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[20 Dec 2006|06:32pm] |
July 4th Eternal
The cracked vinyl seats of Mom’s Plymouth Duster
Were bad enough, but they were super-heated—
A thousand white-hot suns shooting razor blades—
in the summer
Especially with boy gym shorts
And a superman tank-top
When we got there—
A tire swing creaked chains and had given someone rubber burn—
Pappa was in his swimtrunks and black dress socks
Poking at the barbecue
And mom put suntan lotion on her legs.
Coconut oil, dried sweat and overcooked meat
Permeated everything
Except the pool-
Bleachy azure and stagnant—until
Fat Uncle Larry performed
World famous tattoo-crazy Vietnam veteran
CANNONBALL!
And water slapped the brown concrete,
Painting it a little browner.
At dusk
The kids ate chocolate ice cream right out of the container
With wooden mini-paddles shaped like double-size peanuts
And grown-ups smoked pencil-thin cigarettes—
Beer in silver-brown cans and dried-egg yellow potato salad
Drew flies who flew delightful figure eights,
A curious orbit for potato salad.
Avocado countertops and harvest-gold wallpaper—
Soapy redolence in a bathtub for the Carter era—
Cedar scented potpourri and mom’s coconut suntan
Braves beat Giants, seven six,
New Anthony dollar coins
Pappa watches the news on a one-ton television set (on wheels)
And I curl-up,
Comfortable, safe,
asleep on a shag rug.
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[20 Dec 2006|06:32pm] |
Carson City to Tuscon
Humming, the sand-wind swirls
Around a bad muffler and a nose bleed
she brushes at those curls
That dangled over her swollen belly and bikini top
and peers at the Kleenex stuffed in my nose
Blonde and then brown around the edges
-- bungled bleach job—I suppose..
You’d like to pull over at the next rest stop?
Her lips were white, dry, and sand had collected
Near the sides. Chain-links and a desert pawn shop
Flew by, swallowed by the sand storm
And spit out like sun-dried bones
No storm in Blythe, just over the Arizona border,
Texaco tacos.
I went in to pay and
A mechanic, filthy, peered
At the bikini pumping our gas
in his mirrored sunglasses even I could see her ass
C’mon baby!
Detours to avoid more desert sand
She smacked gum and fingered Glamour
And asked me the lover quiz as she stroked my hand
It was great being with her like this
Sweaty and beyond sandy, barefooted,
her feet on the dash
do you think my dad’s gonna be pissed?
I remembered her at the sink bent over a plus sign and crying as we kissed
I remembered her glowing aura
The salty smell of her arms clinging to my neck
No interference, no harsh words, no limits
Entering Pima county, bristled buttes giving way to rusty brush
We would soon find out
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[20 Dec 2006|06:31pm] |
Three Vignettes
Number One
Writhing
And then still serpentine slumber
Listening as the sunset ripens to quiet silhouettes
Shadowy swaying of indeterminate branches
Pecking patio, as if coded,
Expressive
Simple dimpled knees traverse a sloping majesty of hip
I am an interloper here
Welcome just now to enumerate the occasional freckle
Hued and imbued with blush
In the valley of her spine, wide enough to allow bones
Make spoons and damp sheets and soft whispers
Number Two
A few more hours
Waiting in the hall
Banshee screams and willowy wails
Broken in and again watching
Traffic of shrouded shoes, gurney wheels, and sobbing trudges
The street light laser beam through the wool red curtain part
Sweat beading
Soaked auburn hair matted to a clenched mottled jaw
It will be time soon
Three maybe four speaking
And all I can see is her eyes, teary and pained and beautiful blue
And all I can hear are her whimpers, pleading
Number Three
Faint swooning emergence
Indecisive as they excise the long crimson dripping
Wide-eyed, the first experience of masculine light
Held to my heart beat
Swathed in hopeless white cotton blankets
I want to hold this moment but—
Seven pounds of sublime sworn eye contact
Spindly legs, new and elastic
Calm without instinct
Darting glances
Gingerly across the room
She feeds
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[20 Dec 2006|06:29pm] |
I knew it!
I cut myself on a peeler today
It was small and black
Japanese, cold as a river stream
It lurked at the bottom of the tool bucket
Under the whisk I was groping for
And my pinkie finger
Became a cucumber.
I cried for her
And the echo of emptiness
Reverberated as I stumbled bloody
To the medicine chest
And caught my wrinkles in the mirror
Black lines, no rest
Feathering gray,
Withering temples.
