Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Friday, July 9, 2010
Monday, June 28, 2010
Hotel Godiva
This is the store to buy the strange
and the old and their hopeless kin:
dead schoolgirls' sweaters, shoes rejected
by Elvis, miniature porcelain fish
angrily carved, held aloft
by black, strong string. We who have given
away our minds, been betrayed
by the bitter coasts, search now
through the belongings of others.
These mapped, blue and green walls
become our eco-system, a thrift lighthouse
of stuff lived in by drunken movie stars,
dandies named Barney, his great aunts,
their dark mauve skirts faded
from trips up the stairs, they who mend
the insane and the weak, us,
we who plow through the circular racks,
grabbing disco bric-a-brac over 50's rayons,
knowing, deep in our addled souls,
that we'll buy instead the goldfish platforms,
black, scraped buckle and all.
These clothes are tested and sound;
scarred from past falls or misuse, but true
and tireless, as with our second spouses' hands.
We seek connections, a participatory democracy
of textiles and no-longer-chic shapes and shirts,
ruins dismissed on many Sundays,
traces of rouge on lapels, dead labels,
maybe tiny burnholes now vivid,
small perfect eyes that know exactly
when wars ended, when to go next door
to borrow slim, white leather gloves,
gaps easily sewn with re-cycled thread,
re-made paisleys and plaids now ours
for pool halls and weddings, parties
of patchy dreams, half joyous
that we will never again be as alone.
and the old and their hopeless kin:
dead schoolgirls' sweaters, shoes rejected
by Elvis, miniature porcelain fish
angrily carved, held aloft
by black, strong string. We who have given
away our minds, been betrayed
by the bitter coasts, search now
through the belongings of others.
These mapped, blue and green walls
become our eco-system, a thrift lighthouse
of stuff lived in by drunken movie stars,
dandies named Barney, his great aunts,
their dark mauve skirts faded
from trips up the stairs, they who mend
the insane and the weak, us,
we who plow through the circular racks,
grabbing disco bric-a-brac over 50's rayons,
knowing, deep in our addled souls,
that we'll buy instead the goldfish platforms,
black, scraped buckle and all.
These clothes are tested and sound;
scarred from past falls or misuse, but true
and tireless, as with our second spouses' hands.
We seek connections, a participatory democracy
of textiles and no-longer-chic shapes and shirts,
ruins dismissed on many Sundays,
traces of rouge on lapels, dead labels,
maybe tiny burnholes now vivid,
small perfect eyes that know exactly
when wars ended, when to go next door
to borrow slim, white leather gloves,
gaps easily sewn with re-cycled thread,
re-made paisleys and plaids now ours
for pool halls and weddings, parties
of patchy dreams, half joyous
that we will never again be as alone.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Theolonius Monk - Nutty (live)
Made most famous in a quartet setting in ’58 at the legendary Five Spot (has the Five Spot ever had a different adjective?); that quartet was Griffin on tenor, Haynes on skins, and Ahmed Abdul-Malik. Compared to this group (Rouse, tenor; Riley, drums; Gales, bass), especially Griffin, the earlier group was more adept at time changes and more imaginative in soloing. They can be heard on Misterioso a pretty great collection of tunes and performances. However, this date we are watching does feature an elongated version and Gales is superb throughout. Also, it wasn’t long after this that Monk retired to his Weehawken home (built for great filmmaker Josef von Sternberg) and his Princess and her 30 cats, a mile or so from where I am as I write this reverentially. The song itself, covered by Trane, Miles, John Hicks, Sonny Fortune (and a half dozen lesser lights), first showed up in 1953, a full 6 years after his ground breaking Blue Note recordings which changed Western music. 6 years is a long time in jazz and especially in the nascent era of bebop, but “Nutty”—a sad title that prophetically conjured Monk’s mental instabilities (nearly full blown by the time of this era)—is firmly ensconced architecturally within the earlier mold, a mold that remained steady and sturdy for the 25 years after Monk sat down in ’47 and carved out the angular stride/bop masterpieces that belong on Rushmore: “Epistrophy,” “Ruby My Dear,” “In Walked Bud,” and “Round About Midnight.” There are many days when Monk is both my hero and my fave musician.
Monday, June 21, 2010
I'm Gonna Booglarize You
jumping around in the perfect hat is the manic rockette (mark Boston) morton, the mind-expanding bassist from trout mask; art tripp (ed marimba) is on stellar drums; the great ex little feat, ex mothers bassist is roy estrada; the tall guitarist is zoot horn rollo—bill harkleroad; the other equally magnificent guitarist—the one with the hair—is eliot ingber (winged eel fingerling), the finest jewish guitarist since michael bloomfield.
this band shd be in the hall of fame.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Cape Cod. 1960. Peking. 1997
Over there! There’s a fat man
striding across the beach, beer
in hand, chasing
his photographic negative,
wanting to buy up the property.
In front, addled images,
me and myself, digging with fury
into the white hot sand. Father,
you could never slow down.
Even in the sliced surface of this photo
of heaving tides and out-of-sight skies
I can hear your voice
flirting with neighbors, phoning sitters
as your scotch-soaked pals
from New York grimace and giggle.
Your illegible notes home made it clear
we needed scorecards, maps,
decoding rings just to find out
which end was up. Taxis
sped you away as you screamed
about important business meetings.
