Dressed in your uniform,
scarf and goggles,
I hear you sighing
a steady confidence
over the airwaves.
This aluminum cabin
carries the stalest oxygen
and the oddest people:
a walrus-skinned woman,
a cauldron-bellied businessman,
two lovers plucked from
a glamour magazine.
Your voice guides the clouds,
directs the winds,
calms cautious hearts.
Your plane is the only place
I ever drink tomato juice.
This stewardess is older
than her wrinkles and less pleasant
than her perfume suggests.
We all fly in at different speeds,
you know.
Even if we are on the same plane.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Friday, November 18, 2011
"Thirteen Ways of Looking At A Blackbird," by Wallace Stevens
I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.
III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.
V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?
VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.
X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.
XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.
XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.
III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.
V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?
VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.
X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.
XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.
XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
Monday, November 14, 2011
A Life of Honey
It was some late September dreary morning, the clouds hung like steel wool and rain freckled the windows. I walked to the corner grocer and bought one jar of honey. There were probably other items I should have gotten, but I had forgotten the reason I went out in the first place. I didn’t even have a kitchen, what could I buy? The place I was renting off of 112th street belonged to some withering old lady, Mrs. Eskin. She was about the height of a gremlin, the weight of a paper bag, and looking every minute of 89 years old. I rented out one of the bedrooms of her Manhattan apartment; two other students were doing the same. We all shared one bathroom. None of us were allowed to use the kitchen. She had her personal toilet in a small little cupboard of a room, opposite side of the stove. It was enough reason to keep me from arguing for permission. My 60-square foot box of a room had a mini fridge and a half-broken microwave. I managed. It was the cheapest rent in the city.
The supermarket off Broadway and 107th was much like a garden party at all hours of the day. It was a deep burrowed store, constantly buzzing with people. All that Manhattan motion was dizzying, surreal in the same way a circus is surreal, or the moment you finally understand the significance of a peach when you rip through it’s juicy flesh over the kitchen sink one drunken summer night. On occasion, when boredom sunk it’s own teeth into me and I was low on cash, I would saunter into that supermarket and hunt for samples of cheese or pickled tomatoes. The pleasures of bachelorhood are simple, borderline survival techniques. If you live in the jungle, you are at all times the prey and the hunter. You make your way and you learn the rules. But whatever you do, make sure you act like you know exactly what you are doing, even if you are shit-town clueless.
Ah yes, back to the honeyjar. I know what you’re thinking. How could one meaningless little jar of honey be enough to set this high voltage-bachelor jonesin’ for a spell of storytime? Boredom, my friends. The answer is simple, unforgiving, and profoundly wanton boredom. I’ll continue.
I wandered through the middle-eastern spice aisle and then through the seafood section with the lobster tanks and the crab dip and alongside the sushi bar until I ended up in the glassy foods section. Apparently there is only one shelf in the jar aisle for honey. I guess Newyorkers don’t really have a tongue for the stuff. They’re more about salty foods, anything that will jack up their blood pressure and keep them pumping through sidewalk traffic. Anyway, the honey jars stood with the other creamy non-paste, non-liquid food products, the cousin of apricot jelly and the mistress of peanut oil.
The honey jar itself was strangely appealing to me. It was about the width of my wrist and the length of my palm, with one neatly plucked cylindrical honeycomb suspended in the center, surrounded by the bright golden glue even the tamest insects fiend after. Natural Honey it spelled in block letters on the label. I hadn’t had natural honey in a grip, and for less than four dollars a jar, it might have been one of the cheapest food items in New York City, so I bought it. Honey sandwiches, honey tea, honey soup, frozen honey drops; I was coming up with some life sustaining culinary ideas with this stuff.
When I got back to my place I was shivering. The hole in my sole was starting to bother me now. I kicked off my shoes and removed my dampened socks, put on another pair and began to boil some water in my plastic hot pot I filled in the bathroom sink. That honey tea was starting to sound like a divine herbal remedy right now. I pulled the jar from the grocery bag and noticed something I had apparently missed in the store. A dead bee. Yes, a real bee. A dead one. It clung weakly to the underside of the rectangular honeycomb by thin black legs.
