life: a linguistic adventure

i read that the four main languages are manderin, spanish, hindi & english & i thought man if i could master these languages i could read most of the world's poetry

but what about icelandic, swedish, xhosa, estonian et al. how about those languages each a rocket ship full of poetries as well 

i despair that i shall never get to read all that i wanted to not because of poetry's abundance but because i am a limited human being that has only so many hours to live on this planet

in a way that's why i embrace technology for sure it doesn't make our lives simpler & easier but i can watch video hear audio of languages that i'll never understand as i know my own Inglish 

to watch/listen to poets in their own tongue to see their facial expressions their hand gestures well what would you give to have the opportunity to see keats read his poems on youtube or in an interview explain negative capability

so in a way language is cinematic 

so in a way poetry is found in the 1s & 0s of binary codes

furthermore i am still able to daydream but when i am doing something anything i have an inner dialog going on i process the world into words

Inglish for sure but i am part of our human being i will never know but i can try & i do watch video & listen to audio of our poets in their own words even so for i am a citizen of the republic of poetry that knows no borders

much in the way that i would rather watch a film with subtitles rather than dubbed into Inglish unless the movie is a cheapjack HK kung fu flick with terrible editing horrible acting & with kicks that go all the way up 

mixtape '92

back in 1992 i was dicking around college, taking classes, fucking off, living life.  this was the year i returned to school.  this was the year i met anna.  things just clicked with anna.  felt right & natural.  a week after we met, we arranged to meet at the pub on campus.  i met my dream girl & i knew i wanted to be with her from then on.  

i was also working as a custodian at night.  part time.  this was a great job.  a couple of hours of labor & the rest of the night was yours to do as you wished.  pay sucked.  but then again, i was an apprentice poet who spent most of his time in the library making one poetry discovery after another.  part of my nightly duties was cleaning the school radio station.  the university had a tiny transmitter that broadcast during the day.  i don't even know if the FM transmitter was powerful enough to broadcast to the whole campus.  i don't know who was listening either.  i sure as hell didn't.

but what the radio station had in abundance was promotional CDs, doodads, & other ephemera to promote this & that band or artist.  it was great.  i made a few discoveries.  i also made liberal use of their phone.  after i finished my duties i'd wander over to the station, paw thru piles of discs & call my great love, anna, on the phone.  i was in heaven.  & i made a mixtape that anna & i played so much, so often, as we were dating that the tape snapped & broke.  

music instantly returns us to our past.  but not just as nostalgia but music, like smells too, can immediately teleport our emotional being, our passions, our loves, our lost things as well.  music can make us live, at least for a little while, how we had lived.  today was a busy day at work.  anna & i were texting about our cat leo the pretty fierce.  he got into a fight with a neighbor cat & anna had to go outside to break it up.  as we were texting i thought of that mixtape that we played so much of that the cassette tape snapped apart.  i don't remember every song but i remember a few.   below are a few of those songs.

Sonic Youth - 100% (Official Music Video) - YouTube [huge admirer of sonic youth many years before this tune was released but this is one of their more succinct & structured pop melodies that has the right amount of clashing dissonance.  somehow i kinda think of this song as anthemic of that magical year '92]

Mary's Danish - Leave It Alone (official music video) - YouTube [this band fucking rocks.  their sound was so unique with two women singers with killer harmonies.  play this one real loud!]

The Beat - Tears Of A Clown (Top Of The Pops 1979) - YouTube [anna & i have seen the english beat, or just the beat, several times when dave wakeling started touring again about 25 or so years ago.  this song always makes me happy.  just an uplift in the beat & melody]

Happiness In Slavery - YouTube [this is an aural assault on the senses.  i love it.  this one demands it be played at 11]

now my memory has become fuzzy for these were not the only tunes that anna & listened to.  XTC is an important band to us.  so was the eponymous 1990 record Social Distortion.  so with that i shall leave these four songs as an emblem of that beloved mixtape & the start of our life together.  as an older band once said, what a long & strange trip it's been.  i had, & still have, a blast living it.  like i said, i married my dream girl.  i shit you not.  i'm a lucky motherfucker!

quote unquote

 ryszard krynicki translated by clare cavanagh

leo the pretty fierce cozy on a cold winter morning

physical labor: my first night at work

they tried to fucking kill me.  i was a skinny, pimply faced, 18 year old kid barely out of high school  my parents suggested applying to their company, Campbell Soup Co., which had a plant located in the south area of Sac.  apply for general labor.  they needed lots of workers for the tomato season when the harvest came in & was dispatched to the plant in the making of its products.

