senor raccoon

watching that rascal 

senor raccoon strut across my backyard

after bathing in my fountain

like a royal

high on pomp

he took out my water pump again

to wash his ill-gotten produce

a berry or a nut or a bit of carrot

i grit my teeth 

now needing to fix my fountain

goddamn it!

i watch in disbelief as he

waddles away to his next crime

perfect & coifed for it

what the fuck

he's left for me to do

is praise that fucker's name

it's friday nite & i got the blues!

it's saturday nite, september 21 - 'do you remember?'!

oh hells yeah!  this song is guaranteed to make you groove & light your way!

only shallow

in the last 10 years or so i've been considering or reconsidering the definition of antipoetry.  any casual reader of this blog would've sussed out my great & abiding admiration of the great antipoet nicano parra.  forsooth!  but what is antipoetry?  to use duchamp's definition of art in re his readymades et al. antipoetry [art] is whatever the maker deems it to be.  might that be a copout explanation?  yes, of course, it is because the products of human imaginative creation cannot be so easily or so blithely described.  because, for better & for worse, i have made my life in poetry.  might not be a great life, or even an interesting one to the casual observer.  but for me poetry is fundamental to my way of being.  at any rate, i recently read somewhere that defined antipoetry being surrealism mixed with pop art.  when i read that my blood quickened.  but, hold on!  i'm not too keen on surrealism [after all, considering all the events of our early century & even those who railed against the bourgeoisie of the 19th & 20th centuries might be swept off their feet regarding how strange our lives have become.  staid, our world, ain't.  with powerful magical technologies!  surrealism was a punch in the nose to ordinary middle-class boring life in all its forms, including the form of the owners of the means of production.]  but pop art!  i'm listening!  plus i think poetry lives in song but is married to speech.  ordinary speech.  graffiti.  memes.  porn.  movies.  pop music.  poetry.  videos.  oh my!  one of my favorite passages of rimbaud's une saison en enfer is where the speaker describes his loves of [then] contemporary pop culture: inane refrains, church latin, erotic novels innocent of spelling, graffiti etc etc.  rimbaud, mon frere!  so then art, antipoetry, poetry et al. is whatever you make it; however, you define it.  let that be on my tombstone!   

old man punk rocker credos

1.

keep it diy, motherfucker

2.

live fast    die old

it's saturday nite with a foxy lady!

 

Neeli Cherkovski and Jim Dunn — The Poetry Center

wonderful bit here when poet jim dunn says, 'i'm not a great poet but i am a great friend'

i hear that, brothers & sisters, & my batteries are charged to 11!  because what matters is not just the work we leave behind us, but how we've lived our only lives.  however, we see it fit our lives.  that is up to you, & yours.  but being a good person, being a good friend, is fucking tops with me.  i don't mean the goody-goody, wishy-washy, kinda good.  i mean being on balance a good person.  again, define that as you wish.  because being a good human being means being a complicated, multifaceted, complex person.  goodness as a category is always being redefined.  so make it count! 

please allow me to introduce mi brother's, jonathan hayes, new collection of poems!

 

i had a little hand with this book by writing the introduction & conducting the concluding interview of the poet.  i'm pleased as hell to see jonathan's book in print & for sale.  is the world ready for a blast of sunshine?  you bet it is!

you can order your copy of Ghetto Sunshine & Other Poems [1997 - 2023] by following this link, Ghetto Sunshine & Other Poems 1997-2023: Hayes, Jonathan: 9798329687255: Amazon.com: Books.  buy two!  

it's the end of summer & you wanna take one more journey - let larkin poe lead you to the 'southern cross'