I stood statuesque for a moment, half perplexed, half considering whether I should return this infested product back to the store. I let out a grunt of dulled excitement and studied the dead creature mummified in his own juices. In all my years of consuming animal by-products and live ingredients, never have I been so intrigued by a creature of such benign influence.
This is the common fate of a honeybee, is it not? I started falling into a heavy existential lull, pondering the life of bees. They know nothing outside of honey and wax. Do they die as workaholics buzzing tirelessly in their sticky obsessions for perfection? I mean, are they like us? Working for the pleasures of effort itself, and not actually tasting the sweet dew of their labor? Or maybe they are more like drug addicts. Buzzing for a buzz, fiends eager for a fix, for that sticky glucose high. It could be either, and I suppose I thought I could tell from the position in which he was embalmed how this bee had lived his life. I figured he had passed during the apex of some hymenopterus artistic revelation. He looked like the type fool around, to daydream, to forget things and just bask. The bee's existence seems more playful; sweeter one might say.
I imagined him buzzing furiously around the honey hive, perfectly geometrical, assembled and constructed by him and sibling bees. I imagined them gorging in the sweetness of that sticky amber, racing to all corners of their bowling ball weighted home, without a single thought, a blank existence that only runs on instinct and impulse. He and his companions hunting out nectar, sucking and fucking that hive all of their 90-day lifespan. What bliss.
I picked up the jar and held it closer. As dead as he was, this bee seemed to have more life than that ladybug of a woman I had for a landlady. My eyelashes almost brushed against the glass. His legs were thick, probably as muscular as insect hind legs come. They each had tiny, beard-like hairs projecting outward. His coat was the color of a high noon summer, and black as Texas leather, striped down his thorax like a bomber. His eyes were small, deep black pits, like pilot goggles, as kaleidoscopic as the honeycomb itself. As if the design of his eyes rendered his entire world in honeycomb configuration. Everything honeycomb: Honeycomb skies, honeycomb flowers, honeycomb bees, honeycomb honeycombs. Everything. He was dead, still. He must have swam in that overdose avalanche for weeks already, an addict basking in the revelry of some beautiful ecstasy just before slipping out.
I finally unscrewed the jartop and spooned a teaspoon sized spoon of honey into the only ceramic cup I had in my possession. I decided to leave the bee inside the jar as a monument to nature. As a fossilized animal with the tool he used to produce the goo I was to consume. And, I confess, as some lively decoration to my otherwise bland and peeling white-walled room.
I stirred the cup slow with my teaspoon, a metal rod of a utensil rusted to a brownish-red, dissolving the honey into the dark liquid, but still the tea lacked the sweetness I had expected. After some contemplation and toe massaging, I unscrewed the jartop again and slipped the spoon back in, all the way to the glass base this time, and fidgeted around with my museum pet. With some effort I ripped the bee from off his honeycomb, one of his microscopic legs still attached to the underside of that golden death plank, scooped him from the bottom and dumped him with another spoon’s worth of honey into my cup.
It was dream-like. His body sank below, dissolving with the sugar in the hot dark herb-suffused water. For a couple minutes I just watched the steam dance off the edge of the cup, wisping wildly into vapor and then into nothing. Then, almost completely by impulse, I picked up the cup and swallowed the whole dark concoction in four or five large gulps. It ran like liquefied magma down my throat, the heat neither scalding nor calming, but perfusing warmly in my gut. Bee and all, all drunk in still, damp September room silence. Over and done. I burped. I cocked my head toward the window and listened to the rain softly beginning to click on the sill. After licking my lips in a daze of abent-mindedness I decided with satisfying breath the fate of this bee was justified by my own fate. And the taste; still bitter.
The supermarket off Broadway and 107th was much like a garden party at all hours of the day. It was a deep burrowed store, constantly buzzing with people. All that Manhattan motion was dizzying, surreal in the same way a circus is surreal, or the moment you finally understand the significance of a peach when you rip through it’s juicy flesh over the kitchen sink one drunken summer night. On occasion, when boredom sunk it’s own teeth into me and I was low on cash, I would saunter into that supermarket and hunt for samples of cheese or pickled tomatoes. The pleasures of bachelorhood are simple, borderline survival techniques. If you live in the jungle, you are at all times the prey and the hunter. You make your way and you learn the rules. But whatever you do, make sure you act like you know exactly what you are doing, even if you are shit-town clueless.
