Trailer-Poem / Jonathan Hayes

                                  

                                  Unable to hold my chopsticks

                                  while watching The Perfection

                                  — I'll never eat Chinese food again

 

weeds

push & pull of weeds in the garden

                         i bend to the task

it is by poetry i unfuck the world

catching up

a friend texted me '& how are you'

whereby i thought about the litanies 

of anguish i feel regarding our uncertain

days on this third rock of the sun

but could i admit to ecstatic moments

like stepping outside the building after

a long day at the office where the mind

is shot & the feet are sore until

two blocks away the skies erupt into

a violently unexpected downpour 

when i text my wife 'it's fucking raining'

thinking that it will clear up i continue on

rather than getting pissed at getting soaked 

the wet of my shirt against my skin 

the petrichor of the new rain on the city streets

i am, in spite of myself, happy 

when a homeless man sees me taking shelter 

under a tree & says, 'how the hell did you find

the only dry spot here!  it is pouring, you 

are some kind of genius at staying dry'

which cracks me up & i tell him i'm no 

freaking genius but thank him for his 

good thoughts when he then says, 'stay dry

brother' & i say, 'you too brother'

whereby my happiness increases 

& i text my friend in reply, 'all is well here

in my domestic bohemia, in other words 

the same old same old, which is really a gift'

& i realize the routine things & the unexpected 

things are really a gift to experience

despite all the miseries visited upon us 

& the ones we cause because well shit

 

& fuck & fucking goddamn it all

move on move down move up

but moving we do because in the end

we got no freaking choice

it's sunday nite & you want to hear shakepeare's sonnet 116 in Original Pronunciation

independent record store day

today was it.  we met our good friends b. & c. to comb a local indie record shop for the auspicious day.  we bought a turntable as a family chrismas present.  we own still a buttload of LPs.  however, mine have been beaten & weathered while anna's remain in pristine condition.  plus, i must've been on a purge of vinyl decades ago because many of my beloved records, like the revered local punk band, tales of terror's eponymous1984 LP (a band that is said influenced kurt cobain), is missing.  i bought that record when it was a brand new release.  there were only a few thousand copies pressed.  & so when we set up our new turntable we went thru our record collection expecting to see tales of terror.  but no!  i don't know what happened to it.  did i give it away?  did it get lost in the intervening 40 years?  i don't know!

but i vowed today that if i found that album it is coming home to me. but, alas, no.  rather, searching thru the bins of the store, The Cave, in the punk section i discovered that record labels will produce specialty pressings of beloved albums for independent record store day.  the first thing i needed to get over was the sticker-shock on the price of the new vinyl.  the prices varied, around $21 to $45 bucks, depending on how many copies were pressed.  but then i took a step back.  if that record cost 12 bucks in 1982 & it costs 35 bucks in 2024 that even outs on account of inflation.  also, even tho vinyl is a popular item for music aficionados physical media has become a niche market.  because most music fans, including this dude typing, listen to music via a digital platform.  

again, going thru the bins of at The Cave brought out my inner 15 year old.  i loved it & had a blast.  i had several choices, like the d-beat crust british punk band, discharge, here nothing see nothing say nothing [1982], that i once owned & made a shitload of cassette recording off it, & a collection of live performances by the germs.  i do have still in my possession the record, gi [1979], by the germs which is pretty battle-scarred thru decades of listening.  but instead i chose a special pressing of group sex [1980] by the circle jerks, a great punk LP.  anna picked up a special record store day pressing by the english beat.

it's been a long, long while since i was in a record store.  i used to make regular stops at The Beat here in town when it was still around.  i used to feel self-conscious for being an older dude in a record store when record stores were still the place to get music.  like today, i felt a bit weird because my music knowledge is pretty extensive in respect to the punk bands that i grew up on & loved.  so when i was going thru the bins i was shouting to anna here is this & that done by whosit & so & so.  but i realised that as i was doing that kind of thing a woman around my age was also going thru the same bins.  no doubt she also has extensive knowledge about her choses genre of rock&roll.  she couldn't help but hear my outbursts & i'm sure she was thinking to herself, shut up poseur!  stop trying to impress! 

c'est la vie!  the world continues to churn & turn.  i'm nearly ready to set up shop in geezerville but i am still the punk rock idiot of i was at 15.  i am a different person, of course, but i love music, punk music especially, & to be at a record store looking for good music was something special.  as a sage from the 1980s said, you spin me right round round like record baby right round round round!

'i'm ready for a wild friday nite!'

