How will it be when I am old & destitute
After the social security well has evaporated
And my back has definitely gone to the tank
And maybe I still have a little old wife stirring about

Will we able to tell each other that we love one another
or will she say it in a kind of montone,
matter-of-fact way as if it were an afterthought;
just another comment about the need for rain.

Will it rain so often that I'll forget what state I live in,
& have to confer with my mail to remember my zip code
How will it be when I so close to the end,
will I sleep with one eye open, afraid to shut them both for eternity.

You know, it can be seen from both sides, maybe
that dying before your time, as the euphemism goes,
might not be so tragic, since certain folks, struck dead
by aneurysms or blood clots, whiskey, do not suffer.

Or maybe they suffer but they did not wake up one day
knowing that this could be their last day, the ill-fated ones,
without disease, and it just happens to them: an accident,
or a freak change in their system, and they drop cold.

But when you have lived a long time, and know that if you
make it up there, seventy, eighty, say, you are cheating
that dark maiden, man, and you know it could come
for you any day. So you can be happy all you want,

You deserve it after all, you are cheating fate, but
maybe also you have this itch in the back of your mind,
a longing, something you didn't notice years ago,
but it's like hey, get it over with, if you're going to do it,

I mean, can't we just know, like a doctor's prognosis, or a
prophecy from some mean witch glass looker:
you will die on June 13 this year, you will be standing
in your parlor, or your garden, at 2 in the afternoon,

You'll look at the sky, it will be ninety-three degrees, unseasonably
warm, and the old ticker will stop for a second, start again,
etc. etc. but you'll be rushed to the hospital, and
within three days, that will be all you have written.

Maybe there's a reason why the gods don't want you to know
all that, to placate your fear, maybe, so I guess I just
want a little heads up, not so I can slack off for the
rest of the days, knowing where I'm headed and who cares,

But just a picture you want to see every so often to make
you grateful for all the good in life, to maybe offset
all the pits & drams too, so maybe some of the junk you
get dealt becomes less murky and honorable or dignified.

I have been watching the documentary on Charles Bukowski, and maybe most in awe of the sheer desire to write. "My light is dwindling now" he said later in the film, but the question seemed to be, "did the light ever entirely shine. Some poets seem to radiate an outward being but Bukowski, instead, was a lone 60-watt light bulb in the universe. Out of which came something tremendous and terrible and vast. The ramblings of a madman, and yet one who died of leukemia like so many others before him. I don't care to venture whether he stands in the realm of heaven or hell, wther he's in a better pace now then he dwelt on earth. I didn't know him personally, and I don't think he would approved of me, necessarily, or who in fact, he did approve of, what vestage of livelihood would have made him satisfied except maybe his own.
The message that appears from him from the little I've read of his work, how you cannot really trust the happiness of the good things of the world. If nothing else, I can't help but thank him for his honesty, though I want to believe that the world has some much more beautiful purpose than not trusting in goodness. Not trusting that the bluebird in your heart should be allowed to sing. More than anything, the writing of Bukowski makes me want to react to it. As if it's a monologue of that old guy who pisses and moans the world away in the blink of an eye. React to him, but on any given day, my own reaction would be different. Some days, I'd want to shy away from those words, from that sentiment, which is both morose and sublime, a hard liner for the truths that school children shouldn't yet get exposed to, or should they?
I remember reading Sex Drugs and Rock N Roll by Eric Bogosian my senior year of high school. My teacher had left it among her stacks and stacks of books she kept in her treasury at the back of the classroom. And I read it of course because it was everything that brought me joy in those days, and I saw the glamor of it as the epitome of all that life could pretend to be. I read Junky by William S Burroughs a year later, then convalescing at home after getting out of rehab for the first time. Eighteen years old, a dismal future lurking somewhere out of my reach. I don't remember when I first read Bukowski but I must have been in my early twenties, after I had read On the Road, after Franny and Zooey, even after Milton, Whitman, Thoreau, Emerson and Aldous Huxley. So it was in mind that here is a man who figures he's got the whole establishment figured out. Here's a guy who just will not budge. And it seems to me, that he never really budged, not until it was far past the call for pleasantries. And does this kind of life preclude or propel the existence of pain? How can you judge a man like that? Because it seems he may have been an incredible writer, chronicling human pain and human folly all at once.
I don't know if maybe it's just a sliver of envy. Envy, a deadly sin. Knowing that others are getting away with something like avoiding work for years and years. Heavy drinking. The utter attention to whim, acting on the first pretense, and being able to nail it down in a language that practically everbody can understand. There, right in your face, in a voice so plain as if he's sitting next to you in a bar, maybe or on a bench, or right there on the couch next to you. On the bus riding downtown or just to meet a friend. But all the words are written, typed out and pounded into a neat form. His own form. A form I like to get to but am having such a hard time of these days. That crisp sentence that every writer needs to validate his hunger for meaningful verse. He's not a man you can speaak about once and dismiss. He's a small lamppost in the middle of the unbeautiful city, with a 60-watt bulb, speaking softly but you cannot help listening to what he's saying.

