Oktoberfest

Ten days from now I will be on a plane bound for Dusseldorf. I'm staying in Cologne for the first three nights, then Paris (Montmartre) for three, Amsterdam for four and back to Dusseldorf for one. This is going to be the first time I've ever been abroad, and I'm going it alone w/o too many German/French-speaking abilities. I haven't studied any French. I have been studying German. I downloaded 6 CDs onto my ipod, and while I'm at work, delivering construction equipment around the Miami area, I listen: Wo auch immer er auftauchen mag, man wird ihnerkennen. Which is a little strange, esp. when you ease into a convenience store/cafe/place on Jose Marti Blvd., and get accosted by some Cuban-Chinese muttering Spanish & selling key limes out of a duffel bag. I mean, it's a little strange to hear "Entschuldigung, wo ist die Kaiserstrasse, bitte?" in your ear when that happens.

But... that's just the way it goes. Hopefully my trip will bear some stories and some poetry. I already have some ideas for both and I can't even pronounce Hauts-de-Seine yet.

2 Poems

Here are two poems. The second one is in Calliope Nerve.



*****

1.)


Antique

Through the red window, smokestacks
gurgle in the rain. Trees lay their sobbing

shadows all around. "No vacancy in the world," says the sign.

I sit up in bed, a homemade knife
taped to the bottom

of my shoe. Across the room, the hood
of the executioner

falls off, reveals the face of a beautiful woman,

or is that a clock?

Is that a hearse
driving the wet streets backwards?

I rub my eyes.

My mind feels itself up
for thoughts.

Poetry is a wonderful old keepsake left on the side of the road
that no on else
wants.



2.)

the neighborhood watch

there he goes again, backing the ass
of his big diesel pickup truck
into his driveway
parking so the nose juts out just a little
past the holly bushes,
so its headlights peer out like eyes
of a rat that's just crawled back
in its hole...
i bet it makes him feel safe
i bet he thinks he's in complete command
of the game
letting us all know his jumbo-sized tonka
truck is out there
eyeing us, gazing into the very depths
of our souls, passing moral and definitive
judgments on us...
i bet it makes him feel superior
and a tad macho
climbing down out of his eddie bauer cab
striding up through his lawn
in his ill-fitting boilersuit
and all his
small-minded pride
he stomps his boots on the stoop, opens the screen
door and
scoots inside
leaving his truck in the driveway
to off-gas the egotistical facets of his personality
the world must learn to adapt
itself to. in a word,
i'm thinking about slashing
all his tires

feeling vs. thinking

It's been a couple months, but here I am, and without much to say. I'm thinking instead about what Hemingway said about Dostoyevsky in A Moveable Feast. Something along the lines of "how can a person write so poorly and make you feel so deeply?"

This is a beautiful question, and it only goes to show you how much more important the feeling part of writing is than the intellect part. Of course they join somewhere, but the best writing is felt; when you have to climb up into your brain (even momentarily) and think about what you're reading, the dream has been accosted and something's been lost in translation.

This is especially true in poetry and fiction. I'm not talking about anything else. I bring this up is because I consider myself a feeling (maybe overly-feeling?) person, yet for years I wrote for the mind when I should've been writing for the senses.

A terrible mistake.

Nothing ever translated
except a lot of bird-dung;
promise
I won't do it again.

Toccata & Fugues

I have found the lorazazzezzzz my lady has taken to hiding from me and I have taken them and I have drunk the wine today. Chianti (Gabbiano), and the bottle's almost empty, and the cup is to the left of me (left to me). It's like the blood of a sacrificial bull when I pour it in me, warm, dark red, flowing. Sometimes it's as good as beer. Sometimes it's better. Like now... sitting in my swivel chair, listening to the rain coming down and Bach's Organ Music. The house is dark, even though it's still daylight, and the wind outside blowing the palms around.

I take a sip of red... I'm in no rush to do anything, no one's waiting on me and I'm not dreading or expecting anything.

(shut that door)

Of course, this isn't going to last.

I'm just temporarily in abeyance.

Is that the right word?

And temporary like John the Baptist.

