Really Bad Movies

2012-02-01T22:37:00.000-08:00

turning in the decrepitude

i'm deep into will hermes' book on the music scenes in 1970s nyc, love goes to the buildings on fire: five years in new york city that changed music forever [fsg, 2011]. nyc in the '70s was for some a cesspool and emblematic of all that was wrong with u.s. cities: high-crime, poverty-stricken, dangerous, dilapidated, and so on. what hermes' book shows is that beneath the surfaces of all the grit and grime was revolutionary sounds percolating amid a popular music scene that was roundly criticized for its perceived sterility.

i bought the dvds for season three of the cop sitcom barney miller. the years for the third season are 1976 and 1977, the era hermes chronicles in his book. miller is a favorite tv show of mine. i've always admired and related to the zen-like quality and intellectual goofiness of det. arthur dietrich, played by the late, wonderful comic steve landesberg. often the episodes were penned with much wordplay so much so that one show had both dietrich and miller trying to one up each other by quoting dickens. it works.

very often the humor in miller comes from a deprecating knowledge of characters stuck in a city in decay. entropy is the rule of order. the city's looming bankruptcy, the environmental crises predicated on jokes about acid rain and polluted snow, brown-outs and black-outs, cuts in departmental fundings and threatened police force lay-offs. it seemed like it was the end of the road.

i look back to that era i see fecundity, humor and survival. there's a beckettian grace as the characters of miller go thru their staccatto rythms. in the music as investigated by hermes there were small miracles. the talking heads and television on fire at cbgb. anthony braxton performing in lofts. bruce springsteen proudly declaring his natal city of asbury park, new jersey. looking back at 1970s nyc i see individuals and groups of individuals not making due with what they have but taking what they have and making it new.

which might be said for any era. i wish i could point out object lessons for today. because often it does seem like it is the end of the road now. yet lessons taken from the past are not easily come by. or if they are those lessons could very well be proven false. i can't help it. it's probably because i'm on optimist by nature. i look at the worst era for nyc, or one of the worst times for the city, and i find great beauty. i'm not the only one. proof too with hermes book on the era. people don't necessarily stagnate. sometimes they do. oftentimes they do not. we turn in our perceived decrepitude in order to create because if we stop then we stagnate. then we die.

2012-01-30T21:59:00.000-08:00

quick note on a good read

for a while i lost touch with a poet who i consider a good, if geographically distant [because i'm west coast and he's east coast, and i rarely leave my burg], friend, steve caratzas. if you clicked on that link you'd see steve's not updated his blog in over a year. a few weeks ago i was curious to see what he was up to so i googled the hombre and found a few of his poems published here and there.

i also discovered caratzas recently published a new chap, past present suture [drifting man press, 2011]. i ordered it right away. a few things are different in steve's verse. the work still retains a tough rind but has become structurally ambitious. i once compared caratzas to a meat poet. a meat poet was a label used on writers publishing during the mimeo revolution of the 1960s and 1970s where the work was simple and brutal. early bukowski fit the example; so does sac's own douglas blazek.

these aren't poems that are throwbacks to an earlier era in publishing. instead, steve's formerly snap-in-place linebreaks are looser and enjambed. these poems remind me a bit of australian poets like david prater or liam ferney or paul hardacre. if i lose the thread here it's because steve's poems sound and nearly behave like i've known them in earlier chapbooks such as It Will Be A Train [2004] and The Incredulity Tour [2005]. yet the toughness of these earlier texts have yielded to an ambition in the making of these newer poems.

Blue Noise

We could use the discouragement
so gimmie gimmie gimmie some
pain that lavender scented everything
makes nothing feel better who knew
though I have long suspected life is
tricky sometimes in a sweet way too
but you know the tune better than
most unlush life without a roman collar
on nor god nor irony and something
about men and their fear sets you free
under the influence of me arms without
hands on the jackpot didn't you? I hadn't
thought about it was you and you only
such infernal appraisal is final approval.

i love how this poem quotes, i think, song lyrics. that's how i read it since the line '[s]o gimmie gimmie gimmie some' sound to my ears a lot like an early black flag tune rasped by henry rollins. it is one of the many pleasures i have with this book. caratzas is also a musician and his craft with sound is plenty abundant in the many slant rhymes in the lines.

these are fluid, ambitious texts. but the old caratzas makes an appearance in the book too. many pieces are flat out funny and they are poems of work and working for a living. steve caratzas is a full-blooded 21st century writer. one whose poems embody not just the life of the text but the life of the writer. take this poem to the office with you.

Life Among the Cubicles

I've completely lost my will to live
I wonder what I should have for lunch
I can't believe that pig is married
It smells like someone is eating stir fried shit
No one cares about your trip to Baltimore

tell me you don't recognize yourself in that piece. anyway, this is an excellent chap and i'm glad steve is alive and writing.

peace

2012-01-28T01:18:00.000-08:00

one of the most moving love scenes in u.s. cinema -- ever!!!

2012-01-27T22:32:00.000-08:00

a few thoughts on aging

maybe half-thoughts, or inklings, or low glimmers. at any rate, the poet donald hall published a lovely essay on aging in a recent issue of the new yorker. hall was born in the 1920s and is now 83. hall has a huge gusto for life [yeah, i know. who doesn't] and tho i'm so-so on his work i do have a book or two by him and i think he's a tremendous talent. he's as talented a prose writer as he is a poet tho who is making the distinction. after all, writing is writing no matter what you call it.

what i loved of hall's piece in the magazine was its humor and humanity. instead of turning into a cranky old man, he is instead, an old man with a bit of distance and perspective. that distance gives him the ability to laugh so that he still enjoys living. not an easy task. try it. say if your approaching 50 how often do you stop and, in the habit of our late, beloved kitty, ernie, eat the flowers? is it not easier to feel the world collapsing around you and your prospects getting narrower?

after all, aging is no picnic. our bodies change and not for the better. we don't get older and stronger. we get older and weaker. and there is memory. which starts to fail. the person you meet in the mirror more and more looks like your father, or mother. hair falls out, gets thin and grey. and so on and so forth. aging is a long ride into decrepitude and senescence. who gets pleasure out of that?

that's one way of thinking of it. another way is realizing that life is a gift. at any age. there was no contract so you can be here, now. no fate. nothing written in the stars. it's all luck. so feel lucky. age can have its pleasures too. if i wasn't growing old i could remember what are those pleasures.

i told a couple friends today who were complaining about growing old that i look forward to decrepitude and senescence. in the history of humanity growing old is a great privilege. until fairly recently people died very young. so feel lucky that most of us will see our seventies and eighties. if your body hurts and you can't remember where you left your glasses think of yourself as the lucky few who because of today's technologies and so forth are partly responsible to allow us to hurt in old age.

then again, i don't worry about growing old because i've always thought i was old even when young. some of my favorite poets didn't start writing their best work until they were well into middle-age. a few poets i've been reading returned to school in middle-age and are writing some of the most exciting work i know.

plus, i've never thought of poetry forebears as my mothers and fathers. i read rather ahistorically, not in a physical sense, after all i'm well aware of the constraints society placed on women in the past, the horrors and injustice, when i read say stein, plath, rich, dickinson et al. however, i read poets of every era, if those poets speak to me, as my brothers and sisters. that the only time we occupy is the present and if i'm reading catullus then catullus is alive, for me, right now. sometimes i think catullus and i might be collaborating and sharing work. i know that's a poetic fiction, a conceit, but so what.

the beauty of life: no one is getting younger. i've yet to meet the person who on his/her birthday becomes a year younger. nope, everybody gets old. every one. if life is a ride why not enjoy each segment of the journey. sounds silly and hippyish pablum but again so what. this is it, amigos, this one life. ask yourself what you want to do with it. then start doing it. what made reading hall's essay such a pleasure for me is how the poet embraces life, even at its end. that is a gift and very generous one at that.

2012-01-26T22:26:00.000-08:00

quote unquote

I’m all right, I’m okay, I’m not a John Berryman, suffering, being an alcoholic. I’m a middle-class poet that took a shower this morning, that is happily married, has the typical conflicts of people who live in a neo-capitalist society. My only struggle today is whether my pension is going to go up $25 or $40 a month, you know. I have no other basic conflicts.

--jose kozer

2012-01-24T22:09:00.000-08:00

2 movies i want to see -- eventually

2012-01-23T23:11:00.001-08:00

some movies simply haunt me

i caught an extended version of david lynch's adaptation of frank herbert's vast novel dune [1984] the other night. it's not what you might call a good movie. the film is a huge, sprawling mess of portentous cries and whispers. lynch might not have been the best choice to bring herbert's visions to the screen. yet, what lynch achieves is a kind of lunatic genius.

i remember seeing this picture at the local multiplex when i was 17. long before i read the novel i didn't know what to expect but i'd heard that it was the most expensive sci-fi film thus far produced. i was vaguely aware of director david lynch but barely. i'd seen the elephant man [1980] but remembered the movie for its intense melancholy.

we were given leaflets as we entered the theater. a glossary of terms that were spoken by the characters of the movie. didn't make a lick of sense and in the darkness of the cinema reading the leaflet was out of the question. i was wholly disappointed in the movie. confusing, long, and pretentious as all get out i wondered how something so cheap looking could be the most expensive sci-fi movie in the history, at that time, of movies.

but that wasn't the end of my viewing. dune was released not long after on vhs video cassette. i lost count on how many times i watched the movie. something about the set decorations, the religious sweep of the action, the bizarre formality of the characters in manner, speech and dress. there was a kind of faux-victorian design of the sets and the space ships that beguiled me. there was also a sadean body horror present in the vision of lynch and embodied by the baron harkonnen and the guild navigators. if this flick was a mess it was a beautiful sort of mess.

then i got around to reading the novel and of course the story made sense. i watched the movie with new eyes. i don't know if i fell in love with the picture. i am haunted by it. i still am. the vast scale of herbert's creation might not be an exact fit for lynch's manias. lynch proved himself an adept at sadean horrors in smaller films such as blue velvet [1986] which is as close to a masterpiece in contemporary u.s. cinema you can get. dune is rather an experiment in scale for lynch. i'd imagine hardcore herbert fans were probably deeply disappointed upon first gazing at dune. i argue that if one is to take the time there is much to admire in lynch's vision of herbert's book. then again maybe that's just me. perhaps the movie for me is like staring into the abyss. stare long enough and you find it stares right back at you.

2012-01-21T22:27:00.001-08:00

dailies

hello it's me again

you greet the face in the mirror

as you scrape the last day's stubble from your face

* * *

you wanted the day to caress you on your cheek

not sucker punch you in the solar plexus

you have no answer

* * *

still you buy books even if you ask yourself

what is a book?

in this brave new digital age

* * *

reading an interview with tan lin on jacket2

you find that lin's published his poetry book

in a variety of formats including sound files and blog posts

* * *

you never wanted a career

in poetry

you do your best to rid yourself of ego

* * *

try again

you love books don't ya

almost as much as you love the poems

* * *

you recognize the face in the mirror

you stare and it stares back

you can swear it nearly recognizes you too

2012-01-19T22:28:00.001-08:00

don't stress: a poetics

when you come to a fork in the road don't worry about the path not taken for any path will do because it is the journey -- right -- that is the gift and be glad if the path is not the shortest route because you want a quality that is difficult to measure and make last for as long as you possibly can

2012-01-19T22:14:00.000-08:00

a poetics: an anti-manifesto

when walking on a wet sidewalk do not stop to pick up that shiny object -- whatever it is -- glistening in the wet for it may well trip you up and down you go BOOM

2012-01-17T23:54:00.000-08:00

dailies

fascinated by 'marquee moon' by television

those hard, clean guitars by tom verlaine and richard lloyd

to wonder what is in a name, indeed

compared to such glorious sound

* * *

name? i mean didn't shakes ask is not a rose

still as sweet by any other name

i suppose because shakespeare didn't care

about the spelling of his own name

* * *

tom verlaine does since he named himself

after the french 19th century poet

lover of rimbaud and long the keeper of

ol' rimbe's flame

* * *

oh what is in a name indeed

since mine is so generic a shopper would

pass it by unnoticed if it were sitting on a store shelf

* * *

still there is a beauty in the anon

i am the voice of seven billion

i am a voice of seven billion

* * *

there is that lot of us, as whitman said

and all so luscious

* * *

i make shit up and go on

2012-01-13T21:54:00.000-08:00

how to disappear completely

i am an addictive walker. i used to be addicted to long bicycle rides. now my addiction is for long walks. often when i find a rhythm i lose track of where i am and even my movement. there is a danger in this because to not know where you are can make you vulnerable to, say for example, walking into a busy intersection and getting smooshed by a car. yet it is lovely to lose yourself in your gait. kinda like meditation. you are here, and you are at the same time elsewhere. the field of time, of presence, ceases, for a while. it is the best sort of getting lost. you are still you but you become something else, somewhere else, when time turns from something to endure and get thru and changes to a vast and narrow at once. not that time stops but that you become dimensional like time and experience it as wondrous pleasure. every step is an additional increment toward an alternative creation.