Miami? Las Vegas? Canton, Ohio?
We tried cement in your Florsheims
but ultimately feared martyrdom;
the headlines would blame us:
HANDSOME MAN, LIPSTICK, RIVER.
Saltpeter on Wheaties was easier
but as with Mithridates you got stronger,
pumping pints of coffee into your cancerous
organs. You were our candy,
our canoe up the Cuyahoga, our glib
majordomo, so we took ads out
warning future broken families
about your pills and your fuck up
at Three Mile Island and the lies
and cover-ups as the press
learned to sleep perfect sleep.
We were the children wide awake,
obnoxious with our ludicrous prayers,
our catcher’s equipment and comics,
the TV on all night, watching
Welles’s “Macbeth” 2, 3, 20 times,
thinking by 5AM that that was you--
drunk, sweaty in your armor--
leaping through dark and fog
and over battlements, rescuing us.
Mother could never take pictures:
unsteady hands, failed reverence
for facsimiles and technology.
Jesus, there’s sand everywhere. And father,
you and your engineering soul,
like Horace at Philippi, said see
you later, and there was your exposed son,
idiot shoveller, on some shore,
grinning for other moronic white families, saying Hi There!
to flag-waving picnickers. I could never
complete a task. If I had, I would have dug
through the earth’s core, I’d be radioactive,
I’d be the Vice-President of China,
where my million tiny, yellow children
would stiffly salute me, hourly.
striding across the beach, beer
in hand, chasing
his photographic negative,
wanting to buy up the property.
In front, addled images,
me and myself, digging with fury
into the white hot sand. Father,
you could never slow down.
Even in the sliced surface of this photo
of heaving tides and out-of-sight skies
I can hear your voice
flirting with neighbors, phoning sitters
as your scotch-soaked pals
from New York grimace and giggle.
Your illegible notes home made it clear
we needed scorecards, maps,
decoding rings just to find out
which end was up. Taxis
sped you away as you screamed
about important business meetings.
Miami? Las Vegas? Canton, Ohio?
We tried cement in your Florsheims
but ultimately feared martyrdom;
the headlines would blame us:
HANDSOME MAN, LIPSTICK, RIVER.
Saltpeter on Wheaties was easier
but as with Mithridates you got stronger,
pumping pints of coffee into your cancerous
organs. You were our candy,
our canoe up the Cuyahoga, our glib
majordomo, so we took ads out
warning future broken families
about your pills and your fuck up
at Three Mile Island and the lies
and cover-ups as the press
learned to sleep perfect sleep.
We were the children wide awake,
obnoxious with our ludicrous prayers,
our catcher’s equipment and comics,
the TV on all night, watching
Welles’s “Macbeth” 2, 3, 20 times,
thinking by 5AM that that was you--
drunk, sweaty in your armor--
leaping through dark and fog
and over battlements, rescuing us.
Mother could never take pictures:
unsteady hands, failed reverence
for facsimiles and technology.
Jesus, there’s sand everywhere. And father,
you and your engineering soul,
like Horace at Philippi, said see
you later, and there was your exposed son,
idiot shoveller, on some shore,
grinning for other moronic white families, saying Hi There!
to flag-waving picnickers. I could never
complete a task. If I had, I would have dug
through the earth’s core, I’d be radioactive,
I’d be the Vice-President of China,
where my million tiny, yellow children
would stiffly salute me, hourly.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
top twenty lp's of this century
Badly Drawn Boy The Hour of Bewilderbeast (2000)
Soundtrack of Our Lives Behind the Music (2001)
Gorky's Zygotic Mynci How I Long to Feel That Summer in My Heart (2001)
Rufus Wainwright: Poses (2001)
Of Montreal Coquelicot Asleep in the Poppies: A Variety of Whimsical Verse (2001)
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds No More Shall We Part (2001)
Sigur Rós () (2002)
Drive-By Truckers The Dirty South (2004)
The Sadies Favourite Colours (2004)
The Reigning Sound Too Much Guitar (2004)
Sufjan Stevens Illinoise (2005)
The Mountain Goats The Sunset Tree (2005)
Antony & the Johnsons I Am a Bird Now (2005)
Architecture in Helsinki In Case We Die (2005)
Scott Walker The Drift (2006)
The King Khan and BBQ Show What's For Dinner? (2006)
Johnny Dowd Cruel Words (2006)
Eddy Current Suppression Ring S/t (2006)
Danielson Famile Ships (2006)
Robert Wyatt Comicopera (2007)
The Hex Dispensers S/T (2007)
Thomas Function Celebration (2008)
Bonnie Prince Billy The Letting Go (2009)
Soundtrack of Our Lives Behind the Music (2001)
Gorky's Zygotic Mynci How I Long to Feel That Summer in My Heart (2001)
Rufus Wainwright: Poses (2001)
Of Montreal Coquelicot Asleep in the Poppies: A Variety of Whimsical Verse (2001)
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds No More Shall We Part (2001)
Sigur Rós () (2002)
Drive-By Truckers The Dirty South (2004)
The Sadies Favourite Colours (2004)
The Reigning Sound Too Much Guitar (2004)
Sufjan Stevens Illinoise (2005)
The Mountain Goats The Sunset Tree (2005)
Antony & the Johnsons I Am a Bird Now (2005)
Architecture in Helsinki In Case We Die (2005)
Scott Walker The Drift (2006)
The King Khan and BBQ Show What's For Dinner? (2006)
Johnny Dowd Cruel Words (2006)
Eddy Current Suppression Ring S/t (2006)
Danielson Famile Ships (2006)
Robert Wyatt Comicopera (2007)
The Hex Dispensers S/T (2007)
Thomas Function Celebration (2008)
Bonnie Prince Billy The Letting Go (2009)
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Parading Paranoids
I. Marriage
Don’t bring grief into someone’s life
immediately: be deliberate, delicate,
and begin slowly--hide keys, have lover
call mid-day, refuse relations’ feasts.