Ah yes, back to the honeyjar. I know what you’re thinking. How could one meaningless little jar of honey be enough to set this high voltage-bachelor jonesin’ for a spell of storytime? Boredom, my friends. The answer is simple, unforgiving, and profoundly wanton boredom. I’ll continue.
I wandered through the middle-eastern spice aisle and then through the seafood section with the lobster tanks and the crab dip and alongside the sushi bar until I ended up in the glassy foods section. Apparently there is only one shelf in the jar aisle for honey. I guess Newyorkers don’t really have a tongue for the stuff. They’re more about salty foods, anything that will jack up their blood pressure and keep them pumping through sidewalk traffic. Anyway, the honey jars stood with the other creamy non-paste, non-liquid food products, the cousin of apricot jelly and the mistress of peanut oil.
The honey jar itself was strangely appealing to me. It was about the width of my wrist and the length of my palm, with one neatly plucked cylindrical honeycomb suspended in the center, surrounded by the bright golden glue even the tamest insects fiend after. Natural Honey it spelled in block letters on the label. I hadn’t had natural honey in a grip, and for less than four dollars a jar, it might have been one of the cheapest food items in New York City, so I bought it. Honey sandwiches, honey tea, honey soup, frozen honey drops; I was coming up with some life sustaining culinary ideas with this stuff.
When I got back to my place I was shivering. The hole in my sole was starting to bother me now. I kicked off my shoes and removed my dampened socks, put on another pair and began to boil some water in my plastic hot pot I filled in the bathroom sink. That honey tea was starting to sound like a divine herbal remedy right now. I pulled the jar from the grocery bag and noticed something I had apparently missed in the store. A dead bee. Yes, a real bee. A dead one. It clung weakly to the underside of the rectangular honeycomb by thin black legs.
I stood statuesque for a moment, half perplexed, half considering whether I should return this infested product back to the store. I let out a grunt of dulled excitement and studied the dead creature mummified in his own juices. In all my years of consuming animal by-products and live ingredients, never have I been so intrigued by a creature of such benign influence.
This is the common fate of a honeybee, is it not? I started falling into a heavy existential lull, pondering the life of bees. They know nothing outside of honey and wax. Do they die as workaholics buzzing tirelessly in their sticky obsessions for perfection? I mean, are they like us? Working for the pleasures of effort itself, and not actually tasting the sweet dew of their labor? Or maybe they are more like drug addicts. Buzzing for a buzz, fiends eager for a fix, for that sticky glucose high. It could be either, and I suppose I thought I could tell from the position in which he was embalmed how this bee had lived his life. I figured he had passed during the apex of some hymenopterus artistic revelation. He looked like the type fool around, to daydream, to forget things and just bask. The bee's existence seems more playful; sweeter one might say.
I imagined him buzzing furiously around the honey hive, perfectly geometrical, assembled and constructed by him and sibling bees. I imagined them gorging in the sweetness of that sticky amber, racing to all corners of their bowling ball weighted home, without a single thought, a blank existence that only runs on instinct and impulse. He and his companions hunting out nectar, sucking and fucking that hive all of their 90-day lifespan. What bliss.
I picked up the jar and held it closer. As dead as he was, this bee seemed to have more life than that ladybug of a woman I had for a landlady. My eyelashes almost brushed against the glass. His legs were thick, probably as muscular as insect hind legs come. They each had tiny, beard-like hairs projecting outward. His coat was the color of a high noon summer, and black as Texas leather, striped down his thorax like a bomber. His eyes were small, deep black pits, like pilot goggles, as kaleidoscopic as the honeycomb itself. As if the design of his eyes rendered his entire world in honeycomb configuration. Everything honeycomb: Honeycomb skies, honeycomb flowers, honeycomb bees, honeycomb honeycombs. Everything. He was dead, still. He must have swam in that overdose avalanche for weeks already, an addict basking in the revelry of some beautiful ecstasy just before slipping out.