 

absolute music

5:37 of ecstatic sadness.  a song for crying yourself to sleep.  david roback's quiet guitar.  hope sandoval's ethereal voice.  the pauses.  the phrasing.  the simplicity of the melody.  if gorgeous despair has a sound it is this song.  art at the first intensity & the highest order.  as if beckett on MTV, 'i can't go on i shall go on.' a great beauty.

on the path of totality

on the last total solar eclipse, in 2017, we were on our annual holiday in a little beach town time forgot, cayucos.  we were nowhere near the path of totality, which was further north in Oregon by several hundred miles, but we looked forward to seeing the partial eclipse on the beach.  we had our special eclipse glasses too.  but the weather didn't cooperate.  it was very overcast that day.  that didn't stop us.  we hopped into the family truckster, & drove into the interior of the CA Central Coast where we found a break in the clouds 70 miles inland at a farming community called Bitterwater.  we parked beside the elementary school.  soon we were joined by eight or nine other vehicles who were also looking for a hole in the clouds to see the eclipse.  we must've been quite an unusual sight because one of the teachers of the school came outside to ask why were parked beside her school.  she smiled when we told her we wanted to see the eclipse.  soon she was outside with a few of her colleagues to do the same.

my father did drive to Oregon to be in the path of totality.  he told me it was an awesome thing to experience.  really emotionally moving.  stunning one to tears.  

today, seven years later, the U.S. experienced another total solar eclipse.  the next one will be in 2045.  but the path of totality was not even close to my beloved town in my beloved state.  instead, we experienced a partial solar eclipse of about 36% of the moon covering the sun.  besides, i was at the office today.  i did manage to take a peek around 11:15 AM at the peak of the eclipse but in downtown, & without eclipse glasses, what i saw was kind of dimming of ambient sunlight, like very early sunset perhaps.  but we live in a remarkable age.  yes, we do.  i shit you not.  NASA's youtube channel hosted a livestream on the path of totality & tho watching the total eclipse online is definitely not the same as actually being in it NASA did a really great job.  for about two hours i watched several total eclipses starting in Mazatlan, Mexico & ending in Maine.  they even provided the view of the moon's shadow on the earth from the International Space Station.  mind blown!

i've been reading & hearing lots of hype about this total solar eclipse for a few weeks now.  especailly stories about the economic boon many small communities will get because of a large number of eclipse chasing tourists booking rooms & dining at local eateries.  i've also read online a darker side of the eclipse.  conspiracy theories.  stories about the rapture happening during the eclipse etc etc.  i don't remember reading about these things in 2017.  says a lot about our collective mental space at the moment, i guess.

at any rate, i would love to experience a total eclipse but at my age 21 years from now is a long time coming.  the next total solar eclipse will be on August 12, 2026 which includes Greenland, Iceland, & Northern Spain, among other areas, in the path of totality.  will i travel to any of these places?  never say never.  but Iceland & Greenland often have cloud cover even in summer.  Nothern Spain?  don't know.  probably not.  tho these are places i've always wanted to visit.  especially Iceland.  

still, i want to say that the path of totality is also a mental space, an interior of the mind & imagination, that can be visited when my own mental apparatus are working for it.  but that's not quite true.  the path of totality cannot be replicated by the willed power of the imagination & the intellect.  for solar eclipses, partial & total, are a fact of physical reality.  we can read about sitting on the sand of a beach & feeling the breeze, taste the salt air, & seeing & hearing the surf, but you really got to be there to really experience it.  

but if i might borrow a phrase from a pop song of a certain repute, i can have, sometimes, 'a total eclipse of the heart.'  we live in a remarkable age.  we have the calculations that can tell us the precise date & time for solar eclipses, partial & total, for the next thousand years.  we can also see evidence of these beautiful acts of nature in the form of video & audio.  when the camera operators removed the protective filters off the lenses during totality, & i could see the Daimond Ring effect, while in another screen i can watch the people gathered, now in darkness, & hear their awe & joy, i felt a sudden irrigation of my eyes.  for solar eclipses shows us the true scale of our solar system, its awesome size, & how small we are in relation to it.  then telescope that out more & realize our solar system is tiny compared to the Milky Way.  then telescope the Milky Way out to its small size in relation to the Local Galaxy cluster where our own home galaxy is one of 54 galaxies etc etc.  & in all that vastness we are here on our planet with the ability to think, to love, to hate, to have emotions such as awestruck & humility.  when i am reminded, & not for the first or last time, that we are made of starstuff & afterwards, when we die, our atoms, might return to the Cosmos, back to starstuff.  & forever be a part of the Cosmos until it too shall die.