May 30, 2009
VIVA LA FEMME SUPERNOVA
Just Like A Woman
Nobody feels any pain
Tonight as I stand inside the rain
Ev'rybody knows
That Baby's got new clothes
But lately I see her ribbons and her bows
Have fallen from her curls.
She takes just like a woman, yes, she does
She makes love just like a woman, yes, she does
And she aches just like a woman
But she breaks just like a little girl.
Queen Mary, she's my friend
Yes, I believe I'll go see her again
Nobody has to guess
That Baby can't be blessed
Till she sees finally that she's like all the rest
With her fog, her amphetamine and her pearls.
She takes just like a woman, yes, she does
She makes love just like a woman, yes, she does
And she aches just like a woman
But she breaks just like a little girl.
It was raining from the first
And I was dying there of thirst
So I came in here
And your long-time curse hurts
But what's worse
Is this pain in here
I can't stay in here
Ain't it clear that--
I just can't fit
Yes, I believe it's time for us to quit
When we meet again
Introduced as friends
Please don't let on that you knew me when
I was hungry and it was your world.
Ah, you fake just like a woman, yes, you do
You make love just like a woman, yes, you do
Then you ache just like a woman
But you break just like a little girl.
--Bob Dylan
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May 22, 2009
HERO WORSHIP
For the Union Dead
"Relinquunt Omnia Servare Rem Publicam."
The old South Boston Aquarium stands
in a Sahara of snow now. Its broken windows are boarded.
The bronze weathervane cod has lost half its scales.
The airy tanks are dry.
Once my nose crawled like a snail on the glass;
my hand tingled
to burst the bubbles
drifting from the noses of the cowed, compliant fish.
My hand draws back. I often sigh still
for the dark downward and vegetating kingdom
of the fish and reptile. One morning last March,
I pressed against the new barbed and galvanized
fence on the Boston Common. Behind their cage,
yellow dinosaur steamshovels were grunting
as they cropped up tons of mush and grass
to gouge their underworld garage.
Parking spaces luxuriate like civic
sandpiles in the heart of Boston.
A girdle of orange, Puritan-pumpkin colored girders
braces the tingling Statehouse,
shaking over the excavations, as it faces Colonel Shaw
and his bell-cheeked Negro infantry
on St. Gaudens' shaking Civil War relief,
propped by a plank splint against the garage's earthquake.
Two months after marching through Boston,
half the regiment was dead;
at the dedication,
William James could almost hear the bronze Negroes breathe.
Their monument sticks like a fishbone
in the city's throat.
Its Colonel is as lean
as a compass-needle.
He has an angry wrenlike vigilance,
a greyhound's gentle tautness;
he seems to wince at pleasure,
and suffocate for privacy.
He is out of bounds now. He rejoices in man's lovely,
peculiar power to choose life and die—
when he leads his black soldiers to death,
he cannot bend his back.
On a thousand small town New England greens,
the old white churches hold their air
of sparse, sincere rebellion; frayed flags
quilt the graveyards of the Grand Army of the Republic.
The stone statues of the abstract Union Soldier
grow slimmer and younger each year—
wasp-waisted, they doze over muskets
and muse through their sideburns . . .
Shaw's father wanted no monument
except the ditch,
where his son's body was thrown
and lost with his "niggers."
The ditch is nearer.
There are no statues for the last war here;
on Boylston Street, a commercial photograph
shows Hiroshima boiling
over a Mosler Safe, the "Rock of Ages"
that survived the blast. Space is nearer.
When I crouch to my television set,
the drained faces of Negro school-children rise like balloons.
Colonel Shaw
is riding on his bubble,
he waits
for the blessèd break.
The Aquarium is gone. Everywhere,
giant finned cars nose forward like fish;
a savage servility
slides by on grease.
--Robert Lowell
May 15, 2009
THIS FRIDAY, A DOUBLE-SHOT OF ART, LOVE AND A BLOG PLUG
first, a big plug for my new favorite web site: awkward family photos dot com...
truly funny, disturbing, nostalgic, troubling, bewildering, and yes, awkward--indeed all the things that images of human families can do. above and below, a small, awkward sample...
