post pandemic haiku 

late june sunday

crickets sing at 101 F degrees

                what happens next...

my fucking memory

i'm watching [after a great many years] the film stir crazy [1980] starring the great comedy pair, gene wilder & richard pryor, directed by sidney poitier, written by bruce jay friedman.  i'd seen this film in the theater [hard top (my family distinguished between indoor theaters & drive-ins because we often would see movies at both kinds of venues)] on its original release.  i'd forgotten how funny it is.  damn it is funny.  really funny.  some moments are sublime comedy.  pryor & wilder were magic together.  they are a pair of misfits who are given a lengthy prison sentence for a bank robbery they didn't commit.  wilder possesses a particular talent for rodeo bull riding.  the prison warden wants wilder to compete in the annual prison rodeo.  wilder resists until he & pryor & a small group of fellow misfit cons devise a plan to escape during the rodeo.  i love this movie.  i recall the poet garrett hongo wrote a poem about this movie.  my former professor, the late poet dennis schmitz, told me about this poem.  i remember reading it.  but - fuck me - i can't recall its title.  i did a quick search online & i can't find it.  is my memory that fucked?  that i remember reading a poem by a specific poet & yet find no evidence of it?  could this poem about this movie be written by another poet & i assigned hongo's name to it in my very faulty memory?  hell if i know.  really.  which brings me to another peeve.  how can, in cop shows, when the cops interrogate a suspect &/or witness about an event that happened years ago & that interviewee can recall even the minutest detail.  i can't remember how i got to work on some days.  often i spend my time on automatic pilot.  my literary memory i thought was acute.  i've seen some movies so often that i can play them from start to finish in my head.  perhaps that is an illusion.  & my own imagination plugs in the holes that my memory creates.  what is memory anyway but a flawed hard drive of dubious data.  even my memory of this 41 year old comedy is corrupted.  so that as i watch it right now it is like seeing the movie for the first time. 

the greatest p.i. show - jim rockford was a bodhisattva

 monster hunter [2020]

it's been a while since i've written about the pleasures of watching a really bad movie.  i was once an avid dvd collector.  i still do cherish my discs, & my few vhs tapes.  i have a working dvd player & vcr.  yet, i find myself drawn toward streaming platforms where my viewing is now scandinavian noir cop shows, hk/chinese action films, s. korean zombie movies, u.s. & u.k. cop shows, canadian sitcoms et al.  least to mention deep rabbit hole youtube dives too.  i need several lifetimes to watch all that i want to watch!

& yet, sometimes a movie comes along, grabs me by the throat, & drags me thru its narrative paces.  monster hunter is such a flick.  i watched this pic this afternoon.  why?  because it stars one of my favorite action movie heroines, milla jovovich.  she is the bee's knees.  i dig her very much.  maybe it's because of her eyes.  she as a screen presence that belies the video game cum movie fodder.  she started in action movies as project alice in the resident evil franchise.  helmed by her filmmaker husband paul w.s. anderson these zombie flicks are about as scary as a moldy loaf of bread.  it's the action set pieces, the fx, the wild art direction, & the talents of jovovich that make these movies so fun.

this flick is no exception.  written & directed by anderson the movie is based on yet another video game.  how could i tell?  because the putative monsters from 'another world within this one' can only be killed by hunters like jovovich.  even the mighty fire power of the u.s. military cannot fell these fiends.  only a warrior skilled in martial arts, wielding a sword the size of a blue whale jaw, can kill these beasts.  jovovich is an army captain ranger in the middle east.  she leads her elite squad thru the desert only to find these weird markers stretched out in the barren wastes of the desert.  a sudden, fierce lighting storm lights up these markers.  lo!  our gang is trapped & then transported to a bleached out desert of sand dunes.  

whoa!  hold on!  what's that coming under the sand towards them?  a monster?  no shit!  suddenly these elite soldiers are greased one by one leaving only jovovich alive.  why is she the only survivor?  because her husband is making the film & she is the star!  but, hell, like i said, i love these kind of movies & i am a big admirer of milla jovovich.  i can watch her in almost any movie.  almost.  still, she finds her way to safety & befriends a local monster hunter played by another grand action movie hero, tony jaa.

do they get along?  does peanut butter go great with chocolate?  but not after doing some bang up fighting with each other.  then, as a peace offering, jovovich gives jaa a few bites of a hershey's chocolate bar who in turn gives jovovish a flagon of water.  they don't speak the same languages but they are friends for life.  more importantly, monster hunters for ever.  & so it goes until we find other locals led by the great ron perlman who can speak the queen's english.  good luck monsters!  because they are gonna get their asses handed to them.

or do they?  i'm not telling.  i will say that the plot is easily predictable & if you haven't figured out that this movie is based on a video game you will once you come to the conclusion.  as for video games, i admit to not being a player, but i think they are a formidable form of art.  like poems & movies.  sometimes video games get adapted to some fine films.  & sometimes, they are turned into movies like this one.  fully enjoyable.  goofy & fun.  starring kick ass action heroes. perfect summer matinee fare.  

