The Three Musicians

<-- Picasso - The Three Musicians - The more you look at it the better and funnier Picasso gets. This is what I want my poems to read like.

(^^) Below is a sonnet about my great-grandpa Rudy. I don't know much about him - he died in 1936-7? I know this:
He lived near Frankfurt in Germany. He was a butcher. When my grandma was about 2-3 he cheated on his wife with the housekeeper at the hotel/butcher shop his father owned. He stood to inherit the hotel. When he found out the housekeeper was pregnant he trashed his inheritance stole money from the cash register and fled for America (Chicago) to avoid what if any scandals?

In Chicago he opened a butcher shop somewhere & sold Oscar Meyer wieners on the side.

W/in a year he paid back the money he stole from the cash register + interest.

He had the 1st motor-car in Oswego. A couple years later when everyone had one he had three.

He weighed 300lbs.

When he went back to Germany in the 30s (to visit) Hitler was in power and you weren't supposed to buy from Jewish merchants. He thought that was bullshit and bought from them anyway. He did what he wanted, hated rules. Here's the rest of him/his story:

Rudolph Knapp

(see: Slipstream Aug. '09)

God's Mills

I just found out my (2nd or 3rd or 4th?) cousin Lilo Beil is now (this week) a best selling author in Germany. Her book is called Gottes Muhlen, i.e. God's Mills, i.e. "The mills of the gods grind slowly, yet they grind exceedingly small" - also one of my favorite ancient (Greek?) quotations.

Here is her book description half-translated from German by computer:

Friedrich Gontard, young, well looking, melancholischem view, is Kriminalkommissar and the clearing-up of a child murder in the südpfälzischen province is assigned. It is the year 1957. The Gontard still traumatisierte by the war dips into Pfaffenbronn into a Mikrokosmos, which seems to lag behind as in a time journey ten years. The young man from education-civil Frankfurt house here everything is not free and open enough. The tendency in the village brews itself together. The murder the outsider Otto Straub is suspected. More is here not betrayed

hurray

hurrah

for lilo beil
my 2nd or 3rd or 4th cousin
everyone should go out and get
Gottes Muhlen
it reads in German
but it reads
well

lilo also wrote a story
about my great-
grandpa
he
was a butcher hawked
wieners in Chicago
& fled Germany w/ wife & kid
after sticking his
in the maid
- how
could you not wanna write
something about a guy
such as
him.

hiphip
hurray
for lilo & my fodder's mutters fodder
great-grandpa Rudy Knapp
300lb.
wiener-broker, Chicago's finest.


* I saw the above Picasso in MOMA (NYC) last week. One of my all time faves. It's called Harlequin.

Captain Tony's

I was in Key West not long ago, and I began drinking at the Green Parrot. It's a blues bar and the jukebox is full of blues songs, and I'm not really a blues fan - some of it's alright, but it gets old pretty fast. Anyway, I'm in there alone and I'm drinking Heinekens as fast as I can because I don't know anyone and I figure if I drink fast enough someone will get interesting or I will get interesting, and my mind will wander away from the blues - I was feeling a little depressed at the time, but more than that I was feeling edgy - don't ask, I made a mistake. So I'm gunning these beers back to get my mind off everything and it's starting to work and I order another and the waitress finally says, "Hey, where you putting these?" "I'm dumping them out in the toilet," I say. She gives me a hard look. "Carry on..."

A while later I'm at the Half-Shell on the wharf. I'm feasting on conch soup and oysters, sitting amidst license plates. The walls there are full of license plates, i.e. specialty tags, with clever witticisms and innuendos on them. This to me is if not the height, at least a tall mogul of dumb-shit American diversionary indulgence. I scanned the plates for the best/worst one. I decided I would never wanna be a passenger in a car with Ohio plates that said "HOP IN." But it was right over my head. It was just plumb
wrong.

Here's a poem I got out of that night. I ended up at Captain Tony's Saloon - the original Sloppy Joe's, where Hemingway used to mill about. I ended up drinking rum with Robert Frost's great-nephew (he's a kayak-outfitter in Key Largo, soft-spoken, funny, egoless, one of the better ones - never even bothered reading his uncle's stuff - says it just doesn't interest him - me neither - Frost can pound sand for all I care - I can't think of anyone who I don't like better than him), and his jail-bound buddy who wound up balls-naked in the Garden of Eden later that night and got thrown out by the scowling tarbender for continually forgetting to put the complimentary washrag under his ass when he sat on his bar stool - it was more than a little disturbing - he was the only nude in the (clothing optional) bar, too drunk to remember the washrag.


