NEEDLING

The millionaire
wanted to impress the people
because he hadn’t always been
a millionaire
and he bought a sailboat
even though he got sea sick
just thinking about it.

The millionaire
had an Italian super race car
with which he raced
from port to port
so as not to get sick on his sailboat
he couldn’t sail on.

The millionaire
hired a captain to sail his sailboat
from port to port
and meet him there
because the millionaire
couldn’t go out more than three feet
into the bay
without spilling his diner on his girlfriend.

The millionaire
bought a sailboat and had the captain anchor it
on the French Riviera
so he could play
the millionaire playboy
with a sailboat
having fancy parties
with lots of wine
with lots of pretty people
drinking his wine
and eating his food
and taking all the rest.

The millionaire
never understood
how he became a millionaire
because he was born a peasant
and somehow
still managed to amass all that money
starting out with a small car rental
agency
and got so far into money ownership
he could buy himself
a sailboat to get sick on
a fast car to forget with
and a pretty wife who slept with the captain.

He started the revolution
to get rid of the dictator
then became the dictator
himself
and led the revolution
some more
and ever more
till he would just never die
and his beard got grey.

In dreams I thought maybe
In thoughts maybe I dreamt

I felt maybe you dreamt
I dreamt you felt maybe

Thoughts
expressed badly here
for the sake of my soul packed
in baggage midnight express
through railroads tracked
and packed inside
my baggage

I thought you dreamt
my luggage expressed badly
improvised
with worldwide stickers stuck badly
on fake leather

Maybe
my soul express-mailed out of state
in a card-box patchily packed
with duct tape
in dreams I thought
you felt myself here
nailed
creamed
constantly packed
in styrofoam peanuts
squeaking while

traveling.

Glendronach
100 percent matured in sherry casks
15 years old
now that’s a poem
in and of itself blessed malt express
going one hundred miles an hour
in my chair
swiveling singing drinking coalescing dingbat
bottled in Scotland.

Dialogue between my co-worker and me about one of our regular customers who works next door and who has a crush on D. It doesn’t matter how many times we told him she’s hooked up all ready and about to get married sometimes in the next few months, he still hopes loud and clear.

“Your Romeo was in today,” I said when D. came back from her break.
“Yeah... I know, I saw him just as I was walking out.”
“He’s trying not to drink too much, he said. So he bought a little bottle of Windsor instead of his usual half gallon of gin.”
“Dooffus.”
“You know what he said?”
“What?”
“It’s pretty funny, he was like ‘don’t tell D., but tomorrow I got a first date with a new girl.”
“He didn’t say that.”
“He sure the hell did.”
“Like I give a shit.”
“I know!”
“I couldn’t care less.”
“I know! I was thinking to myself, I didn’t say anything, but I was thinking, ‘Dude, she couldn’t care less who the hell you’re going out with tomorrow or the next day.’”
“That’s right.”
“Anyway, that’s why he ain’t drinking much, he said, cuz it’s not good to get drunk on a first date, he said.”
“You know it.”

Listening to Mariza on eklektikos with John Aielli (KUT). What an amazing voice she has.

Iraq blogs: Free Iraq and Baghdad Burning.

This is what I'm drinking.

It's time for me to go to bed.

Opening E.E. Cummings Complete Poems 1913-1962, as published by Harcourt Brace Javanovich Publishers, at random.


XXXI

poets yeggs and thirsties

since we are spanked and put to sleep by dolls let
us not be continually astonished should
from their actions and speeches
sawdust perpetually leak

rather is it between such beddings and
bumpings of ourselves to be observed
how in this fundamental respect the well
recognised regime of childhood is reversed

meantime in dreams let us investigate
thoroughly each one his optima rerum first
having taken care to lie upon our
abdomens for greater privacy and lest

punished bottoms interrupt philosophy



...

(not sure what that means.)

It’s barely a few minutes past twenty three hundred and I’m not sleepy, though I should be in bed. Tomorrow I have to be at the store right after eight in the morning. (Twenty minute drive + shower + coffee and toast + feed / play with Brutus = 6h45 latest wake up call.) Like all liquor stores in Texas, we don’t open before ten, but I have to do the whole liquor order before twelve, at which time the computer automatically tallies all the orders of all the stores linked to the company for which I work and processes them. If it’s not in by twelve mid-day, then we’re screwed. Usually, we do this on Saturday morning to get it over with and not have to work under the pressure of the clock, but for reasons too drawn out, beyond my control, and way too freaking boring, we weren’t able to get around to it... and I’m stuck with the blunt of it tomorrow.