2012-01-12T21:57:00.000-08:00

dailies

i pretend to be a buddhist monk

i want to shave my head

but afraid of what i might find hiding

there

* * *

reading jose kozer

i too am more or less a middle-class poet

who took a shower today

who prefers health

and a happy marriage

* * *

in the produce section tonight

as i was scanning the tomatoes

an older lady says to me

oh! you look like jon huntsman!

he's so handsome

do you know who he is?

he's running for president

he's married and has seven kids

* * *

i persist

i write the next line

and the next line

and the next line

2012-01-09T22:34:00.000-08:00

the tao of grocery shopping

i am -- we are, i'm guessing -- creatures of habit. i was watching henry rollins do his spoken word thing a few nights ago and he had this bit about grocery shopping. he shops like me. or rather i recognized my own habits in his spiel.

you see i usually stop at the grocery store on the way home from work. i walk past the supermarket anyway. i pick up what we need in small bundles. whatever i can carry home with my own two hands. which means that i am a pretty fast shopper and i buy the same shit every time. so does rollins when he bitched about people who are slow and linger over items while they are standing in the middle of the aisle and blocking your way lingering over a can of peas like it was an ancient artifact dug out of the sands of egypt.

which is proof of my own habits. i'm sure the clerks who if they don't know me personally can tell a lot about the contents of my cart. which rarely varies. i don't mind shopping. i have a few friends who hate grocery shopping. i know what i need for the family and i can get to it in a speedy manner.

still i've long thought that shopping for need, such as buying food, is a kind of art. maybe even a spiritual exercise. if we are what we eat then surely we are the also the sum of the items we put into our grocery carts. and if you're like me than that cart usually holds the same things for each visit to the supermarket.

could be another subject for writing. recall ginsberg's 'A Supermarket in California' where the beat poet meets up with the good grey poet, ginsberg's spiritual father. if that don't sound too far-fetched and i'm guessing that it is not. since we all have to live in the world and make do with it however we can. a suite of poems about grocery shopping? why not. because food shopping is an individual and collective activity with its own codes and signs. like language. each day i go to the store is another line written over the line of the previous visit. a palimpsest of behaviors encoded, mapped and drawn over each time we try, each day we visit , sharing in that most intimate portions of ourselves because we are what we buy.

2012-01-06T22:26:00.000-08:00

the language of drugs

it's no secret that that pharmaceutical leviathan has appropriated all sorts of media to sell their products. they've been shilling their chemicals in print publications for many, many years. they are on the web, but a relatively recent phenomenon is their tv commercials. any student of pop culture and media would find this new development, tv commercials for prescription medications, fascinating. we've all seen the adds for erectile dysfunction and depression. everything onscreen is sunny, warm and the actors are all well-adjusted and happy after their prescriptions got from their doctors after the patients asked for these drugs by name.

it's not the language of advertising that i find interesting. writers have appropriated that grammar for some time. rather it is the language of the risks tasking these drugs. because in these ads must be disclosed potential risks in taking these medicines, including the risk of what is not-so-euphemistically called 'a fatal event'. i'm not down-playing the need for these drugs. i am interested in the language used in marketing these chemicals and the language marketers use in relaying the risks involved in taking these medicines.

for if this is indeed the post-capitalist society [i really don't know what that means, even tho i hear it used often enough] then nearly everything has a potential market value and thus there is a language to sell it. including those items that was once rather private and maybe even sacrosanct because the old language for prescriptions was privileged between physician and patient. thems were the old days. now these prescriptions are marketed to us in a big way.

i'm getting off track. the language of risk and the selling of that risk in tv commercials i find worthy of study and might well be put to good use in poetry. you know the words i mean like 'consult your physician if your skin starts peeling off and you begin to see in purple' and 'some users of y experienced polka-dot sight' and 'some users of y experienced a fatal event. if this should occur to you consult your physician'. that sort of thing. it's the tone of the marketer and the absurdity of some of those risk factors i think can be fruitful in writing. the language of drugs is also the language of the market and is too the language of adverts.

but how to use in poems. well now how indeed. i'd imagine jonathan swift, were he alive and writing today, going to town. i recall a poem by polish poet ryszard krynicki that used the tone and language of a tv quiz show. i remember that being a pretty good example of life in the post-, or post-post, modern age. now matter what the age there is always it seems an excessive level of absurdity in our cultures. for writers there appears no shortage of work.

2012-01-03T22:16:00.000-08:00

small chunk of black

imagine your way in
to summer '77 nyc
when the city goes
mad from bankruptcy
garbage piled high
son of sam on the hunt

go one imagine it
as you step off
the train in
to what you might
think is the lost world
found again just for you

one could dream, right
because your 10 years old
chump and the toughest thing
you have is a switchblade comb
bought in a joke shop
strum your lyre boy

odysseus is laughing to the gods
you think you're
the star of an exploitation movie
played at half speed
on a stained screen at the deuce
the soundtrack recorded on mars

2012-01-02T17:40:00.000-08:00

quote unquote

Zombie Tip:

Remember that YOU have the power to change the world.

Not in any real, meaningful, geopolitical way, of course. But if you're willing to scale things back just a bit, you'll see that real change is possible when you work on a one-to-one (brain-to-brain) level.

--scott kenemore [The Zen of Zombie (Better Living Through the Undead), fall river press; 2007]

2011-12-31T17:23:00.000-08:00

hello 2012! happy new year!

Blues for the New Year, 1997

My dealer left town
(sounds like a song).

Had a date with
a certain man, but
he got pneumonia.
I guess it's off.

Storm after storm
bowls in
off the Pacific.

Pale and sleepy on
his Tenderloin mattress.
He has different-
colored eyes and nothing
about him quite matches.
A challenge.

Oh, it's just New
Year's. I'm
not superstitious:
the year may turn out
very rewarding. Anyway
I'm sixty-seven,
and have high blood pressure,
and probably shouldn't
be doing speed at all.

Let's reschedule!

--thom gunn
[i'm sure i've posted this poem before but i love it and i think it's a great new year's poem!]

2011-12-30T21:37:00.000-08:00

loveless [1991]

much has been made this year being the 20th anniversary of nirvana's groundbreaking album nevermind. i seeing the video for 'smells like teen spirit' on mtv and i thought, finally mtv got punk rock right. mindblowing music from a raw, visceral band that blew open the mildewed curtains of mainstream pop.

this year is the 20th anniversary of loveless by my bloody valentine. it is instructive to compare the albums by nirvana and my bloody valentine and argue which recording is more influential. that's not an argument i want to get in to right now. for me, i discovered shoegaze bands about 10 years after the movement. i knew about bands such as lush, slowdive, and my bloody valentine but i wasn't paying attention. the bands for me back in the late '80s and early '90s were the pixies, the sugarcubes, sonic youth et al.

it was a cassette that anna had laying around the house, gala by lush, that got me paying attention to shoegaze music. i rediscovered these bands and i fell in love hard. i kick myself for missing out on the opportunity to see slowdive, lush and my bloody valentine live.

if there are masterpieces in shoegaze dreampop it would have to be loveless and just for a day, also from 1991, by slowdive. i return to these recordings with great pleasure and deep appreciation for their creators. maybe its age that i prefer the slower, richer textures of shoegaze but i don't think so. i still get a rise out of punk, hardcore punk like the circle jerks and black flag. i return to my bloody valentine, slowdive and lush much more than i listen to black flag.

so i discovered loveless many years after it was released. kevin shields' sonic structures and bilinda butcher's lilting vocals created a sound that was cerebral, exhilarating and trippy. it's not for nothing that my bloody valentine is credited with influencing electronica musicians and post-rock bands like radiohead. grunge in the early '90s may have eclipsed shoegaze and by the late '90s both movements petered out. i can only speak for myself because shoegaze is timeless music. i hear its influence in contemporary indie rock bands such as the electronica one-man project washed out and the lo-fi guitar based rockers real estate.

i love the entire album. i'm celebrating its 20th anniversary, or i have been celebrating its 20th anniversary because after tomorrow night the record will be 21 years old. right now its 20 years old. not that that matters. its all about the sound. and this sound rocks me to my cells. below is my favorite song off the album 'blown a wish', with vocals by butcher and those jagged but swirling guitars by shields.

2011-12-29T23:10:00.000-08:00

small hits of orange

certain to stumble thru another day i sit here guarded by noah the cat perched upon my right shoulder making sure that i don't dot every i and cross each t so far when writing becomes the reading and the reading becomes a life because tonight when i fall asleep i am unable to distinguish between a text i've previously written and composing a text to read when i wake again as this turns like a run-on sentence while i practice dutifully for another day and night erasing line by line THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SPIDERMAN and hope that when i toss it sticks to the wall

2011-12-29T11:28:00.000-08:00

midnight in paris [2011]

a thorough delight. i'd given up on woody allen and had not seen a movie of his since the early '90s. not that i don't like allen because i do. i recall auditing a film class on woody allen's movies with an old girlfriend way way back in the late 1980s and falling in love with his classic works. i also appreciated woody allen as a prose writer and read the books he published at that time.

but then the movies allen directed after the 1980s stunk! or so i thought. then this movie comes around and charms me with its lightness of touch. the angst of allen's earlier pictures is replaced here with a sweetness of character assayed by the wonderful owen wilson. if the movie is a rip on nostalgia, so what. who hasn't fantasized about living, or at least visiting, a bygone time populated with our heroes.

for wilson's character, a screenwriter who feels he is a hack who longs for the paris of the 1920s -- that generation of writers and artists gertrude stein dubbed 'the lost generation'. well wilson finds them, or they find him. whatever the turn-around wilson's character gets his wish and enters that hallowed era of his choosing.

woody allen populates his film with actors who look and sound like the real life figures they portray. or so i surmise. the dude who plays scott fitzgerald looks an awful lot like fitgerald. kathy bates plays gertrude stein to a t. at least i bought in to it. what might be a fault of this film is that it is played too sweet. stein immediately takes wilson's character under her wing with gentle support of his writing. even hemingway, that bastard of ego-driven mania, is assayed with a comradely spirit of supporting gentleness.

why not. it's allen's fantasy after all. paris is all eye candy. the script is mighty witty. wilson's novelist becomes a realist in the end but still manages to follow his dream. the movie ends on a happy note. i take that not because woody allen has grown soft but because maybe the demons he battled earlier in his career have taken a backseat to whimsy. allen in later age lets the darkness spread to light.

at any rate, i was delighted by the film. it is, as they say, my cup of tea even if 1920s paris wouldn't be my dream location in time and space. as i watched the movie i kept wondering where my dream of nostalgia would take me. perhaps 1970s paris with the poets paul auster hung out with. or maybe mid to late '70s nyc with its brown-outs, high crime, nearly bankrupted, garbage strikes, grindhouses and punk rock. hmm. . .i'll have to think about it a little more.

2011-12-28T23:31:00.000-08:00

quote unquote

This is what you shall do:
Love the earth and sun and the animals,
Despise riches,
Give alms to every one that asks,
Stand up for the stupid and crazy,
Devote your income and labor to others,
Hate tyrants,
Argue not concerning God,
Have patience and indulgence toward the people,
Take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men,
Go freely with powerful uneducated persons
And with the young and with the mothers of families,
Read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life,
Re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book,
Dismiss whatever insults your own soul,
And your very flesh shall be a great poem
And have the richest fluency not only in its words
But in the silent lines of its lips and face
And between the lashes of your eyes
And in every motion and joint of your body.

