We'll be doing an open mike and signing books----
Click here for more details:
www.nycip.org/bookfair/
Please stop by and say hello! It's free!
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Independent Book Publishers Fair
We'll be doing an open mike and signing books----
Click here for more details:
www.nycip.org/bookfair/
Please stop by and say hello! It's free!
A Dream of the Old Pastel Bennett Building
Things fall away...
Whole ways of life are destroyed forever. Things that seemed solid are shown to be nothing but dust motes & particles, suspended for a brief moment in an aching light as the sun illuminates them and then concludes it’s mournful arc across the southern skies down there at the bottom of the city...
*Cataleptic chants emanate from the bio-chamber labeled 1003, and their echo informs the lurkers in the halls...
Strobe-Alarm Nocturne on the 10th floor deep in the underground american night
Night-crews toil in the utility room at the end of the hall—I cower in fear of what they will discover—and on & on they work, deep into the savage night of Fulton Street!
Thanksgiving Day at the Old Bennett Building—now lost forever in the mist!
Recollections cast a spell over the rooftops as I dream of things long gone...
Shards of stabbing memories distract me from my immediate surroundings...back there in the lost Bennett...
Memories and ghostly scenes illuminate my chamber deep in the winter night of Old Fulton Street...
The wondrous old buildings give way to underground poems—crumbling, along with all our hopes, as the carnage is ratcheted-up to obscene levels! A palpable sense of our impending doom & demise, as the destruction echoes all around us—back there in that tarnished sepulcher, deep in a strange night of unrest and regret
I grasp at phantom memories—seeking balm for my aching wounds and palliatives for my lonely soul, back down there at that strange and melancholy outpost
Endless conjecture and rabid theorizing—all useless against the implacable onslaught down there in that terrible din and dirge!
And there was nothing we could do except hurl a curse at the sulphur skies...back there in the fading light of that strange dream!
Help us, dear God! So that we are not swept away! Away with all the other lost things, down there in that time of gnashing gears and particulate-storm hell that reminds us that we’re in the way, even as it chokes the life out of us!
Particle-Chamber experiments at the end of a forgotten hall—-poems dark and ghostly--it’s echoes combine & comingle with the unholy night-clang & dirge of the southern end of the city.
Fractured & flayed at the end of the hall amid dreams of the family and other lost things!
A blast of sunlight explodes against the plaster—illuminating strange hieroglyphs and causing phantom images to burst from the walls... back there in that lighted chamber on the rooftop! Another poem dark and dispersing in the cracked skies
The Late & Lamented Pastel Bennett Building—it sits back there still...
As fugitive colors and dissolving scenes trouble me on a lost afternoon
The awful toll that is taken from human flesh & soul as we are dragged through the days & nights, all against our will!
Endless days rotate out of existence as we stagger blindly through the pitched landscape...
Nassau Street in an unholy light:
Down the hill past John Street, and then Maiden Lane, and further on still, back down to ancient harbor-memory squall & cry of gulls and creak of rotting wood on a Sunday afternoon of gray concern and deep loneliness.
Down by the old harbor, transfixed by all things, old and new...
Journal of Dreams and Other Disreputable Things by an underground american:
Escaping rivulets of Fulton Street on a rainy morning in the bleak light of Absentia
Aphasiatic monks worship and chant from the gloom of Old Fulton Street
An echoing curse bounces off the old buildings down around Fulton Street where I stayed for a strange hour suspended between one thought and the next.
Complaints echo through the long-departed halls of the Bennett
Underground poems and antique concerns and cancelled appointments in an abandoned structure on top of the Bennett
Cartesian thoughts amid the empty bottles and detritus of last night’s revelry:
The dense and delirious rooftop garden of the Captain. A strange and ephemeral arboretum, now up-rooted and torn out forever! Along with everything else!
A palpable doom is in the air...my toxic liver and kidneys breed fear in my mind and a black sea of ink floods in...
Many ghostly scenes of old-time Fulton come back to me at odd hours of the day
Poems dark and crepuscular
Paraphrased thoughts and holiday-stain memories project through the windows on the second floor of a building on Nassau street across from the great Repository. Now gone! One by one, the buildings and places that I knew and their co-responding dreams are rooted out and discarded.