I’ve been good all day. Sipping a little white wine this afternoon. Having some refried rice with venison. A cup of coffee here and there... Couldn’t or didn’t want to go out because the cold and wet weather is back in town, so I stayed home all day, tried to do a little work on Claire and my new project – to be revealed soon – and even got around to doing the dishes and scrubbing parts of my kitchen. All this time, I’ve been resisting the temptation to pour myself a little vodka tonic and lime. I’ve just faltered. Shouldn’t have taken that nap from 17h30 to 19h00. That did me in. There’s no way I’m going to sleep now. Brutus is crashed out.

We watched The Battle of Algiers, by Gillo Pontevorco, together. That’s a hard movie to watch. I can’t help but ask myself: Will the Americans stay in Iraq for the next 130 years? What is the difference between an Insurgent, a Terrorist, a Liberator, and a Resistance Fighter? Are they really all that different, or does it only depend on who the winner is? On who the stronger hand is? Does idealism really have any say in the matter? Weren’t the French Resistance Fighters during WWII considered terrorists by Nazi Germany? What was the Vichy Government? It certainly wasn’t Free France as advertised by the powers that be of the time. (Weren't the Nazi Germans really stuck on bringing the values of the family back to the French people? Those propaganda posters of Dad, Mom, and Child being / looking patriotic... sponsored by the Marechal himself.)

All these are easy generalizations, I realize, and what the hell can I know about anything sitting here safely in my little Austin home with my dog and the heater working properly. Tomorrow, my car will take me to work, I will clock in, I will do what is asked of me, I will earn my keep, I will clock out, then my car will bring me back to the safety of my home. There are no tanks on the street. There are no Freedom Fighters or Terrorists blowing themselves up in my favorite cafes. I am safe.

These two twenty something girls came in the store last night half lit all ready but not in a bad way. One tall one and another one. They come in once a week usually. Party girls. Barely twenty five and all ready too much make-up, too many blocks gone around. But friendly in a way only total flakes can be. Joyous ride into nothing. The tall one was bending over facing me half way down the store picking out a fifth of vanilla flavored vodka, her skimpy half t-shirt not holding anything in. Her breasts hanging out. Then they came up to the counter. We have a little basket of free-stuff the distributors give out with their product’s name on them. This week it was Captain Morgan key chains. They were going through them and I told them they were free.

“Really?”
“Yeah... take as many as you want?”
“I can take more than one?”
“Sure...”
“Wow... this is so-n-so’s favorite drink, can I get him one too?”
“Take’em all if you want.”

And then I told them the half-gallon of straight vodka of the same brand they had picked was on sale for a mere eight bucks more than the fifth. Two and a half times the amount, I added.

“You ROCK LIKE CRACK,” the blond one screamed at me jumping up and down turning red in the face. The tall one with the skimpy shirt ran back to the vodka display to pick out the half gallon glass bottle. I thought for an instance the whole display was coming down crashing unto the floor.

A line of middle class bourgeois had formed behind the counter. They were turning red, shocked and amused at once, looking down at the floor whenever the blond girl turned back to them.

“I’m sorry... I’m just joking, I hope I’m not insulting anybody.”

Then she turned back to me, laughing her head off telling me how much I rocked. I was laughing and enjoying this attention.

My manager and my co-worker were whispering in the back.

Once everybody left, I said to them.

“What are you two whispering about?”
“I didn’t understand what she said,” my manager answered, “I thought she’d said: ‘You rock my crack!’ And I didn’t really know how to take that. Then D. explained what she said to me.”

Things will go on
like this
forever on

A cycle of squirrels
going around
in circles
forever on

A spring
infinitely springy

... before going to work.

Listening to Philip Glass and Foday Musa Suso. Music they wrote for a production of The Screens (Les Paravants) by Jean Genet.

Went on a music cd buying spree the other day. I came home one hundred dollars poorer - I also bought the latest edition of Tin House - and so much richer in musical selection at home : War Requiem by Benjamin Britten, performed by the New York Philharmonic; Philip Glass Solo Piano; the soundtrack of The Mission by Enio Morricone - I've always wanted to have this and never have bothered, so I went for it after fifteen years of wanting this - ; and the music for The Screens...

... all right... time to go get my laundry and go to work...

“Did you catch anything?”
“No.”
“Well, it’s ok.”
“Yeah… I guess.”
“Next time,” she said. “And what about Mr. Sams?”
“He didn’t catch nothing either.”
“So you see, it must have been there wasn’t any fish in the water.”
“I guess.”
“You’ll go again soon.”
“But I never catch anything… it don’t matter where it is or if there is any fish in the water.”
“Now, why would you say that?”
“Because I know.”
“You know, uh?”
“Yes.”