I feel that yesterday, in commenting on The Squid & the Whale, I was more harsh than I can admit right now. I can admit that I knew I was being harsh even as I was writing that whole quip. But I won't retract. Instead, I can return to the subject for a second pass. Bernard, the Jeff Daniels character in the movie is a compelling subject in human loneliness. I said before that I could relate with him, and I think that's what sells me on this movie. At first, I thought it was funny but eventually, I just thought him sad, weak. The effect of this character mirrors that of Sean Penn in HurlyBurly and certainly Royal Tannenbaum. The arrogant, the decadent and the self-deficient. The fact that his children mimick him, that they take on his turns of phrases, and his mannerisms are a very powerful cause for thought. When most people can consider how much they have taken from their parents. Their temperament, their opinions, beliefs. What we hold sacred as truth, as definitive reality. Walt- who becomes a liar stopped in his tracks, matched by his girlfriend who actually reads Kafka's Metamorpheses at his suggestion, then cannot have any kind of lively conversation with him (because he hasn't read the story), only throws the words back at her in emptiness. I'm not entirely up to this tonight... I have other things on my brain, not the least of which is spring sprung, and the sometimes unholy consequences thereof...

...if'n you don't know by now...
The only thing I could really report within the last week was my viewing of The Squid & the Whale. A movie for which I had high hopes, only because I knew it didn't really get anywhere with the Oscars. Not like the heavy hitters, Crash, Syriana, Capote, Walk the Line, Brokeback.
So I saw this movie with the anxiety that it might be that sleeper hit that made it through the cracks. But instead, I came away feeling as if here was another movie that I could have left on the shelf. Maybe that's too much of a gut reaction. But I watch a lot of the HBO series with their no holds barred approach to the modern questions of interpersonal ethics, and I wonder how much of the dialogue is meant to be commentary, and how much of the remainder is nothing but intellectual shock manipulation. Like people need to see parents explaining to their children why they had an affair, and then blaming themselves for the dissolution of their children's behavior.
I mean, okay, we get it. Society is forever a continuing anecdote for human being's unceasing ability to behave poorly. And maybe the documenting thereof is healthy. Parents, in a general sense, have certainly begun to allow their children free rein with how to act in the name of "learning themselves." The youngest of the pair was Frank at age ten-eleven, completely unravelling from the effects of his mother and father constantly using each other and their children in unsavory attempts to get back at each other.
I know there are men out there as cold and self-serving as Jeff Daniels' Bernard. Maybe that's what unsettles me entirely about his character. Mostly since I think men like that are ridiculous, and Noah Baumberg said in his "commentary" that he intended for that character to be unwavering in his rigid arrogance. You want him to relent in some way. Maybe see it from someone else's perspective. But everything makes sense only if and when he agrees with them.
God, I guess every guy I've ever known has gone through that phase of his life, usally around age twenty-one until twenty-four or thirty-five-ish... haha myself included. Where he (or I) couldn't help but to impose my viewpoint on everyone around me. And anyone who disagrees is a Philistine. I couldn't help to relate and maybe that's what makes Daniels' portrayal so brilliant, but at the same time, and maybe this where he lost the Oscar, you can't bring yourself to like him in any way. I felt myself repeatedly disappointed by this man in his unfailing need to serve himself, and consequently, warp his oldest son, you can almost sense that hammer falling repeatedly as he shapes a clone in his liking. So is this a way of saying, folks this is not the way to do things? And isn't that the liberal stance on child rearing. Lead by poor example if you must, just for the sake of showing your children how not to live. Only the children who attempt to avoid following in their parents footsteps only fail to find the tread that's never been posited before them.
I only had that experience for a few years in my own life. Maybe the fact that my parents were mostly not open, until maybe the last two years or so, keeps me from "appreciating" this movie as a "worthwhile, must-see" type of movie. If you didn't see it, haven't see it, don't worry too utterly much. It has the ring of a Royal Tannenbaums type production and the characters are in fact, drawn thoroughly and probably realized even beyond the script. It's just that they don't meet in the right places at the middle to give you any good feeling about any of them, except a sorry feeling for anyone whose lives they should happen to touch. At least, Royal Tannenbaums managed to be funny to the point where we could make jokes about them after the show-glow had worn off. Here, I think we mostly marvel at how pathetic they have allowed themselves to be toward each other. How afoul they've run from their own briefly-lived intentions. But take that with a grain of salt. I've just recently seen Jarhead and Capote, two efforts that hit their mark with an almost senior precision. Two movies that managed exactly what they set out for, and no one could ask for anything else from. Maybe I'll watch Squid & the Whale again someday from a different perspective and gaiin that appreciation I desired. Until then, it's just another pretensious effort which will probably drift into video store obscurity.