I finally unscrewed the jartop and spooned a teaspoon sized spoon of honey into the only ceramic cup I had in my possession. I decided to leave the bee inside the jar as a monument to nature. As a fossilized animal with the tool he used to produce the goo I was to consume. And, I confess, as some lively decoration to my otherwise bland and peeling white-walled room.
I stirred the cup slow with my teaspoon, a metal rod of a utensil rusted to a brownish-red, dissolving the honey into the dark liquid, but still the tea lacked the sweetness I had expected. After some contemplation and toe massaging, I unscrewed the jartop again and slipped the spoon back in, all the way to the glass base this time, and fidgeted around with my museum pet. With some effort I ripped the bee from off his honeycomb, one of his microscopic legs still attached to the underside of that golden death plank, scooped him from the bottom and dumped him with another spoon’s worth of honey into my cup.
It was dream-like. His body sank below, dissolving with the sugar in the hot dark herb-suffused water. For a couple minutes I just watched the steam dance off the edge of the cup, wisping wildly into vapor and then into nothing. Then, almost completely by impulse, I picked up the cup and swallowed the whole dark concoction in four or five large gulps. It ran like liquefied magma down my throat, the heat neither scalding nor calming, but perfusing warmly in my gut. Bee and all, all drunk in still, damp September room silence. Over and done. I burped. I cocked my head toward the window and listened to the rain softly beginning to click on the sill. After licking my lips in a daze of abent-mindedness I decided with satisfying breath the fate of this bee was justified by my own fate. And the taste; still bitter.
"Pastoral," by Ron Loewinsohn
Death.
The death of a million
honeydew melons
festering in the fields
east of Tracy.
The scent of death
narcotic in its sweetness
which we mistook for the smell
of fresh-churned butter
until I ran across the road
into the field
& was attacked by flies,
Later
on another road, I smelled myself
the fetor of the living
like locker rooms & loving beds.
& thought about the mutilated melons
which from a distance looked like
a field of wild buttercups.
The death of a million
honeydew melons
festering in the fields
east of Tracy.
The scent of death
narcotic in its sweetness
which we mistook for the smell
of fresh-churned butter
until I ran across the road
into the field
& was attacked by flies,
Later
on another road, I smelled myself
the fetor of the living
like locker rooms & loving beds.
& thought about the mutilated melons
which from a distance looked like
a field of wild buttercups.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
HomeYears, 10.28.2011, day
What a wild night. It was the last autumn eve of the year where you could go out without a coat and still return home with only rosy cheeks. Steam vapor swirled out from under lifted hats and mingled exhaled breaths and cigarette smoke blown out by pedestrians into the street. I had been at the coffeehouse all day, trying to write letters to the girl I've loved like a childhood secret. It was late afternoon, the sky was a violent pink and burgundy and the ghostly silhouette of the moon forebode something ravenous. It was halloween weekend. I knew I felt some lurking rage seething through my blood. The goons from work were starting to exit their offices and pour into the buses and subways. They were going to dress up like sexy goons now. I headed into an italian eatery off of Augusta and sat by the window, ordered a beer and read some Tom Robbins. The language out of this guy! Like tripping mushrooms in South Dakota. Anyway, I sat there, brooding, getting drunk until David Hoyne and Daniel Huron and Chaz St. James got back from work. We were supposed to go out on the town and get silly. The cheap easy dames were roaming the streets tonight, hunting for kisses. I was willing to sell mine, God knows.
By the time the gang called me I was three pints in, wobbling on the checkered table, dizzying vision over the already slippery words of my book. I paid my check and smiled at the waitress on the way out. Though I'm not one much into small talk, some playful banter would have really swooned that buzz right smooth to a Charlie Parker melody, ya dig? She seemed like the quiet type, no matter.