You must seek balance. Have your penitentiary
correct routine annoyances of vagabondage,
pickpocketings, but never relax surveillance.
Organize your reign with monstrous glee:
fertilize the sober soil so that vice
multiplies. Squeeze the toothpaste’s top,
never remember trash night, stuff joints
under the cushions, be blissful when strangers
ring the bell. Don’t bicker or slap--
better that you simulate the South Pole,
tentless, carving your own fingernail grave.
Keep the fruit bowl filled, the sheets clean.
Pay the bills, whisper in your sleep, and open
your windows and your veins: wet back
against wet back, inch near the edge.
Remove yourself from yourself.
II. Divorce
For the perfect crime add layers:
hang out at thrift stores,
buying flannel shirts and extra-large
wing-tips. In your dead man’s clothes
and rusty Pinto breathe in
the sooty scent of the Seventies
as you glue yourself to the VCR,
viewing and re-viewing Gimme Shelter.
Live in an abandoned water tank
and fool the small-town neighbors
by miking your voice through banks
of suspended speakers. Inhale helium.
Sharpen knives daily. Gloved, clean
with peroxide, dry with black napkins.
Stock up on duct tape, valium,
fruit juice, books by Genet,
and gauze, in case of accidents.
For your victim, choose an ex-lover.
She will be suitably depressed, angered,
gullible. Lure her to the river
with cocaine and pirate tapes of the Stones.
Bring tequila: salt, shot, then suck.
Confuse police with no signs of struggle.
Perform pagan pranks--a slow dance,
an orderly fire. Send odors downwind.
Beneath the four-dog moon avoid iron
insects. Ease your pain. Leave town.
Don’t bring grief into someone’s life
immediately: be deliberate, delicate,
and begin slowly--hide keys, have lover
call mid-day, refuse relations’ feasts.
You must seek balance. Have your penitentiary
correct routine annoyances of vagabondage,
pickpocketings, but never relax surveillance.
Organize your reign with monstrous glee:
fertilize the sober soil so that vice
multiplies. Squeeze the toothpaste’s top,
never remember trash night, stuff joints
under the cushions, be blissful when strangers
ring the bell. Don’t bicker or slap--
better that you simulate the South Pole,
tentless, carving your own fingernail grave.
Keep the fruit bowl filled, the sheets clean.
Pay the bills, whisper in your sleep, and open
your windows and your veins: wet back
against wet back, inch near the edge.
Remove yourself from yourself.
II. Divorce
For the perfect crime add layers:
hang out at thrift stores,
buying flannel shirts and extra-large
wing-tips. In your dead man’s clothes
and rusty Pinto breathe in
the sooty scent of the Seventies
as you glue yourself to the VCR,
viewing and re-viewing Gimme Shelter.
Live in an abandoned water tank
and fool the small-town neighbors
by miking your voice through banks
of suspended speakers. Inhale helium.
Sharpen knives daily. Gloved, clean
with peroxide, dry with black napkins.
Stock up on duct tape, valium,
fruit juice, books by Genet,
and gauze, in case of accidents.
For your victim, choose an ex-lover.
She will be suitably depressed, angered,
gullible. Lure her to the river
with cocaine and pirate tapes of the Stones.
Bring tequila: salt, shot, then suck.
Confuse police with no signs of struggle.
Perform pagan pranks--a slow dance,
an orderly fire. Send odors downwind.
Beneath the four-dog moon avoid iron
insects. Ease your pain. Leave town.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Napoleon's Second Love
That’s the type of womb that I want to marry.
N Bonaparte
I want to make one thing clear: it all starts
with the downstairs, the potential lap dance
from the widow from Albuquerque. Lacking sea brine
and the heft from an obsolete pulley, most things
become dull, underused, as if sunshine and rapture
are things to be mocked? A piecing of the left lip
is not for you. My lesbian daughter calls: Everything in Utica
stays the same—shithole weather, blue laws:
We all circle answer E, the last resort of idiots.
Midgets are taller than dwarfs according to my neighbor.
I reply: Firemen like it hot. Josephine laughs. You are not
the first, or second, her pet cockatoo screeches. Nothing that
stays stays put. Say it better: Everything
that will change will change
back to its first caged shape. And here
the great man, Emperor Me, stands, pomegranate in hand,
estranged father to the King of Rome, guilty of leading
droopy generals into humdrum wars, exiled to Elba,
serving up platters of cured meat to Greek tourists.
