was it frank o'hara

who sd 

'mommas of america,

LET YR CHILDREN WATCH EXPLOITATION MOVIES!'

hey now

plump

soft                                    hard

thump 

has this happened to you

after a long day at work you sit down to write out the idea that sprang to mind at lunch & which has been buzzing all day like a shit-house fly but when it is time to write after dinner & clean-up & the hugs for your wife & son you now have the time to sit down & stretch out & explore the idea but you now have forgotten what the hell it was about

it happened again

post-spring 

when this 

month the 

temp was

cool as 

heaven

now it is

almost july

we return 

to satan's butt

hole in like

it is hotter

than hell

wednesday nite, summertime, at the drive-in!

for over 30 years this band has held my heart

evil dead rise [2023]

it's been a long while since i've seen a really fun, gooey roller coaster ride of a horror movie.  this flick, the fifth in the evil dead franchise, was written & directed by irish filmmaker lee cronin.  a pair of coworkers saw it at the theater after watching the very spooky trailer.  they reported back to me that the movie was okay but not so great as the trailer would leave you to think.  

so tonight,  i didn't expect much.  yet, cronin & his crew crafted a thoroughly entertaining revision & homage of the franchise as this movie steadicams its risen deadites into a blood red bacchanalia of terror.  lots of grue.  lots of the red stuff.  & an energy that threatens to give its viewers heart palpitations.  the fx is wonderful.  good old fashioned blood squibs at play here as well as physical features that are, in most movies today, made by CGI.  most likely CGI was used but from the first frame to its last it looks like, to this old horror fiend, it was good old-fashioned tom savini- style physical fx.

to say nothing of cronin's love & homage of the series.  there are a few set pieces that recall in loving detail the effects created by director sam raimi.  yet instead, we are treated to a new version of the deadites' call to chaos.  the plot is simple.  two estranged sisters, single mother of three kids, ellie, played by alyssa sutherland, & beth, played by lily sullivan, are reunited after beth, who is often on the road as a guitar tech, discovers she is pregnant.  ellie is a tattoo artist living in the Monde Apts. in LA.  her building was condemned & soon to be torn down.  the Monde is empty but for a few eccentrics.  the building is precisely what you would expect it to be: arrested decay.  most things, including the electricity, are spotty.  

after an earthquake, & hey this is CA where earthquakes are common, ellie's three kids return to the parking garage after going on a pizza run just as beth & ellie are getting reacquainted after a sizeable estrangement.  one of ellies kids, danny, finds a hole on the floor of the parking garage.  danny can't help but climb down inside the hole & poke around the ruins of what once was the vault of a bank.  that's where danny finds the Necronomicon, a volume of spells & images bound in human skin, as well as a couple of records from 1923.  danny thinks the book is valuable so takes it in the hope of giving the proceeds of the sale to his cash-strapped mother, & snatches the records because danny is also a DJ.  

guess what happens next.  fucking deadites are summoned & literally all hell breaks loose.  lily sullivan as beth makes for a very good final girl.  she finds the pluck to fight & save the youngest of ellie's daughters.  again, cronin is not beneath showing some very savage gore.  some of the set pieces made me squirm.  but i also loved how cronin made his movie & his love of my beloved genre is self-evident from the prologue which includes a scalping & a beheading, to a pair of scissors thrust into...well, see for yourself.  i think cronin stopped short of really making a nasty scary movie in the same spirit sam raimi did when he made the first evil dead movie in the early 1980s. think of young regan & her potty mouth in the exorcist [1973].  how shocking was that then & remains as shocking today.  cronin's script almost goes for those same heights but stops himself from going into some potentially problematic material.  should that be so?  let that question be answered by artists in their own way.  but one thing i love about the horror genre is how, historically, it shocks & disturbs our social being.  its fear generating to new ways of perceiving & thinking & doing.  

at any rate, it's been a long while since i've watched a new horror movie that scared & grossed me out.  even when i can see the conventions of horror being drawn , again, lee cronin created a movie that is fresh, red, & fun to see.  kudos to cronin & co.

it's saturday nite & you just had some kind of mushroom so feed yr head!

damn!  rachael price's voice is another kind of high.  i got goosefuckingbumps!

