today's rimbaud

scrolling thru social media today i came upon a thread that asked what the visionary, & asshole, poet arthur rimbaud would be like if he were alive today.  okay, i confess.  rimbaud still is a lodestar poet for me.  as he is for a great many of us rhymesters today, including musicians like patti smith et al.  i'm almost 60 years old & the brilliant electricity of rimbaud's poetics & life thrill me as it did when i first read him when i was in my early 20s.  i called rimbaud an 'asshole.'  because i think if i knew the dude i would probably hate his fucking arrogant guts.  he was a selfish prick.  he was mean & low & vicious.  & yet.  & yet.  his life is a goddamn fireball.  i love his poetry.  i love his life.  even the wildly unsavory parts of his later life are thrilling even tho parts of it are abhorrent.  if rimbaud was a teenager today who the fuck knows how he'd behave.  maybe one of those pesky social media dudes who do the worst kinds of pranks on people & post the videos online.  maybe he would reject the world we live in.  but he did tell us that one must stay 'modern.'  so perhaps he would post his wild poetry online via blog or other social media.  while stories about his conduct would start to circulate.  drugs, the refusal to cut his hair & bathe.  sexual adventures, of course.  tattoos?  perhaps.  i think i read somewhere that verlaine had a crude tattoo made by rimbaud.  i don't know.  but then when he gave it all up where would he go.  what would he do.  africa?  one can't be a gunrunner & slaver today.  i think.  so someone in that thread suggested rimbaud would become a real estate agent in dubai.  fucking perfect!  i can see that!  rimbaud as a real estate agent in one of the wildest, & bougie, places on this planet.  would he be successful?  he was kind of successful in africa.  but then he was later out-maneuvered & out-matched by king menelik ii.  however, rimbaud did manage to acquire considerable amount of gold too.  anyhow, it's fun to think of how rimbaud would live today.  after all, he was a real person with real needs, desires, prejudices, self-destructive impulses, that all are well-documented & researched.  we are no stranger to rimbaud.  besides, i got a kick out of the thought experiment of rimbaud working in a real estate office in dubai doing his level-best to make as much money as he can.  because that was his goal in later life.  first to run away, reinvent himself, & then to make a lot of money.  & that's partly why his life remains so thrilling.  because he was so poetically human.     

it's saturday nite & you wanna see the great antipoet nicanor parra praise american troubador bob dylan & trace dylan's poetic lineage all the way to allen ginsberg & walt whitman

 

light in august

 

disclosure day [2026]

i've long pontificated on the limits of the superbly gifted filmmaker steven spielberg.  i've enjoyed his movies for almost as long as i've had a lifetime of watching movies.  yet, spielberg often loses balance in his stories.  often his films become clunky with a contrived sentimentality.  that doesn't mean i don't enjoy his flicks.  but often, even in his better movies, suffer from a sublime mawkishness.  take for example the red coat girl in Schindler's List [1993], albeit is a powerful image of the brutality of the holocaust but is used as a cudgel to beat over the head of the viewer who need no further imagery as proof of the barbarism we see in the liquidation of the jewish ghetto.  or take the heart-light of the alien in e.t. the extraterrestrial [1982], a literary device so blatantly manipulative of the viewer's emotional state.  i can go on & on.  but my point is thus: spielberg is a master storyteller who can't help himself make emotionally manipulative fictions. 

even so, i looked forward to seeing this movie in present discussion.  i mean, hell the world is so freaking topsy-turvy it would surprise me none if the next earth-shaking news is evidence of aliens.  i don't believe in UFOs, or UAPs as they are called now, but i sure the hell want to see one.  i also think, tho without evidence, that we are sure as shit not alone in the universe.  i know i know.  how the fuck can i know we are not the only intelligent species in the universe.  i don't.  but i think humanity, unique yes, is not that special.  if the universe can create the conditions for life, intelligent life even, here than it most likely can create life elsewhere.  problem is time & distance.  the universe is fucking big.  way bigger than our minds can intuit.  so meeting an advanced civilization in the right place at the right time is pretty goddamn astronomically small.

but that's why we have sci-fi so we can imagine it.  my nephew, .a., invited me to his downtown flat this afternoon because he wanted, i think, to spend some time with his uncle, & to get my opinion of this movie.  a. lives with two hounds, einstein & dora, who greeted me at the door with waggy tails & friendly barks.  a. ordered a pizza from a local place which was tasty, put on the flick, & got a big bowl of buttered popcorn.  geezus, i was in heaven!  buttered popcorn is better than crack & more addicting.  also, a. lives in a section of downtown that is, plainly, cool.  Sac has grown up a lot & when i was a.'s age, not a lot was going on in downtown/midtown.  that's changed!

but back to the movie.  i enjoyed the last third of the flick.  the first two-thirds was a summer popcorn movie deluxe.  filled with chases & cat & mouse shit.  the principals, emily blunt, colman domingo, colin firth [dreamy even with his shaggy beard.  but shave it, man!], eve hewson [bono's daughter, really!], & josh o'connor are game for a summer movie adventure.  spielberg & co. really can ratchet up some cinematic excitement.  but the great director's emotional heaviness comes barreling thru the script.  in short, as the beatles said, & this is not a spoiler, all you need is love.  but hell, man if someone like emily blunt is looking at you with those eyes & telling you to 'listen' & all you need is love, i'm gonna take heed.  

when the reveal, the disclosure, happens brace yourselves for an anti-climax.  you've seen this before.  still, like i said, spielberg, despite my dislike of his mawkishness, really can deliver the goods.  is this movie the filmmaker's grand final statement?  i dunno.  but even if it is this movie is not a bad coda to a very distinguished oeuvre.  i hate steven spielberg's movies & i can't help myself admiring them.  even loving some of them.  like this movie.

after the film, a., his friend, d., who dropped in to a.'s flat near the end of the movie, & me discussed this movie & other recent sc-fi flicks.  a. gave me a copy of ted chiang's short story collection, stories of your life [2002] because we were discussing one of my favorite movies of this century, arrival [2016].  then i gathered up my things into my backpack, put on my black basesabll hat, that makes me look, according to a., some crazy dude, & walked out into a very warm night in downtown/midtown Sac which was very much alive with people in bars, restaurants & even doing that most ordinary thing, walking their dogs.  

quote unquote

the greatest poverty is not to live 

in a physical world, to feel that one's desire

is too difficult to tell from despair

--wallace stevens [ed. amen, brother!]

old wine new glass haiku

 apologies to The Who

meet the new skateboard

same as the old skateboard

do-do-da-do!

failed poet haiku

fiery red evening sky on the beach

waves are such an ancient sound

what did my big toe strike

a stone?  a small crab?

i don't know 

i don't  know

& how now goes the next line?

wherever the wind takes me

it's a hot thursday summer nite & you wanna trip like i do to 'white rabbit' performed by elephant revival. feed your head!

 

cayucos: rocket launch

 

cayucos: a local about to get booped

 

word on the street