I split down Augusta, straight west into the drowning bloodied sunset. It was marvelous. A scene right out of Kerouac's psyche. I stumbled into Hoyne's place to find them pulling together the usual friday night pleasantries. Enough dope and whiskey on that table to kill a horse, but hey, there was about five us to do the job of one stallion. It was more like conversation. You put on a record and lit a cigarette in between your hand gestures. It's about finding a groove, and finding a groove is like rowing down a river, the stream will carry you if you feel out the rhythm of the water. There was incense and the windows were open. The sun was huddled under the earth now, darkened and snoozing. Night crawled in like a sax player slowly drinking himself mad at the bar. We laughed like hyenas, clinking glasses together in the dim-lit bohemian room hazy with all kinds of smoke. Eventually, the boys had to split for a concert, some slow dance string music made for lonely single women. They knew what they were doing. St. James and I headed out and they promised to meet up with us after their show. We met St. James' dame Miss Whytecliff and our buddy, Lollipop, on the street corner.
Painting the town red, we were all dolled up. Straight-laced and buxom breasted, I was getting thirsty again. We hit a bar off of the 6-corner strip, and grubbed on pizza. People were flooding the streets. The energy had me all riled up. Legs and heels, tight dresses and long hair, bare shoulders and strutting the sidewalk for attention. As much as I loathed the whole scene, I was howling like a wolf. We hit the dance joint down the street and piled into the sweaty club, made a bee-line for the dance floor and passed my flask of whiskey around as we started swinging.
The costumes were impressive, I must admit. Typical pop-cultural imitations with any attempt to expose skin, as close to naked as social customs will allow. I donned my normal threads, though always a bit of a throwback out of the generation, people act like a shirt-tie-vest combo is the sheep's pudding once you start talking fashion. Anyhow, I was full of whiskey and music, my engines were revving like the derby just came into town. I approached of flock of quiet looking chicks sitting down at a half-circular table near the dance floor. To be honest, I had no idea what we talked about, although I do remember throwing around compliments and mysterious invitations to dance. The first girl I made conversation with was a full-bodied vixen, dressed like Natalie Portman from "Black Swan," damn, did she know how to move those hips. She had me pinned up against the wall, pressing her ballet feathers into me like she was trying to grind her leotards to flames. By that time, the gang lost track of me, I was so deep in the pond, no fishing line could have hooked me out. They texted me their goodbyes and left. I was alright. Drunk off my rocker, but there was no way I could go home with Natalie Portman. She started biting her lip and grabbing me. It started to feel like danger. We necked a bit, but I split after a couple dances. There is never any commitment in these kinds of things longer than it takes to knock down a couple shots. I threw away 12 bucks of drinks on her. That kind of upset me.
I busted out of that joint and headed toward Huron's place. We talked on the phone, sounded like he was bedpan drunk, but he insisted I crash on his couch. It wasn't that late, and I was hungry for a burrito after all that calorie burning jiving. I stumbled down the street among the throng of equally inebriated hipsters slurring their speech and all disheveled. It was comforting to see. On my way to that hole in the wall burrito joint Piquante off Division, in my journey I decided to abandon my quest for food and just head to Huron's for sleep. It was about another 6 blocks or so, but I enjoyed the saunter without any rush. When I got to his apartment door, it was locked. I knocked on the door, on the window, rang the bell, shouted his name through the screen window and called him a few times. Out cold. SHould have expected this. Huron pounds brews like he's on the clock. Weekends he gets quick drunk, stone liquored and lead-headed. I saw the tv lights flicker on the wall through the window. I thought I could even hear him snoring.
New plan in order. I was hungry now. I had a few other buddies sharing a duplex apartment on the other edge of the neighborhood with plenty of crash space for the likes of me. I took a cab to the Hollywood Grill diner next to their place and called all four of them while I ordered a grilled chicken deluxe sandwich. None answered except Roger Zaine, but he wasn't coming home 'til after 4am, an X-rave somewhere on the Northside. I contemplated sleeping in the back of the diner on one of the seats at least until the sun came up and I could catch the earliest train out of there.
