In the beginning was the Deed

I was in Chicago a couple weeks ago, and got a relatively cheap room ($105/night) at the historic Ambassador East. It's a pretty okay place, although the Pump Room isn't what it once was, and the walls in the rooms are so thin you almost have to whisper so your neighbor doesn't hear you. One morning I woke up and my woman was singing and laughing when suddenly we heard a loud bang on the wall. "It's 6:00 in the goddamn morning!" someone yelled. It was a woman's voice, husky and unpleasant. "Where'd that come from?" I asked. The voice heard me. The walls got beaten again. "Shut up! Shut up! We're fucking sleeping!"

I rolled over in bed. "Exactly what kind of beast is this?" I wondered.

I never found out. We let the creature sleep and never heard from it again.
--
Later that morning, I walked along Lakeshore Dr., and around and about all the way to Wrigley Field. It had been about thirty years since the last time I was there. I remember watching the Pirates & Cubs play. This is when the Pirates had Dave Parker and Willie Stargell & the Cubs' great jewel was their catcher Barry Foote. He was a heel though. And so were the Cubs. They still are. I always preferred the Sox (White or Black).

Anyway, I lapped Wrigley and ended up at a used bookstore on N. Clark. I perused the place. Couldn't find anything worthwhile, but just before I left one of the employees was carting a stack of books and as she moved past me one book fell off the shelf and landed on my foot (my barry foote). It was Faust Part 1, by Goethe, Penguin Classics 1949.

I opened it:

"Well, well, keep at it: ply the shears and paste
Concoct from feasts of other men your hashes
And should the thing be wanting in fire or taste
Blow into flame your little heap of ashes:"

The exact book I was looking for. I just didn't know it yet. I bought it and went back to my hotel, which happened to be on Goethe St.
--

twentytwelve prophesy

Prophesy for 2012

Humanity won't be very humane in 2012. They won't bother to change their whims or ways. They will see red and feel blue, and green will be the color of their envy, and their cowardice yellow and they will tell each other white lies. They will devour everything and desire even more, yet nothing will satisfy them, and they will die for nothing too.

Mankind will never change, no matter what the pastors and prognosticators may preach. They will murder virtue for vice, and God for money. They will make gods out of knaves, rogues and thieves. They will edify lotharios, together with mobsters, sharpsters, harpies, bunglers, bucklers-of-swash, butchhaired mopes & rope-a-dopefiends.

Expect more of the same in twentytwelve.

Winter

Fools will rule in the first month, particularly when Capricorn holds sway. Men with misshapen skulls, underslung jaws and penguinfeet will emerge from their subterranean stumbling grounds and clamber up the ranks. They will obtain positions they'd been quietly eyeing all along. Some will become bigwigs and head cheeses in the corporate belly; others will carve out niches for themselves as mouthpieces for shitmerchants. All will be highly in vogue.

January 31st: As Eros glides past Earth, electromagnetic radiation combined with sleet & low atmospheric pressure will cause several different species to crossbreed. Polar bears and elk will copulate, possums and ground squirrels occasionally rendezvous & in Wood Buffalo, Alberta, an ape with messed up biorhythms will slip on a banana peal (his trainer's excuse) and rape a drunken rent-a-cop.

Spring

Springtime will bring crime levels to new highs in the lower fortyeight. Pursesnatchers & pocketpicks will be in season in most metropolitan areas. They will blame the gas prices for their desperation, as well as pawnshops & their henpecking wives. In Miami, three underhanded Overtown men will pilfer an outsized Virgin Mary statue and get arrested selling the copper for scrap - a sign of the times. I recommend paying it no mind, but instead preoccupying yourself with lighthearted diversions. Play the sludge pump on your front stoop. Keelhaul a deadbeat dad. Kill your first bear. Wear stretchpants and moonboots & go potato sack racing in the night. And in the daytime, read the ancients - Xenophon, Aristophanes, Seneca, etcetera. And remember what Horace once wisely said:

"Well-timed folly has a sweet relish"

And Lucretius too:

"Eject the gathered sperm in anything at all"

...But for Christ sakes, do stop draining your balls in front of your computer. It will ruin your sex life, and besides, someone's liable to find the evidence you leave behind.

Summer

The summer of 2012 will be presaged by several oracles & omens. In Gemini, just after Venus passes by, crows and bulls will be particularly loud and unruly, and an eagle will drop a clump of earth on a tyrant's head. I'm not sure what this means in the scheme of things, but I do suggest keeping an eye out for signs like these, and also for unlicensed soothsayers, keeping in mind all the while what Pacuvius said:

"For those who understand the speech of birds,
and learn from others' inwards more than from their own
We may well hear, but not attend, their words."

Too much superstition, after all, is what drove Alexander the Great mad. It did in & did away with whole armies, ages, factions and nations. And I foresee that come midsummer, on the Rue Saint-Cyr in Port-au-Prince, it will induce a befuddled midget to shit his pants and walk crabwise.

Expect flash floods, mudslides, wildfires & thunder storms in August. Bird flu, killer bees, ozone depletion and human stampedes should also be expected, along with meteorites & dead flowers. All of these things coupled with cost-push inflation will pervade the collective unconscious on deeper levels, giving rise to spiritual & climatic discontent among the populous, and causing many to suffer under the weight of their most nagging neuroses.

I recommend as a remedy taking a reprieve from all the world's affairs. Get yourself in a dark room, and get drunk often on Irish whiskey & Riesling Kabinett. It will chase away your blues, and get you in the habit of comparing your life not with the lives of other women and men, but with marigolds and hummingbirds, with moon and star and any creature or thing uninhibited by self-consciousness. For they are the best exemplars of living correctly. They show us the way. They regret & dread nothing.

You'll understand this best in your cups.

