absolute music: i will always love rock&roll!

huh!

 

the oppression of the rights of one group of people is the oppression of the rights for all

task

 to read/write beauty mystery & magic in this ruined world

it got a little hot

 

smells of summer

what smells are summer smells to you?

for me there are a couple.  

a river smell.  i grew up here in Sac where we have two rivers, the American & the Sacramento.  both, in summer, have a rich, watery, vegetable smell married to a muddy/earthy scent.  you hang out on the water in summer & i think you know my meaning.

the drive-in theater.  when the daytime temperature climbed into the high 90s or triple digits F.  the heat that compounds the scents of gravel, car exhaust, popcorn, other treats, cigarette smoke, hanging heavy in the hot summer air.  it is a smell of decadence & of abandon.  the drive-ins were a place where dreams were made.  its smell was a perfume from a long vanished world.

it's a cats' world - we only live in it

 

by novica tadic [translated from the serbian by charles simic]

happy summer solstice!

jurassic world: dominion [2022]

i'm confused.  my natural state of being.  i recall the summer of 1993 & being so stoked to see Jurassic Park.  the crichton novel was floating around.  i think my brother read it first.  i picked up his copy & read it in anticipation of a summer blockbuster with real dinos!  this was my first summer with anna.  we met a few months earlier.  movie-going was an event.  a special occasion when you'd need to get to the theater in plenty of time to get your tickets & find a decent seat.

29 summers later anna, nick & i were searching for a summer thing to do.  go bowling?  have you seen how much bowling alleys charge for games & shoes?  go to the movies?  yes!  but what to see.  i've not been to the movie theater for at least three years.  movie-going has changed.  buy your tickets online, get emailed a QR Code for your tix, reserve your seat, hell, you can even buy your munchies online & have it waiting for you when you get to the theater.

sure there's still the obligatory half hour of trailers - which i love seeing - & commercials for the products you go to the movies to avoid seeing those same commercials for.  but the seats are large, comfy & recline.  man!  they are so good you can nap in those seats!  the surround sound system is killer & even if your neighbors are gabby the movie will roar over their noise & you forget you have someone sitting next to you loudly munching on a candy bar &/or popcorn.

the movie?  well, as i confessed, i'm confused.  i enjoyed the shit outta the original.  that summer blockbuster movie experience is something that can't be replicated in today's world.  but there's been so many sequels they blur into one movie.  this particular flick finds all the stars here together, sam neil, laura dern, bryce dallas howard, chris pratt, jeff goldblum, b.d. wong, et al.  the bad guy is a biotech billionaire, played by campbell scott, who has genetically modified locusts to fuck up the world's food supply for reasons that are murkily expressed.  he is also busy raising pure-breed dinos that roam free on his island bio-campus cum nature preserve. 

but this is a world where dinos are now part of the ecosystems.  pratt & howard live in the sierra nevada mountain range & are the guardians of a young girl with a modified genome.  this little girl is the maguffin of the movie.  she is kidnapped so the scientists of the bio-tech firm can learn her secrets.  the sierra nevadas are snowy.  in the mountains, among the deer, bear, & all the other critters, are feral velociraptors.  dinos in the snow?  what the fuck.  i'm supposed to believe that shit?  thus it goes for all the world.  dinos in every eco nook & cranny.  & the message of the movie is that we are all expected to live in harmony with animals that lived on a far different planet than the one we live on today. the baby velociraptor that live in the woods is also kidnapped for its genome too. 

still, it is fun to watch the evolution of the dinosaurs.  we know so much more about them today than even 30 years ago.  such as the relation of some dino species & birds.  some of the species of dinosaurs in this movie have feathers, for example.  & the technology to create realistic animals is extraordinary.  our heroes go on a world-trekking adventure to find & rescue the little girl & the baby dino.  do they succeed?  does a dino shit wherever it fucking wants?!

the director colin trevorrow doesn't have much of a script to work with but he keep the action going fast & hard.  i had to look past the plot holes & scientific inaccuracies.  i mean why would we assume that a species that has been extinct for tens of millions of years would roar to life with a yen for the skinny meat & brittle bones of a human body?  how the hell am i expected to believe that dinosaurs will roam the african veldt in relative peace with wild elephants or for us to be fine for them to make nests on the top of our skyscrapers?   

it was fun to get out for a couple of hours & tune in, turn off & drop out of common sense to enjoy a summer flick.  i do miss the old days when going to the movies was more spontaneous, chaotic & messy.  29 years ago we bought our tickets at the box office & hoped the movie wasn't sold out.  then we looked for seats in a crowded theater.  popcorn & other goodies has always been a bit more spendy.  but man was it fun standing in line for a ten-gallon soda & a five-gallon bucket of popcorn.  i love today's technology.  buying tix & goodies online is fast, easy & convenient as fuck.  i wouldn't go back to the good old days but i do miss, sometimes, those good old days.  i think the days of the movie theater as being the powerhouse it once was is gone.  but going out to the movies will never die.  it is fun as hell.  the very first poetry book i bought was living at the movies by jim carroll.  i've spent my life both in poetry & at movies.  & the greatest joy for me is watching a really bad movie.  on a hot summer afternoon with the loves of my life, anna & nick.    