Tremble-on-Brimstone.
I move silently and stealthily downhill along John Street on a clear and cold night, past store windows of aching regret, and stabbing loneliness—past rumor, and recanted pledge, past Old Dutch Street and the ancient church...
Friday, June 20, 2008
Perched on the Third Dot of the Ellipsis
A day called Friday, January 11, 2008, for no reason that I can ascertain...
An overcast & rainy mid-morning in the unforgiving city whose name can change
without warning.
Raindrops hang suspended in a vaporous light.
The days stretch across another meaningless page of the Journal named Thirty-Four
in a day-dream of Old Ditmas Park.
Spheres of Vast Discontent and watery disillusion cast their orbital shadows across a rancorous & repentant Calendar
The day slowly retreats across the page and it’s psychic imprint is pressed neatly between pale and parallel blue lines.
Now the rains come in earnest...
And I know that it must also be raining on the Fulton rooftop—up there where I gazed out at impossibly retreating afternoons in a lost daydream, retrievable now only through obscure incantations and watery prayer.
An obscure gloom & loneliness troubles me on the second floor overlooking Dorchester Road as the cars and trucks and buses push through the rain and on into oblivion...
Perched on the Third Dot of the Ellipsis:
The Great Cenotaph of Fulton Street, washed by the downpour, sighing & moaning softly in the dirge of the storm.
Raindrops hit pools of water as blurred reflections dance to the water-born rythms.
Ghostly Latitudes and Spidery Longitudes...
As a few pale lights are visible in the muted houses across the street.
And the waters must also run down the hill of Fulton Street as I record their progress from afar—in exile in a suburb of re-routed and strangely echoing thoughts and ruminations on memory.
The rains have bent my mind out of shape, or possibly into shape—who knows which?
And thusly in despair & desperation would I coax Neptune down out of it’s mighty orbit and onto the more easily-managed confines of my kitchen table and perform a decoction of that vast & terrifying planet, boiling it down for days on end and then siphoning-off it’s essence into a thimble-full of the rarest poison ever known to man and then hold the unspeakable liquid up to the light and swallow it with a hearty toast, and then dream like no man has ever dreamed before!
Unknown cities revolve around me in a vortex of fear & horror.
I throw back the shot into my gullet and toast the Heavens as it burns through my entrails:
The winds pick up immediately as the tree across the road bends almost to the ground as it is lashed by unimaginably ferocious gales! The windows give way and are sucked out into the maelstrom, then the walls are torn away and I am bourn into the Ammoniacal Skies! My first breath fills my lungs with the absurdly toxic atmosphere and my flesh dissolves and is torn to pieces by winds that no man will ever feel! My spirit is blown along into the vortex of Neptune’s storms, aloft on blue vapor, crackling with immense electrical currents and an as-yet-unidentified chromophore which gives the clouds their rich blue tint. Hydrogen and Helium are my companions in this mad ride around the vast planet:
Fire of Suns and Spray of Comets!
And Baleful Light from a Sickly Moon!
From Neptune’s great Cyclonic Storms
And Ammoniacal Oceans:
Dreams too Foul & Frightening to Recall!
Are Bourne on an Orpimental Hue:
Sinopia & Saturnine Red
and now Egyptian Blue...
An overcast & rainy mid-morning in the unforgiving city whose name can change
without warning.
Raindrops hang suspended in a vaporous light.
The days stretch across another meaningless page of the Journal named Thirty-Four
in a day-dream of Old Ditmas Park.
Spheres of Vast Discontent and watery disillusion cast their orbital shadows across a rancorous & repentant Calendar
The day slowly retreats across the page and it’s psychic imprint is pressed neatly between pale and parallel blue lines.
Now the rains come in earnest...
And I know that it must also be raining on the Fulton rooftop—up there where I gazed out at impossibly retreating afternoons in a lost daydream, retrievable now only through obscure incantations and watery prayer.
An obscure gloom & loneliness troubles me on the second floor overlooking Dorchester Road as the cars and trucks and buses push through the rain and on into oblivion...