(+) 428 Greene Street ~ see: Underground Voices Poetry

Killing the Eagle

I wrote a story called Killing the Eagle. It was published in Underground Voices a few months ago. But there's a strange story/coincidence behind it.

I wrote the thing in December of 2005. Two weeks after I finished, the real Road Dog - the symbolized eagle in the story - Road Dog died in his sleep I think on his sofa. He was only forty. No one saw it coming. Not even his girlfriend who (I heard) just sat there running her fingers through his long hair and weeping while she waited for the medics to come and whisk him away.

There's a whole page and DVD and pics dedicated to him on the website of the bar where my story actually happened.

Here's the link. http://www.natsden.com/

Killing the Eagle you can find here. http://www.undergroundvoices.com/UVPowersMP2.htm

Red Wraith

First of all, I wanna thank Big One of Bukowski fame for posting this link... the reason I got rid of it is because I equate the below poem to a pair of cokeheads spending their night doing lines together and coming up with a business idea/stratagem they believe is genius, only to wake up the next day w/ the realization that patenting zero gravity oven mittens and warehousing them in Manchurian brothels wasn't such a good idea after all. In fact it was dumb
as shit.



Somewhere between dawn and dusk,
between dreams of cathedrals
and crematoriums I am
awakened
in my motel room my roll
by bells tolling Easter Sunday.

I have only dirty sheets to veil
the dirty sounds. They are draped over
the windows like animal hides
butchers
hang to dry,
dripping slowly still the blood
of Christ what was last
night? Was the mile I walked on Mayan
time? I remember graffiti
on a bathroom wall -
something about last-ditch dreams
on this last-ditch isle.

Is this where failed men come after
failing love and war? Are my six
dead soldiers gleaming from
the shelves turning
coke remnants on the cover
of The Marriage of Heaven
and Hell?

It's not the Arab
with the bulletproof pants,
yet I am no closer to the infinite
than the scrubwoman downstairs
cleansing doors with her
with her clunky
cart.

Physiognomy

{!!} A person's character is often revealed less by what he says than by the subtleties he unknowingly exudes. There is almost nothing that a person does that doesn't in some way betray him - his gait, his gaze, the inflections of his voice, his posture, laugh, every mannerism, the clothes he wears, a sigh, a grunt, a belch - everything is telling, everything pronounces something.

A person's physical traits too have a voice of their own. There is much that speaks of a man by the symmetry of his ears or eyes, or by the shape & contours of his skull. Even his rump is a novel of its own, and I can usually learn more about someone by what I see in him than by what is spoken of him or by what he propounds.

"The tongue expresses only the thoughts of one man, but the face expresses a thought of nature herself." - Schopenhauer

I think Velazquez was following my same train of thought when he decided to depict the hump in the smock in the painting above. Not only does his face "discover" him, but also his pregnant posture, his hands, and particularly his outspread legs. If you cdn't slide a sofa-bed through them without him knowing, you couldn't slide anything through, and for this I do not believe I wd've liked him. I can only imagine what self-indulgent atrocities this charlatan committed during his lifetime. I can only imagine what rings of hell his monstrous prancing feet led his people through.

Wholly Crustacean

[?] When I am drinking heroically, or thinking about booze (as is my wont wnever I'm sober); when I am reading Sterne, or Swift, or Joyce or Burroughs; when I listen to the strains of the Irish fiddle and they lift me through the chimney to the rooftops then sink me into such a dark depression that even plastic bags become a threat; when I think about my furies, my hatreds, my loves, & the seesaw of emotions that fill my soul every day, I know I am Irish through and through.

But when I read the works of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Heine, and even more than that when I listen to Bach and Beethoven as I always do; when I want nothing more than to write & work, and work & write and when I don't such a deep feeling of listlessness/ogida comes over me that I can hardly handle myself, let alone others (having been cursed w/ the inability to make small talk, I am wholly crustacean, and avoid my neighbors in the most shameful ways for fear of being pried out of the glory of my shell), I know my German ancestors have their hands in my soul, and are turning my inward glance towards them.

