hijinks

words can decay
degrade
by use and misuse
take
well
torture
as an example
now
the idea
of waterboarding
a human being
or any sentient being
would be considered
at best
macabre
by EA Poe

though it appears
for many
wags
to be nothing more
then a stunt that
high schoolers would try
or a prank
that sorority members might use
to inititate

perhaps

if HP Lovecraft ran that particular
pledge

when language becomes
a tool of sadists
porcine cowards
hiding behind a flag and a
document
anything becomes possible
2+2 really does
equal
5
the Iraq war
does not
exist
freedom
is merely
a
word

Johnny Red

most of the time
you know
i don't want to
lay across a doorway
yours or anyone
seeing your contempt
fear
revulsion
at a grown man
having pissed and shit
himself
mouth encrusted with
puke
teeth
yellowed
missing
wrapped in newspapers
this is not
the way life started

i just wanted the pain to go
far far away

dreams
man
my dreams would make you laugh
or cry
or certainly spit
smelling year round of sweat and wet cardboard
and urine
having breath that could peel paint
belching beer
eating discarded fried food
living large
hunh?
still
despite the sun
which hurts my eyes
and the noise which makes me
shake
and the heat
which gives me the
yips
Im gonna try
this time
reALLY
SERIOUSLY
RIGHT THIS FUCKING TIME
Im gonna go to those
goddamn meetings with those
people who think they are
so fucking good
and listen and try to stop
not forever
you know
just to get the wrinkles out
just till my check comes
first of the month
closed down the detoxes
been in so many i could be a
tour guide
but I saw
you know who
damn he looked like
you know
like he was clean
he lived in the basement of that
apartment building
for 3 months in the
winter
man
you know the size of them fucking
rats down there
he kept going to those meetings
look AT HIM
NOW I KNOW HE AINT
ANY BETTER'N ME
oh idont know maybe
there really is something to this shit
a a

Seaver

There was no grace apparent
Marichal was beautiful
Palmer also
even Tiant had a lyricism
to his movement
Yours was a grunt
a sandhog
a lunch-bucket-shot-and-a-beer
delivery
compact
delicious
knee scraping
toe scuffing
Spalding glove
for a brief moment
resting on your knee
like a childs
placed on a table
the explosion
was coming
the legs
torso
arm
and mind
all at once
hurling
a ball
the batter
frozen
the fans
mouths agape
witnessing
perfection


the catcher throws
it back
and you begin
again

1965

remembering
is a blessing
the hot summer mornings
the air smelled close
the kitchen linoleum
sticky
the hum of factories
the sky orange and
grey
the battles of childhood
leave the worst
scars
there was a family
who had like 10 kids
all boys
and were
if memory serves
one meaner than the next
one my age always started
one day I finished
of course
next were two more brothers
against
one of whom I held
my own
i always wanted a big brother
to have my back
to tell me where to step
I had to do it solo
and having missing teeth
as proof

Obama

It is natural
to be cautious
it's not quite Einsteins dice
though it's close
at times
the people whispering
into your ear
how you can alleviate poverty
forge trust
feed a continet
on fire
if you will only
hold back
wait until 2013
safely ensconced in victory
you will be able to
break the brittle lies
of ineffectual wags
these folks have
never
obviously
sadly
read Dostoyevsky
the boisterous cowards
who will always
alas
be with us
Don't heed them
push every direction at once
before a star goes supernova
the pressure is unbearable
think of the Gandhi quote
on the poorest person
think of your position to
actually do something
history is replete with
con artists
smooth shuffling
bullshitters
who destroy by indifference
the expectations are
ridiculous
the hope
absurdly
salvific at times
climbing out of that safety
requires steel and balls
be the steel that bends
have the cojones to care
the system is on life support
you can make the call

Greenpoint

it used to be
leviton had three shifts
the air reeked of
metallic fumes

carbona from
the factory
shit from the plant
[yes, we have our own feces mill]
which stands on the
worlds largest oil spill
no one finds the humor
or irony
not anymore

now the contractors are
serious about the
environment
of course
now that there are million dollar condos
fed by children of
greenpoint lifers
inheriting the buildings from their parents
budding Trumps all
selling out for outhouses of cash
to the speculators
bloodsuckers
seeing fallow land buildings
factories dotted with
dollar signs
there's money to be made
it's the american way
wink wink
longterm residents ?
well you know
change is inevitable
yeah well sorry for the eviction
thanks for keeping up the
area when the banks red lined it
the new money want in
you know how that goes
be a nice fellow


now leviton has
no shifts
and will
i'll bet
soon be
condo
the language from
the past
the subtle crazy
sometime nasty poetry of the shot-and-a-beer
crowd
is gone
replaced by
incessent cell phone chatter
doesnt anyone walk quietly ?
is everyone afraid of silence ?
the area is more educated
sophisticated
living in brooklyn is hip
you know
and mostly
the new folks are fine
most everyone in their 20's thinks they have invented the
wheel
most are more than ok
its the corporate soap scum
that are intent on
colonizing

that are sucking the soul and skyline out
living as though
yesterday never came
as if
the universe
eventually
does not tilt toward
justice

Teabaggers unite!