Mr. Sams was this old West Texan who was the father of the maid who worked at the motel where I lived as a kid. She lived about fifteen minutes away on a bicycle, if you weren’t in too much of a hurry and you rode by the clinic then you kept going through that dirt alley with all the flowers - bushes and bushes of gardenias - but you couldn’t be in too much of a hurry. She had a house and a garden and she grew vegetables in the garden. They were poor people and there was lots of junk in the garden but I liked it because they had a garden and we didn’t. We had a parking lot and a swimming pool that would get clogged several times a year. When it unclogged, it would empty in the tool shed / tornado shelter underneath the parking lot. Somehow, we never figured out that plumbing problem. Finally, one year, my dad got the bright idea to fill the hole at the bottom of the pool with silicon rubber. That fixed the shelter / tornado shelter overflow problem, but the water couldn’t be filtered – cleaned – anymore and over the next few years, it became a cesspool of tadpoles, frogs, and other small aquatic creatures.

Also, the maid had lots of cats and white squash in her vegetable garden. I’d never seen white squash before we moved to West Texas. My mother sent her my underwear to sow up the holes. I hated the hole in the front of my boxers and I refused to wear regular underwear so my mother bought me boxers and got the holes sowed up. I would ride my bike to go pick up my sowed up boxers and sometimes the maid would give me some white squash to take back to my mom, who didn't know what to do whith them.

(Paris, France, 1998)

(bad poem # 1)

Growing up…
`
next to prairie dogs
living underground.

I, Us, We?
making our nest
over
ground
staring –
they : the prairie dogs
starred at us
and we starred at them

neither with or back to
or from which or I don’t know
as an agreement
of common interest
not
common commodity needs

(maybe but probably
neither or either or whatever or
you know it isn’t I knew
what was looked – seen, watched
observed, discombobulated,marked with a question mark –
at… )

I… grew up…

– mutual misunderstanding –

with prairie dogs.

(What about you?

What’s your excuse?)



(bad poem # 2)

What I need
– one thing only –
oh lord! Where do I start?
What – say only one thing –
do I gotta say
to begin my confession?

I – there’s no two way around it –
... you make me drool
at night

frosting
(slurping along floors
slithering lizard-like fearing
my tale
might get pulled off)
at your potential nakedness.

What I need
do I gotta make it so black on white?

for my teeth

(what am I saying?)

dig deep

(is that a sin?)

well it’s just a thought

for your undressing
to the rhythm of big boats
blowing their fog horns

– ooohhh –

morning dew fogs you down
and I feel dis-
-quietly alone
in my bed this morning listening

– fog horns blowing –

I am them the fog horns
blowing as loud as I can

for your breasts in my mouth…

(Portland, Maine 2003)

When you understand
the light of the world
is held by a couple rolls
of toilet paper

you know you’ve lived a bit
already and you’ve started
to see things as they are.

Simple.

Take a picture
if you got a camera
whip your ass reverently
after a good shit
drink some more beer
and thank god
when you ain’t got the runs.

Pray it’ll last.

That’s some wise speaking
you’re after
I can tell.

It’s all over your tongue
like a hair ball after a prime rib steak.

Been going through some old poems that I'd forgotten about. It's fun, and while doing it I trick myself into thinking I'm actually doing some work. To make this easier, these joyful though sometimes painful journeys into the past are being accompanied by a small glass of Caol Ila 18 years.

Cheers!

1

Kaiser Kangaroo Kaput
Karaoke Karma Keg Kathleen Keek Kepi
Kermis Kernel Ketchup Kettle Khnum
Khaprabeetle Kidney Kilogram Killer
Kimono Kilt King Kinkajou Kohoutek (comet that passed around the sun in 1973)
Kremlin Kyoodle

Circumcised Compact Conglutinate Cooch Cephalate Cervical Cloistered

Ice-cream

2

Icarus Crashes in Kalamazoo
Idiots Counting Kabobs
Indigenous Cultural Kaleidoscope

Irritated Cooch Kangaroo
Interned Codependent Kaiser
Indelible Compact Karma
Ishtar's Cervical Killer
Irruptive Conglutinate Kinkajou
Ithyphallic Circumcised Kohoutek
Insatiable Cibarium-like Keg
International Cultural King
Impetuous Cinephile Khaprabeetle

Iceman Capsulated Kepi

(Paris, France, 2003)

MEGALO TAKES A REST

In his head.

There, inside
instead of outside
there, out there
not of this world.

Not the world where
he isn't
nearly as great
as he is
in his head.

The world outside
of his head.

He sits
on a park bench.

He invents stories
in first person
there, inside
and makes himself cry
there on his park bench
looking at nothing
but himself.

How great he is
there
inside his head

A Hero.