God makes these things happen in perfect ways. I was trying to befriend some older chicks next to me at the diner bar when my pal Andy Morgan called me. It was almost 3am and he just got out of the library when he caught the message I left him earlier in the night. Savior. He swung by the diner, right as I stuffed the last fry in mouth, I bolted out there with my jacket in arms. I hopped in the car and we sped to his apartment near the south loop, laughing and detailing the night into slurred language. I fell asleep like a rock on his floor, dead weight and drunk. The night swirled like a toilet flush and I woke up like a rare autumn daisy on a brisk, sunny morning. It was a good night, it was bound to be a solid morning.
By the time the gang called me I was three pints in, wobbling on the checkered table, dizzying vision over the already slippery words of my book. I paid my check and smiled at the waitress on the way out. Though I'm not one much into small talk, some playful banter would have really swooned that buzz right smooth to a Charlie Parker melody, ya dig? She seemed like the quiet type, no matter.
I split down Augusta, straight west into the drowning bloodied sunset. It was marvelous. A scene right out of Kerouac's psyche. I stumbled into Hoyne's place to find them pulling together the usual friday night pleasantries. Enough dope and whiskey on that table to kill a horse, but hey, there was about five us to do the job of one stallion. It was more like conversation. You put on a record and lit a cigarette in between your hand gestures. It's about finding a groove, and finding a groove is like rowing down a river, the stream will carry you if you feel out the rhythm of the water. There was incense and the windows were open. The sun was huddled under the earth now, darkened and snoozing. Night crawled in like a sax player slowly drinking himself mad at the bar. We laughed like hyenas, clinking glasses together in the dim-lit bohemian room hazy with all kinds of smoke. Eventually, the boys had to split for a concert, some slow dance string music made for lonely single women. They knew what they were doing. St. James and I headed out and they promised to meet up with us after their show. We met St. James' dame Miss Whytecliff and our buddy, Lollipop, on the street corner.
Painting the town red, we were all dolled up. Straight-laced and buxom breasted, I was getting thirsty again. We hit a bar off of the 6-corner strip, and grubbed on pizza. People were flooding the streets. The energy had me all riled up. Legs and heels, tight dresses and long hair, bare shoulders and strutting the sidewalk for attention. As much as I loathed the whole scene, I was howling like a wolf. We hit the dance joint down the street and piled into the sweaty club, made a bee-line for the dance floor and passed my flask of whiskey around as we started swinging.
The costumes were impressive, I must admit. Typical pop-cultural imitations with any attempt to expose skin, as close to naked as social customs will allow. I donned my normal threads, though always a bit of a throwback out of the generation, people act like a shirt-tie-vest combo is the sheep's pudding once you start talking fashion. Anyhow, I was full of whiskey and music, my engines were revving like the derby just came into town. I approached of flock of quiet looking chicks sitting down at a half-circular table near the dance floor. To be honest, I had no idea what we talked about, although I do remember throwing around compliments and mysterious invitations to dance. The first girl I made conversation with was a full-bodied vixen, dressed like Natalie Portman from "Black Swan," damn, did she know how to move those hips. She had me pinned up against the wall, pressing her ballet feathers into me like she was trying to grind her leotards to flames. By that time, the gang lost track of me, I was so deep in the pond, no fishing line could have hooked me out. They texted me their goodbyes and left. I was alright. Drunk off my rocker, but there was no way I could go home with Natalie Portman. She started biting her lip and grabbing me. It started to feel like danger. We necked a bit, but I split after a couple dances. There is never any commitment in these kinds of things longer than it takes to knock down a couple shots. I threw away 12 bucks of drinks on her. That kind of upset me.
I busted out of that joint and headed toward Huron's place. We talked on the phone, sounded like he was bedpan drunk, but he insisted I crash on his couch. It wasn't that late, and I was hungry for a burrito after all that calorie burning jiving. I stumbled down the street among the throng of equally inebriated hipsters slurring their speech and all disheveled. It was comforting to see. On my way to that hole in the wall burrito joint Piquante off Division, in my journey I decided to abandon my quest for food and just head to Huron's for sleep. It was about another 6 blocks or so, but I enjoyed the saunter without any rush. When I got to his apartment door, it was locked. I knocked on the door, on the window, rang the bell, shouted his name through the screen window and called him a few times. Out cold. SHould have expected this. Huron pounds brews like he's on the clock. Weekends he gets quick drunk, stone liquored and lead-headed. I saw the tv lights flicker on the wall through the window. I thought I could even hear him snoring.