I caught my wife cheating today.
Not in the obvious way—
Holding a sheet to her breasts
As a bare-assed hairy man
Reached for his pants,
His watch
Or his wallet—
It was in a love note,
An expression of infatuation
Something new and elation, spinning
And rosy-cheeked
Hushed, blushed and grinning
Wildly
---- You hid from me
And in your hiding
I knew your fleeting heart
Your tired eyes turned down
Our blanket pulled to your neck
My awkward advances
And I knew but didn’t know
And until now
I have never not known
So much, all at once.
Bundled pink hand
Fetal bathroom floor, listless tears.
The morning birds sing quickly and
Flutter to other windows.
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| ummm |
[31 Jan 2005|05:06pm] |
more about my absence later..
in the meantime, Ive been reading this guy for a few weeks now. He's 21, a smartass loser and an absolutely brilliant writer. Its not fair!
http://martybeckerman.com/archives.html
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| ummm |
[31 Jan 2005|05:06pm] |
more about my absence later..
in the meantime, Ive been reading this guy for a few weeks now. He's 21, a smartass loser and an absolutely brilliant writer. Its not fair!
http://martybeckerman.com/archives.html
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| Observations over the last 24 hours, done in the spirit of empiricism |
[05 Oct 2004|04:36pm] |
Note: All Times are Pacific Standard
10/4/4 11:34 PM
Frazzled vagrant,obviously inebriated, struggles with a curiously luxurious piece of luggage and drops 24 ounce tallboy of "The Bull" Steel Reserve, denting the can and spilling beer all over the pavement.
QUickly forgets her limp and scrambles to collect the beer, hollering "THIS BEER AINT KILLING THE PAIN!!"
10/5/4 4:02 PM
Handwritten Dildo advertisement scrawled in black permanent marker on beige MUNI seat, 19th seat from the front, right side
10/5/4 4:04 PM
Overheard cell phone conversation greeting:
"Um, yeah, can I talk to Chocolate?"
21st seat from the front of same bus, left side.
10/5/4 4:06 PM
Overheard cell phone conversation:
"Any god damn way" and f-ing this and that.
Uses swear words deftly as descriptors.
Extreme rear of same bus.
10/5/4 4:12 PM
Portly older gentleman in full Catholic friar get-up. European eyeglasses, speaking with a woman wearing a pink embroidered sweater.
10/5/4
Distressed caucasian male in late 40's with receding gray hair positioned outside Walgreens on Van NEss and Eddy. Nicely dressed in business attire from the waist up, with a tasteful blue sateen tie and patterned shirt. Navy blazer made of what appeared to be expensive fabric.
The Man wore no pants, only a pair of Spongebob boxer shorts, knee length black polyseter socks and wingtipped shoes.
Held sign offering hard work for money.
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| Ignorance is not bliss |
[25 Aug 2004|11:59pm] |
So its 11 at night and Ive got mole negro spattered all over my apron
Ive just finished frying the thing and made a huge fucking mess because the kids were crowding around even though I warned them that it would pop loudly and go all over.
Im trying to wipe up and one one my stare-ers asks me to practically kiss her boo-boo. Shes got a hair thin cut on her middle finger and she wants me to clean it for her. Shes maybe 20 and she's breathing really heavily, trying to get me to notice. I notice for sure but dont let on. I hand her the alcohol wipe and a band aid and move on. Not worth it.
I turn them loose into the blanketing fog and slow-trudge to the locker room. Alone, I take my time changing and put on some old Serge Gainsbourg for the agonizingly slow walk home. Since I have lived here, I have found I love walking. It gives me alone time and I have time to think about things not related to my life. I havent put together 6 hours of continuous sleep in well over a year and my brain misfires constantly.