N Bonaparte
I want to make one thing clear: it all starts
with the downstairs, the potential lap dance
from the widow from Albuquerque. Lacking sea brine
and the heft from an obsolete pulley, most things
become dull, underused, as if sunshine and rapture
are things to be mocked? A piecing of the left lip
is not for you. My lesbian daughter calls: Everything in Utica
stays the same—shithole weather, blue laws:
We all circle answer E, the last resort of idiots.
Midgets are taller than dwarfs according to my neighbor.
I reply: Firemen like it hot. Josephine laughs. You are not
the first, or second, her pet cockatoo screeches. Nothing that
stays stays put. Say it better: Everything
that will change will change
back to its first caged shape. And here
the great man, Emperor Me, stands, pomegranate in hand,
estranged father to the King of Rome, guilty of leading
droopy generals into humdrum wars, exiled to Elba,
serving up platters of cured meat to Greek tourists.
Diminuendo & Crescendo In Blue - Part 2
There are so many things to worship in this vid: paul's humility; duke's excited exhortations; cat's piercing wails at end; the pounding clock of the drummer's beat;
the rhythmic muscularity of the bass line; the band's digging paul's (crazy) solo; duke checking out his fingernails; the nuanced signature duke horns (live!!). But what I love most is at 6:13 Satan himself seems to be digging the beat. Yeah, crazy, man.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Ben Franklin Sees London, He Sees France
Dear Monique, stop splashing the bubbles around.
This book is priceless and I’m due
at Versailles. I’m supposed to petition
compassion from your icy countrymen.
I hold a check, not that we have money,
for Lafayette, also in love with a seat
in the front row. Lower your laughing.
This bathroom is not a bullring--you’ll startle
your husband, Jacques, the Royal Frog.
This is a curious drama. I read Dante,
mistranslated by that idiot Hancock, but steam
fogs my bifocals. Don’t call me Uncle Benjy.
Why don’t you vacation in the Carolinas? Your skin
is too perfect, too white. Eat more.
I prefer thickly-carpeted paths, strenuous
struggles of gloomy appearances. Excuse my panting.
I was raised Quaker and my wife eats potatoes
with every meal. Put your legs down,
I can’t see the door. My beliefs?
They are as if cut straight out
of The Bible but where your back narrows
I pray for the next ten generations
that you can’t reach that spot. Please,
don’t hurry: the croissants are still warm
and we’re only midway through the Inferno.
Fifty years ago when I wasn’t old
and fat my crazy mother
drew my baths, made me memorize
catechisms of diligence and planned prudence,
and near Philadelphia and stable borders the winds
howled as I walked under the storm,
the dark sky not large enough
to hide me, and floating Monique,
the lilac soap leaves a fine film
that must be done away with.
I am not a perfect politician.
I cannot see clearly the rebels gathering
in your French barns, disturbing
the sleeping animals. I turn my back
to them, like an optimistic matador.
I can smell everyone’s fear
but my seeds need to speak. Excuse me,
dear mother. You and America never taught me
about the beautiful cracks and rivers that now surround me
or how God died from fever in Florence in 1321.
The ribbon in your red wig has
come
undone. Move over, I feel so dirty.
This book is priceless and I’m due
at Versailles. I’m supposed to petition
compassion from your icy countrymen.
I hold a check, not that we have money,
for Lafayette, also in love with a seat
in the front row. Lower your laughing.
This bathroom is not a bullring--you’ll startle
your husband, Jacques, the Royal Frog.
This is a curious drama. I read Dante,
mistranslated by that idiot Hancock, but steam
fogs my bifocals. Don’t call me Uncle Benjy.
Why don’t you vacation in the Carolinas? Your skin
is too perfect, too white. Eat more.
I prefer thickly-carpeted paths, strenuous
struggles of gloomy appearances. Excuse my panting.
I was raised Quaker and my wife eats potatoes
with every meal. Put your legs down,
I can’t see the door. My beliefs?
They are as if cut straight out
of The Bible but where your back narrows
I pray for the next ten generations
that you can’t reach that spot. Please,
don’t hurry: the croissants are still warm
and we’re only midway through the Inferno.
Fifty years ago when I wasn’t old
and fat my crazy mother
drew my baths, made me memorize
catechisms of diligence and planned prudence,
and near Philadelphia and stable borders the winds
howled as I walked under the storm,
the dark sky not large enough
to hide me, and floating Monique,
the lilac soap leaves a fine film
that must be done away with.
I am not a perfect politician.
I cannot see clearly the rebels gathering
in your French barns, disturbing
the sleeping animals. I turn my back
to them, like an optimistic matador.
I can smell everyone’s fear
but my seeds need to speak. Excuse me,
dear mother. You and America never taught me
about the beautiful cracks and rivers that now surround me
or how God died from fever in Florence in 1321.
The ribbon in your red wig has
come
undone. Move over, I feel so dirty.
Friday, May 21, 2010
all star jews MLB
This team could not beat the all stars from, say, the dominican republic, or italy, but with sandy a pitchin' and greenberg a hittin' clean up, in a one game play-off I’ll take my baruch atah adonai brethren:
1B hank greenberg
2b ian kinsler
Ss lou boudreau
3b al rosen
C brad ausmus
Of shawn green, ryan braun, sid Gordon
Dh kevin youkliss
P sandy koufax, ken holtzman, scott feldman, joe horlen, jason marquis
1B hank greenberg
2b ian kinsler
Ss lou boudreau
3b al rosen
C brad ausmus
Of shawn green, ryan braun, sid Gordon
Dh kevin youkliss
P sandy koufax, ken holtzman, scott feldman, joe horlen, jason marquis
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
A Summing
That's how it is on this bitch of an earth.
