sweaty to good music in crowded clubs, halls, & other venues.  

Come and See (Modern Trailer)

after watching clips of this flick for over a year i finally watched the full length over the weekend.  it was a shitty print.  i'm still trying think how to write about this movie.  this is a war movie.  this is an anti-war movie.  this is an anti-nazi movie.  this is a bildungsroman.  this is the most powerful horror movie.  the russian filmmaker elem klimov created a masterpiece.  in every way.  sound design, photography, lighting, editing, art direction, & especially acting.  klimov used non-actors.  he used live ammunition.  if you haven't seen this film you are in for a gut-punch experience.  we have no u.s. war movie that is its equal.  this is cinema of the highest order.  this is art to the first intensity.  this is a movie that will fuck you up.  

LA Story - Springtime in LA

The Linda Lindas - "Racist, Sexist Boy" (Live at LA Public Library)

mi hermano in rhyme, jonathan hayes, sent me this video of the teen punk band the linda lindas performing a ferocious song.  makes this old punk's heart glad to see young people pick up guitars, bass & drums to make music with, in the phrase of bono, three chords & the truth.  to quote a classic double lp of northern california & nevada punk bands, compiled by the great zine & radio show, maximum rock&roll, all is not so quiet on the western front [alternative tentacles; 1982], 'if punk is dead, what the hell is this?'

it's friday nite & you want to drive, roll down the windows, & turn this up to 11

when the late astronaut michael collins [1930-2021] , orbiting the moon in the command module Columbia in 1969, while fellow astronauts neil armstrong & buzz aldrin were the very first humans to step on to the moon, the very first persons to leave footprints on an alien landscape, took a picture of the earth & the lunar module Eagle as it made its descent, he took a photo of the whole of humanity, every single human being alive at that time, except for himself 

 re freedom

rene char said, 'the poet burst the bonds of what he touches.  he does not teach the end of bonds'

***

& dylan thomas said, 'time held me green & dying/tho i sang in my chains like the sea'

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& janis said, 'freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose'

***

while brendan behan said, i respect kindness in human beings first of all, and kindness to animals. i don't respect the law; i have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer.

i watched an interview with NYC poet john godfrey who detailed his writing practices over the many years of his being a poet.  because of his demanding job as an AIDS pediatric nurse he would chip away at a poem over days or weeks.  but since his retirement it can take him minutes to complete a poem.  i'm reminded of what mi hermano john bloomberg-rissman said about poetry after taking up the art again after a several year hiatus.  john b-r read a poem in APR & said to himself, is that all there is to poetry?  & i think of something the bay area poet/lusophone translater chris daniels said about poetry.  it is as natural as breathing.  & taking a shit, i would add.  what does being a poet mean?  how do you know you are a poet?  how the fuck should i know.  but i think that you are on the path of poetry as a way of life when you are obsessed with poetry.  you think about it all the time.  everything you find interesting is fit for poetry.  non-writing poetry is poetry.  when you walk your dog you think of poetry, in poetry.  when you do ordinary things, live an ordinary life, & consider how to translate those things into words, is poetry.  poetry, to paraphrase the possible apocryphal danish poet, paul la fleur, is finding a new way to live.  writing a poem is the sum of your years plus five minutes time. 

evidence of changing world

a couple of weekends ago anna asked if i had a couple of dimes she could use as spacers for a home improvement project she was working on.  a little lightbulb snapped on above my noggin.  yes, yes i do have two dimes, i said. i procured them.  they were just the right size for her doing an amazing job.  a week later i'm sitting in the backroom, laptop open, writing/reading/watching/listening.  here you go, anna said.  & returned my two dimes.  you could keep them, i responded.  & do what with them, anna asked.  i don't have a change jar to put them in.  i considered that.  i very rarely carry &/or use cash too.  i don't remember how i acquired those two dimes.  here are your dimes, anna continued.  i don't want them.  this isn't 1998. 

i've become a little obsessed with cop/p.i. shows.  we seem to be living in a golden age of flawed brilliant malcontents who play by their own rules to get to the truth.  i know many poet friends are long deep readers of detective/crime fiction.  the tv shows, like the one i'm currently watching, bosch [2014 - ], are very well-written, complexly created fictions of our underworlds.  the p.i./detectives in these series are usually brilliant, yet flawed, characters.  i do think the attractive portions of these fictive personalities, their dogmatic drive to uncover truths, waylaid by the circumstances of their employers, their societies, their own visionary quests, are similar to poets.  perhaps that is their attractiveness to writers, & creatives [doesn't have necessarily need to be only to writers].  the fascinations with crime, the desires & demands of justice too.  plus their language, albeit on the visual spectrum, such as lighting, editing, blocking & acting of their scenarios, but by their language too.  i recall dashiell hammett's antihero p.i. sam spade who said, in the novel the maltese falcon [1930], 'the gaudier the patter, the cheaper the hood.'  & i wonder if crime writers ever modelled their antiheroes after poets.  i can think that the visionary intelligence & personality of arthur rimbaud could make for a very interesting p.i./cop.  could be too that poets [& other creatives] come to love & admire the p.i.s & cops of crime fiction is that they are, to use a phrase by the late poet richard hugo, the wrong people in the right world.  the world is thus & can't ever be otherwise but the need for clarity & visionary justice creates forth obstacles for our antiheroes who sometimes win the battles but not the war.

saturday night's alright for fighting

naw, on 2nd thought, tonight i'll strap on my squirrel thong watch a cop show & thoughtfully pat my ever-expanding 50something buddha belly!

 i'm in the mood to buy a squirrel thong.  anyone know where i can get one?

r.i.p. tawny

echoes 

be skeptical 

keep yr shit funny 

the world is always the 

case but in...

it's friday nite & you wanna watch/hear Genesis from 1981

listening to this song is like aimlessly driving around with your friends on a hot summer afternoon

gestural koan 

what is the 

sound of one 

hand spanking?

Brandi Carlile - The Joke (LIVE at the 61st GRAMMYs)

holy shit! 

i'd say something.  something.  but i'm curled in the fetal position wiping away boogers & tears.  damn!  this woman's voice!