I love my little one though. When I dream about things I see a tapestry of Dr Seuss and a myriad number of regional cuisines. Horton the Elephant asks what kind of chile to put in the ajilimojili. I laugh and somehow say scotch bonnet and some other shit about how its indigenous. He wasnt listening and the same thing happens over and over. Funny but not at the same time
Im going to keep pursuing an upward trajectory. Ya'll take care
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[19 Feb 2004|05:53pm] |
Citronella
flickered in the small night of a porch corner
licking the torn screen of the hot humid Florida evening
The pool lights shimmered over a staid above ground pool
We made makeshift moments over our marlboros and mint juleps
and spoke of old times and new times and what could be done next
if there was ever the free time
"God I hate hard work"
she stated between belches
and I nodded in drunkenness, foolish and clumsy
fumbling with a new cigarette
She draped her freckled leg over the arm of the cheap plastic chair
and kicked her untied chuck taylors with what seemed wanton abandon
but developed into gentle whispering conversations and
tender luminence
In the north country on a frigid February evening
we passed an open window with a citronella candle burning in it
and I remembered and mused on the moment
at that time between dusk and night
strolling down the street huddled close
wearing scarves drawn to our chins
She held my arm like I was Freewheelin'
Our universe extended only as far as we could sense
or at least until the next paycheck
and we kept warm that night with a kindling fire
and swiss miss with mini marshmallows
the next morning I could still smell citronella on my clothes though I had only passed the window
we looked back upon the memory
that only smell could resurrect
with both a fondness and a sadness
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| were a brunch of hypocrites feasting on that in-between meal |
[18 Feb 2004|08:46am] |
It is our right to choose and to dissent
To make an argument because we're compelled to embrace a democracy of convenience
To make heroes of men and women who who speak their minds when their is an audience listening and who are seen when there are people watching
It is our right to get overweight on puffy ideals and saturated fats in front of televisions blaring with entertainment for the masses
To expect other peoples and faces to see and do it our way
Because we're bigger, stronger
with an enriched sense of self worth based on our judeochristian military complex
We're right in our rights because we decide what the rules are and how they're interpreted
and They're wrong not because they don't agree
but becase we can't or won't understand
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[07 Jan 2004|09:06am] |
its not what you did its how you changed cause of it
jazz drummer twizzles symbals and works into it and the bass hammers on
the horns go off a tangent and theres an organ too
spritely city, drenched in spit and odious white sneakered gentlemen down on their luck and buzzed from the 8 o clock quart in a paperbag stumble and bumble to a crowded bus with no route just garage on the marquis..a sad shallowy
I pondered on, beaten by the brow by the beat poetry of this city and squeamish from the mere thought of it all
On the corner of Polk and Turk a Navajo woman in some sort of headdress clutches some ritualistic pillow tightly, as though she held some part of her culture dear in the compromising clutches of the urban nightmare
She must stay true and rationalize her place here
Just a few months, to keep shoes on her kids feet and barbecue stains on their happy faces
She didnt mean for all of this to happen
but that's this life, her life..the consequences of her miscreant youth
to this doorstep to collect a welfare check drawn on the unknowing sweat of America
and thumpity thump thump the city beats on
When you come here you dont realize it, but you walk through the mouth of a fire breathing dragon between fire spits
We all live in this belly of the whale and are affected by its consumption and digestive juices
We did things that summer..poked our heads into shops,
spent our funny money,
laid down in parks and I stroked that swollen belly, whispering to it
We ate burritoes with the works and drank bottled sodas through straws smiling with our eyes at one another
It was a happy carefree time, though totally naive and oblivious to the world around us
And now we live overcautiously, careful, so careful
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[25 Nov 2003|06:17pm] |
| [ |
music |
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vinod's deep house mix |
] |
I already knew lux liked music. i frequently put on nick drake or damien rice or john denver and dance with her around our apartment. i thought she really only dug mopey singer song writers.
today, i have made a startling discovery. lux loves house music.
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[18 Nov 2003|02:27pm] |
In two days, Chaka Khan will be signing books at Marcus Bookstore, an African American themed bookstore two blocks from our flat. I think I will go to this. I will ask her to kindly inscribe in my copy of JET magazine:
To Josh
Lets hear it for the boy, my lovin one man show
In other news, as I have noted as I have gotten older I scrupulously inspect every home depot advertisement and get excited when circular saws and other tools are on sale..I havent bought any yet though.
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| San Francisco is pulsating with listlessness |
[14 Nov 2003|09:40am] |
There was a man whose writings I had amired. He squeezed his 200 pound naked frame through a window, nearly tearing off his manhood in the process and plunged two or three stories into shrubbery, scratching his ass up on the sharp protuberances of the bushes. All this to escape being caught sucking face with a fancy of a girlfriend who was babysitting for a rich woman.