MEGALO TAKES A WALK

He is a large man
he sweats a lot
he loves to tell stories
at dinner time
and make whoever is listening
laugh.

He specially likes it
when others are awed
by his crazy tales.

He is a lonely man
he doesn't have a job
or a girlfriend
and he eats well
only when he is a guest
at another's table.

His friends invite him
often, knowing of his financial
situation, and on those
evenings, several times a week
he shines with dirty stories
funny ones, self-denigration
tales of self-hatred
and cynical misanthropy.

He has an opinion on everything.

In the daytime
he likes to sit on a park bench
in the shadow of a tree
whatever kind
he doesn't mind
as long as the shadow is cool
where his sweat bothers him less.

He likes to walk too
down a path
where he doesn't have to look
where he's going
and he can partake
in his favorite activity
to forget he hasn't a penny
to eat on
or buy a bottle of wine on
and he imagines himself
a Texas oil tycoon.

So, if you happen
to be walking in a park
and you cross a large man
with shinny brown shoes
looking spiffy
dressed in loose flanels and pasleys
(worn a little if you look close enough)
and you happen to notice
this man is crying to himself
his eyes dazed
his look far away off in Marfa
or Irkusk
then just keep walking
act as if you hadn't seen him.

Whatever you do
don't disturb him!
He is getting real close
to a climax you or me
cannot even come close
to imagine...
lover, saint, martyr...

Just keep walking.

(Paris, France, 2003)

1

Started out with some onions and some garlic
chopping slicing and crushing.

Left them in a ceramic bowl
to think about the situation
while me and the three leeks
got into a cleaning frenzy
a sort of vegetable loving
spree
with a knife and some water.

Sliced them lengths ways
so as to get that cold water in there
and wash that mud away.

Chopped them up grossly
so they’d fill a large wooden bowl.

Melted my onions in olive oil
and some vegetable stock to help me along
the melting process
before asking the Scotch whisky
for some much needed help.

2

Continued with the caramelized bulbs
and the chopped leeks
topped off with enough vegetable stock
to cover them safely
from harm
and any unfair airborne attacks.

Left them there
boiling frenetically
for peace
and understanding
and a cross to bear
and a savior to die
in their place
having me a proper English pint
filled with German beer
in an American kitchen
lived in by a Frenchman
saying to myself
hey you
leeks
boil away and soften up gently
like damsels
walking down the street waving at me
and blowing sweet hellos
my way
and turning red in the face.

(day-dreaming...)

3

Following through
I chopped the scrubbed potatoes
and filled in the pot
with them roots
and the rest of the stock
to fill up the pot
and bring to one last rolling boil
one last hopeful scream of glory
one last war cry down the muddy hill
one last prayer for the dead souls
one last potato fallen for the good soup
fallen for the good of the whole
fallen for the whole of the soup
fallen for the soup of my house
fallen for my house full of good
and I lowered the fire
to barely a small blinking flame
basking my soup
into a creamy winter night’s meal.

4

Moved on to Count Belisarius
by Robert Graves
where I read about a boy
who would become a general
in the Roman army.

Brutus

my dog
threw up in the middle
of the night
a bone
he’d chewed in two
and then swallowed
the two pieces
without any further
chewing.

That didn’t wake me up
however.

What did wake me up
was him making great
slurping noises
while chewing
on said bone some more
the one he’d thrown
up.

Bad writing. Bad poems. That’s not the point. I’m trying to do some instantaneous crap on this blog. Most of it will be bad. Maybe some of it will give birth to better stuff to be worked on later. Who knows and who cares. That’s not the point. The point is getting my fingers moving and trying to put something down somewhere since I seem to not be writing anywhere else. Eventually, I’ll post more translations – good or bad – and I’ll try and post some workings of fiction prose... continue with the bad instant poems...and even delve into my work and my daily life... though I’m trying to avoid the pathetic whining I unfortunately fell into the last time I blogged. Some daynote stuff. Some meaningless meandering. Some talk of this and that. A loose journal, basically. That’s what I’m heading after. A sort of improvised song.

I have a plan.
I can’t go and spill it all over here.
I just wanted everybody to know.
I have a plan.

It’ll be a grand plan.
It’ll be a long five year type.
I just wanted everybody to know.
I have a plan.

It’s a circus stand.
It’s a large plot of land over here.
I just wanted to know everybody.
And take a stand.

I have a plan.
I can’t tell you just yet what’s here.
I wanted everybody to know just.
And take a plan.