Anyway, bliss like this is always fleeting because it has to be.

Bliss has no memory.

Friction makes most.

blind, deaf, dumb

the
best
revenge
is
often
just
avoidance
and
forgetfulness

no
one
needs
to
be
taught
anything

let
daisies
be
thy
dream

if feeling fails you, vain will be your course...

when I look back on some of the stuff i've written in the past (i.e. before 2005), it makes me really happy that none of it ever got published. it didn't deserve to get published. i didn't either. "man, was i misguided... what wasn't i thinking?"

the stuff i'm writing now, on the other hand, i think is fairly durable. when i say that, i mean durable to me, as in something i can read more than once (long after the fact), and without cringing, without feeling like i was duped.

"for man must strive, and striving he must err" -- goethe

so, here's what i keep reminding myself:

*sarcasm/flippancy doesn't stand the test of time.
*humor does as long as it's natural and not forced.
my proof: caddyshack vs. knocked up, zoolander, wedding crashers, et al.
*you might regret never having written from the heart (in tongue and w/o commonplaces). "it is always a mistake to be plain-spoken." -- g. stein
*editors are often right. and form letters are often nourishment for the brain (as long as they don't come from some fee-simple jackass with a personal agenda, which occasionally happens).
*get used to being a lousy public-servant because you'll never make any money writing poetry.
*work on your soul as much as you work on your poetry.
it's your only chance, and it's a good back-up plan too.
*refer again (and again) to Ez:

Music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance... poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music.

*and then refer to the top of this page:

i.e.:

And should the thing be wanting in fire or taste
Blow into flame your little heap of ashes

after reading meister eckhart...

if your mind
is a great sunflower
hunched over on its stem
just remember
what seneca said: "that man or
woman is wretched who does not
transcend
their humanity." and to this i would
like to add: self-love is the
fleetest animal that bears
you to
mediocrity.

(the spiders they
sleep on sunday)

thanksgiving, 1986

After watching myself last night in an old home video, circa 1986, I am left feeling totally disgusted and ashamed of who I was at age 15. Talk about a person with an identity crisis. I was a mock-person, a mimic and a fraud with a bad temper, terrible acne and on top of that I thought I was funny, but my humor was only a cheap form of escapism & a tool used to hide my true feelings. Well, I guess some things never change.

"You can drive out nature with a pitchfork, but she keeps on coming back" -- Horace.

But at least now my acne is gone, and I don't think I'm so much of a fraud. One thing I can say for myself is that at least I've always been willing to step outside of myself and form an semi-objective critique. Some people never truly see themselves, but I've always seen myself perhaps a little too deeply, and a little too self-consciously, which is probably why I drink and why I write and why I feel the horrors of life so much that I'm not afraid of dying. I am afraid of death though. Which was pretty much me back in 1986, when all of the forces of the world were just beginning to align themselves against me, and me just laughing (at everything and everyone but myself). I still do that sometimes, but at least now I know the final joke will always be the one that's on myself. The one that no one else tells better than me & which trumps death (and sorrow) (and you) (and me) every time.

Taz...

Last night, my good friend J..., who's also the co-owner of an Irish bar I sometimes frequent, starts buying the whole table Jagerbombs, one after the other, and then when happy hour ends, he dumps me on these three Studs Turkel (Turds Stuckel) characters I don't know from Adam (or Eve), and disappears. Then the napoleonic generalissimo comes forth. He of the angry aging face on which has migrated two thirdrate pieces of struggling mustachio, and his shirt decorated with flying marlins and thrust open to the sternum as to expose the four gold chains nestled comfortably in his silvery chest hair, his jeans being these loosefitting preshrunk Wranglers, and he's wearing steeltipped cowboy boots, the kind you find at that one boot depot off Yeehaw Junction, back behind the stand where they sell plastic alligators and bags of grapefruit and oranges.

At any rate, he befriends me, which is only natural, since I attract almost nothing but his kind. e.g. mutinous bottom-dwellers looking for someone who will listen. I will always listen. At first anyway. It went something like this:

"Hey buddy... c'mon over with us...
we're all friendly at this bar, ya see...
we're like family here...