Perched on the Third Dot of the Ellipsis:
The Great Cenotaph of Fulton Street, washed by the downpour, sighing & moaning softly in the dirge of the storm.
Raindrops hit pools of water as blurred reflections dance to the water-born rythms.
Ghostly Latitudes and Spidery Longitudes...
As a few pale lights are visible in the muted houses across the street.
And the waters must also run down the hill of Fulton Street as I record their progress from afar—in exile in a suburb of re-routed and strangely echoing thoughts and ruminations on memory.
The rains have bent my mind out of shape, or possibly into shape—who knows which?
And thusly in despair & desperation would I coax Neptune down out of it’s mighty orbit and onto the more easily-managed confines of my kitchen table and perform a decoction of that vast & terrifying planet, boiling it down for days on end and then siphoning-off it’s essence into a thimble-full of the rarest poison ever known to man and then hold the unspeakable liquid up to the light and swallow it with a hearty toast, and then dream like no man has ever dreamed before!
Unknown cities revolve around me in a vortex of fear & horror.
I throw back the shot into my gullet and toast the Heavens as it burns through my entrails:
The winds pick up immediately as the tree across the road bends almost to the ground as it is lashed by unimaginably ferocious gales! The windows give way and are sucked out into the maelstrom, then the walls are torn away and I am bourn into the Ammoniacal Skies! My first breath fills my lungs with the absurdly toxic atmosphere and my flesh dissolves and is torn to pieces by winds that no man will ever feel! My spirit is blown along into the vortex of Neptune’s storms, aloft on blue vapor, crackling with immense electrical currents and an as-yet-unidentified chromophore which gives the clouds their rich blue tint. Hydrogen and Helium are my companions in this mad ride around the vast planet:
Fire of Suns and Spray of Comets!
And Baleful Light from a Sickly Moon!
From Neptune’s great Cyclonic Storms
And Ammoniacal Oceans:
Dreams too Foul & Frightening to Recall!
Are Bourne on an Orpimental Hue:
Sinopia & Saturnine Red
and now Egyptian Blue...
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
The Floods
Powell's Cove in the 1950's, as flood-waters rose and the tide came way in and almost up to our house...
I turn to the open window ...
... and it’s the view that I used to have from my old bedroom on the North side of the Old House, facing Powell’s Cove. The tide had risen up during the night, silently, calmly, without a ripple, till it had reached the side of our house, and then higher still—right up to the window’s ledge—impossible!— Gray, mirror-like, alluring, and leading out into a cove of preternatural stillness. It shimmered and beckoned with an aching seduction, as if all memories were held by this supernatural tide that sometimes crept up to my window unannounced, during the night. I look further out into the now-flooded Cove and can see the tips of the rotting and skeletal frames of the boats that had run aground ages ago, dark gray and black below the waterline and the tips bleached white where the oily waters could not reach: Markers and contemplative points of reference in this Cove of Lost Memory.
The morbid tides, on a sullen & sacrificial day, pull back, and reveal the carcasses of ships, the broken structures and spines — then back in again — full-tide swelling and filling up the Cove and covering these markers up almost to the bleached tips of the ancient masts & poles, rotting and disintegrating, year by year, ever so slowly, as time and weather and the relentless tides wear them down. Impossible, rickety structures of ancient walkways jut out onto the waters to shephard passengers into long-gone & forgotten vessels — bending crazily in one direction after another—now dangerous and forbidden. Death lurks all around these rotting skeletons — luring foolish schoolboys out onto their narrow and crooked paths, perched just above the mysterious waters that swirl & swell around them. Stories of unfortunate children who had crept out, further & further, hovering precariously just a few feet above the enticing water ... and tragedies alluded to amid averted glances & far-away looks and terrible warnings intoned by stern-faced aunts & uncles.
As I look out amid currents of lost connections and missed chances on that long-disappeared ocean known as Iapetus ...