I had idolized this particular moment as the epitome of everything I thought I was becoming, or everything I wanted to become. This was before I knew myself. Age and the advancement of time and random occurences has nurtured a nascent tendency toward solopsism in me. Most things exist only because I perceive them to exist. My dogs of childhood have all passed away. One years time has changed me forever, and in describing it, I have no idea where to begin.. I can only truly know myself and my experiences and my ultimate salvation from the constraints of this world has become gnostic.
Still, holding my 8-weekling and dancing with her to Nick Drake and feeling her coo and grasp my western shirt with a pink little fist, I am starting to question these beliefs. What purpose do these experiences hold for the greater tapestry of my life if I were to view it as such after my passing? How can I truly believe that I can only know myself and my own self-modifications when a little person has thrown up on my pants or defecated on my undershirt two days ago? She has in essnce modified my "self" in a scenario that was without my control. And as such my ism is out the sliding glass windows.
Sleepy dreaming wide awake and swaying with a pink bunny blanket bundle
father and baby survey the city from a comfortable 11th floor distance
crisp air resonates with a skateboard smacking the curb and an
inexperienced rider swearing as he tumbles to the sidewalk
further over on the block, flummoxed crackbangers swindling for quart money holler across the street at one another.
these are churchgoers; they'll see eachother on Sunday and
they'll rasp about salvation and fabricate a rapture that will last through the harmonies of the choir and pitter out when monday morning comes and they'll need a fix
bouncing, a hunger for milk overtakes baby and father ducks back inside, gets the water warm and placates her.
These small bonding moments are lost on her
One day, dad will tell her about them and baby won't remember
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| From Reformation to Restoration:July 4 eternal |
[08 Jul 2003|07:49am] |
Cascading white on off-white,
past the billboards and a purple pastel industry silo silhoutted against the western sunset
Comes booming an orchestral gaggle of engine sounds from a shortbed latemodel Mitsubishi pickup
Pistons firing and levers churning and valves spurting at eighty pounds per square inch and 35 miles an hour
A man, this Frank Deacon, adjusts the rearview window, straightens his scraggly snow white beard and re-lights a half smoked Swisher Sweet with coffee stains on the plastic mouthpiece
His crowning glory a love affair with a woman named Tess, a 15 minute moment at 27 years, clumsily spread over a lifetime
Frank, a librettist of his own downfall and wasted youth
-a opera life that saw a stage only in his imagination-
steers his shitbox pickup into an auto parts store parking lot
turns the NPR on the am/fm radio all the way up
slouches way down in his seat
and puffing the swisher absent mindedly
he hides from himself
Across the street, Bea locks the doors to her family sedan with a remote and heads into a craft store
A retired soccer mom whose onetime skindeep beauty would have made Dante's scribbling hands tremble with rapture
She strolls down aisle 12 and selects some lattice patterns and some brown fabric for a basket she'll make for her young grandson Jimmy
Patsy Cline comes on the store intercom and wails a heartbreaker
and Bea thinks back to her high school talent show where she belted a Patsy Cline tune, an anthem for lost souls for an auditorium of awkward onlookers
At the register Bea confides with Debbie the cashier:
"I yearn to be prolific again"
and Debbie shrugs
Meanwhile across the burning city swathed in dusklight, a skinny man on a windy eleventh floor balcony struggles with a cheap barbecue grill and a burning roll of newspaper
The Matchlights catch and he postions five Polish sausages on the rusted metal grate
and looks across at the fireworks going off over the hill
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| I feel I must interject here |
[20 Jun 2003|10:49am] |
"I know Ive made mistakes"
says Jimmy the busdriver to the boozy botox housewife chaperon named Estelle
Nothing a 40 thousand dollar salary and a powerful drinking habit wont help you forget, popping that big bus rig into a tenth gear
But it's still hard to forget sometimes
36 children on the bus screaming seeming in unison,
with milk mustaches and
peanut butter on their faces and grape jelly on their t-shirts
"I was waiting for a cross town train in new York in 1977.
I was 18 years old"
Estelle paused to pull Shnapps from a thermos and gesture to the back of the bus-
"Annie! ANNIE! BACK IN YOUR SEAT!"
She sways with the jostling bus gears
and looks ahead with clear aquamarine eyes streched back on her temples
Jimmy peeks over at her, then wrestles the large bus back onto the freeway
"And I had my life in front of me.
I remember watching a pigeon at the train station running with a stick twice as long as he was. I had 30 mintues to wait for the train.
