Armed with a deep sense of victimhood, outrage at the powers that be, and remarkable personal candor
I’m going to show you a lot more than tickle fights.
I have come to a place where I believe at some point the system will destroy me.
I think this is the first time I have wasted an hour of your time.
A reading
For the first time in 19 or 20 years (as well as I can remember), I will be doing a reading: some poetry, some fiction, maybe even a look at the graphic novel, at South Texas College in McAllen, Texas, next Tuesday at 4 p.m. Y’all fly on down and join the crowd.
March elimae
Enjoy. (It’s free.)
Four Poems by a Cranky Old Man
SCARED STRAIGHT
Boys your age shouldn’t be
playing with balls all the time.
Sports turn a fellow queer.
Now go on. Get out of here
or else I’ll make you blow me.
I’m not homo, just really lonely!
###
LIVE & LEARN
Everybody loves kittens.
Kittens are cute.
You know what’s even better?
Kittens are mute.
But the neighbor puppy
& his shrill little bark —
that’s what I couldn’t stand.
You should’ve seen him
arc through the air.
Unfortunately, dogs don’t land
as reliably as cats.
Or so I just heard
from the crybaby kid next door.
###
GOLDEN ENOUGH
That beer is really your favorite?
My piss has more kick to it.
I’m surprised you hadn’t noticed.
What? Where are you going?
You try living on a fixed income!
###
PRACTICE NOTHING
My underwear today
are older than you.
I’d like to review
your medical school
degree, if that’s okay.
I’m old, not dumb
or crazy.
And not every doctor
plays with my prostate.
quote out of context
from a tea party email chain:
Then I got to the part that made me feel like my head was going to explode: “A protégé of the political imprisoned patriotic poet Ezra Pound, Mullins compiled a well-researched corpus of works…”
Er? (via The Hydra)
February elimae
is now posted.
Gertrude’s Ghost
A long complicated sentence should force itself upon you, make you know yourself knowing it and the comma, well at the most a comma is a poor period that it lets you stop and take a breath but if you want to take a breath you ought to know yourself that you want to take a breath.
– Gertrude Stein, qtd. here.
January elimae
is now posted for your viewing enjoyment.
Happy new year to you all!
“Storm” by Tim Minchin
A nine-minute beat poem by Tim Minchin, wherein he confronts a new-age hippie and smacks down homeopathy, astrology, and various other accouterments of the anti-science crowd.
December elimae
is now posted. I hope you will find something to enjoy.
Brother Blue is gone.
I will try and write about his impact on me. Meantime, this from the Boston Globe.
Meg Pokrass was kind enough
to interview me for SmokeLong Quarterly.
William Shatner reads Levi Johnston’s tweets
The November elimae
is now posted.
This Living Hand
This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calmed—see here it is—
I hold it towards you.
("This Living Hand". John Keats.)
The October elimae
is now posted.
quote out of context
The parts of Atlas Shrugged that expressed contempt for the academic characters that studied science for it’s own sake didn’t make sense to me at the time.
The new elimae
is now posted.
Where’s the moon?
This morning on the 2 train, a large white-haired man boarded in downtown Brooklyn, wearing overalls and a hat covered with all manner of buttons, clutching a worn, wrinkled photocopy. As the train started to move, he sat up straight, held the paper aloft, and began reciting the following to the assembled commuters, in the sing-song tone of a storyteller or a town cryer. This continued until I exited the train, a few stops later, and has been playing in my head for the better part of the day.
Where’s the moon, where’s the moon?
Where’s the moon, where’s the moon?The globe in Columbus Circle–that’s the Earth.
The moon’s on 63rd Street West;
It’s a simple test
Of spacial reality.How well did you do?
Where’s the moon, where’s the moon?
Where’s the moon, where’s the moon…?
From Duncan
O Daddy
I am intoxicated by the liquor
of your butt crack.
Your sweet, sweet funk is enough
to sustain my joy—
just barely.
I can’t tell if you’re scratching my head
or pushing me away.
As if I care!
Throw the damned ball.
Throw it now.
Throw it.
My guiding light
henceforth shall be this vision conjured forth by Deron: embrace the oh my fucking god.
The August issue of elimae
is now posted.
Beginning with this issue, I will aim toward a beginning of the month publication.
Next Sleepingfish Exit
I’m reading now for the next issue of Sleepingfish, issue 8, co-edited with Gary Lutz. All clusterflockers welcome, especially if goats & vampires are involved.
Did he deserve it? Hell, yes.
I am a very PA person myself, and while I try to hold it in check with coworkers, this man really and truly pissed me off. He berated me, belittled me, constantly criticized my work (which he would then turn in as his own, without making changes), and he was rude and offensive to students, which count for 90% of our customer base since I work on a college campus. Some days, I would push his buttons just to see how far I could get, and how red I could make him turn (think cooked lobster). He gave me a bad review, stating that while I was excellent at my job and with customers, I didn’t treat him with the proper respect (understandable) and spoke too often about things like Viking helmets and zombies. He actually put the following comment in my annual review. “While I appreciate D’s enthusiasm for subjects dear to her, sometimes she talks too much about Zombies, and shows a lack of respect for me as her manager and an internationally published poet by suggesting I wear a Viking helmet.”
. . .
Did I try to get him fired? You bet, and everyone knows it. Did he deserve it? Hell, yes.
—Diane, comment 16.7 on the post no good deed…, Passive-Aggressive Notes, May 12, 2009
Y’all? I love Diane.
Mortal Remains
We have been speaking of mortal remains.
This, the tail-end of Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”, has always just shredded me.
I take it personally.
I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.