Beckett
I. My First Forty Years
Farouche dreams pour down like rain
from yesterday’s Kuala Lumpur.
Dear Doctor: these sessions
are a one way ticket on the Trans
Siberian railroad, the longest hearse
ever ridden. First, Vladivostok, then de-camping peasants
who revel in the morning near Novosibirsk.
The Ob River surges near its aching banks.
My family lacks this history. My uncle, from Kiev,
collected E.A. Prescott Pistols
and Eustache Le Sueur pencil sketches. He said,
inside the small box, two circles
of blue wheel near each other. In the middle
is a small statue of a minor deity,
her breasts tossed like falling snow.
The background newsprint suggests Serb, mid 30’s,
but I know better: this is page 217
of my autobiography. A small band of soldiers climbs a hill
looking for ammo and better shoes
II. Two Weeks Last August
After three years what gifts do I bring?
Plucking the strings of a Guadagnini
and watching the flies gather inside
my glass of port, you fully expect
these routines, darling doctor,
like old school assignations with louche men
smelling like miracles,
vacationers to Ogunquit, semi-coherent transitions from
one bleak morn to blasé eve. You cannot strike
this from the public record. The campanili are shrinking.
How can I keep waiting? It is predictable
and endless, like children, or chickens.
This is the Age of Federalism and, it goes
Without saying, seems like hell—
Carpaccio on a Ritz, the moon finally out,
her teeth gleaming, something elegiac, but soon
erased, like Geronimo befuddled by blood
oranges and skies of rosaries. All my friends
have names that are palindromes: Lon Nol,
Nisio Isin, Revilo P. Oliver. This irritates me.
III. Puteum Abyssi
Near Rouen, the Festival of the Ass
has ended. This is my last trip.
I am surrounded at home by relics
from Venice and medallions of St Fellatio,
patron saint of gag reflexives. You ask
if I have a good memory. I remember
Nothing. No thing. Just last Tuesday
my butcher asked me my name. I replied:
“Rabbi Jitters, I presume.”
You have asked me repeatedly
to write down my fantasies: Well,
Meinem Kinde, I have none,
purged from me by you eons ago,
callipygian ideals long lost. It’s OK.
I have no need to explain.
But in the last locust-free spaces in Brooklyn
I maintain one final desire—iron
braces for my callow cousin’s honied vagina.
Beckett
I. My First Forty Years
Farouche dreams pour down like rain
from yesterday’s Kuala Lumpur.
Dear Doctor: these sessions
are a one way ticket on the Trans
Siberian railroad, the longest hearse
ever ridden. First, Vladivostok, then de-camping peasants
who revel in the morning near Novosibirsk.
The Ob River surges near its aching banks.
My family lacks this history. My uncle, from Kiev,
collected E.A. Prescott Pistols
and Eustache Le Sueur pencil sketches. He said,
inside the small box, two circles
of blue wheel near each other. In the middle
is a small statue of a minor deity,
her breasts tossed like falling snow.
The background newsprint suggests Serb, mid 30’s,
but I know better: this is page 217
of my autobiography. A small band of soldiers climbs a hill
looking for ammo and better shoes
II. Two Weeks Last August
After three years what gifts do I bring?
Plucking the strings of a Guadagnini
and watching the flies gather inside
my glass of port, you fully expect
these routines, darling doctor,
like old school assignations with louche men
smelling like miracles,
vacationers to Ogunquit, semi-coherent transitions from
one bleak morn to blasé eve. You cannot strike
this from the public record. The campanili are shrinking.
How can I keep waiting? It is predictable
and endless, like children, or chickens.
This is the Age of Federalism and, it goes
Without saying, seems like hell—
Carpaccio on a Ritz, the moon finally out,
her teeth gleaming, something elegiac, but soon
erased, like Geronimo befuddled by blood
oranges and skies of rosaries. All my friends
have names that are palindromes: Lon Nol,
Nisio Isin, Revilo P. Oliver. This irritates me.
III. Puteum Abyssi
Near Rouen, the Festival of the Ass
has ended. This is my last trip.
I am surrounded at home by relics
from Venice and medallions of St Fellatio,
patron saint of gag reflexives. You ask
if I have a good memory. I remember
Nothing. No thing. Just last Tuesday
my butcher asked me my name. I replied:
“Rabbi Jitters, I presume.”
You have asked me repeatedly
to write down my fantasies: Well,
Meinem Kinde, I have none,
purged from me by you eons ago,
callipygian ideals long lost. It’s OK.
I have no need to explain.