New plan in order. I was hungry now. I had a few other buddies sharing a duplex apartment on the other edge of the neighborhood with plenty of crash space for the likes of me. I took a cab to the Hollywood Grill diner next to their place and called all four of them while I ordered a grilled chicken deluxe sandwich. None answered except Roger Zaine, but he wasn't coming home 'til after 4am, an X-rave somewhere on the Northside. I contemplated sleeping in the back of the diner on one of the seats at least until the sun came up and I could catch the earliest train out of there.
God makes these things happen in perfect ways. I was trying to befriend some older chicks next to me at the diner bar when my pal Andy Morgan called me. It was almost 3am and he just got out of the library when he caught the message I left him earlier in the night. Savior. He swung by the diner, right as I stuffed the last fry in mouth, I bolted out there with my jacket in arms. I hopped in the car and we sped to his apartment near the south loop, laughing and detailing the night into slurred language. I fell asleep like a rock on his floor, dead weight and drunk. The night swirled like a toilet flush and I woke up like a rare autumn daisy on a brisk, sunny morning. It was a good night, it was bound to be a solid morning.
"The Wisdom of Life," by Al-Akhtal al-Saghir
Life's wisdom is best found in living drunk;
Pass me then my winecups and my lute.
Strip the world down to its delicious beauty
As you would unveil a virgin bride.
We are all in love with Life and aspire
To reap its unsoiled pleasures.
Grab on to life then, damn you,
And throw away the mask your face has hardened into.
However long you live, you're but a bird,
Tree-bound one moment, soaring high the next.
Pass me then my winecups and my lute.
Strip the world down to its delicious beauty
As you would unveil a virgin bride.
We are all in love with Life and aspire
To reap its unsoiled pleasures.
Grab on to life then, damn you,
And throw away the mask your face has hardened into.
However long you live, you're but a bird,
Tree-bound one moment, soaring high the next.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Ecclesiastes 12
Remember now your Creator in the days of your youth,
before the difficult days come,
and the years draw near when you say,
"I have no pleasure in them":
while the sun and the light
the moon and the stars
are not darkened,
and the clouds do not return after the rain;
in the day when the keepers of the house tremble,
and the strong men bow down;
when the grinder cease because they are few,
and those that look through the windows grow dim;
when the doors are shut in the streets,
and the sound of grinding is low;
when one rises up at the sound of a bird,
and all the daughters of music are brought low.
Also they that are afraid of height,
and of terrors in the way;
when the almond tree blossoms,
the grasshopper is a burden,
and desire fails.
For man goes to his eternal home,
and the mourners go about the streets.
Remember your Creator
before the silver cord is loosed,
or the golden bowl is broken,
or the pitcher shattered at the fountain,
or the wheel broken at the well.
Then the dust will return to the earth as it was,
and the spirit will return to God who gave it.
"Vanity of vanities," says the preacher,
"All is vanity."
And moreover, because the preacher was wise
he still taught the people knowledge;
yes, he pondered and sought out
and set in order many proverbs.
The preacher sought to find acceptable words;
and what was written was upright-- words of truth.
The words of the wise are like goads,
and the words of scholars are like well-driven nails,
given by one Shepherd.
And further, my son, be admonished by these.
Of making many books there is no end,
and much study is wearisome to the flesh.
Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter:
Fear God and keep His commandments,
For this is man's all.
For God will bring every work into judgement,
including every secret thing,
whether good or evil.
before the difficult days come,
and the years draw near when you say,
"I have no pleasure in them":
while the sun and the light
the moon and the stars
are not darkened,
and the clouds do not return after the rain;
in the day when the keepers of the house tremble,
and the strong men bow down;
when the grinder cease because they are few,
and those that look through the windows grow dim;
when the doors are shut in the streets,
and the sound of grinding is low;
when one rises up at the sound of a bird,
and all the daughters of music are brought low.
Also they that are afraid of height,
and of terrors in the way;
when the almond tree blossoms,
the grasshopper is a burden,
and desire fails.