What do I do? I move dirt for a living.
I'm a heavy equipment operator.
Dozers, rollers, backhoes...

Hey, buy this guy a beer!...

I was running Cats when they were still green.

I AM reality!... What's your name again?...

I'll drink anyone here under the table...
I'll drink YOU under the table...
Do you like stone crab?
I get the best stone crab known to man...

Oh yeah, that's my wife right there.
Look how pretty she is...
I got a pretty wife.
She's the first woman I've ever had who's free.
All the others I had to buy.
Know what I mean?...
You don't?
Think about
it.

Suicide? I never thought about suicide. This is the real shit right HERE baby! HAHAHA!

...and then I grabbed him by the shorthairs and jammed my .380 in his goddamned frog face and said "Don't you ever take a KNIFE to a GUNFIGHT!"...

But we're all family here...

Call me Taz... Pleasure to meet you.

Hey, tonight I'm going to go home and fuck my wife, then I'm gonna meet this guy for a load of stone
crab at three in the
morning... I'm meeting him down at the docks when he comes in with his shipment. He's my connection...

LOOK into MY EYES when I'm talking to you!

What's so funny?

I call everyone who's younger than me a punk-
ass.

Punk-ass. Punk. Ass.

I SaiD To thE GuY, DOn'T YoU EveR TaKe a KniFE To a GUNfiGht!

GET THIS GUY ANOTHER BEER!
Dontcha see? I take care of my people.

I used to smuggle dope through the blackwaters just south of the Bahamas. Back in the
70s.

Yeah I ran grass.

Hey listen, I AM THE TRUTH!

Ya always gotta be protected. That's why I never go anywhere without my .380. I keep in my
cowboy boot. Right here. Here's
where it
is.

Whaddya mean SCARED? Hell, I ain't SCARED!

I push dirt for a living. I don't got no employees. I'm self-employed.

Hey punk-ass!

GET THIS GUY ANOTHER BEER! ON ME!

Would you like
to be a part of the
FaMILy?

Huh,
wouldya
punk-ass?

velazquez, bacon, matilda & you

Waltzing Matilda

So I'm at this waterside saloon yesterday sitting between a Romanian exboxer (who stands about 4 feet tall), and a Turkish usedcarsalesman. Across the bar, there's a couple in their fifties. The lady keeps straddling the guy, but the guy's playing it slo-mo & cool, fidgeting with his Blueblockers and grinning around a cigar in all his omnivorous buckteeth. She touches his (makebelieve) hairstyle, nudges his crotch with her knee, and I'm beginning to think I'm watching a Levitra infomercial until the band starts to play. It's a ragtag agglomeration of yokel huckleberries. The pivotman is this seething hump of whaleshit in leathers, a pissmop of yellow pseudowig flaring out from beneath the skullandcrossbones bandanna precariously unbalancing itself upon his tete. He keeps placing his Stratocaster up against his ear, strumming the chords and winking at the drummer and I'm like oh god oh please not again... not this... again. The harmonica player I do believe I know from somewhere. He's this washedup partially exhumed pile o' phytoplankton the Tet offensive neglected & Nixon left for dead because, apparently, when the shit hit the fan, he was out smoking from a RubeGoldberg-shaped hookah on a sunken ricepaddy somewhere around Hill 55 (without even knowing it). I watch, as his boots measure the sound. and this is all I need, I think... Jesus, this is all I need... but he actually surprises me. And the rest of the band does too. And when they finish their first song, the old man next to me says, "Play it again, Sam!" "They don't do that," says the even older man sitting next to him. "You watch..." says some thirdwheel in a shirt upon which swims several seacows. He yanks a fin from his billfold, waves it, then quickly stuffs it down his own pants and all is forgotten except for the Levitra couple dryhumping on the other side (over bud lights & against the leg of one strategically placed busboy). "Get a room!" someone yells & all our Blueblockers lothario can do is blow cigarsmoke on his knuckles like he knows something no one else does, except perhaps for the band, which plays Waltzing Matilda as if they all had her once.