--walt whitman

2011-12-28T20:31:00.000-08:00

lowering my standards

was what william stafford often said regarding his writing a daily poem. the question was, what if your writing wasn't so good on a given day. stafford answered, i lower my standards.

now that we are ending 2011 and entering 2012 [looks futuristic, don't it? i mean sci-fi movies and dystopian novels are set in years like 2012, right?! i'm still waiting for my time travel machine and my jetpack!] this is the time to reflect and offer up resolutions to better ourselves.

me, i'm taking stafford's advice. besides i'm not one for new year's resolutions because they always seem like bullshit to me. i plan on doing more of the same as i did this year. sure there are regrets. ain't there always regrets about say not writing more, publishing more, saying i love you more.

well now so maybe. at any rate, i do want to say i love you more, make more friends, get a fucking manuscript together and publish more. i also plan on taking more naps, go for longer walks, watch more movies, read until my eyeballs fall out, be a better partner to anna and a decent father for nick.

but i'm always thinking about those things. the manuscript thing's got me. i want to get enough work together and publish a chapbook. a readable chapbook. also, i want to collaborate more. and head down to sf and hang with hayes.

not much really. i wouldn't call this a list of resolutions. me being a personality type who is always looking to improve the self no matter the time of year. but yet still. . .there it is.

now now let's lookie see.

2011-12-26T22:00:00.000-08:00

one of the coolest dudes ever to grace the earth

i'm a great fan of the thin man films. the pairing of william powell and myrna loy is priceless. last night we watched shadow of the thin man [1941], the fourth entry in the franchise and relatively a weak movie, you could tell that the movie works only by chemistry of its leads and is heavy on the nick and nora charles whodunnit formula, and yet. . .and yet. . .it is still magic.

that is because not only is myrna loy an utter beauty with a great wit but william powell is simply one of the coolest dudes to ever grace the earth. his persona is the high society sophisticate who is utterly at home with the criminal underworld. his nick charles character never met a highball tumbler he didn't love. yet with all the drinking the detective used his mind to solve the most intractable murder mysteries.

i'm not sure if there is a poetic equivalent to william powell. i mean there was a time in u.s. poetry when poets would compare themselves to actors. i recall a james dickey journal entry that compared himself to wallace beery. fine. it's all good. after all, there is the image we project on to the world and the image that the world sees in return. sometimes those images meet.

not that i'm going to compare myself to william powell. i can never be so charming and dashing. something about his persona i simply find appealing beginning with his name and ending with his tailor. yeah, i'm ga ga over the guy. why not. after all, he was one of the biggest stars in the world for a reason. he was simply cool.

2011-12-23T22:47:00.000-08:00

have yourself a merry little christmas!

it is a wonderful time of year. if you want it.

here is judy garland singing that great hugh martin song from the film meet me in st. louis [1944].

and!

william burrough's classic the junky's christmas

have a very very merry christmas, y'all!

2011-12-22T22:51:00.000-08:00

american horror story -- season finale

i've not been keeping up with this show. so when a friend invited me to watch a couple of prior recorded shows then watch the season finale tonight i said yes. now i'm up to speed and yes it's still a very creepy show. i wonder how long the dark tone and intensity can be sustained. i read a very good analysis about the show reflecting contemporary economic ills. that a middle-class family who are bogged down by their financial burden of their house and that they cannot leave it if they could are suffering and the cause is the house itself. sounds about right. still, i was surprised with the twist at the end. jessica lange's character is getting juicier and juicier. yet, there seems to be a peace set upon the family that tempered the darkness just a bit . was it because show creator and producer ryan murphy wished to make a christmas theme? appears so as the family, after much travail, stand before a fully decorated and lighted christmas tree while two of the other occupants, signficant players, of the house -- they are ghosts -- watch from another room thru barred glass. the peace won't last of course. madness lives in that house. fascinating ending to a very good show. can't wait for next year.

2011-12-21T22:21:00.000-08:00

longest nite

1st day of winter
and the shortest day of the year
some find that dispiriting
me i love it

i love the cold
northern california cold
not canada cold
and arctic snow

when i left work this evening
a wind kicked up
blowing clean the cold dark air
and i was in love again

i wonder if there are any poems
that explore night in a way
i experience it
protected and enveloped

there are plenty of pieces
that experience terror of night
or that blurry fuzzy 3 a.m.
feeling of isolation

i mean for me
walking home in the dark
being awake in night
is a source of great pleasure

and comfort
i was doing my best to remember
any texts about night
that share my pleasure of the dark

i'm sure they exist somewhere

2011-12-17T22:33:00.000-08:00

mission: impossible -- ghost protocol [2011]

the art of movie-going is not dead. at leat not yet. we do live in a virtual and physical world that is blurring together at a rate that even the most savvy of savvy sci-fi writers of the past century could not dream of. and yet people do want to go somewhere and do something. movies are still that something and movie theaters are still that somewhere.

it was this that my brother, a huge movie geek like me, asked me to the movies this afternoon. when we were much younger and single dudes we would literally hang out at the movies together. now, we both have our families and jobs that keep us humming with life. we rarely go to the movies together anymore. besides, we have both succumbed to life in the digital age and we watch films on dvd and online in our homes rather than the theater.

still i love going to the movies. i take nick with me to the movies every change i get. the ceremony of the cinema is perhaps what i love the best even if the movie projected onscreen may not be the best that art form has to offer. getting the popcorn and candy at the concession stand, taking our seats and watching the trailers before the start of the feature is still, for me, pure magic. the speed and convenience of digital life cannot replace that magic.

so when my brother called to go to the movies i said, yep, and asked what would he like to see. he chose this one, mission:impossible -- ghost protocol, at the local imax. well now, i'm not a fan of either tom cruise or the franchise but i've not seen a film at the imax and frankly he could've suggested any pap and i'd still have gone without question just to hang with my brother.

the movie was entertaining if a bit silly. after all, where else but in moviedom can you watch a 40-something man scale a hi-rise in dubai like he was spiderman with nary a bruise on his well-muscled arms and chest? lots of explosions; lots of world travel to mumbai, moscow and dubai; lots of hi-tech gear and software; and a villain who buys russian nuclear launch codes so he can send a nuclear weapon to blow up san franscisco because he thinks nuclear war would cleanse the earth and set us humans free.

oh dear, did i give too much away? fear not. because you know cruise and co-horts, like our own local boy jeremy renner and the always reliable simon pegg, will get the job done. it's not the plot that runs the engine to this franchise but the gadgetry and action. oh yeah, with all these bullets spraying bodies i was amazed to see so little blood and hardly a cuss word uttered but for cruise saying, shit, at one point to give the flick an air of pg-13. otherwise the movie was pretty clean and would have no trouble airing on primetime tv in the middle of the week on a major network.

it was the imax experience that i thought was pretty cool. the screen is huge. the sound system is loud and crisp so that each explosion or passing train got the full surround sound treatment. i tell you, watching even a goofy action flick in that theater made the goofy action flick great fun. i'll have to do it again real soon.

but then even gimmicks like 3D or blowing a movie up to fit a screen that is the size of a building is not part of the ceremony of the cinema. rather it is the going out and being in attendance with our fellow human beings. it is the art of popcorn getting and eating. it is the art of watching the trailers. it is the art of taking your seat. the theater tonight was filled to capacity. people left the theater talking about the movie. why not. even in this digital age i saw many people open up their iphones and point their browsers to imdb.com for more info on this film. my brother did it because we were both smitten by the breathtakingly beautiful actress paula patton who plays an agent in this flick and we couldn't figure out her name and didn't catch it at the end. i don't have an iphone so i had to look over his shoulder. i was -- i am -- amazed that our technologies let us do this: look up information on anything we want anywhere we want. getting movie info via iphone is a new part of the ceremony. it is not the whole part. i was happy to spend a couple of hours with my brother. i was happy to watch a movie at the imax. i was happy that we are still able to go out to the movies -- together.

2011-12-16T21:30:00.000-08:00

quote unquote

I always associate art and artists -- poets, novelists, painters, musicians, dancers, whatever -- with warmth and a generosity of spirit. Some form of continually creative curiosity about the world surrounding them and the possibilities of their art. An atmosphere of hate, prejudice and mean-spiritedness is the enemy of anything that makes your mind, and heart, step out. There are exceptions, of course, who feed on bitterness, such as Celine, but I feel that they are very much the exception. I'm not talking about going around with an inane happy grin, Born Again & Co., or Walt Disney saccharine. I'm talking about a real openness -- in eye, ear, and heart. I'm talking about a sturdy vigour, a real intelligence, and that wholly admirable and necessary virtue -- enthusiasm.

--lee harwood

2011-12-14T22:36:00.000-08:00

self-portrait as an aging silverback

laptop
moleskin
two cheap BIC ballpoint pens
a PELIKAN ballpoint pen

awful handwriting
attitude like a sloth
youtube addict
addiction to words

buddy holly styled glasses
torn JANSPORT backpack
tan kahki pants
and black CHUCK T's

2011-12-14T22:29:00.000-08:00

dailies

oh man what a drag! what a bummer!

dragging my sorry carcass thru these days

okay i'll get over it

it seems that i have a need to tweet

my secret identity

MY LIFE AS PETER PARKER

spin a web in the mercury switches

of mobile devices

the faint blue glow of the screen

reflected in the lenses of my glasses

2011-12-13T21:29:00.000-08:00

dailies

it is evening cold and dark

walking in my own Sacramento Spleen

with a head full of shallow errant nothings

but with -- i hope -- a gallant heart

that flops like a frog in a puddle of mud

2011-12-09T21:40:00.000-08:00

fair trade

anna and i were supposed to go to sf tonight and see death cab for cutie in concert but we are both nursing colds -- damn things are lingering on for so long they are beginning to feel like permanent conditions -- and were too pooped to make the drive, stand in line, and endure the crowds. we've seen the band twice before so it ain't like we are missing out on a once in a lifetime opportunity.

well then there was work to get thru. which i did. feeling like the morti viventi i arrived home like i was on the set of romero's night of the living dead [1968]. just as well but then i found a small package waiting for me. it was a book by ozzie poet pete spence, perrier fever [grand parade poets, 2011]. i've been digging the groove laid down by spence for several months now. i think he might be better known here in the u.s. as a visual poet. spence is a wonderfully exuberent -- if i may say it this way -- alt-lyric poet. i feel a spiritual kinship with the writer as we are both lower-case kind of dudes and write -- if i may be so bold -- in a pretty concrete manner. i don't want to get too carried away because spence is spence and i am some one who is a different person.

but anyway, i think spence is an awesome writer and his work simply makes me glad to be alive. here's a small taste from the book.

shop

i thought the shop
was called SLIDE
until i walked into the door!

you can hear a touch of berrigan in this tercet as well as oz's own john forbes. however, spence has a visual quality that i think makes his poetry cinematic. spence is also deeply indebted to the l=a=n=g=u=a=g=e poets too which makes him even more appealing as an example of a writer who married nyc school, avant and post-avant writing into his own inimitable australian ear.

okay, enough of that. i have to thank kris hemensley for sending the book from his own poetry only bookshop in melbourne COLLECTED WORKS. i offered to trade a couple of my chapbooks in exchange for the spence which kris obliged by sending it along. i fear it's not a fair trade. even so, i'm happy as a tick buried in the thigh of a fat dog to get the poems of pete spence between two covers. thank you, kris.

peace

2011-12-08T21:57:00.000-08:00

dailies

the strident chords of political discourse in this country

i'm at a loss and why go on

like that lady on the street clearly off her meds

fucksuckihatemothercuntshit

* * *

something of the sort so i turn to read some poems

i want a kind of amazement

* * *

yes that's what i want

a language that i can translate

my amazement

at looking at a beautiful woman or far out sunrise

* * *

damn the cliches

i want to be amazed

2011-12-06T22:58:00.001-08:00

dailies

the far off look of the man

set in motion

again the stumbling forward

falling back

freak it or fold it

like that moment when jh

is buying weed on market st

all poise and panache

becomes a poem

while the poem

crosshatched with scars

but don't be too romantic

about it

passing by the occupiers

every day

the cold the hunger

flick of a switch

and thump of my soles

on the street

open up

say ah

2011-12-05T21:34:00.000-08:00

the workers of poetry

the paper today ran this ap this story about computer programmers and poetry. the author of the piece seemed surprised that poets could also be programmers and vice versa. i'm nonplussed. the jobs of poets are many and varied. the work of poets is reading/writing. as for me i was happy to read this article as i don't think science, math and creative work, like writing, are incompatible in the least. when i read the bio notes on the flyleaf of a book or website or journal i prefer to read about that writer's wonderfully varied lines of work. the kind of work that is done to support the family, pay the mortgage, afford the broadband, buy books and get the beer. writing supports the soul, not the wallet. another cool thing about the article is how it underscores the need for the humanities in our age, in every age really, when so many universities are cutting back or eliminating humanities courses and programs due to budget cuts. contemporary thinking in the marketplace of ideas nowadays is how to translate a degree into profits. humanities, art and literature seem to have no place in this marketplace. how can one make money thru poetry?! the poet is asked. you don't. you get a job to feed the obsessions. but one can take the skills, critical thinking and writing and reading skills, and apply them to any task. we live in a post-industrial age. poetry can help us navigate thru these days.