And take a stand.
And let a whole lot of land take.
And everybody knows my plan.
And takes a stand.

there’s that faint not so faint
color emitting odor
from the underworld
of my chair
from the parquet
of my house
a five toed dead fish currently
against my chair

not so faint
not so faint

japanese jesus super star
on the radio

i like it better in japanese
i think

my dog nesting by the shallow
of the curve
of my flat not so flat
feet
on the wooden floors
the gallows snoozling space
next to the faint
not so faint
unbothered currently out like a dead mouse

not so faint
oh so quaint

from “de nos oiseaux”, published by les editions Kra, 1929


CRIME DISTINGUÉ

une robe rose de lucioles
gélatines givre dru
cuir
médecin pour les affaires
qui ne marchent pas
boy boy
cria l’impératrice
la jeune fille
tomba morte
c’était le boy


(Horrible interpretation from yours truly)

DISTINGUISHED CRIME

a pink firefly dress
jelo bushy crystallization
leather
doctor for those periods
which never arrive
garcon garcon
yelled the empress
the young girl
fell dead
it was the garcon

                    
            
                      My clock is wrong
    
    
it’s          on the wrong time          flying Martian planet orbit
    
  
                    DEFINITELY

    
    
not there on time anywhere                     the date is wrong
                     I pissed on an air -  RA   - plane

                                                once
                        
                                      in mid-altitude gaining

GROUND
                  ATMOSPERIC DIVERGENCE

        loosing gravity...

00h02

Thinking I might need a drink
is the type of thinking
that’s gotten me in trouble usually...

Usually I might need a drink
is the type of usual
that’s gotten me in trouble lately...

Lately I think I need a drink
is the type of ladle
that’s gotten me in trouble drinking...

Drinking I might need a drink
is the type of drunk
that’s gotten me in trouble thinking...

Old Song

Chewing on a grapefruit
the angel farts a tune to my lady
sitting next door in the outhouse
she trembles with fear he might stop
singing his air-tight melody

Trying to do my best
easing in
I want everybody to know
I’m easing in

I want everybody to know
I’m easing in

Chewing on a torpedo
the bird sings a gun to my baby
scramming next door like a comet
she demands with glee he drops it
whistling his air-tight melody

Trying my best to do
a tight spin
I stamp everybody to hell
with gleaming steam

I stamp everybody to hell
with gleaming steam...

Making vegetable stock for... probably soup tomorrow or the next day, or just to drink straight after refrigeration. Feeling a little blue, so I melted a large white onion and a crushed garlic head, the skin still holding on for dear life, in some rattling olive oil. When the time came, I slapped in a little Islay Scotch whisky to give it a little air of seaweeds, something closer to home than anything else I could find in Texas. Whilst doing all this, I’ve been sipping on a glass of sherry, the extra dry kind... the blues is on the radio, the smell of garlic and onions, the slight mist of seaweed and ocean front smell added on to some Andalusia fortified wine... all this put together, it’s bringing my spirits back up, letting me know though I’m far away in the Texas hill-country – winter time walking around with my shirt wide open, like my front door and all my windows, humidity making the joints in my fingers swell... and my dog is sleeping on his bed... – that possibly I can think a good beautiful though whilts making vegetable stock. I don’t know why, really. It’s just that I wanted some of these smells around me to take me in. I wanted everybody all around, every fucking house surrounding mine to smell like garlic and onions boiling in Islay Scotch! Two leeks followed suit real quick, which I covered with some water to bring to a rolling boil – ain’t that how they say it in the fancy smanchy recipe books? bring to a rolling boil, keep it there for ten minutes, then bring down the flame and let simmer for half an hour – so I did just that, except I only went around the block for ten minutes keeping a steady wooden spoon in the pot making sure nothing stuck to that cheap pot I bought... and in came the sliced sweet potato – I am in America after all! And somewhat of an American as well – a sliced white potato, too watery this kind, not starchy enough but I don’t seem to find any proper potatoes in my grocery store... some left over fresh spinach leaves I hadn’t gotten around to eating, and a large dash of salt. I’m making vegetable stock. I don’t know why, it’s just that I was feeling a little blue and I needed some of them smells to lift me back up. Maybe after refrigerating this concoction tomorrow... I’ll make me a vegetable cocktail?

It’s time to go to sleep. It’s hard when the playfulness and willingness to write has come back to me. Almost. It’s been so many months! In my journals, going through them has helped me as usual. I’m dreaming of a possible book to be built from what I have. There’s plenty of work to be done. Prose and poems and pastiches. All in one puzzle of a book. Inspired by my own journals, from Cendrars, from Tzara... I’m getting ideas for this, and I like it. It’s like being born again... or rather, it’s like waking up after a long somnambulant sleep. How the hell am I suppose to go to bed now? Well, I have to... I have to open the store tomorrow at ten o’clock and I need to be there early to get the ordering faxed and all that good stuff, and before that I need to drive by the bank to pay my credit card... ! At least I have something to hold on to now, something to look forward to now... the creation of this book! There are so many flaws I’ll need all the help I can gather to fix all those interminable problems. Not insurmountable! Not a one bit! Lots of work, though...