i got the job after a medical exam, hearing exam, & a short interview.  i was quickly placed on the graveyard shift.  i start at 10 pm & end at 7 am.  what was i gonna do?  they would train me.  bur first they needed to see if i was serious about the job.  wanted the reassurance that i would do the work necessary.  so on my first night they put me in the Flour Room.

what?  it's exactly what it sounds like.  this room was in the basement, or maybe even the deepest stygian depths of the factory.  in it were these great metal tubes that ran all over the plant.  my job was to open 50 lbs. bags of flour, wheat, whey etc etc. & shove the contents down these giant flues down those pipes that would become the stock for the soups made upstairs on the cook floor.  

i must've looked like a complete dork.  i know i looked like a complete dork.  my fellow workers was a tall skinny older man who was the boss of the room, & a younger college student.  the college student was a few years older than me & built like a lineman.  the older gent was a long-time employee who was steady & steadfast at his work.  his complexion was something else.  i can't describe it other than it seemed that he spent so much time in the Flour Room his pallor mirrored that of the flour & whey he poured down those flues.

the college student was a pretty cool guy who took me under his wing.  he showed me the most efficient way to get my knife to slice open those huge sacks of product & how to pour their contents down the flues with the least amount of physical resistance.  the room was hot, sticky, & the flour, whey, wheat etc etc. would stick to your skin & your clothes.

as for clothes we were all issued the standard white shirt & trousers.  sometimes you could finagle a white hat from the dudes who were in charge of issuing uniforms.  after a couple of hours i was spent.  physically exhausted.  yet this was my first night of my first job.  i sure as fuck wasn't going to let the work get the better of me.  i stuck thru it all night.  even the skinny old timer loosened up a bit for a few words of encouragement.

i'm convinced that the bosses of Campbell Soup Co. put me in the Flour Room to find out if i was serious about the job.  serious about working.  for the next night they placed me on one of the cleaning crews.  that work was so much easier on the old back.  indeed, one of the better jobs for the summer season was to be working the clean up crew.  but man, that first night was fucking tough.  was i tempted to give up?  fuck no!  i was prepared to work until i dropped dead.  

perhaps that was a stupid & naive attitude but i sure as shit was not going to prove anyone that they were 'right' about this skinny dumb ass kid.  besides, Campbell Soup Co. was a union job.  Teamsters.  pay was great.  time & a half overtime, double time on weekends & holidays.  i was making bank when my friends were making squat at minimum wage which at that time was a paltry $3.33 an hour.  

i remember lunch break on that first night.  i'd been lifting, slicing & pouring 50 lbs bags for about four hours.  i walked into the cafeteria with my pack of camel cigarettes & my stephen king book.  i got a burger, fries & a soda & sat down.  the college student just walked in too.  he ordered his food with two cans of soda.  earlier he reminded me to stay hydrated, drink lots of fluids, on the job for it is hot work.  he asked me how i liked it.  i told him, fine.  but i think they want me to die.  the college student took a sip from his can & stopped.  his eyebrows raised.  die? he asked.  yeah, this is the first night of my very first job, & they put me on one of the most physically demanding jobs here.  the college student laughed.  okay, he said.  just make sure they can find your corpse.  

it is fucking difficult to get the news...

as WCW said 'it is difficult to get the news from poems/but men die everyday/from lack of what is found there.'  [i quoted that from memory so sue me (but don't sue me!) if i got the lineation wrong.

but lo!  our world is in a topsy turvy place.  as crazy now perhaps as it was in WCW's days.  & his days were nuts, even murderous.  so i must confess that i pay way less attention to the news in print or broadcast media.  not that i don't want to know what is going on in the world.  only but for the creation of a small space for my sanity.

cuz the news wants to get clicks.  it needs your eyes & ears.  the best way is to engage your emotional responses.  the easiest emotions to exploit are fear & anger.  study exploitation movies for proof.  so i am reading poems, nonfiction, watching movies, & watching youtubers that give me pleasure & comfort.  

that's not a retreat from the world.  rather, i am better placed to absorb the states of our world & how they are presented to us via media when i don't watch the damn news all the time.  one can't live in a constant state of alert.  i need downtime.  dream time.  play time.  ludic not lunacy, dammit.

even as i am suffering from my first cold since the start of the pandemic.  it is just a cold.  but i got the coughs, sniffles & overall mien of daffy duck running from the little man from the draft board.  i am dying!  no not really but really.  i am dying.  & so are you.  but if we are lucky we are not dying anytime soon.

so to beat this fucking horse to death & allow me to be a bit didactic we should all practice humility.  after all, it was announced a couple days ago that we have officially hit 8 billion people on this planet.  our population quadrupled since i was born.  put that in your pipe & smoke it.  think you are important?  sure, but so are 8 billion other human beings.  a little fucking humility!