A few things weighed on mind the last couple days. The last of which--today--came up from a magazine my girlfriend bought at the store, the latest copy of The Nation which had the article on the controvresy over My Name is Rachel Corrie. This is a play about a girl who had gotten crushed by a bulldozer operated by soldiers in the Israeli Army. It seemed strange that they had composed a play using her emails, journal entries because the play seems like such a strange forum for such an incident as this. Apparently, the play has been produced in London and has had a great deal of circulation there, but has been posponed "indefinitely" in New York. If anyone wants to know the full story about this girl, they can either google cahiers de corey or simply go to racehlswords.com. What lies there is a memorialization to a girl, I mean 23-years old woman, who had an adamant belief about what she was doing, and a strong desire to make a difference in a way that so few people get to. I mean, I went to college, and occasionally attended conferences and forums about peace and justice in the world, but ultimately, I have always felt like I fell short in the arena of actively contributing to the injustices of the world.
I often felt as if there was little I could do, or else, was only participating in the most passive ways to situations abroad or at home. I certainly never joined Habitat for Humanity and only signed a petition or two for Amnesty Interntl, and then received pamphlets ever after regarding symposiums or conferences which I never found an interest to attend. I thought it cold and calculating if I ever did. Depressing. Reactionary. Simply didn't want to be deemed a prostylitizer or something along those lines.
I just went to the rachelswords website and was inspired ? by what I found there. Mostly because there is a girl who's way up there on the Maslow hierarchy or Erikson's eight stages of development. This is a girl who must of been heavily exposed to Gandhi-like ideas, and she just stayed there, lived there most of her short life. That she wanted to be dance around to Pat Benetar and have boyfriends, etc. but that the kind of world that the people in the Middle East have to live in just simply needs to change. That the injustice should stop. There's a well there and I think people realize that. It's not that she died in vain. But that she died with a whole legacy untold of yet. Why? Because so many people die in similar causes and go unsung, and they are the dispossessed, and are so because they recognize so many who are similarly dispossessed. Just that simple recognition in a human being. realizing the simple, innumerable freedoms they have, and that there are so many who go without, only because they were born into families, into whole other worlds than our own. I don't think a girl like this wants to curse the world she is born into, but simply wants to see that this world, this planet is an equal opportunity lender. I think she sees the world from a wholly different perspective than what we are used to, the angle we're slinging.
I guess I got more interested in the Israel-Palestine situation as a result of a convergence of a few different news items. I am not a political person, but I subscribed to Harpers in college, mostly as a trickle down from reading it for the essay form. I loved the essay form, and still do, simply because it allows us to explore our beliefs about the information we gather through the world. In any case, to say I'm not political may be a bit misinformed. Some of us just don't delve that deeply into the world of politics as others. Yet, I found myself experiencing a deep sense of reverence upon my last couple trips to Washington DC, that there could actually still be something sacred about the constructs of government. At any rate, no more digression...
The Israeli-Palestine problem continues to be an elusive matter for me. I have done my best to read up on the matter, the major players, why the Gaza seems to be the cause of years of dispute? Being from the United States, in the modern era, a disenfranchised Catholic, despite twelve years (including college) of religious background, I am at pains to understand the importance of the occupation of land. The Jews against the Muslims, the Muslims against the Jews, and basically we don't want you in our backyard. Same as the Hazaras and the Pushtans in Afghanistans... Correct me if I am wrong, but this goes back to David and Goliath in a sense, does it not? Or even whether Abraham was the father of all human civilzation.