For man goes to his eternal home,
and the mourners go about the streets.
Remember your Creator
before the silver cord is loosed,
or the golden bowl is broken,
or the pitcher shattered at the fountain,
or the wheel broken at the well.
Then the dust will return to the earth as it was,
and the spirit will return to God who gave it.
"Vanity of vanities," says the preacher,
"All is vanity."
And moreover, because the preacher was wise
he still taught the people knowledge;
yes, he pondered and sought out
and set in order many proverbs.
The preacher sought to find acceptable words;
and what was written was upright-- words of truth.
The words of the wise are like goads,
and the words of scholars are like well-driven nails,
given by one Shepherd.
And further, my son, be admonished by these.
Of making many books there is no end,
and much study is wearisome to the flesh.
Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter:
Fear God and keep His commandments,
For this is man's all.
For God will bring every work into judgement,
including every secret thing,
whether good or evil.
Monday, November 7, 2011
Finally
turn on all the lights in the house!
my mother embraces me
and my sister is laughing,
dad removes his glasses in disbelief.
I've been accepted into medical school,
there is a celebration to be had.
my mother embraces me
and my sister is laughing,
dad removes his glasses in disbelief.
I've been accepted into medical school,
there is a celebration to be had.
Arthur Rimbaud's summary of a poet
A poet makes himself a visionary through a long, boundless, and systematized disorganization of all the senses. All forms of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself, he exhausts within himself all poisons, and preserves their quintessences. Unspeakable torment, where he will need the greatest faith, a superhuman strength, where he becomes all men: the great invalid, the great criminal, the great accursed—and the Supreme Scientist! For he attains the unknown! Because he has cultivated his soul, already rich, more than anyone! He attains the unknown, and, if demented, he finally loses the understanding of his visions, he will at least have seen them! So what if he is destroyed in his ecstatic flight through things unheard of, unnameable: other horrible workers will come; they will begin at the horizons where the first one has fallen!
"Poet," by 'Ali Ja'far al-'Allaq
Who among you has begun his days
seeking out the color of the dew and stones,
searching and searching
for themes that have neither been profaned
no sung to satiety?
Whenever he felt
that the stallions he pursued were too elusive
that the songs he tried to work were too abstruse,
he would cast his vexed eyes
over the flock of his days,
as one filed by behind the other,
every one the same.
This is the dusty song of papers.
Can you smell its blossoms
as it draws him to his room,
to the loved ones he has been neglecting,
and lists for him the number
of his dreams, his deserts, and his books?
He surveys his days and his preoccupations,
gazes on his loved ones,
sincere and cast aside.
He counts his books: one, two , four.
Then he slips away,
restless and morose.
Of him they say he is, as usual, dazed,
as one well might be
who contemplates a stream to touch the taste of dew.
They say he is impervious
to offenses,
they say he is too quick to find offense.
They say he is dismal
elated
absent-minded
as one well might be
who is given to the contemplations of streams and crows.
He remembers his friends
and forgives them their taunts.
He laughs
and releases all his birds into the fog.
seeking out the color of the dew and stones,
searching and searching
for themes that have neither been profaned
no sung to satiety?
Whenever he felt
that the stallions he pursued were too elusive
that the songs he tried to work were too abstruse,
he would cast his vexed eyes
over the flock of his days,
as one filed by behind the other,
every one the same.
This is the dusty song of papers.
Can you smell its blossoms
as it draws him to his room,
to the loved ones he has been neglecting,
and lists for him the number
of his dreams, his deserts, and his books?
He surveys his days and his preoccupations,
gazes on his loved ones,
sincere and cast aside.
He counts his books: one, two , four.
Then he slips away,
restless and morose.
Of him they say he is, as usual, dazed,
as one well might be
who contemplates a stream to touch the taste of dew.
They say he is impervious
to offenses,
they say he is too quick to find offense.
They say he is dismal
elated
absent-minded
as one well might be
who is given to the contemplations of streams and crows.
He remembers his friends
and forgives them their taunts.
He laughs
and releases all his birds into the fog.
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