jim carroll talks about frank o'hara & patti smith [for jonathan hayes]

it's saturday nite & the glance you take is backward to 1994

toad the wet sprocket is an under-appreciated band.  their songcraft is exquisite.  glen phillips' voice is so distinct he can't be mistaken for any other sound.  plus, this video, so caustic about mass consumption, could it be made today?  perhaps.  i dunno.  i'm not suggesting the past was a better country but would a major commercial network, such as MTV in the '90s, dare to broadcast the ALMIGHTY in a not so flattering light, like in this video?  again, i dunno.  this is music created before we definitively broke the world.  pre-9/11 & before the massive 2008 financial crash.  before the pandemic & a non-peaceful transition of presidential power.  four black swan events in these two decades.  still, the song flows.  & achieves what good art should do, bring us to our senses as it lifts us up too.  

it came from the trailer park! mako: the jaws of death [1976]

skateboard: the movie [1978] poster

 

moving in to geezerville

a couple weeks ago anna & i went to the pool.  it was opening weekend.  we figured this summer we will most likely be patronizing a few public pools so let's forgo the yearly pass & pay as we go.  & it happened.  age.  aging.  & people who view you as old!

see, when i got to the front window i said to the girl taking admission, 'two adults.'

'two adults?' she asked

yes, two adults

'well, adults admission is for 4 to 54.  you sure two adults?'

she was looking at me like dude you've long past adulthood & landed in the neighborhood of senior citizen.

anna busted up laughing.  a woman customer at the other window said, 'i wouldn't admit that too!'

but here's the thing.  we all get old.  if we are lucky.  i don't prize youth.  or youth culture.  so much.  i was young.  i enjoyed the shit out of my youth.  but you couldn't pay me any amount of money to repeat my youth.  

& no matter your physical age your mental age will always be around 25.  mine sure as hell is.  but fuck youth.  i want to grow into an elder rascality like my heroes ikkyu & nicanor parra did.  

as the late poet adam zagajewski wrote, 'i am no longer young / but someone is always older.'  & if i make it to the point where i am the oldest fuck around i will consider myself super lucky.  for in the history of humankind growing old is a luxury & privilege.  

i feel very lucky indeed.  doesn't mean i'm happy about moving into geezerville.  but what the fuck.  i don't have a choice about it as our little blue marble makes its orbits around the sun.  

i think this is the best time to be alive in the history of our species.  call that bias.  call it naivete.  in spite, & despite, our very fucked-up-edness i wanna live to see what happens next.  

& if i am not so fortunate to live as long as ikkyu & nicanor parra well i've lived longer than most humans have since the start of our species.  & i've seen some shit.  good, bad, evil & sublime.  we all have.  i am not unique to that.  but i am a poet.  for good & ill.  not a famous, good or well-known poet.  but i say i am a sentient being, & in the phrase by santayana, 'i am an ignorant man.  almost a poet.'  the trick today is to admit to your limitations & ignorance.  so much to learn still.  so much to read, listen & watch. 

eat the fucking ice cream today for there is none in heaven or hell.  but do take care for if you die from overindulgence that will be the end of your eating. 

it's friday nite & you wanna hear a song about birth, school, work & death

say it anyway

you know what i'm saying?

no.  do you?

no

say it anyway

i don't know if i have it in me to write a long prose work / but i know i have enough in me to compose a few lines

i am 55 today - poem by my man thom gunn

 

skate or

die

eat or

die

read or

die

write or

die

look or

die

watch or

die

listen or

die

fuck or

die

love or

die

live or

die

die or

die

whether it be age or no

 i am always at the beginning 

what time is it?

 the time is right fucking now

when you got nothing to say

 say it anyway

an ancient punk rock joke

q: how many punkers does it take to screw in a lightulb?

a: 20.  1 to hold the ladder, another to screw in the bulb, & 18 to get on the guestlist 

mission

there are many missions in our lives.  each one unique to their own person.  for me, one of my many missions is this

fall in love, always, with our ruined world

i was recently told by a master poet whom i adore that an optimist is a person without all the facts

is that not the task of the poet but to be such a fool

seriously stoopid & 

wide-eyed

sentient of

the horror

the beauty 

& my favorite poet is the one who i am reading right now 

this song can break your heart

yoda dropped out of his mfa program & said

'do DIY or do not do DIY 

 there is no try'