after reading the poems of tom beckett

 now i need a cigarette!

it's a hot summer friday nite & you wanna watch a late '80s drive-in intermission ad!

self-portrait of the poet of the 21st C

 

a confession

when i watch/listen to a movie [fiction & documentary], music [live or recorded], extreme sport [like skateboarding or martial arts or boxing or roller derby or thumb wrestling], or read some rad poems, or see some cool pieces of the plastic arts, etc etc. i don't think about how i wanna do those things too [like skateboarding] i consider something the poet alex gildzen once said to me when i showed him pics of my father skydiving, alex said, 'i'd rather swan dive into the OED,' & but so, me too, i wanna know how those things can become part of my poetry

oh humanity!

--who the fuck is cutting onions?!--

happy summer solstice!

& remember, 'there ain't no cure for the summertime blues!'

the outhouse on hwy 37 going toward sonoma speedway

 

took this pic on the way to stinson beach this morning.  as we were stuck in traffic anna shared a video that uncovered the mystery of this lonely toilet located in the marshland outside of vallejo.  we were traveling on the 'richard "fresh air" janson' memorial bridge.  i've seen this outhouse for years & always thought it was a piece of environmental art.  well, it might be now.  but this was - is? - a real once-upon-a-time working outhouse.  'fresh air' dick installed this toilet in the early 20th C.  it is the only structure left of a little town in the marsh called Tubbs Island.

more information about the outhouse can be found by clicking here.

more information about 'fresh air' dick & his memorial bridge can be found by clicking here

J. L. Borges on English

the creature

watching the water duet of julie adams 

& the creature 

their dance in the black lagoon

& i know that i would be the creature 

if the tables were turned

somehow me watching my love 

drift in the near distance while 

i am alone in my transfiguration

of man & gill-man

& all i could do is reach my webbed hand

to touch barely her toes

ah! sun-flower

 

               Ah Sun-flower! weary of time,

               Who countest the steps of the Sun:

               Seeking after that sweet golden clime

               Where the travellers journey is done. 

               Where the Youth pined away with desire,

               And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow: 

               Arise from their graves and aspire, 

               Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.

           

               --william blake

          

buenos noches beetches!

 

drive in weather

summer heat 

sitting in lawn chairs 

beside the '71 chevy impala

a cooler of cream soda & cheap beer

& a bag of nacho cheese doritos

we are watching the cornpone movie

onscreen while

trying to get the sound to play

on the FM radio

when we hear the whine

from a plane flying right above us

we can see it spraying

vector control dropping insecticide

we remember the warning

as it was played on TV

the summer of mosquitoes

here is our collective need to kill

that which might bite us

or maybe it is a desire

to believe we have it all 

under our control

we watch the plane fly past us

the movie silvers the night

the sound is scrambled

but dopplers off the radios of other cars

death comes one bite at a time

quote unquote

metadada

--mark young

capt. willard travels in the underworld & visits the souls of the damned

[i'm sure i posted this scene before here but in my defense, this is cinema of the highest order.  this scene is a work of genius.  art at the first intensity.  i shit you not]

that kind of day

as always under

               the same old sun 

                             it was a long stretch of time

& drag yr big ol' carcass

                                              to work kind of

                                                         day