...The memory of a young girl’s face arises from out of the vapors of that shimmering flood — with a watery look of faint recognition, and rippling echo of a lost song that is sung in her name. We share a moment of tender longing before her image evaporates in that strange Lithosphere of Exultation & Grief that hangs over this Lost Cove and she is born away forever on that ghostly tide. I know her! I remember... lost to me for so long—back there in that glimpse of ancient oceans! Too late now! Waters of Longing, and Second and Third Chances—all too late! They all live back there now—where I can only go in rare instances, and then only fleetingly—back there—on the Rheic Ocean that sometimes rises up to the very edge of the Old North window of my bedroom and beckons me out to Powell’s Cove on very early mornings of great fortune and unearthly promise!
This Cove has appeared to me in many forms:
Once, hideously drained of water and revealing the slick, oil and filth-covered walls with a terrifying black sheen covering everything: crumbled shells, fish skeletons, oil drums, tires, and nameless things ... and the horror of being in a place that no one should ever have to see: All the water sucked out of the harbor by
an unknown & unnatural phenomenon!
I stand on a bank of sand covered with patches of black grease and old tires and a million cracked and bleached shells all covered by the unspeakable black filth and oil. I am astonished at the sight of the harbor: all the water has been blown out of the cove — blasted or drained — who knew which? You could now walk out to the very center of the river bed — where ships used to pass — amid oil drums, fish skeletons and rotten planks. The unnatural scene fills me with fear and horror and I turn and stare at the greasy-black, slick sides of the Cove, rising up 20 feet on all sides— terrifying! Strange fish lie all around— precious, rare, and beautiful— flapping in death-throes—giant, flat, and circular-shaped deep-sea fish lie on their sides in shallow pools of silver, staring at the uncaring sky with their single, upturned eye. I grab the most beautiful fish and try to drag it to the safety of one of the deeper pools of water. It lies, half submerged in the shallow little pond—it’s marble eye rotating and wobbling in it’s socket. It stares at the sky and I can see glinting particles of golden light suspended in the great iris. It tries to speak to me but is too weak. It dissolves in front of my eyes, becoming flat and two-dimensional—merely a translucent decal wavering and undulating on the surface of the pool like some irridescent & ghostly flag. I cry as I stand over my lost friend and a terrible sadness comes over me as the white disk dissappears into the silver hues of the oily water. Lost to me!
And all the while: the great and mournful awareness of dreaming and a nameless grief born on ancient floodwaters ...
There is no way out of the harbor it seems. Dead & dying Horseshoe crabs litter the beach, stranded and upturned on their backs, their rows of small, black claws wriggling and flexing spasmodically. An ancient species, unchanged since the time when unnamed seas rocked and foamed upon unthinkable shores. Anger is in the air, and it’s somehow directed at me as I realize that I have transgressed and caused great harm.
I turn back amid patches of white sand, surrounded by filth & grease—black, oil-coated grass delineating forgotten pathways of childhood. Running among tall marsh-grass now—a foot above my head—their bleached & dried-out tassles undulating slowly in the disturbed air, as a sullen & unrepentant sky glares overhead. I am led down strange and unknowable paths, hither & thither, first this way, then that way ... pulled through ancient routes trampled crazily by long-departed and truant schoolboys through the impenetrable marsh ...
A large & imposing pool suddenly blocks my way through the trail: Protean, dark-green & brown, viscous and thick with algae, as sickly bubbles emerge from the depths and expire in the humid air. Black tadpoles dart in incomprehensible patterns amid hideous larvae as strange & terrible insects hatch, break through the surface with a hiss, and then fly into the poisonous air seeking receptive and unwary flesh. I see someone’s image reflected on the surface, but they are unknown to me. I leap over this Devonian hatchery and the translucent walls of yellow/tan marsh-grass propel me deeper into the labyrinth — the giant wavering tassles ceremoniously heralding my mad flight and then ...