exhaustion after a hard day's work of sleeping

 

post pandemic world

now that we are emerging from the long dark tea time of the soul [phrase from douglas adams] & we stray out of our homes into the sunlight of a newly awakened day can we pretty please for heaven's sake with sugar on top keep at least some poetry readings on zoom & other digital platforms?  i have attended more readings this past year than i ever could even if i had time money & means to travel to all these wonderful events held around the world.   sure, i know, being face to face with the readers in an audience can't be bettered but damn!  i love the intimacy of these digital readings for i can really focus on the words & music of the poetry.  i have traveled the world via digital technology to readings that i couldn't possibly attend in the physical world.  so please i beg of you please keep at least some of your reading series digital so that those of us who don't live in say s.f. or nyc or aukland or london or melbourne or belfast or timbuktu or tokyo or l.a. can attend these readings we citizens sans borders of the international republic of poetry.  

poetry is not a career.

there are lots of jobs poets can do

i.e. tax auditor, accountant, public school teacher, research scientist, plumber, finish carpenter, minister, public defender, even - gasp! - hedge fund manager

the sky is the limit for careers poets can have

poetry is not an occupation

poetry is an obsession

a way of happening.  a mouth, as auden said

a life

 anna asked me if i wanted some macabre info.  i said, yes.  she said, according to this [she must've been consulting some actuarial table] you will die at age 90 in 2057.  that's pretty generous.  i'm surprised i've made it to my mid 50s.  & for you young folks out there who might be reading this let me add to what all your older relatives said about the passage of life.  it goes so fucking fast.  for sure, i started this blog in '04 when i was a relatively spry 37 year old poet.  i am now fiftyfuckingfour.  yes, those years traveled faster than the speed of light.  but as for my age & date of my death.  i don't worry or think about it.  i would like to see our civilization at the end of this century & the beginning of the 22nd C.  ain't gonna happen.  i'll be lucky to see the middle of this new century.  & yet, i am not one to be depressed by my death.  it happens to all of us even if we might harbor the lie that somehow we are the one to escape death & live forever.  i am grateful for life.  i am grateful to be a sentient being in a relatively prosperous age.  the miracles of technology are not to be poo-pooed.  yes, these marvels of innovation are used for evil purposes.  but they are also forces for good.  i shit you not.  & just step back a little to look at the broader landscape.  you might find that life is a little better than it was even 20 years ago.  but i dunno.  i am not cassandra.  i am not an oracle.  i think, as rene char said about the poet, 'he bursts the bonds of what he touches.  he does not teach the end of bonds.'  take that for what you will.  i feel a relatively spry 54.  & yet i know i am growing older.  even on zoom meetings i wonder who that old man with the resting bitch face is in the rectangle with my name.  will i make it to 90?  i hope so.  i want to see how nick becomes a human being.  i want to know his own family.  but i want to make that journey only if anna is with me.  for she is the force that drives the green fuse thru the flower.  for me, every created thing is poetry.  as robert frost said, poetry is a condition of living; not an occupation.  but hell, should i not live to 90 what of it.  i aim for quality over quantity.  this is the only life i know.  there won't be another one.  & in this life i have been given an intellect & tools & language.  holy fucking shit.  how lucky is that.

it's friday nite & you want to see lorde come save this freaking world

i love the night sounds of the city: the ocean waves of the freeway traffic, the caterwaul of police, fire & ambulance sirens, the clack of a passing truck, the still air at 3:00 a.m., the doppler chop of police helicopters on patrol, the murmurs of the occasional passerby, the whir of the blowing wind thru the trees, the critters, racoons & opossums, on their midnight rounds, a poet who should be in bed

summer of love

i was born on this day of the summer of love 

holy shit!

how the years have flown 

Brandi Carlile - The Times They Are A-Changin' (Live on KEXP)

i fucking love this woman's voice!!

brandi carlile can sing me my grocery shopping list & i'd be moved to tears. hear her version of dylan's classic song. my god! the times are seriously fucking changing. the world i was born in to is not the world of today. we are not done with our changes. it scares the hell out of many of us. but we are in an utterly exciting time to live. in every way possible & conceivable. argue these points at your leisure. for the time are a'changing.

curve [2016]

mi brother in rhyme jonathan hayes emailed me this short australian horror film written & shot by tim egan.  i've watched it four times.  the first time i was a little less impressed by the arch of the story.  particularly the ending.  but on my second, third & even fourth viewing i have come to admire the mastery of its minimalist storytelling.  the setting is rather simple.  the tension it produces is profound.  a young woman wakes up from some sort of trauma.  her forehead is bruised & bloody.  her left leg is tucked up under her body like it had broken.  she is perched on the concrete ledge of an unidentified abyss.  she is stuck.  trapped.  each movement of her body slides her a bit more to the edge of that black abyss.  egan raises the pitch up into a waking nightmare.  for who has not suffered from such a terrible dream.  trapped.  with no escape.  it is brilliantly told & harnesses the flat tones of grey that form a depressive state.  the sound design is wonderfully chilling.  this short is about 10 minutes long.  at the risk of using something that sounds like an old horror movie tagline, dare to watch curve.  just don't forget to breathe.