But when I am transposed by the paintings of Edvard Munch; when I am reading Hamsun; when I am overtaken by a feeling of wanderlust and lusting for the ocean, or want to go fishing in a crab boat on the Bering Sea - this last hardly ever happens -

"never having had a fondness for catching fish" -- Turgenev

But when it does I know I am more Norwegian than anything.

I am 2/3rds Irish and German, parts Norwegian, and am just beginning to figure on what came from where, & who is responsible for my particularly sad form of madness.

It was probably the English. I have some of that in me too.

“It is no good casting out devils. They belong to us, we must accept them and be at peace with them.” -- D.H. Lawrence

On Welts Wanting One More Seasoning

(--.) The farther we are from our hometowns, and from those who know all our faults and that which makes us both slavish and mortal, the better we are perceived. Most people aren't aware of this, but I actually have somewhat of a cult following in a small village in Madagascar. They are promulgating my legend among their people and several neighboring communities as we speak, they tell me, but they need more donations. Apparently there's traveling expenses and printing costs I didn't foresee when I became involved with them. But their accountant has been both accurate and thorough w/ the statements he has sent me, and I believe in the urgency of this cause, so my money has been well spent.

"If you lend someone $20, and never see that person again, it was probably worth it." -- Author Unknown

('') Death needs nothing but its own dark humor; death is stuffing turkeys and wearing latex gloves tonight; death will assail the boudoir in grandmother's bloomers
come midnight.

(*) Ya ever notice that the more you try to cure someone of the character flaws that most become them, the more you actually drive them back into themselves, thus enhancing what you wished most to eradicate in the first place?

In other words, "You can drive out nature w/ a pitchfork, but she always returns." -- Horace

And when she does return she returns in full fury.

Observation Makes Art Real

(/\.) The paintings I post in here relate either subtly, obviously, or in no way at all to what I write, but I like looking at them more than I do photos (especially of myself - there's nothing more crass and vain than filling your blog up w/ pics of yourself - writing about yourself is vain enough).

"We speak little if not egged on by vanity." ~François de la Rochefoucauld

Anyway, I spent about five hours last summer at the Art Institute of Chicago looking at Picassos, Toulouse-Lautrecs, Van Goghs, etc., and it wasn't enough. My girlfriend had to drag me out of the place.

"Nothing exists until or unless it is observed. An artist is making something exist by observing it. And his hope for other people is that they will also make it exist by observing it. I call it "creative observation." -- Burroughs

our culture is an arm in the crapper reaching for a baby wipe that never should've been flushed in the first place

#(1) Intro
(b.) intermezzo stomp

#(2) Here's a quote from today's paper: "The little lickspittle wasn't satirizing, he really thought his pimps, buggers and opulent idiots were important, instead of the last mold on the dying cheese." And this is so true. If you lived with them, you'd wish you didn't. And if you never did you'd romanticize them. I was chased yesterday by a guy with a hammer. He hurled it at a rack of pumps behind me. I told him next time that happens you better kill me, because if you don't I'm gonna get that fucking thing somehow and beat the fuck out of you with it. I don't believe Proust ever had a hammer-wielding idiot moving towards him. Because if he did, it would've helped. It would've stripped the tinsel from his dark clouds.

#(~) Predators accused in periwigs and clown suit trappings 'midst bitter root and tangled bougainvillea. Eating fried pork and conch stew on the courthouse corner of Quadrille and Olive under a sign that says,
"I used a P.D." and Salt Chunk Mary too.

And somehow I knew this time is closer
The burn of tobacco in my throat
Everyday offering something you should take
Everyone something you should learn

They're there for that.

And I keep clearing my throat.