...A huge commotion erupts only inches from my feet—a terrible, choked scream and frantic beating of wings as a pheasant is disturbed in it’s nest by my intrusion as the creature erupts from the yellow and tan thicket of grass and flies off, unsteadily, and improbably, into the air. Startled and shocked, I run through the interminable twists and turns of the path—watching for up-turned nails protruding from planks on the ground—too late!—
I feel the rusty nail pierce the bottom of my sneaker and into my foot. A sickening pain runs up through my foot and leg as I make my way out of the maze, and take the familiar left turn that should lead me home—but the path seems to go the wrong way. I am routed off into confusing and unknown streets and neighborhoods. I was never here before, but I remember hearing about the place from a classmate—ages ago—a section of town that was only a rumor, a word that cropped up once or twice during some forgotten conversation lost in the fading light of childhood ...I finally am able to make my way down a sloping and winding path that leads to the field at the edge of the Cove: The familiar cinder and gravel of that half-mile-long stretch of forgotteness that figured so prominently in my youth. Games were played here—symbols were inscribed laboriously into the ground—rules were established and obscure games commenced, known only to children ...
I hobble up the street to my Aunt & Uncle’s house at the top of the hill. Guilt floods up through my abdomen and mixes with the fear that is generated in the kidneys amid that strange alchemy that creates a steam that rises up through the center of the body along with potent vapors that flood into my head and erupt in hot tears ...
...A basin of boiling water is prepared and Epsom Salts are measured and stirred in. A kettle bubbles and whistles on the stove as I lower my foot into this strange body of water. “It has to be as hot as you can stand it!”, my Uncle announces. Pain jolts through my foot and up into my head, as all thoughts are obliterated by this scourging & scalding basin, leaving just a white light of shock & pain. I can feel the rust & poison being pulled out of my blood and marrow, sucked down through my wound and into this magnetic pool, and then through the wood floors of the old house that my grandfather built, and into the earth amid roots of great trees and strata of fossil-memory. I feel a dizziness and nausea as I stare drunkenly at the rocking and steaming waters as the vapors swirl around my head and blur the outlines of the family gathered around this somber & penitential ritual bath. Through the steam I can make out vague & unknown figures moving around on the other side of the room ...
Terrible stories of Lock-Jaw are recited around the steaming basin as the kettle continues it’s song and is periodically employed to keep the water at a near-boiling temperature. The fear of Lock-Jaw overcomes me as I imagine being unable to move my jaws or ever speak again!
The kettle pours again as the stories turn to myth and legend—of schoolboys left paralyzed and struck mute forever ...
Thursday, June 5, 2008
The Microcosm of Celestial Dread as Captured & Condensed in an Antique Flask
Dreams Bourne on Antique Pigments and Discontinued Colours ...
Ink and More Ink on These Sad & Suffering Pages
Journal #X by an underground american
As Jerking Fractals Sputter & Fulminate
Latitudes of Tortured Ink
And Dreams in a Poisonous and Orpimental Hue
Ink-Stain Blue Memories as I Travel Away From the Oasis of the Centerfold ...
2:52—Staggering Under the Weight of Inhospitable Atmospheres and Toxic Vapors
Nightmares Captured & Condensed in a Potent Liquid Suitable for Use as Printer’s Ink
Splashed Upon an Incomprehensible Page: an underground poem!
A Mournful & Melancholy Dew, Collected on a Floating Plain of Regret
I gaze intently at Ink-Stain images, imploring, cajoling, and coaxing them to spring to life back there in that Sphere of Reduced Expectations
Vials Filled with Potent & Unspeakable Liquids Condensed From Nightmares Too Foul & Frightening to Recollect: Poems dark and dreadful
Essence of Nightmare and Decoction of Regret
Dreams Filtered Through Litmus and Turning Egyptian Blue, Saturnine Red, and Antinomy Orange as They Reveal their Essence.
The Great Toxicon: Book of Poison Arrows ...
Monday, April 14, 2008
The Interns
Fresh Young Ladies!
Busy as bees and sharp as tacks!
All headed for rewarding careers in the Corporate Miasma
They are all very nice—I’m sure!
Gathered in the Conference Room
Right next to the Psychic-Disturbance of my Infernal Cubicle
Which should be cordoned-off by the police!
So what?
Busy as bees and sharp as tacks!
All headed for rewarding careers in the Corporate Miasma
They are all very nice—I’m sure!
Gathered in the Conference Room
Right next to the Psychic-Disturbance of my Infernal Cubicle
Which should be cordoned-off by the police!