but goddam it!  ready my poems, my rants & watch some damn fine really bad movies.  why?  cuz we are all dying! & the news is not always that which is found in the media. 

i call forth a catullan poetics that is lusty, bawdy, profane & tells power to go fuck itself.  

fuckin' a!

i fucking love this poet

it's been a helluva busy day at work & you wanna unwind with the melancholy lush synths of a good darkwave band

journeys thru video clearance center

for a film buff a place like video clearance center is, to use a title of a song by the cure, just like heaven.  god, i can't remember when the center closed its doors but it must've been at least 11 or 12 or 15 years ago.  i was a regular.  not that i was on first name basis with the staff.  no, i was just that dude who'd come in, browse the stacks, & make a few purchases.  & what did the clearance center have?  VHS tapes & DVDs.  tho i suspect its bread & butter was located in a side room that you had to access via a closed door.  open that door & all sorts of 'adult' entertainment awaited you.  not that there was nothing wrong with that.  but i love horror movies & the video clearance center had a shitload of them for sale.  all sorts of movies.  disney, comedy, romcoms et al. awaited the discriminating shopper.  the place was huge.  a few thousand square feet of shelves of movies.  i'd spend hours going from one section of genre to the next.  what the fuck would i find?  it's been so long i can't remember the movies i bought there.  what i do remember is the condition of the place.  sorta scummy.  the floors looked like they need a good scrubbing.  the staff were fine.  no complaints there.  & i'm sure they developed a thickish skin for i think most of their customers were there to buy their skinamax kinda films.  but again, this place was located in a strip mall off of a major thruway, on Howe & Hurley, not far from Cal Expo, the home of the CA State Fair.  i loved it.  & i miss it today.  whatever you are looking for, today, you can find with a couple of mouse clicks.  but the object of your searching at the video clearance center was not the goal but the subject of your journey.  sometimes you didn't know what you wanted until you pulled it off the shelf & held it in your hands.  i suspect that the days of shopping in physical stores like this one are over.  not that physical stores are going away.  but their impact upon the shopping experience is forever changed.  not that i'm terribly old fashioned.  the internet has given me great good pleasure in rediscovering my love of horror/exploitation cinema.  but man!  physical stores like the video clearance center are in another dimension.  the smell, textures, & the stamina needed to search its stacks is another thing alright.  i miss it.  

two songs for veterans day

this tune by huey lewis & the news from their 'Sports' LP circa 1983 was written & recorded about vietnam vets.  i think this is a damn fine song about those men [& women] who served in that conflict.  larger still, this song can extend to all veterans of all our wars & police actions.  i am a life-long pacifist but i do believe that we have a duty to all our men & women who served this nation.  another thing as well.  huey lewis took his last name in honor of his stepfather, the great poet lew welch.  

this song by CCR might be the greatest anti-war song recorded.  arguably.  at any rate, 'fortunate son' has come to be an honorific for all those who, again, served in vietnam.  but also, it is for all our vets who, again, i say, deserve our highest duty re medical care, education, job training etc etc.  if you are asked to serve & potentially sacrifice your life in service of our nation then our nation has an obligation to take care of our veterans.  i say this as a hippie-punk pacifist.  fuck war.  honor our vets.  

William Burroughs shooting William Shakespeare

it's late.  busy day at work.  watched a couple of movies on disc.  then i remembered this vid of w.s. burroughs shooting a drawing of shakespeare done by ralph steadman.  this is a fun vid of w.s.b. even if you are no fan of guns.  funny that sometimes the most outwardly outrageous folks are also the biggest peaceniks.  make of that what you will.  but my man, one of my poetry mentors, jim mccrary is in this video.  he's the dude wearing the jean jacket.  you can hear mccrary's voice clearly when he asks, 'do you want powder burns.' mccrary was w.s.b.'s office manager for several years & knew the old beatnik very well.  when i watch w.s.b. doing his thing i know what i want to be when i also grow old.  

it's friday nite & you wanna see a zombie fight a shark

coming down from the sugar high of the spooky high holiday i've been unwinding the best i can.  that means reading, a little writing & watching horror movies.  this scene is from filmmaker lucio fulci's great 1979, zombie aka zombie flesheaters, answer to george romero's groundbreaking zombie film dawn of the dead [1978].  this moment in the pic is incredible.  yes, that is a real shark & a real dude.  no CGI.  no fakery.  just a zombie vs shark.  it is astonishing.  watch.  be fucking amazed.  & consider fulci's audacity as a filmmaker to even think up this scenario.  what the fuck was he thinking?!  at any rate, we are the recipients of the fruit of fulci's wild visions.  the movie holds up quite well.  this is a taut narrative of the world falling toward a new order.  of zombies!  oh my!