From Dix-neuf poèmes élastiques (Nineteen Elastic Poems)

4
I. PORTRAIT

Il dort
Il est éveillé
Tout à coup, il peint
Il prend une église et peint avec une église
Il prend une vache et peint avec une vache
Avec une sardine
Avec des têtes, des mains, des couteaux
Il peint avec un nerf de boeuf
Il peint avec toutes les sales passions d’une petite ville juive
Avec toute la sexualité exacerbée de la province russe
Pour la France
Sans sensualité
Il peint avec ses cuisses
Il a les yeux au cul
Et c’est tout à coup votre portrait
C’est toi lecteur
C’est moi
C’est lui
C’est sa fiancée
C’est l’épicier du coin
La vachère
La sage-femme
Il y a des baquets de sang
On y lave les nouveau-nés
Des ciels de folie
Bouches de modernité
La Tour en tire-bouchon
Des mains
Le Christ
Le Christ c’est lui
Il a passé son enfance sur la Croix
Il se suicide tous les jours
Tout à coup, il ne peint plus
Il était éveillé
Il dort maintenant
Il s’étrangle avec sa cravate
Chagall est étonné de vivre encore

(octobre 1913)


APPROXIMATIVE TRANSLATION :
by yours truly

4
I. PORTRAIT

He sleeps
He is awake
All the sudden, he paints
He takes a church and paints with a church
He takes a cow and paints with a cow
With a sardine
With some heads, some hands, some knives
He paints with the nerve of a bull
He paints with all the dirty passion of a small Jewish village
With all the intense sexuality of a Russian province
For France
Without sensuousness
He paints with his thighs
He has his eyes on the ass
And all the sudden it’s your portrait
It’s you the reader
It’s me
It’s him
It’s his girlfriend
It’s the local baker
The cow-girl
The midwife
There are buckets of blood
Where we wash the new-born’s
From skies of folly
Modern mouths
The Tower like a corkscrew
The hands
The Christ
The Christ it’s him
He spent his childhood on the Cross
He commits suicide day after day
All the sudden, he stops painting
He is awake
He sleeps now
He strangles himself with his tie
Chagall is surprised to still be alive

The book I want to make – write – I want it to be dysfunctional. Disjunction. I want it to be put together, pieced together like a puzzle which was never a puzzle to start with. Pieces together seemingly random-like attachments... not necessarily from the same whole. Pieces of different wholes to make a new whole. Titles for example of sections placed in the middle of the book without a section following it for which the title was destined. BEER SONGS FOR THE LONELY. Starting with a small prose piece. VACUUM DANCE. And continuing with different poems related or not to each other. And then moving back into another prose piece, except this time it’s a journal entry. Unrelated. But there needs to be some sort of logic. I need to find the perfect logic in relation to this book. All the pieces exist all ready. I have them spread about all over the place, I just need to pick them out from the shit in which they currently live. To pick out the necessary pieces! BANALITIES. In a large vat of brew fermenting for the last ten years of head hitting against the brick walls.

For lack of current creativity, I’m going back through some of my journals to see if somewhere somehow a gem has been lain in these endless pages of... un-mentionable expletive here... which could somehow act as a booster to my seemingly dead mass of grey matter which lies in betwixt my ears inside my cranium cavity... something which might light my fire (see! SEEE!!! clichés... yikes... somebody HELP ME...) ... run on... run on... run on...


quoting Thursday 30th of October 2003:

La Revolution

At the head of nine men
including himself
they had nine rifles
500 rounds
two pounds of ground coffee
two pounds of sugar
one pound of salt
and a couple pairs of barbed wire cutters
Pancho Villa rode into history
from his hide-out in El Paso
and headed the revolution
and like another before him
who had turned one loaf of bread
and a dead fish
into enough victuals to feed thousands
Pancho turned his nine men
into a ten thousand strong army
making Chihouahoua
a hell of a place to be
if you weren’t his friend.


or from Wednesday 1st of October 2003:

American Dream

No expectations
nothing basically
all I've got is my birth certificate
saying I was born
with certification
with a stamp from the judge
with a slap from my ma and my pa
all I’ve got is a stamp in purple ink
on my forehead
that I was legal to hoe cotton
when the time came
in August and not in July
in August from sun-up till mid-day
ridding the beat-up chevy
up and down mounds
of sand and burnt weeds
with the black kids from the flats.