2011-12-02T22:19:00.000-08:00

2 tramps in down time

1) dude shirtless appears to be waiting for the city bus
two blocks from the city jail
it is close to 40 f.
says, whoo it's cold
but not as cold as heaven
i've just been there
i need to get back

2) too far gone
in mind and on the street
he's repeating himself
in a loud loud voice
as if imploring god
or whoever will listen
over and over again
meg whitman
megan whitman

2011-12-02T21:54:00.000-08:00

i stand up i fall down i stand up again

we all love beckett's war cry on failure: next time fail better. i love it. every person on earth must contend with failure. despite a few heroes on old-fashioned movies and television programs who seem perfect at every turn, like the fonz, we all must fail. it's part of the job description of being alive.

the past couple of days i've been running this little piece from thoreau in my head. i have my problems with thoreau. yet i admire the hard clarity that comes from parts of his writing. this remembered bit is taken from thoreau's book walden which in turn is taken from a chinese text thoreau quotes. this little piece of language is providing a measure of comfort as i stumble forth.

a messenger arrives. i ask him to give me news of his master. the messenger replies, 'my master endeavours to reduce the number of his faults but alas despairs he cannot come to the end of them.'

2011-11-30T21:26:00.000-08:00

hanging for that dream time

a few nights ago i read a blog post titled CREATIVE PROCRASTINATION where the poet/blogger argues that a kind of a procrastinating indolence is good for the soul and good for creative work. i agree. if i'm good at anything it's procrastinating. i aspire to the laziness as it was ascribed to whitman when a coworker of his said that the good grey poet was so lazy he needed two people to eat, one to open his mouth and throw food in, another to close his mouth and chew it.

since i am a human being and i live among human beings i tend to think that many of my fellow creatures are like me, and i am like them. maybe. the older i get the more i'm wonderfully surprised to learn of our varied habits and our differences that make us unique. so when i think creative indolence is good for the soul i think it'd be good for all souls. not so, i'd guess. if i'm the sort of writer who needs serious downtime, real good dream time, there are other poets who need quite the opposite, bustle and noise.

as the poet said, 'we are the same in different ways/we are different in the same way'. amen, brothers and sisters. for me, i love my daily long walks thru downtown and midtown. i don't have an iphone or ipad. it's just me and the environment. i try to keep pen and paper handy because things do flit in to the brainpan and if i don't write them down i'll lose them forever. often i forget that simple task and have nothing to write with. the words then evaporate like a shallow pool in dry heat. ah well. there are more words to come. more important is to make time to dream.

2011-11-27T22:29:00.000-08:00

la luz

hard to explain and harder still to remember

as i watched the opening to the mid-season stunner

walking dead

three things happened simultaneously

the cat screeched

the character on tv screamed

and the light flickered

not that i'm superstitious

it was the lamp flickering that threw me

like i was a character on one of those ghost shows

harbingers of a haunting

let it pass i told myself

and turned out the light

then in the middle of the show

a shadow larger than a cat

bigger even than a man

swept the top of the wall with the tv set

that gave me pause

because there were no lights on to cast a shadow

trained in the arts of the rational

it must be my own neurochemical makeup

how i woke to the blues

been blue all day

but for a long walk with anna and nick

and the attempt to keep the blues at bay

2011-11-25T22:33:00.000-08:00

prosody, etc.

after the lovely, large thanksgiving feast, and when everyone went to bed i was up -- the night owl that i am -- fired up the laptop and did my usual thing. which is read blogs, write a little, watch several vids of lush performing live via youtube [great undersung band], and listen to a little internet radio.

but then of my reading i spent some time on a blog i've not clicked on for quite a while, mike snider's formal blog. i found snider's formal rigor a bracing corrective in my own sloppy thinking. after all, how many poets nowadays think of prosody when writing poetry? not that i agree with snider one hundred percent but i think that if you are a free-verse poet the vigor of prosody can set a solid foundation upon the work.

and vice versa. if you are a formal poet then reading someone like ginsberg can be a liberating experience. tho frankly, i think the divisions between formal and free verse might not matter as strongly as they did say 30 years ago. i might be wrong in that regard however i remember reading a survey of contemporary french poetry where the author asked a french poet what is the difference between lineated verse and prose. the poet answered, one is written in lines and the other is not.

i liked that response. ted berrigan told students that there is a little guy inside the office of our heads that took care of things like meter. i liked that too. i don't write for the ear. snider does, i think, so for him meter and rhyme matter a great deal. i'm not bothered by charges that my verse could be chopped up prose. prose-y-ness is what i aspire to.

early in my writing life i counted syllables and tried to get my lines to scan. i'm a bad musician and gave up when i realized that i was reading much translated poetry and that is what i wanted in my own writing, a translatability.

for in my view there is no bad or good. that doesn't mean there are no qualitative measures in my accounting of past, present and even future poetics. there is bad writing and there is incompetent writing. there is a difference between those measures. i don't read with regard for major and minor literatures. i don't write for that regard either.

still my self-proclaimed sloppiness and attempts toward a poetics of the lazy can learn much from poets such as snider. i like his work a lot. my favorite poet, the one i learned the most from, is thom gunn, a writer who lived meter and rhyme. i don't write like gunn. or snider. i don't have to. they don't have to write like me either. poetry is a large universe with room for many persons and styles. i know that. you know that. poetry knows that too.

2011-11-24T00:06:00.000-08:00

happy thanksgiving!

2011-11-21T22:10:00.000-08:00

being lopez

above is the trailer for the film adaptation of nick flynn's memoir about fathers, homelessness and writing another bullshit night in suck city. i read the book. i thought i didn't like it when i finished it. but then i went and read flynn's second memoir the ticking is the bomb which is about becoming a father, terrorism and writing. i liked the second memoir quite a lot. so i went looking thru my shelves for flynn's first memoir and i can't find it. i must've given it away. i do that. give books away.

flynn is a poet. that's first even if there is not much poetry, or writing about poetry, in both memoirs. why first? because flynn declares a life of writing poetry. not that i'm a guild man, or have a vested interest in the lives of the poets, but okay, sue me. i'm interested.

still the movie looks okay. maybe all the good stuff is in the trailer. which is baldly about fathers and writing, accent on the writing. yet the title is changed to being flynn and not another night in bullshit city which i suspect is a move to enter the market without the controversy of wearing its language on its sleeve. oh, the movie stars robert de niro and paul dano who look to be born for their roles as bohemian fathers and sons.

and there are not many movies about the life of writing. there's plenty of movies about the lives of writers but not living in writing. too boring. i think this trailer is not quite honest because i think the film is ultimately about how a man becomes a writer and not how the writing makes the man. can't quibble i guess. the trailer looks like it is made for writing geeks like me, and you. it looks like the movie is about writing.

why is the title of this post 'being lopez'? well hell. if flynn can have a movie about his life with his name in the title i can at least use my own as a title for a blog post, right? also, both names are pretty damn common, his of the hiberno variety while mine is of the hispano varietal. of course when these names are situated in the same country that makes us, yep, even if i'm still figuring what it means -- america and writing -- american writers.

2011-11-19T23:14:00.000-08:00

love sonnet

love love love love love love love love love love
love love love love love love love love love love
love love love love love love love love love love
love love love love love love love love love love
love love love love love love love love love love
love love love love love love love love love love
love love love love love love love love love love
love love love love love love love love love love
love love love love love love love love love love
love love love love love love love love love love
love love love love love love love love love love
love love love love love love love love love love
love love love love love love love love love love
love love love love love love love love love love

2011-11-18T23:06:00.000-08:00

quote unquote

in a dynamic universe
stillness is difficult

--billy mills

[mills' collected poems lares/manes [shearsman books, 2009] arrived in the mail today. the book is over 350 pages. i read half of it in one sitting tonight with utter amazement and delight. mills' poems are simply that good.]

2011-11-17T22:36:00.000-08:00

write club

1st rule of write club: don't be boring

2nd rule of write club: don't be boring

3rd rule of write club: you must write

2011-11-15T23:45:00.000-08:00

hold on, chuang tzu

i awoke to a room

not knowing if i am a man

dreaming he's a butterfly

or a butterfly dreaming

he's a man

the room was cold

i knew i shouldn't have eaten

those shrooms!

2011-11-14T21:29:00.000-08:00

dailies

walk like a man who has a song stuck

a song stuck in the head

a loop

* * *

in the middle of the day

i find my self

stuck in the middle with you

* * *

no harm done

practicing kindness

still that's not enough

* * *

i've learned englishes

i mangle my words

lovingly

* * *

i stumble when i walk

i walk i stumble

i do it again

2011-11-11T23:11:00.000-08:00

last chance for elevenses!
for mark

11/11/11 11:11:11

2011-11-10T21:58:00.000-08:00

dailies

nerve-wrack commence the walk

* * *

distribution of an unequal share

* * *

i was outside and i stood

* * *

night falls

* * *

big black man before city hall exclaiming to the traffic

* * *

i am the 99% i am here to educate you

2011-11-08T22:43:00.000-08:00

should it be, too

our
reading be
forms of writing?

2011-11-08T22:34:00.000-08:00

good stuff

the newest edition of otoliths

and

a reading by randy prunty

2011-11-05T21:10:00.000-07:00

please read this

via bill keckler's blog i read a very thoughtful piece by adam curtis on the bbc website about the current OCCUPY movements and 1960s revolutionaries titled dream on.

2011-11-04T20:08:00.000-07:00

on werner herzog

i came late to herzog's films. didn't watch his brand of cinema until fairly recently. i was aware of him and his work i was just not paying attention. i prefer his non-fiction films to his fiction works. a matter of taste, but i think he's an excellent interviewer and his subjects, his search for what he calls 'ecstatic truth', are an astonishing array of vivid humanity. herzog is interested in the depths of the human heart and our positions in our environment. another pull for me is his call, a war cry really, for poetic vision, not averting our eyes to what is in front of us. when herzog talks about poetry and poets he means actual poetry and poets and takes his examples in the likes of holderlin's wired language. another pull for me is his cautioning younger filmmakers, and older poets [like me!], not to make excuses and get your shit done because there is always a way to get it done. don't make your stay in the classroom permanent as it is necessary to get out of the library. if you have to drive a cab to pay for your film [or support your poetic obsessions] or work in an office in IT or something then there is no excuse at all. that is what you must do. so do it.