My point earlier, the United States, despite the childhood admission of the allegiance to the flag, has no sense of allegiance that's worth dying over. Or at least that's what we tell ourselves. Sure, we're Yankee fans, Red Sox fans, Broncos, Raiders, Nascar fanatics, maybe even Cadillac men and women, occasionally feminsts and vegetarians. We express our individualities, and even proclaimn ouselves as white supremacists, Christian coelites or abortion/pro-rights activists. We get behind causes or teams, but most of us don't need to fight over land. We're not constantly having to move every five days because the border has changed. Since it became an annexation in 1845, Texas is pretty much the Texas it was back then. Better yet, and more precisely, San Antonio is pretty much going to stay San Antonio for the next couple of months.
And not a gun will need to be drawn to keep that a constant. We in Omaha do think a little different, at least the papers allow us to. Because there are small towns in the surrounding areas that are in jeopardy to be annexed by the great city metro proper. There may be some pissing and ranting about that. The towns may get a little feisty at council meetings and folks get upset, but car bombs aren't going off. The national guard is not coming in on this one. They argue in side, loudly but by definition, peacefully.
Then, you have Hamas, with their green flags and their chanting and parading. People are firing weapons into the sky for celebration. We don't get it, because it's just not how business is done in America. But there's simply a need to break down that veil of ignorance, the shroud of awareness. That this is a big big world we're in outside of what we're usually moaning and groaning about. It would just be nice to open that dialogue a little more often, and keep that line to the outside world humming just a little more frequently. I work for an international company with clients who move and operate throughout the globe. They travel in and through areas which should be of concern. While they're in the job, they may be acutely aware of such things. They know it has happened, that it could happen that they are rendered helpless against the elements of hostile regimes. But it is never entirely the American's concern because they have a sense of destiny in which bad things happen to civilized people. They want the seat on the airplane closest to the front. They want the low-fat meal on the plane. They want the exit row to afford more leg room. They expect that "you can just make that happen." "Are we all finished here?" "Are we good now?" Israel Palestine , the Iraqi insurgence is just something you read about in USA Today in the airport or in the break room. It may even make it to your couch as you watch the evening news over meatloaf. It is a situation, an occurrence. Unless you can break it down, unless there's people involved. Not people like you and me, no, they're lives are hanging in the balance. They may work for a living, but not if they're homes are uprooted, their lives overturned, inconvenienced, placed in a state of shock and realignment.
They are like you and me, in every respect, except for out of what bodies they were born, onto which earth they fell. We could say, tough break. Which is what would be most easy to say, Wec ould just change the channel. We could completely shut it off, forget about it. Relax with our thoughts or the new Julia Louise Dreyfus comedy coming out. That fucked up Bill Paxton show on HBO about the Mormon family with three wives. My thinking is just this-- there's just not enough drive to stay plugged in to realities of the world. If nothing else, just knowing whats happening beyond your front porch, beyonf the city limits, out there, over yonder, across those two big ass oceans, in those continents that outnumber us 4 billion to less than 1 billion. It was the cradle of civilization until we just into a few ships and tried to sail around the world. Then we got stuck here. And we've been stuck here ever since.