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Chateau If
If love if then if now if the flowers of if the conditional
if of arrows the condition of if
if to say light to inhabit light if to speak if to live, so
if to say it is you if love is if your form is if your waist that
pictures the fluted stem if lavender
if in this field
if I were to say hummingbird it might behave as an
adjective here
if not if the heart’s a flutter if nerves map a city if a city
on fire
if I say myself am I saying myself (if in this instant) as if
the object of your gaze if in a sentence about love you might
write if one day if you would, so
if to say myself if in this instance if to speak as
another—
if only to render if in time and accept if to live now as if
disembodied from the actual handwritten letters m-y-s-e-l-f
if a creature if what you say if only to embroider—a
city that overtakes the city I write.
-- Peter Gizzi
May 13, 2009
JESSE "THE BODY" VENTURA ON TORTURE AND DICK CHENEY
if you're like me and you're simultaneously sickened by the deeds of the Bush administration and frustrated by the pass they're getting from both the Obama administration (so far) and the mainstream media, then please enjoy these frank comments from the former pro wrestler-turned-governor, if only to finally hear a prominent figure call out Dick Cheney for what he is: a coward (and I'll add: sadist)...
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May 12, 2009
ONLY IN NEW YORK
I was arrested this morning. So he said. Coming out of Penn Station, I was rudely cut in line by a tall lanky kid who basically shoved me out of the way. So, naturally I spent the duration of the escalator ride berating and mocking this dummy. At the top of the escalator, I moved up a half-step in anticipation of exiting the moving stairs, and he swung his backpack against me rather forcefully. I retaliated with a shove. Expecting more violence, I took a step away from the lanky offender, who told me, "you're under arrest. it's a federal crime to assault a police officer." Well, we had some fun crossing the street together, as I gamely continued with the back-and-forth mocking ("oh, so I guess you're one of those sports shirt cops huh?") and he stuck to his previous assertion that he's one of our boys in Blue. I waved bye-bye as he proceeded southward on 7th Avenue...
the cuffs never materialized. I'm still on the lam.
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May 08, 2009
FRIDAY HEARTBREAK POEM
Love's Secret
Never seek to tell thy love,
Love that never told can be;
For the gentle wind doth move
Silently, invisibly.
I told my love, I told my love,
I told her all my heart,
Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears.
Ah! she did depart!
Soon after she was gone from me,
A traveller came by,
Silently, invisibly:
He took her with a sigh.
-- William Blake
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May 07, 2009
May 01, 2009
THIS WEEK: RICHARD BRAUTIGAN
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace
I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammels and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.
Gee, You're So Beautiful That It's Starting To Rain
Oh, Marcia,
I want your long blonde beauty
to be taught in high school,
so kids will learn that God
lives like music in the skin
and sounds like a sunshine harpsicord.
I want high school report cards
to look like this:
Private Eye Lettuce
Three crates of Private Eye Lettuce,
the name and drawing of a detective
with magnifying glass on the sides
of the crates of lettuce,
form a great cross in man's imagination
and his desire to name
the objects of this world.
I think I'll call this place Golgotha
and have some salad for dinner.
San Francisco
This poem was found written on a paper bag by Richard
Brautigan in a laundromat in San Francisco. The author is unknown.
Your Catfish Friend
If I were to live my life
in catfish forms
in scaffolds of skin and whiskers
at the bottom of a pond
and you were to come by
one evening
when the moon was shining
down into my dark home
and stand there at the edge
of my affection
and think, "It's beautiful
here by this pond. I wish
somebody loved me,"
I'd love you and be your catfish
friend and drive such lonely
thoughts from your mind
and suddenly you would be
at peace,
and ask yourself, "I wonder
if there are any catfish
in this pond?It seems like
a perfect place for them."