2011-11-03T22:29:00.000-07:00

american horror story [2011 --]

finally caught an episode of the cable channel fx new tv show american horror story. produced and created by ryan murphy of glee and another fx show nip-tuck i will admit to being a bit weirded out by the program. i'm not sure what the hell is going on. the premise of the show is about, i think, a dysfunctional family that is imploding by allegations of infidelity caused by the husband, played by dylan mcdermott, and who knows what else, who move into a house that was the scene of many murders. the victims haunt the house and torment mom, dad and their daughter.

murphy surely cooked up something on par with david lynch's twin peaks tv show that aired in the early 1990s. lynch's program, at least the first few episodes directed by him, were a kind of goth, hard-line, american surrealism where reality and fantasy blurred without distinction that brewed a special recipe of sinister cynicism. murphy's ahs is more of an internecine family abstract of softer surrealist leanings made more gooey, squishier even, because of the bloody violence of its characters. a body is soft and squishy particularly so when violence is done to it. we the viewers are often off balance because we don't know what, if any, reality the characters inhabit. does everyone see the same ghosts, as it seems to be the case, who disappear at will, or are the forces haunting the house and the family very real, flesh and blood entities?

too soon to tell where murphy will take this show. right now he's on a wild swing. glee is a pretty good show, at times bordering on inspired, and nip-tuck for a while had me spell-bound before that show became simply a violent melodrama. murphy is probably one of the ballsiest producers in television today. he is unafraid to tackle sexualities, gender issues, uncoded violent strategies along with a laundry list of hot topics. i will say this show freaked me good and had me looking over my shoulder in my own house. but then again who knows. i walked into nick's room this afternoon and looked at the fishtank. one of the goldfish was looking back at me. he had, i swear it, this look of malice in his eyes.

2011-11-02T21:25:00.000-07:00

ding dong

two ladies dressed in suits are standing on the porch

me: yes?

two ladies: good morning. do you read the bible?

me: no.

two ladies: you don't read the bible? have you read the bible?

me: yes.

two ladies: you've read the bible?

me: yes. i was raised catholic.

two ladies: ah. . . you've read the bible but you don't read it now.

two ladies retrieve a pamphlet and open to an article

me: don't mean to cut you off but i'd rather not discuss the bible this morning.

two ladies: can we come back later?

me: sure. okay. perhaps.

two ladies close the pamphlet and place it back in a leather satchel

two ladies: have a great day.

me: goodbye.

2011-11-02T10:08:00.000-07:00

strip down lyrics

i am in my 2nd week of a 2 week vacation. dropped nick off at school. anna's at work. i am doing my best to do nothing. don't know if i'll succeed.

but then anyway, halloween was a blast. kids scored big time. it was wonderful to see the neighborhood light up in orange and red with children in costumes galore.

we had a robo call asking us to support occupy wall street. okay, cool. i can't help but wonder who funded the calls.

tho i've been reading the newspaper i've not been keeping up on the news like i normally do. which is a nice break. i have a question: has there been a time when the world stopped going to shit?

am reading some/watching some/listening some.

i want a writing stripped down and lean, but fat too. i want a poetics of nothing that contains multitudes.

i worry about an emphasis on joy and pleasure while in plain sight of horror and pain.

but i must insist that life is like that, and that too.

2011-10-31T10:27:00.000-07:00

today is halloween

HAPPY HALLOWEEN
ALL YOU GOILS AND GHOULS!

2011-10-30T23:30:00.001-07:00

ah sunflower

we drove to monterey friday night, after we picked nick up from school, and listened to halloween satellite radio all the way there. it was a bit spooky what with the ambient noise, ghostly tales and goofy songs like 'purple people eater', but we made it to cannery row just fine. we were tired and ready for bed but i wanted to get the lay of the land so me and nick walked, after we checked in at the hotel, walked down the strip to the end of the street where the monterey bay aquarium sits. not much going on for a friday night. a couple of clubs open, a few dozen people hanging outside. the highlight was watching a mother sea otter and her young pup feed just a few feet away and below us from the hotel balcony.

the days were lovely. nick was in heaven at the splash zone at the aquarium, the area designed for kids young and old to touch and pet various sea creatures. there was a decorator crab, star fish, kelp, seaweeds of all sorts, bat rays and so on. nick even impressed a docent when she pointed out some barnacles and nick said, yep those are crustaceans. she asked nick, you are really six?

but it didn't feel like halloween. it felt more like a day at the beach. which it was. when we checked out of the hotel we drove a mile or so down the road to the city of pacific grove where there is a beach. a gorgeous beach full of swimmers, combers, divers, picnicers, families hanging out and so on. it was sunny and warm. we can see a fog start to roll in but that's probably because the weather was so warm. warm air hits the cool ocean and bingo, you got fog.

i ate too much. which is what your supposed to do at the beach, right. we have proof in the form of pictures of our adventures. the halloween feeling kicked in soon as we left the ocean. that light, that california light! especially in the fall. i tell you the 19th century impressionist and post-impressionist painters would have cum in their pants upon seeing such light.

we got home and i needed to go to the grocery store. sunflowers were for sale. i picked a bunch and brought them home to anna. tomorrow is halloween. the sunflowers sit on our dining room table. trick or treats begin in a few hours.

2011-10-27T12:41:00.000-07:00

every day is halloween

trick or treat!

stop me if you've heard this one before. we were living in san jose. i must've been about 5 or 6 years old. my father took me out trick or treating. i don't recall my costume. i do remember the neighborhood being decked out with a fair share of haunted houses. there were lots of kids on the loose. me, my father [who was holding my hand], and about 10 or so other kids approached a house. the house was dark. no lights. nothing going on. me and the other kids walked toward the front door. we got about 10 feet from the door. the door opened with a bang. what popped out of the door was unspeakable. a ghost! who let out this great roar! i -- we -- screeched back to the sidewalk. my father lost it, doubled up with laughter. the ghost took off the sheet it was wearing. standing before us was a young man. he held out pieces of candy like peace offerings. i gingerly approached the man's hand. i took the candy. i never forgot that night.

boo

2011-10-26T23:38:00.000-07:00

every day is halloween

this is cool. last year the dude behind the blog scar stuff created this video that marries images from eerie publications comic books, which were all horror related comics, with a horror record manufactured and released by mail order by the johnson smith novelty company [1973]. just the thing a monster kid would send away for. so grab yourself a cool one, get a fistful of candy corn, then turn on, tune in and drop dead!

boo

2011-10-26T23:04:00.000-07:00

every day is halloween

x-files

i was not a regular viewer. in the past 20 plus years there have only been a fistful of tv shows that i'd set my watch to. and yet, there are shows about the paranormal, and there are shows about the paranormal. when the x-files hit the right notes it was very good. i just had a hard time buying into its paranoia and lacquered conspiracy theories. for me the creepiest thing about the show was its theme music and its intro. it looks cheaply made, like something an exploitation filmmaker would cook up. maybe that's why i like it so.

[click on the link above to watch the intro, hear the music and scare yourself silly]

boo

2011-10-26T22:16:00.000-07:00

theory of many worlds

as a parent of a 1st grader i am closer to acknowledging that the theory of many worlds as it is explained by a branch of theoretical quantum mechanics might indeed be a fact. many worlds posits that there are many universes, all run parallel to each other, without interaction between the universes. in this theory there are many me's, each to his own universe, and every decision i make, every corner i turn, every possibility i encounter, are all played out by one of the me's. for example, if i decide to call in sick at work one day there is another me in another universe that does not. if i have a close call while driving there is another me that dies as a result of the accident. and so on and so forth.

of course i'm simplifying. theoretical physics is way above my head. yet as a parent i am acutely that there are two parallel 'doms' that run simultaneously beside each other but do not cross over. those 'doms' are kiddom and adultdom. all adults experienced kiddom and all kids will grow into adultdom. as an adult we may remember what it was like to be in kiddom but it is an experience that we, as adults, tend to mollify and gloss over as we grow older.

stay with me. because today was the halloween carnival held at nick's school. for the parents the carnival was something where we took our children to play. it was, in short, a ho-hum affair. amusing, yes. fun, sure. it was nothing like what the children got out of it. for them there was dramas galore. great pleasures to be had, and disappointments to endure. the kids all had their own language. their own body movement. their own pecking orders.

i recall my own time in kiddom, but i do not recall it as acutely as when i was watching these kids behave as if there were no adults present. it was a society unto itself. hard to explain unless you are a social scientist, i suppose, but ripe for observation and comment. kiddom is quite unlike adultdom. kiddom is not unlike the theory of many worlds because rarely do kiddom and adultdom meet. unless it is in fiction.

not that i felt the odd man out. i did notice that the kids would acknowledge my being among them. but that acknowledgement was brief and usually done for a purpose, such as being asked if i was standing in a line for an activity they also wanted to do. i am not saying that kids and adults do not interact. of course they do. nick and i had a blast at the carnival. however, kids left to themselves became another thing, another society. it was strange to witness. and thrilling too. i can recall, some of it, the language of kiddom especially when i am thrust into kiddom such as at an event like today's carnival. yet when i think of that kid i once was my memories become fuzzy and vague. like as if i were once a character in a film that i can only recall by watching a few frames without any sound. i do remember reading the script. i just don't remember quite the content. i'm not talking about the cliche being young at heart, or missing my youth. not at all. i mean the parallel world of kiddom. all i can say is that i was there. once. a long time ago.

2011-10-24T22:00:00.000-07:00

seriously / chill

a
few beers
with another poet

he
says, nope
can't abide sourness

and
or dour
poets who pontificate

their
open wounds
their wounded pain

when
you get
up to read

when
you get
up to write

it
is and
is not such

a
big deal
enjoy your life

2011-10-23T22:56:00.000-07:00

every day is halloween

zombies

let us now talk about zombies, and their staying power. if you guessed i'm a fan of the television show the walking dead give yourself a cigar. as i type this currently playing on amc is george a. romero's diary of the dead [2007] a critique of our media culture. that's maybe why 40 plus years after romero's groundbreaking masterpiece, night of the living dead [1968], zombies are a foil protean enough to translate and critique whatever socio-economic climates we create. when we watch a zombie flick we are watching ourselves, the collective at its most primal and base. perhaps maybe it's only that i have eyes for zombies because they are a favorite trope of mine. give me post-apocalyptic cinema any day. throw in some undead flesh-eaters, and survivors navigating thru the madness of an inverted world and i'm a happy guy. maybe zombies are still around because there are enough geeks like me who love them. perhaps it's because it is a week before halloween that zombies seem to be every where. perhaps it's because of a load of issues such as the fucked-up environment, economies in the tank, a rising cri de coeur of the populace fed up with the status quo, and a population that is reported to reach 7 billion by halloween.

boo

2011-10-20T22:56:00.000-07:00

every day is halloween

scary music

there are the standards, like horror movie themes, and there are the horror bands like the misfits and zombina and the skeletones, and there are the novelty songs such as 'monster mash' by bobby 'boris' picket, and there is dark ambient electronica which is indeed some seriously scary sounding shit. but every now and then comes a band that is just plain freaky weird and scary, but in a good way.

pittsburgh's electronica band black moth super rainbow is such a plain ass freaky weird and scary, but in a good way. bmsr's music sounds quite a lot like the psychedelic groups from the '60s with a heavy emphasis on love and harmony. their imagery is fairly surreal, for example a song title from their album dandelion gum goes like this, 'jump in my mouth and breathe the stardust'.

not all of bmsr's sound is so touchy feely. below is the video to their song 'born on a day the sun didn't rise'. the sound matches the crazy, fucked up imagery of the video. watch it and you'll see what i mean. it's not for the faint of heart. great for halloween. even the great pumpkin upon seeing this video might shrivel up in fright.

boo

2011-10-19T22:53:00.000-07:00

best piece of advice i've received

the best peace of advice i got was from an elderly poet. it was one of my very first readings in public, i was 21 i think, and nervous as hell. i thought back then that poetry most be raw and painful, an exercise in exposing the most humiliating parts of your life. i was young and dumb and stumbled thru the reading and was very apologetic about it all.

the older poet said to me, when i stepped back to the table after reading, she said, never apologize.

never hem and haw. get to it. and don't be such an agoniste.

i've learned that poems may be part of expression they are not always self-expression and they are not always a laboratory for examining the shallow pools of personal pain.

never apologize for poetry.

never apologize for being a poet.

just be.