It was heartening to see republicans of all stripes[well, white anyway] endorsing teabagging as a way of protesting the Presidents policies. Who would have thought the staid republican party would engage in public acts of such, uhm, intimacy! This might be an entirely new direction for the GOP[even their acronym sounds like teabagging]...Th Mets inaugurated their new stadium with a loss, as is only apropos. Nice that the city ponied up money for billionaires to have a new place for their play things and play dates. It's not like there is a financial crunch or libraries are not getting their money...The Red wings may get out of the first round, but osgood is going to go belly up soon, and the most beautiful team in sports will probably lose in the second round.Watching the great Nick Lidstom tie Nash in knots was almost poetic,however,they will be fortunate to get by Columbus. BTW,there is nothing in sports, NOTHING, that compares to overtime in the stanley cup playoffs.Nothing!... reading the WWI poets lately.{sassoon, Gurney,OWEN}Actually, I read them often. Our youngest sons middle name in in honor of Wilfred Owen, the greatest of the WWI poets. What strikes me most is the lack of prescience, how after millions of men were slaughtered,it happened again, no one took notice at the underlying causes. Such folly! The lessons of Vietnam were obviously ignored by the Bushies,whose "brain trust" decided it would wipe the "stain" of vietnam clean by mollifying the Iraqis.Sigh. No one read the history of Iraq.So now, what? it is not on the front pages,the "surge"[which is absolute horseshit} which supposedly worked so well has done, exactly what? There was no Al qeda presence in Iraq, until the idiot Dauphin decided to invade without provocation.Now he brags,literally brags, about cleaning out the al-qeda presence in Iraq. That is like saying I called the fire depatment after I set the house on fire...Listening to Louis Armstrong, which can almost restore your faith.Reading Ivor Gurney, Yeats and a biography of Albert schweitzer.

Civics

Perhaps civics classes are passe`,lessons in manners appropriate to conduct sounds sounds positively Orwellian.Yet I do wonder. I do not find New York City more inviting or habitable then 30 years ago. It is statistically safer,certainly dirtier, and meaner in every sense. The frightening disproportion between haves and have- nots, the mendacity of the body politic,the general feeling of ennui,the solipsim of new wave artists,the craven heartlessness of the power elite. You would have hoped that the banks and investment firms ,being caught holding up the national treasury in broad daylight, would have added a touch of humility to the argument. I guess not. I am stunned, seriously, at the morality of if I don't get caught,it's not wrong.Cash register honesty is the simplest form, and even THAT appears lacking in the CEO collective conscience. I remember once a group of runners were questioned before a race. Asked if they could take a performance enhancing drug without consequences, would they? 90% answered affirmative. In other words ,I reckon, anything that i can do to get ahead.Sigh. Of course, the flip side is the religious morality, which is cherry picked from whatever sacred scripture one adheres to. The Bible 's condemnation of sexual morality is often trumpeted, the 2000+ citings on poverty and the poor, not so much. Talking about giving all you have is always a metaphor with these folks, but sex,that's literal.Bloviaters. Fear mongerers hiding behind the veil of the greatest person to ever inhabit this planet.Sigh...Jesus wept

elegies

Yesterday was 12 years since the good sweet crazy Allen Ginsberg went to the next hurrah.It was also Igor Stravinsky's birthday.A lot of karma on that day...reading the new issue of rolling stone, with a profile of one of the great men of my time, Kris Kristofferson ,by the actor ethan Hawke.well...too much of the writer,but a couple of anecdotes.Kristofferson shouting down Toby Keith at Willie Nelson's 70th bd . Keith, a typical chicken hawk, all bluff and no balls, is a paradigm of the new america,the type of true blue shitbird who thinks being patriotic is supporting lying fear mongering torturers,who thinks that waving a flag makes you "true blue" what cynicism!He is a Limbaugh-wannabe :a bloviating bullshitter, soft,bullying,intellectually challenged[and smug about it],mean spirited,the kind to piss on someone rather then bend down to help . The Flotsam that is current music will bear him along to it's septic tank[american idol]. And oblivion{a footnote is that Keith has denied it ever took place{...watching opening day ' festivities', i wonder, why the hell does it always turn into some jingoistic tripe?Why do we need air force flyovers? Is it to remind us of power?never quite understood this.How does this support some GI in Iraq or Afghanistan{or s korea or Germany ,etc.]? ...BTW how sick and twisted is the question if Sarah Palin is the answer?

Opening Day

Opening day is here,again. Another winter, this one difficult, filled with unexpected pain,has ended. Baseball,Easter, flowers, blossoms[cherry,apple ,almond ,magnolia] will soon decorate the gray landscape. My Mets are playing in Cincinnati against the Redlegs today,the oldest MLB team and traditionally,the team that played the first game[before espn,etc...}Either way, here we are,appropriately I was thinking of the late lamented Eugene McCarthy,poet politician [talk about an extinct breed.Oh wait, there's Orin Hatch}former minor league first baseman in the Great Soo league in Minnesota, land of a thousand lakes and poets.McCarthy, whom we need now more than ever, died in 2005.I think he would have rather liked Obama,partially because of the poetry, also the fact he was an outsider and the machine was vehemently against him. Anyway, McCarthy was a passionate stone cold baseball fan simply loved the game, and since his birth anniversary passed at the end of march, I thought of him in connection to opening day. Any excuse to mention McCarthy is fine.he was a huge hero of mine...
Predictions:
NL EAST
METS
PHILS
BRAVES
NATS
Marlins
Central
Cards
Cubs
REDS
ASTROS
PIRATES
Brewers

WEST
GIANTS{love love their pitching}
Dodgers
Snakes
Padres
Rocks

JUNIOR CIRCUIT
EAST
BOSOX
RAYS
NYY
BlueJays
Orioles
Central
Chisox
Twins
Tribe
Royals
Tigers...this entire division could be in play in late september
WEST
Halos
A's
Texas
M's

POST Season...Mets,Cards Phils Giants.mets-giants giants win the pennant
AL Sox,Chisox,Angels A's...BOSox beat la...Giants beat the sox in seven

Reading:Stepping stones interviews with seamus heaney
Listening Bach
Well tempered Clavier ,Glenn Gould recording