The February 21st Post may have been a little harsh... the whole revolution for the sake of revolution seems like a misplayed scenario. What do I do every day after all? I put people on planes. Take them off planes. Put them in overly priced hotels. Take them out of those hotels. Place them in seats. Make sure it's an aisle or your ass gets chewed off. Give them a car I couldn't afford to drive to wheel around in for a couple of days. Get them home to their wives. OR cats. Sometimes I can't get them home fast enough. Sometimes I want to tell them to go to hell, put on a plane to Bangladesh, maybe then they'll shut up. Sometimes I can't stand it. I went to college too. I just didn't master in business. Instead, I'm stuck with a crappy English degree. A lot of knowledge about the Romantic poets. Coleridge's dilaudinum habit. His tuberculosis. Etheridge Knight, Mass Media & Modern Culture. Reflections on the gender politics of the Gillette razor. I realize I was a person once. Maybe people even regarded me in a such a manner. I fight the powers that be, occasionally, but often lose. It's a tug-of-war throughout the week. My bosses--- there are two of them--- and they rarely come over and talk to me, haven't caught on to the fact that I can be downright argumentative in certain circumstances. I can't always get a grasp on what people are asking for, or what they're up to anyhow. So, I disagree with them. I think they're being childish or rude. Sometimes they are, but I've learn that big business motto, that the customer is always right. You're not supposed to argue period. My roommate tells me I have to learn to not give a f*#@k , something which only makes vague sense to me. What am I supposed to develop an indifference toward. Other people's words, their commands. What if you just don't know how to do what they're asking? What if you've entirely lost them in the syntax? There I go, being argumentative again. Just don't be a s:%thead and I'll mostly get along with you.
But it's not a winning attitude I've taken on. I've resorted to reading Buddhist reflections on Anger and Peaceful Acceptance. There seems to be great pain involved in that level of acceptance. Of giving up what you have learned or have interpreted for the truth, for some other plan that has been mapped out. People are getting away with that on a constant basis, I think. Just not giving in to the madness. Not taking it personally. Letting go of the self to discover the self, as priest I knew once said. It's the kind of thing so many people can give advice about, but yet so difficult to put into practice. Especially when you're not disposed to it. I love my old man dearly, but I learned a lot of behavior from practicing what he does, just blows an absolute gasket sometimes, cuts you up from the underside with a snide remark. It's in the genes, they say. Maybe. But there has to be a way to break the cycle.
I've taken to blogging this evening because I thought maybe it might make a difference, this cynicism that's grown into me like a cyst. That you shouldn't let people cut you up. I still don't think you should but how many people have I known and heard say how when you react, you let them win. It's never felt like a win just by being passive. They don't seem satisfied. I've even had people say, "are you still THERE?" which seems to suggest that they are attempting to drive me away, or rock me down to their level, where I say, son, you bet I'm still here, and by god, I'm entitled to be. Like that declaration alone will validate my existence. What a cobweb.
I'm going to work on it, because my former MO was to whimper and cry and overmedicate myself when I got home by playing video games all night in my room. Blotto myself. Rock the brain into a coma. But that doesn't work for me. Great, if it works for you. It's always been more in order to channel all this crap. Welcome to this Channel, thank you all, I'll be in town all week!