September 5th-20th: As the Fall Equinox approaches, Muslims will be at odds with Jews, Christians will claim superiority over Hindus, and angels will avoid any dogooder whose deeds are stained by self-interest, i.e. by ego - every devil's plaything & the speaking thing for those who claim to know:

"The God that holds you over the Pit of Hell, much as one holds a Spider or some loathsome Insect over the Fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his Wrath towards you burns like Fire; he looks upon you as Worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the Fire..."
--Jonathan Edwards, 1741

Yet rolling holy slimedeposits like him will be all the rage in 2012, especially when Libra finds its stride. Be ready for them. Beware of the branding irons they stash behind their pulpits. Beware of their lies. And be leery especially of the love they have for themselves. It is the most destructive force within them. It keeps them dangerous and makes them death to the Divine.

Autumn

Spinsters and frogprinces will crawl out of their personal ads & retreat back to the forests. They will hide high in poplar trees until the leaves begin to fall. Then they will come down and climb into spiraling gopherholes in the underworld, all leading to a desert plain from which will ascend a towering hourglass teetering on a cross full of eyes. It will morph into a mandolin sundial inscribed with Sanskrit numerals. Then it will whirl backwards & become a celestial waterwheel pushed by a bungling pair of conjoined harlequins. They will heave it wholly over a dune & argue it down a long highway whose floor is a fun house mirror. A mirage then will swallow them piecemeal, and a chrysalis will appear, inverting its wings & changing its form into a floating door that opens to reveal a spatial dimension where amputees, giantesses, and bandylegged elves are all entangled in a Bacchanal. All of this will be presided over by a carnival yodeler in women's underthings, and the following sages: Descartes & Kierkegaard.

Look for our newcomers to stay here for awhile.

October 5th-31st: Pay careful attention to the dreams your days are rounded by around this time. If they are vivid and involve the dancing of pagans, vegans, or the bathing rituals of he-goats & spiny primordial creatures you must remember the psyche's intent - it doesn't undress itself in vain. Yin & yang. Ebb & flow. Second sight is clearest in the night. Dreams best dreamt are meant to restore balance in your mind.

November 11th: Unless it's absolutely necessary, avoid cow-tipping on this day.

As the Christmas season approaches, global consumer confidence will trend upwards, unemployment will trend downwards, and the old pastime of attaching highsounding epithets to dull and ordinary things will evolve into a mania. Just as now the garbageman has been renamed sanitation engineer, as the plaquescraper is better known as the dental hygienist, and as the lounge chair is called a chaise lounge, so new names will be created in order to confound the public & conceal from them the contemptible reality of so many cheerless commonplaces.

Hence the cockroach, I predict, will become the jaunty blatta; the Dumpster will be renamed a fortified refuse thingamabob; the small-engine mechanic will insist on being called an internal combustion specialist; and all plumbers will presently refer to themselves as crapologists.

"We strive constantly to embellish and preserve our imaginary being, and neglect the real one." - Pascal

Winter

The Mesoamerican Long Count Calendar will complete its 13th Baktun cycle on December 21st, as the solstice sun reaches the southern terminus of the Milky Way's Dark Rift. The ancient Mayans considered this point the Tree of Life, the symbolic axis-mundi which joins the Underworld with the terrestrial realm and the sky. According to them the creation lord Bolon Yokte K'u will descend from the sky-earth cleft, and a Cosmo genesis will occur. The world will be reborn & transformed.

Some take this to mean mankind will undergo a great metamorphosis; that we will be spiritually enlightened & morally superior to what we are now.

I take this to mean the galaxy may alter its old ways, and exchange its primal mask & cape, but mankind won't change a thing (about itself).

Where the Tree of Life engenders the will-to-survive, the devil does play. The Absurd is the order of the day, and sorrow, always,
prevails.

when the hookers keep getting better looking you know you're in a recession

I first of all want to say I think the woman to my left is the most beautiful I've ever seen in a painting. Nothing quite like the good old fashioned ever-elusive giantess.

Secondly, I wanted to mention how bad things are, economically speaking, in the US of A right now. We're in a recession (and have been since about May of last year) no matter what anyone says. I know this for one reason and one reason only: because that's when the prostitutes started getting better looking.

Maxims & Reflections

^^^^ Here's some winesoaked maxims & reflections:

Never trust a man named
Bobby or Billy or Ricky

The weak will remain weak and the
strong will only appear that way

Fools are often better
educators than wisemen

It's better to compete with birds
and beasts and flowers than with men

Most men bloom swift, (somewhere between
ages 16-22) then spend the
rest of their lives
wilting

Consciousness is the shit-rift
between dream & death

Life is for the most part biding
your time being in time and
waiting

Wait until your dreams are as
ready for you as you are for
them; dreamchasing is a tender
act & cannot be forced

When dreams begin to write themselves
in legalese I will commit hari-kari

Putrid egos bulge
and pander for popular
approval

Egos eat themselves like second growths

Any dolt can (and does) have a
conviction regarding politics

The whisper of
oblivion is the breath eternal

Man plants his germs in the machinery
of the universe

Some hells are worse for their
plausibility

You must wear the
albatross of the people

Spirit & Body will never
find
one another
if they go looking

God made man on a Friday
his failures are ours
to
fix

(he had the courage of matzo balls)

I'm So Fucking ~~~~ kunk

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Schultze Gets the Blues

I just saw the best movie I've seen in about ten years. It's a German film with English subtitles called Schultze Gets the Blues (2003). The main character is the biggest hump of an accordion player & hardly says anything throughout the movie, but he doesn't need to. He plays his part of the froghuman perfectly without even trying.

The only other movies I can think of that compare are Sideways (Paul Giamatti = best actor of our time), and maybe Napoleon Dynamite, which it's similar to at least from a directorial standpoint.

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