[from a comment i posted at jim knowle's blog]

2011-10-18T21:57:00.000-07:00

dailies

i've got the 21st century blues

* * *

each to one their own digitize

* * *

01 10 001 10001

* * *

go to the mall and step on to some sci-fi movie set

* * *

soon it's 2012 and i still don't have a jetpack

* * *

tho there are bills to be paid house to be maintained work to go to

* * *

captain kirk would represent

* * *

make mine a medicine for every kind of melancholy

* * *

even my dog takes prozac

2011-10-17T21:23:00.000-07:00

every day is halloween

horror novels

i still read them. once upon a time i was a voracious consumer of horror fiction. and once upon a time bookstores had sections devoted to horror. i'm here to testify to their thrilling appeal and their lurid cover art. boobs, blood, gore and monsters galore! everything a teenage boy needs and wants.

even when i started reading poetry horror fiction was prominent in my reading life. i was balls out for stephen king. i discovered clive barker's seminal short stories collected in a series of paperbacks titled the books of blood. women writers like tanith lee and melanie tem were important voices in horror. i inhaled h.p. lovecraft and old pulp dudes like seabury quinn. there was also ramsey campbell whose elegant fiction belied its nastiness. there were also experimental writers like steve rasnic tem whose fiction was not bloody or gory but weird and disturbing.

perhaps the 1980s was a mini-golden age for printed horror. i recall anthologies of short stories published in abundance. i lost or gave away many of these old paperbacks. i've kept two, the best of masques ed. by j.n. williamson [berkley horror, 1988] filled with masters such as robert bloch [author of the novel psycho which was later adapted by hitchcock], and ray bradbury. the second anthology is night visions: in the blood ed. by alan ryan [berkley books, 1988], a three author series. the writers are charles l. grant, tanith lee and steve rasnic tem. i think i kept these two paperbacks because they are the only books i have with the fiction of tem who i think is quite a good writer.

i'm sure a few more examples of my horror book collection are tucked away in boxes here and there. i don't read as much horror fiction as i did. in fact i hadn't read a horror novel in many, many years until about five years ago when i picked up a paperback by brian keene. keene's a real gut-munching crazy whose prose reads like an exploitation movie. keene reinvigorated the zombie genre in horror fiction with novels such as the rising, city of the dead and dead sea. keene's fiction is fast-paced, gory and addictive.

another recent, for me, discovery is richard laymon who passed away 10 years ago, i think. laymon's fiction is the equivalent of drive-in horror movies. his prose is not as fast but is pretty twisted and damn well bloody. i've read only a couple of laymon's novels cuts and the cellar and they are an acquired taste.

it's a different age. laymon's and keene's publisher, leisure books, gave up the ghost a year ago. they no longer publish cheap paperbacks but have moved into print on demand and e-publishing. the age of pulp fiction, at least fiction printed on pulp, is over. bookstores still carry horror novels and short stories but now they are usually crowded in with fantasy and sci-fi or even tucked onto general fiction shelves. rarely is horror given its own shelf space. still, the internet has been a boon for some horror writers who have gone the route of self-publishing their fiction.

and yet, i miss the bookstore stacks where weird works were to be had for those stupid enough, and brave enough to seek them. i was -- i am -- just that idiot who loves a good lurid cover and a cheap, fast read. just a few nights ago i remember a piece of this dream. i was in a bookstore with a poet friend -- i don't know quite who -- and found a delicious cache of pulp novels. i bought one and said to my friend as i brought the book to my nose so i can smell the paper and print that i love these exploitation novels. here hold it, i said. you can feel the weight of it in your hands.

boo

2011-10-13T22:19:00.000-07:00

dailies

sitting quietly doing nothing nick said

daddy, i know we can't be in tomorrow

we can't be in yesterday

we can be only in today

* * *

slamming down two cups of rocket fuel

i'm out the door going to work

six blocks in i really had to piss

each step a torture

only 26 more blocks to go

* * *

the steps turned into one long step

thinking of the future when i can hit the bathroom

time turned inward

i looked out amazed

* * *

yes nick i said

we can only be in the present

we can think about tomorrow

plan for tomorrow

we can remember yesterday

we can be in only today

* * *

the slow need of the bladder

becomes a metronome

marking time of the just now

2011-10-12T22:01:00.000-07:00

every day is halloween

resident evil [2002]

i haven't forgotten to watch some shitty movies for the pumpkin season. this flick fits in just fine. for it is quite a shitty movie. i'm not a video game player so i'm totally unfamiliar with the source material here -- it is based on a video game, duh -- but the pic stars gorgeous milla jovovich, who is just simply watchable in whatever drivel she's cast so how bad can it be?

i can't tell you about the plot. i couldn't bear it. it's not all bad. it's entertaining in a grade-z kinda way. i won't spoil you on what little plot the filmmakers eventually propped their filmmaking conceits. however, on the strength of this flick the series became a franchise and there are now -- what? -- 5 or 6 resident evil movies. they all star jovovich and that is the only reason to waste a few precious hours out of your life, hours you will never see again, hours you can never get back, to watch.

ostensibly the movie is about zombies that are created by an evil corporation [are there any other kind?]. jovovich can kick some serious zombie butt. the electronic score is pretty good too. while the movie is effectively lit using muted tones and the editing does a serviceable job of sequencing the action scenes.

the direction is a bit slack. and character development? you must be kidding. i've seen jovovich in a few movies now and i honestly can't answer the question: can she act? she can hold a scene by her sheer presence. she does very well in the action department. but demonstrating honest human emotions. i'm at a loss.

doesn't matter. i count myself a fan of hers. even in such schlock as this. the only frightening thing about this movie is. . .ah no. there's nothing frightening about this movie. proceed at your own risk.

boo

2011-10-10T22:22:00.000-07:00

blatant localism

2011-10-10T21:23:00.000-07:00

every day is halloween

we were driving to wheatland yesterday. to bishop's pumpkin farm for our yearly fall ritual of going to the pumpkin patch. nothing prettier to the eye than fields upon fields of pumpkins. and tho i've been a nut for all things halloween all my life it wasn't until the birth of nick that we started our ritual of the pumpkin patch.

why would we without nick? after all pumpkin patches are really designed with children in mind. there is nothing frightening, or gory, at bishop's. there is nothing that goes bump in the night. i do think spending an evening in a pumpkin patch might be a little spooky given the right atmosphere. if and but bishop's pumpkin farm is loaded with activities for the kids, places to eat, fresh pumpkin pies to be relished and loads of those kinds of kitschy crafts that one tends to find for sale at seasonal places like this.

still it was fun. we met b. and s. and their kid and the kids had a blast. there was even a band that played surf music cover songs that i thought were quite good. the kids agreed because they were seriously shaking their groove things much to the delight of the lead guitarist who often joined the kids in the crowd to shake his groove thing.

pumpkins, indeed. we bought a peck of them. it was a delightful day thru out. wheatland is a small, farming community about 45 minutes outside of sac. there is a whole lot of fields and little else out there. at the end of the day we were tired, dusty and laden with all things pumpkin-y. nick was still going strong. anna and i were ready for a nap.

boo

2011-10-10T21:22:00.001-07:00

quote unquote

halloween is life

--alex gildzen

2011-10-07T22:32:00.000-07:00

dailies

it was a day of protest

leaving work OCCUPY SACRAMENTO surround the building

no one is in there

* * *

the tents are set

the media center too

what will become of this

* * *

oh my big hippie soul

2011-10-07T21:38:00.000-07:00

quote unquote

The moon of leisure circles the planet Work
with its mass and weight. --That's how they want it.
When we are on the way home the ground pricks up its ears.
The underground listens to us via the grass-blades.

* * *

Even in this working day there is a private calm.
As in a smoky inland area where a canal flows:
THE BOAT appears unexpectedly in the traffic
or glides out behind the factory, a white vagabond.

--tomas transtromer (from On the Outskirts of Work)

* * *

congratulations maestro transtromer. your poems have nourished and sustained me for a long time and they remain a luminous presence in my life. thank you.

2011-10-05T21:49:00.000-07:00

every day is halloween

a big part of the allure of the scary season is the telling of frightening tales. whether it be in movies, books or song we love that thrilling sensation of gooseflesh as we terrorize ourselves with our imaginations. sometimes these scary stories are presented as allegories. often they are only just pieces of whimsy. but sometimes the stories we scare the hell out of ourselves are cautionary tales.

the collection of children's tales titled shock-headed peter [der struwwelpeter] written by heinrich hoffman and published in 1845 is a book of the damnedest stories ever read to kids to get them to behave. the book was reprinted all the way into the 20th century. my copy dates to 1954. i hope parents don't use these stories as cautionary tales for children because they will scar the tots for life!

for example there is a story titled the story of the thumb-sucker. the kid in the tale is warned by his parents that if he doesn't stop sucking his thumb a tailor will sneak into his room and cut off his thumbs. guess what happens next! that's right. the kid's thumbs are cut off with large shears, all bloodily illustrated, because he can't stop himself from sucking his digits.

yikes. oh the world was different a 100 plus years ago. we don't scare are kids straight anymore do we? no need to answer. every age has their boogeymen, and women. however, this book is for the adult who might have a macabre sense of humor.

there are a few of us around. even the neo-cabaret trio the tiger lilies adapted shock-headed peter into a suite of songs. below is the band performing the dreadful story of harriet and the matches.

boo

2011-10-03T21:54:00.000-07:00

every day is halloween

i am a child of the 1970s. that era of macrame, disco balls, polyster, mutton chops and bad hair. it was also a time for the paranormal to creep in to pop culture. as a kid i soaked up that shit like a sponge. as an adult i should know better but i do love a good ghost story, ufo sighting and bigfoot lore.

particularly bigfoot. growing up we did a lot of camping in the sierra nevada mountains. every time we camped i kept my eye out for bigfoot, and my ears open and my nose trained toward catching anything stinky that was out of the ordinary. it is alleged that bigfoot stinks rather awful.

of course i never saw bigfoot or what might approximate any evidence of the existence of bigfoot. that hasn't stopped me looking. i still look. each time we drive to lake tahoe i am looking out of the corner of my eye for some large mammal that doesn't have a drink in its hand and is not pissed at losing in the casinos.

the most famous, er infamous, evidence of bigfoot is the patterson/gimlin film shot in 1967 in oregon. the film is fascinating to watch and there are many defenders today as there are detractors. i've watched many documentaries on television that keep this bit of film alive.

all the same, whether real or no it makes for interesting viewing during the scary season. it is the folklore of cryptids that hold my attention. the shaky cam, the grain of the film, the focus both blurry and clear. when we watch this film we are staring at ourselves. whether man or beast we do scare ourselves with our own desert places.

boo

2011-10-02T22:57:00.000-07:00

whitman never pictured this

i've been haunted by news and pics of occupy wall st.
i hope it is the seed of structural change
and not something that burns out and fades away.

when i told friends about these protests
they were surprised because they've not
heard or read anything about them in either
the newspapers or television.

that might be changing now.
for the better?
or worse?

the 21st century is beginning to find
its identity even if we can't step back
and see what it might become.

when i look at these photos
of the protests and the police
barricading and guarding the statue of the bull

o wit! o fancy!
i think of a poem by the post-war polish poet
ryzsard krynicki

from a window

The soldiers kill
boredom; they have brown shoes
and to the mute question "What did you do,
when they ordered you to shoot defenseless people?"
they have the mute answer: "I was lucky,
I was just guarding the TV transmitter."

[translated by clare cavanagh and stanislaw baranczak]

2011-10-02T21:35:00.001-07:00

'the blood of october lay leaved on the ground'

except for sac, because the trees really don't lose their leaves until november/december. what matter! i love october. it is our favorite month. anna and i will celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary this month. we met in early october and that anniversary stands strong at 19 years. the weather can't be any more gorgeous. we drove up into the hills, apple hill, a collection of farms and apple growers located above placerville, today. it is an annual fall rite around these parts. we had a blast and i am still full from that huge hunk of sour cream apple pie. there were horse rides and hay bale mazes and pumpkins bought and roasted pumpkin seeds consumed. nicholas found a new friend too, a little plush toy hamster with a halloween witch's hat that he named cuddles and took with him to see every farm we visited. halloween is just up around the bend. houses and stores are appropriately decorated too. i look around and take a deep breath and i am damn glad for these gifts.

2011-10-01T10:25:00.000-07:00

ballad of the ok grey poet

perhaps a touch of grecian formula?

2011-09-28T22:50:00.000-07:00

dailies

where i hang my hat

i don't know why here rather than there

no compunction or need to travel

i like the world just as it is

* * *

last rites

the talk turned to how you want to be buried

me i said i prefer cremation

maybe my ashes scattered on telegraph st in berkeley in front of moe's bookstore

maybe they said you can be burned along with your favorite books

an urn heavy with the ashes of words and the ashes of flesh

2011-09-26T22:40:00.000-07:00

hatchet ii [2010]

if you think i've stopped watching really bad movies, think again! i love films, i love the cinema, i really love horrible movies and this turd is truly awful. how so? let me begin.