#(3) Humberto Checklick vs. Mohan Pickholtz in the blue tint twilight.
Laundry strung across Brooklyn tenements
Crescent moon coming up over them
Men with heads filled with small-time schemes
rummaging through their pockets for receipts
Checklick sparring a horsefly on a fish hook
Checklick strong of back and weak of mind
Pickholtz sawing a violin for low foreheads
Checklick's double-fisted pigeon-toed passion
Mohan pleading for a fifth
The sixth chapter wearing like an old pair of pants
Schopenhauer throwing old ladies down flights of stairs
Humanity's victorious pumping fist
The crowd a sea of tiny beetle grins
Zweiter Teil, Erster Tiel!
A couple of corn-fed oafs in the knoll
Christians in blaze-orange hunting gear
because they know
And Wilma Pug in a Buick,
her wagging pink tongue slapped down her
throat like a wax seal on a fat envelope
As graveyards grow more teeth
And we forget to remember what's worst.

#(4) CAIRO, Illinois -- MISSING MARINE CAUGHT IN SPIDERHOLE WEARING GUNITE AND ASS-SHOT TROUSERS. Yea big midget unaccounted for. (( )) <-- wholly bandy.

#(5) Good's the best form of cowardice,
and Evil's best when you're willing to die
one death or a thousand continuous
ones

# 6.) But goodness is not cowardice. Good is letting someone in the culture you've created know. Them. It's not about you. The truest cliche. Someday I'll do more than spout. We don't sacrifice lambs anymore. Our time is the only thing on the alter. And it's usually just
useless time anyway, but we don't know it yet.

#(^^). SUGARKANE -- Sturm und Drang, like Siegfried & Roy
Horn, but the lion is me
walking with fools and sleeping with sorrow
and the dream:
her ass crack slowly swallowing her sweat pants
munching a pair of ELECTIVE INFIRMITIES
and Claribel
tall enough to hunt geese with a rake
a bingo parlor of embittered old comedians
catering to bones but not heart
and Steve Allen's dead gams
using a jockstrap for an oxygen mask
and the way he sidelines in locker rooms
disguised as a bar of soap
while squirting blue dye
in crappers
as though it's the height
of class
to have blue water
shot through
crappers.

My co-worker trumping every story with one more wild and far-reaching (reaching something other than truth, always) which is the quickest way to kill a conversation and inspire hate.

#(*) G.W. Bush harvesting daggers under a dove-white kerchief folded neatly on his lap, his strategy session consisting of sumo wrestling with (pompous) blowhards
Commodore Nutt playing "The Vulture Hustle" on a sludge pump
Bill 0. fielding circus peanuts lobbed across a Romper Room bounce house.

Each session consisting especially of diapers
(soiled) in the middle of the ring.

#(::) HURLO-THRUMBO -- And it's so much like that lately, trading hyperbolic tooth for the direct look in the eye from a dog (human or otherwise), and I remember our hugger-mugger salutations so long ago Jesus windblown on a skiff doing hack squats with a masthead (because he looked like a crucifix) the tarpon even parting his wake
and I remember when she said she hardly knew me
drunk on the prow with a dinky crossbones flag violently hoisted
my composure more of Buford T. Justice
than of any Redbeard you could drum up
and if you wanna know where my dignity is I'll dig that up too
and I don't drink anymore
unless the hands of the clock are on a time
and she could've been rude
ambling under there overseas
A cripple in a Turkish trench coat
Peering through shop windows with her submarine
periscope.

In a silvery lean to (pup).

Tugboats passing in the night, and the tolling of bells
and then darkness
and then silence.

Forgive me for my misdeeds and that place in my heart where you are.

But I hope you get better too.

#(4) Instrumental

#) Wine is better the longer it observes from the shelves. I'm more wine than I am heliotrope.

#(7 The shelves at my house filled with Emmett Kelly Jr., W.C. Fields figurines where the head was a cork for a drink never drunk. My dad was an S & L kinda guy. Something happened. My mom taught Spanish and English. Money eludes them still like water parting a jutting rock. Though they still believe in it (even if it were a hobby). They never stopped doing that, despite all it's done for them (in the way of nothing). Of course it has a purpose. I'm not talking about that. Most
people just never can step back from the thing. Even for a moment. It's why most men in America who retire after 65 die within two years. What else is there, for them? All there is is the thing. And insurance too.

Death Brokers with ice picks at their immediate disposal. As feral hogs charge with their eyes closed.

#(V.) CALYPSO -- Beethoven Sym. #9., Choral Fantasy, Bach, Shosta. #15,
Van Morrison.

But modern music is time; classical is eternity.

#(11). And it's never too late to Mendelssohn. But it doesn't mean I
like him.