what a short strange trip it's been

anna & i have crossed that threshold where our child, nick, finished primary education & is in transition from childhood to young adulthood.  hie!  even today nick received in the post a questionnaire from the Fed District Court to determine eligibility on serving in a Fed jury!  whaaaat?!  already adulthood!  whatever labels we want to use to delineate & define the varied stages of our human being nick graduated from high school yesterday.  it was a marvelous thing.  but it wasn't mine or anna's day in the way that it was for nick who is just at the very threshold of life & still growing into person he is & to come.  i am shocked by how fast, how fleet, how quicksilver, time moved as it passed from the moment we brought baby nick home from the hospital to this day watching him cross the dais in acceptance of his high school diploma.  wow!  & to our son, nick, what seemed like a short, strange trip to your parents is to you the length of your lifespan.  to quote a song, you've only just begun.  our world that we give you is beautiful, savage, strange, sweet, mean & kind.  i can only imagine the marvels that await you.  so also, its cruelties.  but there is no word of advice, or counsel, i can give you but one, & that word is experience.  experience the shit out of life.  we have only one.  but here i am shocked into wonder, again, as i try to grasp that first stage of adulthood.  i think i remember mine own well.  &, to be quite honest & fair, i had a fucking blast.  i want the same for our son.  so go forth, nick, have a blast, be kind, & discover what you will become.  

i remember

the man in the parking lot of Tower Records on Watt Ave

moving from car to car as they parked 

& if he caught up to you he would thrust into your hand

a card with american sign language symbols 

printed on it for a donation of whatever you could spare

he did that for years as sure as christmas would come

words translated to words upon words

for a world of money

war said

'the world is a ghetto' 

yes it is & 

the world is 

a poem

i remember

the Sac 6 drive-in theater circa 2001 when the place had gone to seed the plumbing in the bathrooms was all busted there was water on the floor & god help you if you ordered food from the snack bar who knows if it was lethal but i noticed a girl as i stood outside of the snack bar making my rounds to see the crumbling playground the weeds growing in the cracks of the tarmac the skid marks of car tires on the pitted gravel the cracked glass of abandoned ticket booths & the hellscape of the untended car lots i saw her as i stood outside of the snack bar on the playground looking in the window to the condiment table as she dug into a massive bucket of pickle relish & she noticed me watching her with my expression that must've read to her amazement that she would take her life in her own hands by eating that relish on her hot dog

words you can taste

at the supermarket sighted among the rib eye steaks 

& rump roasts is cow tongue

on a blue platter made of styrofoam 

wrapped in plastic

one among several cow tongues that appear

to await the marvel & caress 

of the eaters who call this a delicacy

a cut of meat above 

cuts of meat but i recall my mother

buying & preparing tongue

because we were the working poor

& it was cheap

& me as a child thought it a kind 

of miracle to eat

a thing that can if you grant the conceit

taste you as you 

tasted it & so i would make up words

a language meant for 

cows to hear me explain my eating

of their tongue

the sounds of it making no

sense in english

words that betrayed my innocence 

& stupidity

but could of course speak cow

& have cow speak me

i remember

hot summer nights at the drive-in

like the long defunct Mather Auto Movies

where i saw movies like American Graffiti [1973]

& bruce lee in The Way of the Dragon [1972]

sometimes i'd be bored & asked my parents

if i could go outside & play in the playground

they could keep an eye on me & my brothers 

because the playground was right beneath the screen

& on those hot summer nights we would go to the snack bar

for treats & soda i loved the sound of my sneakers 

crunching the hard gravel of the car lot & the doppler

effect of the soundtrack from each tinny speaker on each car

but it was that time i walked back with my father from the snack bar

when the door was open to the projection booth located smack in the center 

of the drive-in because it was a very hot night & i saw it i swear

the projectionist sat in an oversized over-stuffed la-z-boy recliner

an old man with a pot belly & thick glasses resting on the bridge of his nose

reading a fat paperback while the cartoons were spooling on the projector

& as i gazed inside of the mystery of the movies i knew right then

what i wanted to do with my life

a favorite poet

wild turkey haiku

turn the corner on american river dr

3 toms encircle the streetlight

agentes secretos de la noche

plans upon plans  

it came from the trailer park!

just saw this documentary with b. at the Crest Theater & am totally stoked!  many of the ol' skool skaters were in the audience including producers tony alva [a la dogtown & the z-boys fame] & sac's own, actor/comedian brian posehn [that dude is tall!]  great to see my city & it's underground skate scene well-represented!  peace!

unbalanced day

 a.m.

knocked back by a car driving in reverse

+

p.m.

attacked on the street by a street person's dog

=

keeps you on your toes