21st century scream queen -- and real cutie -- danielle harris stars as a young woman who escaped the evil clutches of a deformed, mutant, bloodthirsty killer nestled in a louisiana swamp. her family was massacred and she vows revenge.

the following night she enlists the aid of rev. zombie, a swindler and tour guide of these same swamps, assayed by the stately tony todd. zombie knows that there is a curse in that swamp. a curse that visits the deformed, mutant, bloodthirsty killer known as victor crowley upon the innocent and soon-to-be-dead. he figures if he can break the curse and kill crowley the swamp will be open for tours again.

zombie enlists the help of a few locals armed to the teeth to help dispatch crowley. little do the locals know that they are really fodder for crowley to kill off so that zombie can get harris to bring a relative of hers so that relative can get killed by crowley. why? something about harris' family starting the curse and it can only end when the killer can exact revenge.

well now here we go. the writer/director adam green sure does love his horror, particularly 1980s slasher flicks. what is the sound of one reel changing. because by the end of the first reel we get the first kill all in splatterific red. the fx are this side of cheap but they are imaginative. no suspense, no tension, no duh. each extra is rounded off like so many third grade sums.

crowley is played by some big dude named kane hodder whose long career of playing bogeymen include the nefarious jason voorhees of the friday the 13th films. in this stretch you'd think the ugly off of crowley would be enough to scare his victims to death. nope. need more? yep. got power tools? check. got electric sander? check. got a chainsaw? check. got a big-assed humongous chainsaw? check check. now crowley's good to go.

tony todd is really a magnificent presence, i think, even when playing bad guys in cheap horror movies. it's his character's hubris that is his downfall. crowley and todd go mano a mano. if filmmaker green didn't make todd's death so easy then perhaps he wouldn't have very much feet of film left over to shoot our final girl's tet a tet with crowley. she does get mediaval on the monster's ass.

is that the end? i'm not sure if the curse is lifted. i don't care. nor do i care about this being a sequel. it was the number two in the title that gave that away, didn't it. this is low budget filmmaking at both its finest and its worst. filmmaker adam green is a fanboy at heart and all fanboy's tastes are circumspect. to love the horror genre is also to love some crap-awful movies. oh what the hell. that bad taste will wash out in a few days. in the mean time i'm going to get another beer.

2011-09-24T23:02:00.000-07:00

a single

i've been lying low the past couple of days sitting quietly and doing nothing. took a couple of much needed days off work to rest, read, watch, listen and sit on my ass. i am also recovering from a cold that developed last weekend and man i'm here to testify that feeling like shit sure can ruin a mood. not that i'm complaining so much since the weather here has been unbearably hot, triple digits, making going outside and doing anything a real bitch.

well but anyway, i did read the paper but mostly avoided the news. read the markets tanked on thursday, a heavy chunks of space debris will land some where, possible here, tho i doubt it since i am writing this on saturday night and i think the satellite was expected to fall by this time. news is bad, all round, but still can't help but enjoy being alive. even if my state of being includes the shivers, a cough and a nose that won't stop running.

also heard that the great band r.e.m. called it quits. not lamenting that fact. i stopped listening to them long ago. at least since automatic for the people, i think. i saw them perform only once in 1989 when they were on tour in support of their great album green. i've used the word 'great' twice now in the space of three sentences in reference to r.e.m. because they were great. together the quartet, bill berry on drums, mike mills on bass and vocals, peter buck on guitar, and michael stipe on vocals, together were, like the beatles, a sum greater than their parts.

every now and again we hear or see something that changes us and defines us. if we are lucky we have these experiences several times in our life. the changes that happen might be hard to pinpoint but the definitions are relatively easy. our tastes changes, or minds expand, protocals are exploded etc. for me one of those moments is the song 'radio free europe' by r.e..m. i've had many such experiences, i don't think i'm unique in this respect at all, we've all had them, but 'radio free europe' when i first heard it broke open the borders that at the time what i thought defined me. the song was nothing like i heard before. the vocals are low in the mix. the jangly guitars riding even with the rhythm section and the lyrics, fuck i couldn't tell you what the song was about. plus stipe's angular, beautiful singing enchanted me. yes, the music haunted me. haunts me still. suddenly, when i heard that song, i had another definition of what it means to be alive.

that might sound like hyperbole but it isn't. there are other songs, poems, and movies that have done similar damage to me. i've read enough poems on mingus and bird to know that the jazz greats have also had such an effect on others. i can't quite say why it does, i can only mention how it does. perhaps there is something like growing up in the post-hippie era when a song had a certain structure and sentiment. then when i got into punk rock there was some real fresh air in circulation. by the time r.e.m. released their single the pop song was invented anew for my generation and for any one willing to listen. i was at the time brought to tears by their music. not for the last time. other songs, such as 'fall (on me)", 'driver 8', 'south central rain', and 'superman' have had similar effect on me. those are beauties. r.e.m. crafted great albums too like life's rich pageant, murmer and the aforementioned green.

i own several albums by r.e.m. but only one on cd. the rest are on cassette. that's how long it's been since i've listened to r.e.m. part of that is getting older and not updating my collection. but then hell the band sonic youth is also a bellwether in my life and i still have yet to upgrade their album daydream nation from cassette to cd. guess it doesn't matter. the music continues to buzz in my head, my ear and my words. what i can do is simply give thanks.

2011-09-22T23:08:00.000-07:00

yes : music

a few months ago i wrote a post titled the no : music. that post was my thinking out loud my own fears and desires of what i want from my writing. there is a danger i think of making categorical statements that begin with 'always' and 'never'. as we often later discover after making such statements that the world is present in its varies forms and it, you and i occupy the spaces between yes and no.

my wanting no music in my writing stems from my belief that i am a citizen of the world and i am seeking a translatability in my work. my poems, i hope, are translations already of the language buzzing in my head to the words i write down to i hope an easy vehicle to other languages. i've been greatly influenced by translations and i want my poems to also translate from my language to another without losing meaning. that, and i am also mostly a film kind of guy and if i had to do my education over again i'd probably go to film school and study filmmaking not in the hope of becoming a director or screenwriter but to learn the techniques of cinema for use in my writing. because i am a hopeless case. i knew what i wanted to be and do at age 16. i wanted to be a writer. when i hit my late teens and early 20s that desire for writing transmogrified into poetry. i've been a sucker ever since.

still but so music is essential in my life. punk rock defines me still, from my political stances to how i wear my hair, the tattoos i've burnished onto my skin and the chuck t's i wear on my feet. ever since i heard the dead kennedy song 'california uber alles' when i was 15 i've been a sucker ever since. how music shapes my writing is too complicated to tease out. i will say that song lyrics have had as much influence on my poetry as have poems. when i go to youtube -- which is pretty damn near every day, at least for a while -- i learn over again that the video website is great for films but even better for live music. my tastes in music can be called catholic. i am no longer the snarling young punk who shouted 'kill the poor' in my best mock swiftian repose. my range has broadened and admits the music i once disdained. my only critiria for live performances is that it be passionate. i love it when the band, or performer, smile in mid-play because i know they are enjoying it as much as i am. when the crowd is sweaty and jumping and swaying i think that there may still be hope for our humanity.

it is that kind of ecstatic joy that i hope i can get into some of my writing. we are here for a short while. we cause great suffering. but we are also the cause of tremendous pleasure, joy and kindnesses. when we are young we want to be brooding and dark and dangerous. we want to be little rimbauds fucking shit up taken seriously for serious artists. we suffer and want the world to know our suffering and that we suffer for the world. yes, there is much to that. there is also the dickinsonian tradition toward ecstatic repose. to find the world in a drop of dew and delight in it. this station will be gone soon. in the meantime, love and find love and share love and create love. in the end the beatles got it damn right, 'in the end the love you take / is equal to the love you make'. perhaps more so because the worlds around us need an increase in kindness and love. look around. i learned that in a song.

2011-09-21T21:58:00.000-07:00

temporal modality

if the walls shimmy and you shake
to singing the chorus of an old song
you spin me right round like a record
as you gallomp thru the house
mercy on the child who stops
you in mid-arc when he asks
daddy, what is a record?

2011-09-20T21:20:00.000-07:00

dailies

to and fro

i get a fucking cold

i have nothing but

a pocket full of sudafed

and a bellyfull of nyquil

* * *

timor mortis conturbat me

2011-09-17T22:54:00.000-07:00

sitting around doing nothing

which is simply one of my favorite things to be doing in all the world. instead, anna and i worked in the front yard and back garden planting mums and putting down bark making it look like fall is coming. i think we did a fair job, more than fair, and the front and back of the house, garden-wise, looks damn pretty. but then i am biased towards our house as we live in the 1925 california bungalow and it is the sort of house i wished i lived in if i didn't already live here.

if that makes sense. nick and i did some shopping this evening and as we were driving thru mid-town to get back home, this was about 8:15 pm, we passed a couple of night spots, clubs and restaurants, and the streets were packed with partiers out looking for a good time. nick asked if this is THE TOWN. i ask him to explain what he means. THE TOWN as nick defines it is downtown, the center of the city. i say no, this is mid-town, downtown is further on down the street, but, i continued, we live in a very lively part of the city. and, i told nick, we are lucky to live here.

see because i love urban living. okay, my burg ain't no sf, or la, or nyc, but it is plenty lively and big enough for me. and you can't beat the weather. today was gorgeous early fall weather. sun was shining as the high temperature hit the mid 80s. it is the light in northern california that's killer. i've always thought that if the post-impressionist painters witnessed our light they'd fucking die of happiness.

well but so nick and i went to one of those spirit halloween stores, the kind of temporary seasonal shop that sets up in a vacant store. nick was a bit nervous as he is old enough to learn to be frightened by things. there are some scary items in that store such as a life-size animatronic pinhead from the hellraiser films. nick was brave as we explored the store. he even bought himself a thing of blood, liquid candy housed in an i.v. drip bag. as for me i thought the store was indeed terrifying because when i asked the lady behind the counter if they had cd's for sale -- halloween music and soundscapes [i've bought scores of halloween cd's over the years, usually from seasonal halloween shops] -- she said no. they don't sell. no more cd's! that's how the world turns, i guess.

then we hit the local barnes and noble. the only big box bookstore around. c'est la vie. i do remember a time when the only bookstores were local indies before the big box stores put them out of business. now it appears that the big guys can't cut it and the survivors are the little indies. irony of ironies! the reason i wanted to go to b&n is because i still had 35 dollars on a gift certificate and there was a certain art book i've had my eye on for most of the summer. the art book cost 60 bucks and i am normally skittish about paying that much for almost anything. not that i'm a cheapie. i just couldn't justify the expense to myself for myself. but then. . .i splurged. because it was half price with the gift certificate. nick wanted a magazine about model airplanes. that boy is totally into mechanical things. he likes the things that are made and how they are made. don't know where he gets it from. he's naturally good with numbers. i am not. nor can i make or build stuff nor do i care to make or build stuff. nick loves those things that go zoom.

but then the boy just finished his second week of 1st grade. he's got many, many years to discover who he will become. his mother and me are along to guide him and be amazed by him. and we are indeed amazed by him.

the art book, you wonder? nobody's fool by yoshitomo nara. i discovered nara's work in 2000 at the sfmoma. okay, call me a savage, a philistine, whatever. i love pop and pop art. i don't distinguish between high and low arts. the division is artificial and rather silly. but give me a good graphic design over a great painting by, say, jacque louis david any day. well, okay, i won't have to choose pop art or classical works. looking over nara's paintings i am sure that he was influenced by another favorite of mine, phillip guston. there is also a diy aesthetic at play in nara that suits me just fine. in nara that aesthetic is rather warm and inclusive and his pop idioms express a connection with the viewer and their maker that i find lacking in other pop artists. then again, it could be because nara loves punk rock and made a drawing about my favorite band, social distortion. that could be it. whatever the means, nara is my sort of dude.

