Monday, February 4, 2002 11:47 a.m.


WINTER POEM

The horizon was
glistening with
sweeps of snow

white lingering sparkle
and quick winks of
sunlight from the glare.

I drive through
the tunnel the trees
make, the weight of
white water piled
onto each branch.

The simple buzz
of the motor
the razor sharp turns
of the heart

remembering,

beneath all this
shivering is a warm
earth that fosters life
and welcomes death

with its same open hand.

Thursday, January 31, 2002 10:46 a.m.
I have begun a correspondence with Lale, at readliterature.com, which is based in Paris. Go to the link on the right and check it out. It's a great site. While you're there, you can read one of my poems posted there...The Gift.

Wednesday, January 30, 2002 01:14 a.m.
I sort of deliberately came across this poem again today, after not seeing it for a long time...

MARRIAGE

Should I get married? Should I be good?
Astound the girl next door with my velvet suit and faustus hood?
Don't take her to movies but to cemeteries
tell all about werewolf bathtubs and forked clarinets
then desire her and kiss her and all the preliminaries
and she going just so far and I understanding why
not getting angry saying You must feel! It's beautiful to feel!
Instead take her in my arms lean against an old crooked tombstone
and woo her the entire night the constellations in the sky-

When she introduces me to her parents
back straightened, hair finally combed, strangled by a tie,
should I sit with my knees together on their 3rd degree sofa
and not ask Where's the bathroom?
How else to feel other than I am,
often thinking Flash Gordon soap-
O how terrible it must be for a young man
seated before a family and the family thinking
We never saw him before! He wants our Mary Lou!
After tea and homemade cookies they ask What do you do for a
living?

Should I tell them? Would they like me then?
Say All right get married, we're losing a daughter
but we're gaining a son-
And should I then ask Where's the bathroom?

O God, and the wedding! All her family and her friends
and only a handful of mine all scroungy and bearded
just wait to get at the drinks and food-
And the priest! he looking at me as if I masturbated
asking me Do you take this woman for your lawful wedded wife?
And I trembling what to say say Pie Glue!
I kiss the bride all those corny men slapping me on the back
She's all yours, boy! Ha-ha-ha!
And in their eyes you could see some obscene honeymoon going
on-
Then all that absurd rice and clanky cans and shoes
Niagara Falls! Hordes of us! Husbands! Wives! Flowers! Chocolates!
All streaming into cozy hotels
All going to do the same thing tonight
The indifferent clerk he knowing what was going to happen
The lobby zombies they knowing what
The whistling elevator man he knowing
Everybody knowing! I'd almost be inclined not to do anything!
Stay up all night! Stare that hotel clerk in the eye!
Screaming: I deny honeymoon! I deny honeymoon!
running rampant into those almost climactic suites
yelling Radio belly! Cat shovel!
O I'd live in Niagara forever! in a dark cave beneath the Falls
I'd sit there the Mad Honeymooner
devising ways to break marriages, a scourge of bigamy
a saint of divorce-

But I should get married I should be good
How nice it'd be to come home to her
and sit by the fireplace and she in the kitchen
aproned young and lovely wanting my baby
and so happy about me she burns the roast beef
and comes crying to me and I get up from my big papa chair
saying Christmas teeth! Radiant brains! Apple deaf!
God what a husband I'd make! Yes, I should get married!
So much to do! Like sneaking into Mr Jones' house late at night
and cover his golf clubs with 1920 Norwegian books
Like hanging a picture of Rimbaud on the lawnmower
like pasting Tannu Tuva postage stamps all over the picket fence
like when Mrs Kindhead comes to collect for the Community Chest
grab her and tell her There are unfavorable omens in the sky!
And when the mayor comes to get my vote tell him
When are you going to stop people killing whales!
And when the milkman comes leave him a note in the bottle
Penguin dust, bring me penguin dust, I want penguin dust-

Yes if I should get married and it's Connecticut and snow
and she gives birth to a child and I am sleepless, worn,
up for nights, head bowed against a quiet window, the past behind
me,
finding myself in the most common of situations a trembling man
knowledged with responsibility not twig-smear nor Roman coin
soup-
O what would that be like!
Surely I'd give it for a nipple a rubber Tacitus
For a rattle a bag of broken Bach records
Tack Della Francesca all over its crib
Sew the Greek alphabet on its bib
And build for its playpen a roofless Parthenon

No, I doubt I'd be that kind of father
Not rural not snow no quiet window
but hot smelly tight New York City
seven flights up, roaches and rats in the walls
a fat Reichian wife screeching over potatoes Get a job!
And five nose running brats in love with Batman
And the neighbors all toothless and dry haired
like those hag masses of the 18th century
all wanting to come in and watch TV
The landlord wants his rent
Grocery store Blue Cross Gas & Electric Knights of Columbus
impossible to lie back and dream Telephone snow, ghost parking-
No! I should not get married! I should never get married!
But-imagine if I were married to a beautiful sophisticated woman
tall and pale wearing an elegant black dress and long black gloves
holding a cigarette holder in one hand and a highball in the other
and we lived high up in a penthouse with a huge window
from which we could see all of New York and even farther on
clearer days
No, can't imagine myself married to that pleasant prison dream-