But in the last locust-free spaces in Brooklyn
I maintain one final desire—iron
braces for my callow cousin’s honied vagina.
top 25 scary movies
Gates of Hell
A Tale of Two Sisters
Psycho
Quatermass and the Pit
Audition
Ju-on
The Tenant
Captivity
Dressed to Kill
Carrie
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (remake)
Don't Look Now
Suspiria
28 Days Later
Bride of Frankenstein
Vampyr
The Body Snatcher
Cat People
Peeping Tom
The Thing (re make)
The Last Wave
The Other
The Night of The Hunter
Rosemary's Baby
Damien
A Tale of Two Sisters
Psycho
Quatermass and the Pit
Audition
Ju-on
The Tenant
Captivity
Dressed to Kill
Carrie
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (remake)
Don't Look Now
Suspiria
28 Days Later
Bride of Frankenstein
Vampyr
The Body Snatcher
Cat People
Peeping Tom
The Thing (re make)
The Last Wave
The Other
The Night of The Hunter
Rosemary's Baby
Damien
all time baseball team
No negro leaguers or paige and josh Gibson wld be here; no relievers: I’ll use Koufax (L) and feller(R) as closing duo; no steroids issues, or a-rod, bonds, and clemons would be off (and in jail)
I have 30: needed to expand because of egos involved
C Johnny Bench
IB Gehrig
2b Hornsby
Ss Honus Wagner
3b Mike Schmidt
OF Babe, Willie Mays, Ted Williams
Starting Pitchers: Grove, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, Maddox, Spahn
C Bench Berra
IF Bench A-Rod; Jimmy Foxx, Eddie Collins, Hanley Ramirez, Hank Greenberg
OF Bench: Barry Bonds, Griffey Jr, Tris Speaker, Ty Cobb
Bullpen: Koufax, Feller, Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, Clemons, Carlton, Gibson, Carlton
I have 30: needed to expand because of egos involved
C Johnny Bench
IB Gehrig
2b Hornsby
Ss Honus Wagner
3b Mike Schmidt
OF Babe, Willie Mays, Ted Williams
Starting Pitchers: Grove, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, Maddox, Spahn
C Bench Berra
IF Bench A-Rod; Jimmy Foxx, Eddie Collins, Hanley Ramirez, Hank Greenberg
OF Bench: Barry Bonds, Griffey Jr, Tris Speaker, Ty Cobb
Bullpen: Koufax, Feller, Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, Clemons, Carlton, Gibson, Carlton
top 25 comedies
No order; no repeats: sry marxes, sturges, pythons, woody the perv
The Awful Truth
Bringing Up Baby
The Bank Dick
Duck Soup
Sherlock, Jr
Used Cars
Love & Death
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
To Be or Not to Be
Easy Living
Nothing Sacred
Raising Arizona
Rushmore
The Big Lebowski
The Miracle of Morgan's Creek
The Odd Couple
The Paleface
Some Like It Hot
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb
The Wrong Box
The Producers
M*A*S*H
Fargo
My Favorite Year
Tootsie
This is Spinal Tap
Carry On Nurse
Our Man in Havana
Something Wild
Real Genius
Pink Flamingos
Mondo Topless
Harold and Maude
Hobson's Choice
The Awful Truth
Bringing Up Baby
The Bank Dick
Duck Soup
Sherlock, Jr
Used Cars
Love & Death
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
To Be or Not to Be
Easy Living
Nothing Sacred
Raising Arizona
Rushmore
The Big Lebowski
The Miracle of Morgan's Creek
The Odd Couple
The Paleface
Some Like It Hot
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb
The Wrong Box
The Producers
M*A*S*H
Fargo
My Favorite Year
Tootsie
This is Spinal Tap
Carry On Nurse
Our Man in Havana
Something Wild
Real Genius
Pink Flamingos
Mondo Topless
Harold and Maude
Hobson's Choice
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Monday, May 17, 2010
On Explaining to the Judge Why I Drove Over a Pair of Teenage Girls
I don’t feel comfortable preaching:
a renter of blue movies, forgetful of exercise,
I speak Yiddish when Student Loans call.
Broadway was spine straight and bone-dry,
and the sun was at my back, turning
everything into Arcadian newness.
The girls darted from the left, through
the traffic, certain of relations
between loose limbs and concrete.
Uninformed of mortality, they eyed familiar
corners--I was shocked by the pints of blood.
For once I was not angry. I drove slowly,
daydreaming about a lewd lunch with a lover.
Her streaks of gray threaten to engulf
her head’s canvas as she lisps
when she tells me, please, please, please,
stop sucking my skin. Her right eye
has a hole and our days are filled
with facial chaos and cable TV.
My Chevette has dents the size of thighs.
Judge, do you remember “The Wild One”
when Brando and his boys raised gravel
in Compton with their black Harleys,
winked at our awed moms,
and drank liquor down in single gulps?
How our fathers shut stores early,
movies were boycotted, and girlfriends
licked Marlon’s chrome?
Hell, even my rabbi learned to roll joints.
Sneer, if you want, Your Honor,
or go with your mistress for a stroll,
because that’s all it would ever be.
This guilt makes me confess:
cocky and cross-eyed Lee Marvin,
on his knees
on Main Street swallowing dirt
and blood, became my father,
teaching me to never refuse the girls
most exhausted, to drive straight
and hard, using
their legs for handlebars.
a renter of blue movies, forgetful of exercise,
I speak Yiddish when Student Loans call.
Broadway was spine straight and bone-dry,
and the sun was at my back, turning
everything into Arcadian newness.
The girls darted from the left, through
the traffic, certain of relations
between loose limbs and concrete.
Uninformed of mortality, they eyed familiar
corners--I was shocked by the pints of blood.
For once I was not angry. I drove slowly,
daydreaming about a lewd lunch with a lover.