So what?
Sunday, April 13, 2008
A Little Provocation, Please!
It was after a recent, lengthy “dry spell”, that I came to a certain conclusion regarding my storytelling & poetry.
I keep a daily journal, wherein I record all my fears, complaints, rants, and the occaisional piece of writing or tidbit of poetry that is worth transcribing into my computer later on. I realized that I hadn’t written anything of any merit whatsoever for the duration of an entire 200 page notebook, named Journal #34. It was poetry-free, containing nothing but boring trivia, and mind-numbing, neurotic drivel. “What was wrong?”, I asked myself.
A few feeble attempts to consciously “force” myself to come up with some poetic lines ended in dismal failure.
Then, a week or so later, I found myself wandering through a hallway and I saw a sign on a doorway that read: “Bankruptcy Counselling”. This was what I was looking for. I sat down in a large room with rows of tables and a stack of forms at the front desk. About a dozen or so dejected-looking souls were hunched over and attempting to fill out these forms. I took a form for myself and set about trying to fill it out. After awhile a lawyer (I think he was a lawyer) walked into the room and proceeded to make a rather lengthy speech about the pros & cons of declaring bankruptcy.
After about twenty minutes I started to glaze over and tune out. He went on and on and I began to form the opinion that I would not choose to declare bankruptcy after all: It was, like most things, just too damn complicated, and also possibly too much of a risk. I was already in deep trouble and who knew what additional trouble I might get myself into? Now, I was here to try and get free counselling and I was wondering if I would be eligible. I had been receiving unemployment benefits for a long time and they were due to run out very soon. He finally finished his speech and we all went back to filling out the forms. It was about then that I noticed that the air-conditioner was blowing toxic fumes into the room. Now I happen to have a chemical sensitivity condition. Even a small amount of paint fumes, or solvents, or cleaning fluids, de-greasers, etc. will make me dizzy and disoriented and quite ill in a very short time. It wasn’t terribly toxic, but it was enough to slowly make me ill. I noticed that I had now been in this room for 2 1/2 hours, and I was starting to feel poisoned. I tried to pull my attention away from this disgusting and unfortunate situation, and to apply myself to the task of completing the form. I came to a series of questions, one of which asked me if I owned any furniture and if so, what was it worth? I answered that all my furniture had always come straight off the street, going way back to the time of my very first apartment back in 1972. I recall trying to be a hippie (or what I imagined a hippie to be) and living as marginally as possible, without having to toil at a full-time job if at all possible. My attempt to be a successful hippie was a complete failure however. I was able to memorize a few slogans such as, “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?”, but this really didn’t help me very much, and I was never able to meet one of those sexy, hippie women that were seemingly everywhere in those days. But I digress! I remember I had dragged home a big, wooden spool about four feet in diameter that was once used to hold heavy BX-cable. It made a pretty nice “coffee table”, despite the patches of grease that would seep through whatever paint I would try to cover it with. And, of course, a series of dilapidated and rickety chairs, and a stool that was missing most, if not all, of it’s cross-braces. And I still have the splintery, old, round bar table that I had hauled in off the sidewalk one day about 25 years ago. I often wonder how many frosty mugs of brew were hoisted over the top of this workhorse of a table. I had never bought a piece of furniture in my life, and didn’t ever expect to! What did they think, I had Danish-Modern, or something? Huh! So I wrote down: “Everything came from the street!”, hoping to keep them off my back. Another question a few lines down caught my attention: “Do you own a pet, and if so, how much do you think you could sell it for?” I felt something crack, deep inside. I paused and put down my pen. I picked it right back up and wrote: “I will kill any son-of-a-bitch dumb enough to try and take my cat away from me! — Does that answer your question?”. I realized that I didn’t care anymore and I took out my journal and wrote furiously for about ten pages. Ten pages of real raw stuff! Good stuff! Useable stuff! Some of my best lines ever! (Later that evening I distilled some of it into a poem entitled: “Great Vats of Boiling Blubber and Churning Contention”, a piece that I was very satisfied with.)