O but what about love? I forget love
not that I am incapable of love
It's just that I see love as odd as wearing shoes-
I never wanted to marry a girl who was like my mother
And Ingrid Bergman was always impossible
And there's maybe a girl now but she's already married
And I don't like men and-
But there's got to be somebody!
Because what if I'm 60 years old and not married,
all alone in a furnished room with pee stains on my underwear
and everybody else is married! All the universe married but me!

Ah, yet well I know that were a woman possible as I am possible
then marriage would be possible-
Like SHE in her lonely alien gaud waiting her Egyptian lover
so i wait-bereft of 2,000 years and the bath of life.
-Gregory Corso  

Tuesday, January 29, 2002 10:50 a.m.
I woke up last night with a song in my head, playing over and over.

Why's everybody actin funny?
Why's everybody look so strange?
Why's everybody look so nasty?
What do I want with all these things?

I went alone down to the drugstore
I went in back and took a Coke
I stood in line and ate my Twinkies
I stood in line, I had to wait

Why's everybody actin funny?
Why's everybody look so strange?
Why's everybody look so pretty?
What do I want with all these things?

I went alone down to the drugstore
I went in back and took a Coke
I stood in line and ate my Twinkies
I stood in line, I had to wait

--
Strange by GALAXIE 500

I must have too many M&M's last night...

Sunday, January 27, 2002 03:18 p.m.
I had a great weekend and went to the bookstore and found a bunch of great books. I am now the proud owner of american firsts of Camus' a Happy Death(his first novel), and Nabokovs' Transparent Things. Also got a good hardcover of Calvinos' the Watcher and other stories. The best find though, was a little book called She loves me...she loves me not. which was illustrated by Maurice Sendak, and written by Robert Keeshan(Captain kangaroo!) Got the book for $2 and saw it on ABE for $200-400.

You never know what's out there until you open your eyes...

Thursday, January 24, 2002 10:35 a.m.
"My wife wants a dog. She already has a baby. The baby's almost two. My wife says that the baby wants the dog.
My wife has been wanting a dog for a long time. I have had to be the one to tell her that she couldn't have it. But now the baby wants a dog, my wife says. This may be true. The baby is very close to my wife. They go around together all the time, clutching each other tightly. I ask the baby, who is a girl, "Whose girl are you? Are you Daddy's girl?" The baby says, "Momma," and she doesn't just say it once, she says it repeatedly, "Momma momma momma." I don't see why I should buy a hundred-dollar dog for that damn baby."?

-Donald Barthelme (from Chablis found in 40 stories)...

Wednesday, January 23, 2002 09:44 p.m.
Just got home from dinner at Deidre's house. I had a good time talking to her about both our crazy lives.

Andrew, Elizabeth, and I are going to Mardens tomorrow morning, there is a rumor of Mac computer parts there, need to see for myself. Strange thought that Mardens has that stuff.

I am going up to see Katie tomorrow night after work. I've got Friday, Saturday off again. I need it, I am a little worn out.

Been reading a Wallace Shawn book I got at goodwill. It's pretty damn good. But I can't get the image of his character in My Dinner With Andre out of my head. If you haven't seen this movie, rent it now. I am glad Penny got me to watch it. I had always wanted to see it anyway. Actually, come to think of it, a lot of movies I love, I saw first with Penny. There were great rep theatres in the Bay Area that we could see old films at all the time. There was the UC Theatre, the Fine Arts Cinema, and the Pacific Film Archive, in Berkeley. In San Francisco, there was the Red Vic, and the Castro,and the Roxy. And in Oakland, there was the Parkway, and the Paramount Theatre. I think this was the most elegant of all. It was one of those big Theatres that have red carpet and large pillars in the entryway. Large intricate patterns of Architecture on the walls. It was a real movie palace! They would have a movie play there for five bucks, and it would be like a night out on the town in the forties. A real event to experience, no stupid vcr or dvd crap. The big event was going out and making an evening of it. We saw lots of movies in all these places.

We went to see Bergman films, Lillian Gish films that we probably wouldn't have ever seen on the big screen(with live piano), lots of noir like Night of the Hunter, and Sweet Smell of Success.

Those were some great times I wont ever forget.

Memories are good things, they remind us of how fast things can change, and how some things don't change so much at all. Good memories are good memories, no matter what is going on at the moment...