Then I looked up and saw someone I used to know, a girl
I called out
Imagined a life with her
a rollercoaster on Coney Island
a wedding at Saint Mary the Virgin
two kids, a girl and then a boy
and a little house in Flushing"
"Hang ON"
and Jimmy crossed three lanes of traffic and exited the freeway toward JFK Elementary
The kids bounced left, then right again
Estelle was wide-eyed
Her bleached out hair wisped through the open bus window
Her stupor, though a permanent fixture, lent her a perpetual look of disinterest
She was beautiful in her own way
"What happened?"
"Nothing. I got on the train, went across town"
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| Poem for my dad and a big soda |
[30 May 2003|10:26am] |
In the back of a pick-up truck with a rusted out bed
On a sweaty Florida Afternoon after the rain
legs dangling over the side
I watched cars whizzing by on a misplaced interstate, stubbed my cigarette into an ashtray full of dad's cigars
and pulled frosty joy from a 44 ounce plastic cup of redemption
On this day of exclamation points
All I can remember is his face pursed like an instant message emoticon
Hollering red-faced and deep-lunged
With putrid coffee and cigarette breath,
White blond tendrils dangling over his red beard
A man irrevocably irresponsible with his life
And I just stood there wide-eyed and hopelessly gangly
And then I went to college
Swilled cheap beer on Saturday nights
lifted pithy from snooty Russian timepiece novels
Living the life
bumping
writhing
twisting transforming
reading
writing
looking to get laid
and find some kind of meaning
And now years later,
still hopelessly gangly
watching four door family wagons speeding along this humid sunset
slurping my big soda and kicking my legs
I try to understand my father's transgressions
and find that I am not so different
that I continue to do the same searching
but for me
there has always been meaning
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| I'm not back, just passing through |
[22 May 2003|10:23am] |
They walk bow-legged the wrong way down a one way wind tunnel alley named
Maiden Lane, gesticulating wildly at storefront facades and goofy models with toofy grins peddling things
They stumbled into a bar on an open mike night,
bought beer in cans and
listened to a poem "in vernacular" tapping their feet
to a rhythm they didnt get and certainly couldn't spell
I remember them well during a trip down amnesia lane
in a memory that may not be mine at a Sassafras roadside produce stand.
Fully evolved men eating tomatoes like apples, with juices running down their chins and the seeds drying to their necks in the sun.
There was a passion then, a flighty expression of youth, wasted gasoline, fifty four cents and yellow flip-flops
I was with them then as I am now tapping my feet, snapping my fingers and spilling back onto the street
This city, this place I love but with whom I am no longer in love
A living breathing information age in 500 square acres
I try to keep in step, but they are lapping me
so far ahead I no longer see them anymore
I am tempted to count my blessings, but buy a tamale at a burrito stand from a weathered man named Guillermo whose eyebrows had grown so shaggy they obscured his deepset ebony eyes
and I sit and lament
I miss my friends
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[07 Apr 2003|06:04am] |
how sad the state of affairs
when you finally find your voice you realize its strangled
and even sadder still
when you realize it left you years ago
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| A race on Geary Street |
[02 Mar 2003|06:21pm] |
I had just left Office Max. I bought a binder, some plastic insert sheets for said binder, a printer cartridge and a bottle of Mountian Dew. I was halfway through the Mountain Dew when I rolled up to a red light at the intersection of Geary and Stanyan Streets.
I peered casually to my left and noted a spiky haired asian fellow gunning his tricked out Honda Civic with the purple lights and ridiculous spoiler. He was really revving that thing. It occured to me that he wanted to race. I had never really driven an automobile that could actually achieve 60 mph in under 30 seconds. I now drive a 1994 black Ford Probe with a 6 cylinder engine and I would guess at least 200 horsepower. I figured Id give this guy a little run.
The light turned red and I floored it, running the RPM meter up into the 5000's before slamming it into second and doing the same thing. The asian guy was pretty close. We sped through the Geary tunnel and the lights inside made the whole affair feel as though I were in a video game. I slammed into third, then fourth, smoking the guy in the process.
At the next red light, I gave the guy a little smile. He was livid, gunning that little Honda and jerking the thing back and forth in the process. The light turned green and we both started in again. I rammed my car into second and then slammed on the brakes. There was a cop stright ahead of us, choking along at merely 30 mph. The asian guy didnt see the cop and was immediately pulled over. I puttered past the scene at 25 mph just smiling at the guy, who was gesturing and pointing like crazy at my car.
I turned down the next block and pulled into the garage. I was home.
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