My name was finally called and I was shepherded into another room. A young volunteer lawyer, who looked to be in his early twenties asked me a long series of questions about my financial status. When it was over he huddled with one of his superiors, and then informed me that I made too much money to qualify for free bankruptcy counseling. I protested that I was only making $406.00 a week, and even that would be coming to an end in a few weeks. He told me that I was making “too much money” to qualify for free counselling.
He told me that I could still declare bankruptcy, but that it would cost me $1,500.00 to hire a lawyer, and another $200 for filing fees, and another $150.00 for I forget what. So I realized that I didn’t have enough money to file for bankruptcy! I didn’t care in the least at this point because I was still crazed and intoxicated by the ten pages of raw verbiage that I had cranked out. I headed out into the street, and the realization hit me: I needed to be provoked in order to jump-start my creative process! Revelations!
I then realized that all of my useable poetry and stories were written under extreme conditions of homelessness, poisonings, harrassments, and various forms of attack, both psychic and physical! Yes! Underground poems conjured up by an underground american! Poems dark and delirious!
Then, the euphoria slowly faded away over the next few days, and I hit another long, unproductive stretch. That is, until today! Today, when I attempted to set up my very first blog-page! After about 4 hours of rejected user names and endlessly-typed and re-typed passwords and indecipherable instructions and complete failure, I again felt that familiar “crack”, deep in my head, and I immediately and spontaneously composed seven new, short poems under the following titles:
Sulphuric Death\Chant
Dire Jottings: Numbers and Addresses of the Wrong People
The Book of Shouted Instructions
Great Excuses of Fulton Street
The Great Catalog of Gray Areas
Bromides For an Overcast Late-Morning in a Remote Suburb of Absentia
Inscriptions in an Inappropriate Font
A little provocation, please ...
I keep a daily journal, wherein I record all my fears, complaints, rants, and the occaisional piece of writing or tidbit of poetry that is worth transcribing into my computer later on. I realized that I hadn’t written anything of any merit whatsoever for the duration of an entire 200 page notebook, named Journal #34. It was poetry-free, containing nothing but boring trivia, and mind-numbing, neurotic drivel. “What was wrong?”, I asked myself.
A few feeble attempts to consciously “force” myself to come up with some poetic lines ended in dismal failure.
Then, a week or so later, I found myself wandering through a hallway and I saw a sign on a doorway that read: “Bankruptcy Counselling”. This was what I was looking for. I sat down in a large room with rows of tables and a stack of forms at the front desk. About a dozen or so dejected-looking souls were hunched over and attempting to fill out these forms. I took a form for myself and set about trying to fill it out. After awhile a lawyer (I think he was a lawyer) walked into the room and proceeded to make a rather lengthy speech about the pros & cons of declaring bankruptcy.
After about twenty minutes I started to glaze over and tune out. He went on and on and I began to form the opinion that I would not choose to declare bankruptcy after all: It was, like most things, just too damn complicated, and also possibly too much of a risk. I was already in deep trouble and who knew what additional trouble I might get myself into? Now, I was here to try and get free counselling and I was wondering if I would be eligible. I had been receiving unemployment benefits for a long time and they were due to run out very soon. He finally finished his speech and we all went back to filling out the forms. It was about then that I noticed that the air-conditioner was blowing toxic fumes into the room. Now I happen to have a chemical sensitivity condition. Even a small amount of paint fumes, or solvents, or cleaning fluids, de-greasers, etc. will make me dizzy and disoriented and quite ill in a very short time. It wasn’t terribly toxic, but it was enough to slowly make me ill. I noticed that I had now been in this room for 2 1/2 hours, and I was starting to feel poisoned. I tried to pull my attention away from this disgusting and unfortunate situation, and to apply myself to the task of completing the form. I came to a series of questions, one of which asked me if I owned any furniture and if so, what was it worth? I answered that all my furniture had always come straight off the street, going way back to the time of my very first apartment back in 1972. I recall trying to be a hippie (or what I imagined a hippie to be) and living as marginally as possible, without having to toil at a full-time job if at all possible. My attempt to be a successful hippie was a complete failure however. I was able to memorize a few