I asked them
I asked them a hundred times
why it was called the flats
I asked them, them kids
them white kids from my class
but all they could tell me
is that the flats was
where the black people live
though where I lived
wasn’t no less flatter than where they lived
and nobody could ever explain it to me
except this one white kid
said once
it’s called the flats cause black people
have flat noses
like they’ve been flattened by a good well deserved punch.


Or this really bad one from Sunday 14th of September 2003:

Looking for a Job

Tonight I’ll go search for work
at Galway’s on the quay
by the river
where maybe I’ll find a good song
to chant like a sailor on leave
by the harbor.

I got three dogs tattooed on my shoulder
eating each other’s tails
in a circle
that’s my life they humbly represent
the canine trinity going around
for eternity.

Tonight I’ll go search for peace
in a warm dark mug of beer
and pretzels
where maybe I’ll find that a dog’s life
isn’t such a sad song
after all.


Or this funny little entry from Friday 19th of September 2003:

Was having diner with Rick and Kyungmee. We had chicken sauted with legumes and such. I wanted to put olive oil on my bowl after Kyungmee handed it to me and she almost bit my head off.

“Oh my god, what are you doing... this is an insult...”
“You’re just like my mother, she’d make some fucking dish with rice and fish or something and I’d go for the tabasco sauce and she’d automatically snap at me saying: What, you’re gonna put that stuff on my food without even tasting it first!”
“You’re funny,” said Rick, “it’s like you grew up in America with French parents. I mean, that’s how French people are. They get pissed if you even think about salting your god damned food, it’s a fucking insult to them. And there you are, growing up in trailer-park Texas with French parents!”
“Yeah... thanks for reminding me.”

Then Rick grabbed for the Winshesterchire sauce he’d just bought and started taking the wrapper off when Kyungmee almost attacked him.

“What do you think you’re doing?”
“What! I’m checking to make sure the label is glued on tight.”
“You’re not thinking about using any of that stuff on my food, are you?”
“Are you kidding! I’d never even think of it.”

Kyungmee is boiling, turning her back to us, and Rick and I are smiling and laughing at each other.

It all started when she handed me a bowl with rice and the chicken and vegies on top of it and it looked a little dry, not bad, but like I wanted to put something in it to mix it up, and I asked Kyungmee...

“You don’t have any sauce or something?”
“Whadda you mean, sauce?”
“I don’t know... you know...”
“It’s... I-I-I can’t believe it... this is typical Korean food, and you’re insulting it... my god... the sauce is in the bottom of your bowl...”

So she grabbed my bowl back and spooned some more sauce from the dishpan to dip into my bowl.

“Hey,” Rick said, “give him all the fucking sauce before you give me anything!”

I just didn’t say anything. Then after a while I grabbed the olive oil container and started popping the cap to put some on my rice.

“Oh my god,” Rick said in a mocking voice, “you’re not gonna put olive oil on your rice!”
Kyungmee turned around from her stove as the bottle was only slightly turned and nothing was pouring yet into my bowl.
“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?”
“What?”
“You can’t put olive oil on Korean rice!”
“Why not?”
“He’s just kidding.”
“No he’s not... you were actually... oh my god... on my Korean rice...”

She grabbed the olive oil out of my hand before nothing more than a drop had gotten on my rice and she put it on the top shelf out of my reach.

“It was just a joke,” Rick said to appease the atmosphere, and I was left with no sauce. Rick made a sign to me without saying anything like sorry, dude, no olive oil for your rice tonight. Then he grabbed the Whorshesterschire sauce and that was that, he wasn’t even able to uncap it.

Then there was the red hot pimente sauce that Rick had bought also this afternoon. He grabbed for that and started looking at the bottle in his hand and then at his bowl of rice. Kyungmee was bringing a wooden spoonfull of rice and chicken to her mouth when she said.

“That’s fine, you can use that.”
“You mean that sauce is all right?” I asked, “We’re allowed to use it?”

Rick laughed and Kyungmee ignored me. I squeezed a lot of hot pimente on my rice and chicken.


And few little somethings from Friday 2nd of August 2002:

Blue & Green Eggs

Have you ever been a blue or a green egg
with legs and arms sticking out two by two
wearing a swimming trunk, the kind that sticks
real tight, a sort of weathercocked condition
imposed by the board of hygienic bad taste?

And through a one way mirror glass window
they stare having a good laugh looking at eggs
bobbing up and down in the city’s public pool.

Eggs, nothing but blue and green eggs!