The Moon Versus Us Ever Sleeping Together Again
I sit here, an arch-villain of romance,
thinking about you. Gee, I'm sorry
I made you unhappy, but there was nothing
I could do about it because I have to be free.
Perhaps everything would have been different
if you had stayed at the table or asked me
to go out with you to look at the moon,
instead of getting up and leaving me alone with
her.
To England
There are no postage stamps that send letters
back to England three centuries ago,
no postage stamps that make letters
travel back until the grave hasn't been dug yet,
and John Donne stands looking out the window,
it is just beginning to rain this April morning,
and the birds are falling into the trees
like chess pieces into an unplayed game,
and John Donne sees the postman coming up the street,
the postman walks very carefully because his cane
is made of glass.
Love Poem
It's so nice
to wake up in the morning
all alone
and not have to tell somebody
you love them
when you don't love them
any more.
Hinged To Forgetfulness Like A Door
Hinged to forgetfulness
like a door,
she slowly closed out of
sight,
and she was the woman I loved,
but too many times she slept like
a mechanical deer in my caresses,
and I ached in the metal silence
of her dreams.
General Custer Versus the Titanic
For the soldiers of the Seventh Cavalry who were killed at
the Little Bighorn River and the passengers who were lost on
the maiden voyage of the Titanic. God bless their souls.
Yes! it's true all my visions
have come home to roost at last.
They are all true now and stand
around me like a bouquet of
lost ships and doomed generals.
I gently put them away in a
beautiful and disappearing vase.
The Shenevertakesherwatchoff Poem
For Marcia
Because you always have a clock
strapped to your body, it's natural
that I should think of you as the
correct time:
with your long blonde hair at 8:03,
and your pulse-lightning breasts at
11:17, and your rose-meow smile at 5:30,
I know I’m right.
Oranges
Oh, how perfect death
computes an orange wind
that glows from your footsteps,
and you stop to die in
an orchard where the harvest
fills the stars.
Death Is a Beautiful Car Parked Only
For Emmett
Death is a beautiful car parked only
to be stolen on a street lined with trees
whose branches are like the intestines
of an emerald.
You hotwire death, get in, and drive away
like a flag made from a thousand burning
funeral parlors.
You have stolen death because you're bored.
There's nothing good playing at the movies
in San Francisco.
You joyride around for a while listening
to the radio, and then abandon death, walk
away, and leave death for the police
to find.
Your Departure Versus the Hindenburg
Every time we say good-bye
I see it as an extension of
the Hindenburg:
that great 1937 airship exploding
in medieval flames like a burning castle
above New Jersey.
When you leave the house, the
shadow of the Hindenburg enters
to take your place.
The Double-Bed Dream Gallows
Driving through
hot brushy country
in the late autumn,
I saw a hawk
crucified on a
barbed-wire fence.
I guess as a kind
of advertisement
to other hawks,
saying from the pages
of a leading women's
magazine,
"She’s beautiful,
but burn all the maps
to your body.
I'm not here
of my own choosing."
Alas, Measured Perfectly
Saturday, August 25, 1888. 5:20 P.M.
is the name of a photograph of two
old women in a front yard, beside
a white house. One of the women is
sitting in a chair with a dog in her
lap. The other woman is looking at
some flowers. Perhaps the women are
happy, but then it is Saturday, August
25, 1888. 5:21 P.M., and all over.
Mating Saliva
A girl in a green mini-
skirt, not very pretty, walks
down the street.
A businessman stops, turns
to stare at her ass
that looks like a moldy
refrigerator.
There are now 200,000,000 people
in America.
I Cannot Answer You Tonight in Small Portions
I cannot answer you tonight in small portions.
Torn apart by stormy love’s gate, I float
like a phantom facedown in a well where
the cold dark water reflects vague half-built
stars
and trades all our affection, touching, sleeping
together for tribunal distance standing like
a drowned train just beyond a pile of Eskimo
skeletons.
The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster
When you take your pill
it's like a mine disaster.
I think of all the people
lost inside of you.
all poems by Richard Brautigan (1935-1984)
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