Her streaks of gray threaten to engulf
her head’s canvas as she lisps
when she tells me, please, please, please,
stop sucking my skin. Her right eye
has a hole and our days are filled
with facial chaos and cable TV.
My Chevette has dents the size of thighs.
Judge, do you remember “The Wild One”
when Brando and his boys raised gravel
in Compton with their black Harleys,
winked at our awed moms,
and drank liquor down in single gulps?
How our fathers shut stores early,
movies were boycotted, and girlfriends
licked Marlon’s chrome?
Hell, even my rabbi learned to roll joints.
Sneer, if you want, Your Honor,
or go with your mistress for a stroll,
because that’s all it would ever be.
This guilt makes me confess:
cocky and cross-eyed Lee Marvin,
on his knees
on Main Street swallowing dirt
and blood, became my father,
teaching me to never refuse the girls
most exhausted, to drive straight
and hard, using
their legs for handlebars.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Theory of Western Literature (Part I: Tragedy)
There is no longer autumn in Akron, Ohio.
Leaves willingly turn overnight from green
to death. This is how we grow old.
According to last week’s dinner companions
last summer’s drought has blocked
the so-called process of photosynthesis,
the mutating struggle to replace cells.
About this and how marriage
won’t turn our young heads gray
our grade schools lied. They told us Venus
would be visible, that California never crashed
into Utah one Friday night forming the Sierras,
that Columbus was a great white man.
All sexual disease, replied Coach Beerbelly,
could be cured. We became the unlucky ones.
The Pledge of Allegiance became less fashionable
and rigid Bon Jours! to Madame What’s Her Name
harbored nagging doubts. Wall Street made fathers
glow as they moved from parked cars to hotels.
Everything was perfect: the endless library shelves,
the frenzy to divide and dissect, the pleasures
of our paved playgrounds. We thought we could slay Nero
and in turn be slain, heroes’ deaths,
narratives read aloud a thousand million times
turning meekly into sitcoms of smoking guns
and faulty coffins, moving us offstage,
handcuffed, passive victims prone to inbreeding,
more eager now to live with beautiful nurses
named Sophia, ivory clasping their dry bosoms
as they roll us down to the bottom of the hill.
With the help of court-appointed translators
at dusk we eat darkness and sing “Arrivederci, Roma.”
Leaves willingly turn overnight from green
to death. This is how we grow old.
According to last week’s dinner companions
last summer’s drought has blocked
the so-called process of photosynthesis,
the mutating struggle to replace cells.
About this and how marriage
won’t turn our young heads gray
our grade schools lied. They told us Venus
would be visible, that California never crashed
into Utah one Friday night forming the Sierras,
that Columbus was a great white man.
All sexual disease, replied Coach Beerbelly,
could be cured. We became the unlucky ones.
The Pledge of Allegiance became less fashionable
and rigid Bon Jours! to Madame What’s Her Name
harbored nagging doubts. Wall Street made fathers
glow as they moved from parked cars to hotels.
Everything was perfect: the endless library shelves,
the frenzy to divide and dissect, the pleasures
of our paved playgrounds. We thought we could slay Nero
and in turn be slain, heroes’ deaths,
narratives read aloud a thousand million times
turning meekly into sitcoms of smoking guns
and faulty coffins, moving us offstage,
handcuffed, passive victims prone to inbreeding,
more eager now to live with beautiful nurses
named Sophia, ivory clasping their dry bosoms
as they roll us down to the bottom of the hill.
With the help of court-appointed translators
at dusk we eat darkness and sing “Arrivederci, Roma.”
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Gauguin's Loss of Virginity (1890-1891)
These days it doesn’t take two years:
post-game comfort after a tough softball loss,
John Lennon’s birthday, or passing tenth grade
for the second time, but these are consolations.
Gauguin knew better: his Juliette,
her back pinched by the limestone,
needs the fox’s paw to support
her spiraling, sun burnt breasts.
She can barely keep her eyes open:
she has been there twelve months.
The bed at the inn is lumpy,
the coffee is cold, and Paul can’t keep
his genius fingers off the maids.
The lilacs and tulips won’t re-straighten
and the rocks’ moss itches like hell.
There are numerous other delays:
Paul has to run to the hill
to shoo local boys away. The kids
aren’t reluctant to go--
there’s not enough action here anyway.
See!, how the narrowed horizon soon evaporates
near Cannes and other questionable virgins,
where less violent marriage processions
won’t keep marching toward the canvas.
Here they are too small to fear,
but the noise disturbs the scene’s dumbness.
Next week there will another wedding march.
Paul will probably lose control again,
call it a day after the clouds shift,
and smugly rub down Juliette’s sores.
As for the fox: he will bitterly complain
about the rocks spreading in silence,
the vacancy in his eyes, a girl’s thigh
getting top billing, the lack
of horizontal stroking. He says,
to the devil with you and your muted pinks.
He desires to become Lassie,
a movie star, a savior for the slopes,
anything, but will settle for the role
of this dead landscape’s pastor
and take off on that impossibly-thin path
once again sure of his own four legs,
his power to smell fresh air and real blood.
On Sundays he will stalk sheep
and schoolgirls, evangelically
learning to love others before himself.
post-game comfort after a tough softball loss,
John Lennon’s birthday, or passing tenth grade
for the second time, but these are consolations.