Dialogue about Rabbits

- Hey honey, how many rabbits you got in that belly of yours?
- Look how he’s talking to me.
- Just got to wondering about the rabbits, that’s all. Didn’t mean no harm.
- He means no harm talking to me like that?
- None.
- What exactly do you mean, then, might I ask?
- You might.
- And?
- I’m waiting.
- You’re waiting?
- For you to ask!
- Ask what?
- What I mean.
- I just asked you that.
- Is that what you asked?
- Yes.
- Didn’t you ask something else?
- Not at all.
- Bust I asked first.
- What did you ask?
- How many rabbits you’re carrying?
- Don’t talk to me like that!
- I was just repeating what I’d all ready asked.
- What did you ask?
- About the rabbits.
- Would you stop with the rabbits! And answer my question.
- What was it?
- What?
- Your question.
- It’s why you talk to me like that.
- Like what?
- About rabbits.
- Because I like rabbit stew.

Solar

Suspended lion face
Spilling at the centre
of an unfurnished sky
How still you stand,
And how unaided
Single stalkless flower
You pour unrecompensed.

The eye sees you
Simplified by distance
Into an origin,
Your petalled head of flames
Continuously exploding.
Heat is the echo of your
Gold.

Coined there among
Lonely horizontals
You exist openly.
Our needs hourly
Climb and return like angels.
Unclosing like a hand,
You give for ever.

4 November 1964
published in High Windows (1974)

(Collected Poems, edited by Anthony Thwaite)

Wolfed them puppies down being as hungry as I am. Though they weren’t what I was expecting. The flesh was white instead of pink, and they weren’t very tasty. That’s what I get for buying fish at HEB. I knew better, but I couldn’t help myself. They never have whole fish, only filleted or somehow processed fish. So when I walked in there the other day and there were some trout laying in ice, I bought a couple. Should have known better since they were gutted all ready. The eyes didn’t have that burnt out look, though. I don’t know. They just don’t taste like the trout I’m used to. I mean, they’re not bad, but they’re not there either. At least this little Muscadet I buy never lets me down. That would have been bad, specially since I started the night with a bottle of sherry. I don’t know my sherry’s, ports, and other fortified and or cooked wines... so I figured I’d try something different for once. I uncorked the bottle and poured myself a glass. It was all clouded up and little chunks of deposit and dust floating in it. It looked like the contents of what I imagine one might find at the bottom of the ocean in an old Spanish trading ship from the late 1700’s. One's hanging around with Cousteau and he brings out the bottle of hundreds of years old fortified wine he found in the galleys of a sunken ship. The bottle has shell-fish of all kinds clinging to it. It smells of fish guts and looks like an antique dildo. Cousteau cracks it open, and pours one a glass. What would be in one's glass is what was in my glass from that sherry bottle. Unhealthy brownish color with chunks floating throughout. The smell was nothing to linger about either. I poured the content of the glass back into the bottle and I’ll take it back to the store tomorrow.

Two gutted trout
sleeping in my oven
with rice on the stove
paying no mind.

Muscadet in the fridge
giggling quietly in green shades.

Sizzle.

seems all like a movie
as if my bright orange couch
my kitchen dirty with mud all over
and splateredness on the yellow
wall
with some grease and all
and my dishes in cold soapy water
just sitting and waiting
and I didn’t mention all them empty bottles...
as if it was all part of some story
being told without dialogue
just a sort of breeze
bouncing from wall to wall...

seems like a movie
turning around standing in the middle of my house
looking at it
trying to figure it all out
I thought for a second
I was in a movie and the cameras were all around me
filming the movie I was in
and watching
all at once
me the cameraman filming me
the dancer in the middle of the floor acting like me
the director giving orders to me
and directing camera movements to me
the filmmaker filming me
the axis of the film in the middle...

Feel like a big boy now.
Got a job.
Get home from work
with groceries in my trunk
paid for with a credit card
twenty dollars from being maxed out.

My dog
Brutus
waits for me with tail wagging
and expecting to be fed right away.
He only pissed once in the house
today.

Good boy.

Fifty milliliter bottle
of raspberry flavored
middle shelf vodka.

Down.

A freebie from the distributor.

Those little bottles
they attach to bigger bottles
of similar yet different
products
which are better known by the public
and thus sale better.

The little bottle is there
so the customers
might get a taste of something
different
and so that the distributor
might sale a wider variety
of their product.

But how would you
the consumer
know?

Since
if all liquor stores are like the one
where I work
those little taste bottles
usually make it
in the employees’ bags
or pant pockets
for immediate
or close
to immediate
use.

I’m a big boy now.

(more to come at a later date...)

(feeling as if I need to say something...)

(i just don't know what...)

(time to get out of my foxhole and get working...)

(the holidays are over...)

(liquor store frenzy has backed down...)

(thinking about words once more...)

(don't quite know how...)