Wednesday, January 23, 2002 1:21a.m.
Well, I slept 14 hours last night, then got up and did both my federal and state income taxes. I feel lazy and productive at the same time, I guess. I had a good day at work, and was able to talk more with Jon about the used books we will carry. He will give me a lot of control over what we carry, which is exciting. I am glad this is happening, because that is one piece of the bookselling business that I really miss.

Other news...
My mom sent me pictures and they made me want to visit her and my brother in Maryland. It would be nice to get down there for a few days very soon.

Finished a painting called LOVERS, you can look at it here.

I am reading THE BODY ARTIST by Don Delillo, it is hauntingly good. It's about an artist who lives alone in the middle of the woods and she suddenly feels the presence of a man. Actually she feels this presence from the very beginning of the book. She has conversations and such with him and you don't realize that she is alone in the room the whole time, until 30 pages into it and then it all hits you like a ton of bricks, her internal dialogue is the conversations she has with him, it's inspiring me to wright prose more and more. I like it when I see someone writing without compromise, pushing the limits of storytelling. I think it gets our brains working again, so we don't get too used to just taking things in doses that are regular and common. Take two and call me in the morning, kind of attitude. This is a way different kind of writing. No apologies, no explaining why. No back story. You have to figure it out yourself, and when you do, it is a rewarding knowledge of how things exist before you know of them, and well after you have forgotten them. They are there always and forever. Everything changes into something else by the way we choose or end up seeing them.

So today, if you can, try to look at something that is familiar to you, I don't know, maybe, your coffee cup or your alarm clock, and try to see something different in it, an extra chip in the rim, maybe the number of screws it takes to hold that piece of plastic together that keeps your silly time. Look at something differently than what is comfortable to you, what you always do the same, differently.

Maybe the mirror is sick of being looked into so much, or needs to be looked in more. Maybe the door wishes you didn't slam it so hard as you leave the house. Maybe someone that you never think of is thinking of you right now. maybe your thinking of someone that never thinks of you.

And just maybe, at this particular moment, you are thinking about someone at the same exact instant that they are thinking about you...
yeah, just maybe...

Monday, January 21, 2002 08:11 a.m.
I had a good couple days off. MIssion of Burma was so good! I couldn't believe the energy and vigor they still have playing the songs after such a long break(20 years) All the original band members were there, except Martin Swope(what a great name, huh!), the tape loop guy. But the tape loop guy from shellac was there instead and he did a great job. It was like this reunion of late forty year old punk rockers. All of the people who loved them the first time around came out and there were a lot of kids there. It was a great family environment. A real sense of community.

I miss being in a band. I think I'll have to start one very soon...
SO...
who wants to play?

Thursday, January 17, 2002 10:27 a.m.
Been writing some prose lately, not sure about it but what the hell, here is an excerpt from a story tentativley titled...
IN THE DISTANCE

This is a story about the soul. It cannot go further than that. It is about every soul. I need the automatic realism of your face. I need to see that this could be a star in the black halo I have worn through my life like a crown. To begin with. I am not a person, nor do I want to be. I am something else. I am something that is desperate to thrive in a world of obstacles. Every pleasure has it’s pain, every anger it’s joy. I exist in between that which is real and that which is imagined. I live in a world of regret and indecision. I never get to fully experience anything. Everything is hypothetical. Everything is felt before it happens, but never actually happens. I know what can happen and spend many hours trying to conjure up plan after plan to counteract what I know will happen, or could happen with what shouldn’t ever happen. How do I know what shouldn’t ever happen?

This is a world where the only love I feel is a future love, something that hasn’t lived yet, but promises to do so. Although I will never be there, I feel it before it comes. It contains everything in it’s tiny noble hands. It carries the world to me and asks what I would do with it’s pleasure if I could contain it within me forever. I cannot say what beckons me to you. It is a morose yielding to what should not happen and what must happen at the same time.

I drown in my own envy. What I can’t see, I imagine. What I can’t imagine, I pine for. I am alone in my neat wanting. I drown in the light of day, the burden of the openness. The night is the only time when I attempt to live, like the beating of wings against a fierce wind. I will not stop wanting what I can’t have. But I will go on having what I don’t want.

They serve me at Ten o’clock sharp. It’s always the same. Crackers and cheese. Except Saturday night, when I have a short but beautiful love affair with a cigarette. I want them to stay, but they never do. I want to be a person again. I want what they have. How easily they stride in and sit. They do not think of the windows, so wide open. How can they not see how easy it would be to just fall out, and down to the grass below. And the grass, how they don’t notice the slim angle of the blade, just waiting to slice their ankles. My poor, poor friends, this is only getting worse, and you are so oblivious. This world has become callous and complex. They know not the harsh heat the ground endures in summer, and that bitter cold in winter. We are privy to lie to each other and simply smile with glee that everything is fine. How sacred is the soul now that we cannot see it from our bodies anymore. My soul is narrow. It cannot fit into the space designed for it.

It just slips through.