Gauguin knew better: his Juliette,
her back pinched by the limestone,
needs the fox’s paw to support
her spiraling, sun burnt breasts.
She can barely keep her eyes open:
she has been there twelve months.
The bed at the inn is lumpy,
the coffee is cold, and Paul can’t keep
his genius fingers off the maids.
The lilacs and tulips won’t re-straighten
and the rocks’ moss itches like hell.
There are numerous other delays:
Paul has to run to the hill
to shoo local boys away. The kids
aren’t reluctant to go--
there’s not enough action here anyway.
See!, how the narrowed horizon soon evaporates
near Cannes and other questionable virgins,
where less violent marriage processions
won’t keep marching toward the canvas.
Here they are too small to fear,
but the noise disturbs the scene’s dumbness.
Next week there will another wedding march.
Paul will probably lose control again,
call it a day after the clouds shift,
and smugly rub down Juliette’s sores.
As for the fox: he will bitterly complain
about the rocks spreading in silence,
the vacancy in his eyes, a girl’s thigh
getting top billing, the lack
of horizontal stroking. He says,
to the devil with you and your muted pinks.
He desires to become Lassie,
a movie star, a savior for the slopes,
anything, but will settle for the role
of this dead landscape’s pastor
and take off on that impossibly-thin path
once again sure of his own four legs,
his power to smell fresh air and real blood.
On Sundays he will stalk sheep
and schoolgirls, evangelically
learning to love others before himself.
Stanislavsky and Methods
Before Kaddish, during the burial,
the ground dream too iced-over for hacking
into, the mother came up to me,
hair ablaze and said, thanks
for the poems about my daughter,
and I said, listen, this is not real,
but I always wanted to play
in a synagogue, marbled voices
and yellowing walls and she was kind
to me, a stranger in town, a fine actress.
In the morning the world was frigid
near Hoboken, my inverted hell, the Hudson
giftwrapping in ice polluted birds.
Happy holidays to you upstate New York.
Cosmic exams ask tectonic plates
to shift south, misshaping the coast.
The daughter still lives in the Village, surrounded
by scripts of Hungarian rapings, CD’s
of Bessie Smith, neighbors after
midnight with small sores
lining their lips, not living
the dogged code that everyone should
breathe. She remains alert
to her mother’s new home, vivid
from freedom, emotional territories
widening with each winter.
Her mother is a true believer
in Jewish Miracles, the daughter,
a blurred fax not so carefree
about the hasty withdrawals of men
and minutes, kept awake
by the nightly screaming of gays
upstairs, everyone else in the building
too drunk on TV and Ecstasy
to notice that Manhattan shrinks
more than usual from record lows,
the island, sold and stolen many times over,
that never weeps, or rather, always
weeps, tears flooding up from the sewers
into the laps of the homeless
who scribble memos on bags:
Dearest Mother:
please forgive me but I can’t live
in the warmth of the South
or your Temple, and where is father,
and I can’t remember my childhood
and there’s no real need
to keep on reading or caring--
you will be runned down enough
from the coming Potomac heat,
and, gee, how lucky and blessed
you are to have a healthy single daughter
willing to illustrate the awful perfect truths
about welcomed random calamities
that at least invent permanently,
as if they were part of a crowd or seedy novel
about the dramatics of atheism with an ending
enigma forcing her to enact
infamous roles in her bed about leaving.
the ground dream too iced-over for hacking
into, the mother came up to me,
hair ablaze and said, thanks
for the poems about my daughter,
and I said, listen, this is not real,
but I always wanted to play
in a synagogue, marbled voices
and yellowing walls and she was kind
to me, a stranger in town, a fine actress.
In the morning the world was frigid
near Hoboken, my inverted hell, the Hudson
giftwrapping in ice polluted birds.
Happy holidays to you upstate New York.
Cosmic exams ask tectonic plates
to shift south, misshaping the coast.
The daughter still lives in the Village, surrounded
by scripts of Hungarian rapings, CD’s
of Bessie Smith, neighbors after
midnight with small sores
lining their lips, not living
the dogged code that everyone should
breathe. She remains alert
to her mother’s new home, vivid
from freedom, emotional territories
widening with each winter.
Her mother is a true believer
in Jewish Miracles, the daughter,
a blurred fax not so carefree
about the hasty withdrawals of men
and minutes, kept awake
by the nightly screaming of gays
upstairs, everyone else in the building
too drunk on TV and Ecstasy
to notice that Manhattan shrinks
more than usual from record lows,
the island, sold and stolen many times over,
that never weeps, or rather, always
weeps, tears flooding up from the sewers
into the laps of the homeless
who scribble memos on bags:
Dearest Mother:
please forgive me but I can’t live
in the warmth of the South
or your Temple, and where is father,
and I can’t remember my childhood
and there’s no real need
to keep on reading or caring--
you will be runned down enough
from the coming Potomac heat,
and, gee, how lucky and blessed
you are to have a healthy single daughter
willing to illustrate the awful perfect truths
about welcomed random calamities
that at least invent permanently,
as if they were part of a crowd or seedy novel
about the dramatics of atheism with an ending
enigma forcing her to enact
infamous roles in her bed about leaving.
Friday, May 14, 2010
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