2011-09-16T23:05:00.000-07:00

life lesson

many lessons many years
over the long haul
i've learned that we
are never too old to rock

2011-09-15T22:26:00.000-07:00

dailies

poesy might need no defense but some times it needs to be told it is loved so i say i love you

because one might not need have a degree or be the smartest one in the room

because language is the force field that surrounds us and binds us

because poesy is with me always it is in the air it is everywhere

because of the sense and sound of these words

because even when i am feeling half dead i am so alive

2011-09-13T21:56:00.000-07:00

i can scare myself with my own desert places

this is my favorite time of year
and halloween is my favorite holiday
but of course for a guy who has a pumpkin
inked on his shoulder everyday
as ministry said is halloween
there is a bit more spring
in my step because of the change
in light and season
as i make my peregrinations
thru my beloved town

last night i watched 'real' ghost videos
at youtube and yes i know the vids
are all crap fake and silly but it got late
and my defences were down
my head was bent toward the screen
and out of the corner of my eye
was a play of light and shadow
shaped like some thing
just so which startled the devil
out of me

ah i love how the human mind
even when it knows better
can scare itself
such is the magic of the movies
that is able to lift the curtain of disbelief

i recall using a ouija board with
an old girlfriend
the protocol if i recall correctly
is to say goodbye to the spirit
you were talking to
when you are done
we forgot and let the board
hit the floor
a few minutes later i said oh shit
we forgot to say goodbye
so i placed a finger on the planchette
said goodbye and that planchette
with me hardly touching it
bolted to the word GOODBYE

i knew it was me making the words
but damn how so it gave me the chills

2011-09-10T23:40:00.000-07:00

a night at the opera

actually it was an evening at the drive-ins but i couldn't help but make a reference to the great old marx bros. movie. the place was packed. the local drive-in theater has six screens and is called, natch, the sac 6. i've been seeing flicks at the sac 6 for as long as i remember. that was in another century. now it is a new century. b. picked me up in his prius. we stopped at the local jimboys to pick up some tacos and burritos. b. also made a quick stop at the store before he collected me to get a couple bags of chips and drinks. thus we were well fortified for the night out. the sac 6 earlier this new millennium was near death. the place was crumbling. the bathrooms were shot. the snack bar was unspeakable. you took your life in your hands if you bought food there at the snack bar. a few years ago, in the midst of the drive-in's decrepitude, i was walking around the snack bar area. the snack bar is in a building constructed in a circle like the hub of a wheel while the spokes are the six screens. i was walking outside this circle looking in and saw a girl digging into a large open container of relish for her hot dog. she must've seen my look of horror. why on earth would any eat from any open container in that joint?! the girl returned my look with one that spoke, who is this crazy old man?! now the sac 6 is cleaned up considerably. the bathrooms are clean and the food at the snack bar appears edible. i say appears because i've still not worked up enough nerve to eat there. no matter as the place usually has a long line and is filled with the latest video games. it was a lovely if very warm evening. we watched a flick called warrior [2011], a mixed martial arts rocky styled flick of no plot and too little action. doesn't matter as we were more in to the ambiance of the place. a car parked in front of us half way into the pic. out spilled a mother, father and three very small tykes. they took off soon as they stopped their car to the snack bar. they returned a few minutes later with the children each carrying a lighted sword, a toy they sell at the snack bar, and these kids spent the reminder of the run-time of the movie chasing each other with their swords. these children were more entertaining then the movie which we couldn't hear very well anyway. again, no matter. i couldn't think of any other place to be on a night like tonight. as faulkner said, the past is not past because it hasn't even passed. looking out to the others sitting beneath the one or two stars twinkling in our city sky i could easily think it was the 1970s. but then a different twinkling broke that spell. because all around us were the lights from phones as every one, and their mothers, texted to who knows about god knows what.

2011-09-08T21:28:00.000-07:00

dailies

standing on the corner

waiting for the light to go by

freeway off ramp

red truck runs red light

* * *

for a few seconds

lucky for me

i looked

for a few seconds time stops

* * *

it goes like that

chance and luck

and chance again

if i am here

* * *

i am here

2011-09-06T21:34:00.000-07:00

hachi: a dog's tale [2009]

we have a dvr. a great pleasure in owning a dvr is the ability to record tv shows and movies at will. i have a habit now. before i leave for work i scan a few favorite channels to see what if anything is worth recording. i found this movie, watched a few minutes of it while i was dressing, thought it was interesting, then turned the tv off. but when i got home this movie was just starting so i hit the dvr to record it. we ended up watching it as it recorded just the same.

i'm a fan of richard gere. he stars in this flick. so does joan allen. she plays gere's wife. gere is a music professor who takes the train to and from work. one night he finds a stray puppy at the station, an akita, a real cutie. gere takes the puppy home. he falls in love with the puppy despite his wife's protestations of having another dog [it's very strongly hinted that the couple lost a dog in the recent past]. she gives in. man and dog make an inseparable bond.

i'm also a fan of sweet-natured movies. this one is very sweet. gere is a wonderful man, husband and father. his wife is a terrific woman, wife and mother. they live in an idylic small town. richard gere is incredibly good looking. he gets better looking as he ages. i mentioned this flick to a coworker the next day and she asked if the movie features the young richard gere or the older one with grey hair. i say the older one. she says, YUMMY!!!!

there you are. swedish arthouse filmmaker lasse hallstrom was responsible for this film. i'm not sure if this movie is a remake of a japanese original. the story is based on a true story of the bond between a japanese professor and the stray akita he adopts in the 1920s. i'll say no more. i will say that if you get to the last 10 minutes and you are not balling your eyes out then you might want to consider making an appointment with your doctor. your heart may be defective.

i loved this movie. i think it needs no defence. there must be a space for movies that are about feelings, heart, sentiment, without any bloodshed or explosions, cgi or the wicked machinations of players looking to score. there must be a space for the tear-jerkers, those movies that were once called four hanky affairs. this movie is sentimental like william saroyan's novel the human comedy is sentimental. you can't get to the end of that book without reaching for your hanky or drying your eyes on your sleeves. so goes too this movie entered the world with little fanfare. it is sure worth your time.

2011-09-05T23:14:00.000-07:00

long day's journey to the end of summer

tho it really never felt like summer to me. maybe it was because the weather had been so mild. maybe it's because i'm a grown man and those easy, breezy days of long nothings are way behind me. maybe it's because we didn't make it to the drive-in movies -tho b. and i have made tentative plans for next weekend to go to the drive-ins.

whatever the case we tried to make the most of it today. we spent a few hours at the public pool where we have season passes. we all have deep tans acquired from hours spent poolside and in the chlorinated waters. i read for about an hour in the back garden before we left. a memoir by the poet alex lemon. i read a chapbook published in i think black warrior review a couple years ago and enjoyed the poems. i think that's the name of the journal but i'm too lazy right now to get up off my behind and search for it among the stacks. i'm on a memoir fix i guess. i just finished nick flynn's book about post-911 paranoia and torture and fatherhood, the ticking is the bomb. i've not read flynn's poetry but for the odd poem here and there. i had read flynn's first prose book, another bullshit night in suck city, which i didn't care for. just the same, flynn has a winning voice and his fatherhood book is quite good. as for lemon's book it's too early to tell but i have a soft spot for poetic fuck-ups so we'll see how this one goes.

what is even more strange about this summer is how the three months of hot weather passed and i didn't watch one beach movie. usually, summer ain't summer if i don't see frankie avalon and annette funicello do their thing. that again might account for why summer this go round didn't feel all that summery.

whatever the case. summer is done. the light's changed. soon the days and nights will grow colder. already the stores and shops are setting up for halloween. that puts a bounce in my step. i'm no longer a boy of summer. i am a man of autumn, and winter. perhaps that goes with my advancing age, even if i still feel pretty damn youthful. no wonder then that the end of summer is a still drop while the beginning of fall is a leap of joy.

2011-09-04T23:45:00.000-07:00

quote unquote

down yesterday
up today
it's just
the magic
of being
alive

* * *

I'm at my best
when I'm Mr Nobody
only happens when I'm alone
so no one ever sees him but me

* * *

as long as I can shit
piss & fuck
I'm flying
high

--billy jones

2011-09-01T21:42:00.000-07:00

es verdad

is the title of the newest chap by jim mccrary published as a pdf e-book. it's a complete delight. then again, i'm rather biased toward mccrary as a man and poet. in my book, there is no other. still, you should read his work. start here. if you'd like a copy of es verdad email me. i'm sure mccrary, that great diy poeta, wouldn't mind that i send copies to whomever asks for them. this is a book of pics of horses taken in the yucatan where mccrary and his wife, painter sue ashline, have travelled for 20 years, and accompanying texts. the real clincher for me is a photo of the author and a dog that would melt the heart of any winter warlock. the expression of the dog will slay you. it's a killer, and so is this book.

2011-08-31T22:55:00.000-07:00

dailies

after work

lovely flight to the bay

* * *

dinner and

the movie right outside

and below our wing

* * *

dusk

ruddy sky

big thumbnail moon

hammered to the set

2011-08-30T22:21:00.000-07:00

good read

after a long day yesterday i came home and found a package waiting for me. i didn't order anything and i couldn't make out the return address on the package. i don't know why because when i opened the package and saw the contents i knew immediately the address and who sent these two books.

i read them both almost immediately. these books are Percy & Bess [hank's original loose gravel press, 2011] and the arrow that is hollywood pierces the soul that is me [otoliths, 2011] by alex gildzen. if you stop by here now and then you know that alex is a good friend and a favorite poet of mine. what is cool about alex is that both he and i share an obsession with movies. our obsessions were achieved at an early age. we also both write poems, reviews and miscellany about the movies and those individuals who make, create, and star in the cinema.

that these two publications are about the movies and those grand personalities that make up hollywood then comes as no surprise. alex crafted texts that are short, melodic and rich in imagery that are also high in hollywood lore. for example, this poem from the book the arrow that is hollywood pierces the soul that is me:

ray bradbury rollerskates
to paramount studios

where he pesters
W.C. Fields
for an autograph

the king of gin blossoms
finally accedes

"there you are
you little son of a bitch"

this poem is perfect in design and execution. you get the whole of hollywood noir and the love of hollywood in all its excesses and humility. fields is a king not only of comedic films but also 'gin blossoms', a great alcoholic who hates children. and we have too bradbury, that great imaginative writer, as a child who cannot take no for an answer even if it is uttered by a world-famous grouch. plus the concluding couplet is a punch line. you can't but laugh when you get to it.

percy & bess is a book containing two series of poems, one for actor percy helton and the second is for actress bess flowers. don't know who they are? such is the beauty of alex's writing. for not only are these lovely poems outright but they are also lessons in hollywood history. you don't have to do the research to enjoy these poems but with the internet you can add to your delight with a few quick searches.

these books are wonderful gifts. i urge you to seek them out. if your interested in percy & bess you can hit me or steve tills up with an email. for alex's hollywood book the link above will take you to otoliths storefront.

2011-08-26T23:35:00.000-07:00

flying high again

two weeks ago today we drove out to the yolo causeway to see mexican cave bats wake to their night's hunt and fly in ribbons underneath the causeway like it is a cave and over a tree that they think is the cave opening. the lands beneath and around the causeway are restored wetlands habitat that are also used as flood control. each winter the wetlands become reservoirs to store excess water and prevent flooding in the sacramento valley. in the summer these wetlands are also used as farmland. and it was the farm roads we travelled to get beside the causeway and watch the bats.

the yolo basin foundation hosts a bat talk and walk where biologists and docents give a lecture regarding indigenous bats and then lead a drive to the causeway where the mexican cave bats make their home. an estimated 250,000,00 bats make up the colony. the evening was perfect, including a full moon to add to the ambiance. the ribbons of bats did ascend higher and higher. anna pointed up in to the quickly darkening sky and said, look. you can see bats way up there. we asked a docent, how high will they fly? she told us that they've been observed to fly up to 20,000,00 ft to get to their meal of moths.

much myth is made of the bat. including misperceptions of their size. they are not large. as proof the biologist who gave the lecture brought in a couple of bats in her care. they are no bigger than your thumb without the wingspan. nor do they suck blood [for the most part. there are no vampire bats in california] or change into humans who prefer to sleep in coffins. instead we were privileged to the astonishing sight of thousands of bats waking to their hunt in a gorgeous section of restored habitat home to egrets, herons, and bugs galore. it was an evening where we could step out of our harried day-to-day muchness and recline into rhythms of the bats.