slogans such as, “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?”, but this really didn’t help me very much, and I was never able to meet one of those sexy, hippie women that were seemingly everywhere in those days. But I digress! I remember I had dragged home a big, wooden spool about four feet in diameter that was once used to hold heavy BX-cable. It made a pretty nice “coffee table”, despite the patches of grease that would seep through whatever paint I would try to cover it with. And, of course, a series of dilapidated and rickety chairs, and a stool that was missing most, if not all, of it’s cross-braces. And I still have the splintery, old, round bar table that I had hauled in off the sidewalk one day about 25 years ago. I often wonder how many frosty mugs of brew were hoisted over the top of this workhorse of a table. I had never bought a piece of furniture in my life, and didn’t ever expect to! What did they think, I had Danish-Modern, or something? Huh! So I wrote down: “Everything came from the street!”, hoping to keep them off my back. Another question a few lines down caught my attention: “Do you own a pet, and if so, how much do you think you could sell it for?” I felt something crack, deep inside. I paused and put down my pen. I picked it right back up and wrote: “I will kill any son-of-a-bitch dumb enough to try and take my cat away from me! — Does that answer your question?”. I realized that I didn’t care anymore and I took out my journal and wrote furiously for about ten pages. Ten pages of real raw stuff! Good stuff! Useable stuff! Some of my best lines ever! (Later that evening I distilled some of it into a poem entitled: “Great Vats of Boiling Blubber and Churning Contention”, a piece that I was very satisfied with.)
My name was finally called and I was shepherded into another room. A young volunteer lawyer, who looked to be in his early twenties asked me a long series of questions about my financial status. When it was over he huddled with one of his superiors, and then informed me that I made too much money to qualify for free bankruptcy counseling. I protested that I was only making $406.00 a week, and even that would be coming to an end in a few weeks. He told me that I was making “too much money” to qualify for free counselling.
He told me that I could still declare bankruptcy, but that it would cost me $1,500.00 to hire a lawyer, and another $200 for filing fees, and another $150.00 for I forget what. So I realized that I didn’t have enough money to file for bankruptcy! I didn’t care in the least at this point because I was still crazed and intoxicated by the ten pages of raw verbiage that I had cranked out. I headed out into the street, and the realization hit me: I needed to be provoked in order to jump-start my creative process! Revelations!
I then realized that all of my useable poetry and stories were written under extreme conditions of homelessness, poisonings, harrassments, and various forms of attack, both psychic and physical! Yes! Underground poems conjured up by an underground american! Poems dark and delirious!
Then, the euphoria slowly faded away over the next few days, and I hit another long, unproductive stretch. That is, until today! Today, when I attempted to set up my very first blog-page! After about 4 hours of rejected user names and endlessly-typed and re-typed passwords and indecipherable instructions and complete failure, I again felt that familiar “crack”, deep in my head, and I immediately and spontaneously composed seven new, short poems under the following titles:
Sulphuric Death\Chant
Dire Jottings: Numbers and Addresses of the Wrong People
The Book of Shouted Instructions
Great Excuses of Fulton Street
The Great Catalog of Gray Areas
Bromides For an Overcast Late-Morning in a Remote Suburb of Absentia
Inscriptions in an Inappropriate Font
A little provocation, please ...
Friday, April 11, 2008
My first blog...
It is with great hesitation and uneasiness that I attempt my very first blog.
Up until now I have foolishly resisted any notion of doing such a thing.
I now realize that I must do so or perish!
I'm not expecting to have an easy time of it, because, frankly, I don't know what the hell I'm doing!
My reason for attempting this is because I am a poet & writer and I want to connect with others of the same interest. I consider myself to be an underground american, crafting poems dark and delirious, and spinning them out into the incomprehensible ether.
Up until now I have foolishly resisted any notion of doing such a thing.
I now realize that I must do so or perish!
I'm not expecting to have an easy time of it, because, frankly, I don't know what the hell I'm doing!
My reason for attempting this is because I am a poet & writer and I want to connect with others of the same interest. I consider myself to be an underground american, crafting poems dark and delirious, and spinning them out into the incomprehensible ether.
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