entropy.

Such as dancing the tarantella
With your lover and tripping
Over your heels which
Smash her birthday gift;
Or feeling the terse breeze
Of an electric fan
And mistaking the shadows
For an evening under
A Managua heat & gunfire;
Such as misnaming your firstborn
For the Cuban general
Last castrated by Communist sympathizers;
Or such as, losing enough grace
So as to drag the electric
Fan with you into the bathtub;
Or your wish to remove
Your mirrors from the premises &
Biting your lip at the urge to
Give practice lectures to
the stranger watching from the walls.
Or such as this sleeplessness again,
Which wakes the neighbors,
All the windows propped open,
Because you are freezing anyway;
Thirteen below, the weatherman
Shivered and smiled saying this;
He wears a suit and tie that you
Decided you could not afford purchasing.
Such as the clock ignoring
Your need for a fresh start,
The savage children who will
Eat you alive again.

Such as rubbing your forehead,
Palms sweaty, tremorous, condensation
On the martini glass, and you
Wouldn’t be doing this again,
If you could afford paying back the loans.
Such as abandoning your car in traffic,
Dry-heaving in the bushes,
While drivers gawk at the red light.

Such as explaining your unbalance
To the psychiatrist, covering
Your ears to drown out the nonsense
Of the last few months which the death
Of a loved one might explain.
Such as the grey shapes above your
Closet or just outside your window,
Which are ghosts of your procrastination,
Which are thank-you letters unsent.
Which is ruthlessly needling you,
Wishing for a cocktail to guide
Through the evening news, which is
The man at work always inviting
You to happy hour across town.
Which has medical advice for the remedy,
And whose name you keep changing,
Which is costing you your wages,
Which you have never pegged w/ your finger.
Which is the drawn bow of your
Everyday panic, which in your mind,
Has drawn you indoors, placing
A peephole so you know who is calling,
With your caller id you feel safer,
Which has you worthlessly attending
To menial labor, so its summons
Won’t rap so loud, you ignore its
Knowing insinuations, its vicious poetry
Working on your last nerve
This side of you raging through the city
Blood pouring from your ravaged heart.

what are we doing revolution-wise?
or is the goal to go zig-zagging into the anonymous dream?
are we waiting for walk the line to arrive on DVD,
live our quiet lives vicariously through an actor playing a legend?
are we waiting for the next super bowl, keeping drinks on ice
and a pantry full of salsa and tortilla chips?
what have you done revolution-wise? other than telling the boss
to stick it, stuff your pockets full of lotto tickets,
and clench your fist while shuffling into the unemployment office?
last I checked, we got a curveball in the white house,
been there for the greater part of the decade, writing his own laws,
signing his own tickets, while his buddies get rich, richer
and the oil fields over there get hot, hot, hotter from the rising fires
and the academics get brainier, the drunks get drunker
and the methheads get empty in the head, in the skin, in the teeth,
you would think there would be someone raging at that,
some wild-haired gent or lass just seething at the audacity of all that:
fill in your blanks, folks, when was the last time the stars
danced for you, when you could get outside of the nine-to-five,
banned food day, boycotted happy hour at the seventh heaven
or drudged up a charity fund to get some of the negativity, the cobwebs
out of your just-trying-to-make-it-to-four-thirty frame-of-mind
it doesn't have to be cranky, you don't have to smash equipment,
but necessary, don't you think, called-for wouldn't you say?
let's not forget how we might get revolution-wise, open up the conversation,
breathe the real air, not the kind that's blowing by on the tv screen,
where we're captive, strapped to the chair, our eyes held open
by steel wires, where we're screaming inside, our mouths sealed shut,
alone, thinking, getting it, with no one to tell, with every chance to forget,
because we think we're dreaming after all, anonymously dreaming,
of being on film, changed and beautiful, wishing we could act revolution-wise.

Listening to a little Vic Chesnutt tonight but I've been meaning to start this thing for whatever it's worth...
in no particular order...

Field Work in Ash & Blue

I left all my thoughts on Leavenworth Street
That lazy avenue always crying under the wet tarp:
For its anonymity, for the cracked-up eyes lingering
on its curbstones, which wonder where you've been lately
and who you're fucking at night while your children sleep;

that name synonymous with jails and private card games:
a legacy for the hustle, food stamps and warm dry gin,
But that was only where it began, the fat artery out of which
Blood then & now had been flowing: not blood for the nightly
news or the photos on the inner lining of the wraps, but
the scuffle just down the side streets, under dark awnings
and yards of cardboard glass, to be hidden from the neighbors
But known like the cheat in a spread: not a dime that drops
there is worth its keep, yet I dared nightly to dream
while my engine idled in the sad corners of its parking lots.

I held a fare uptown with a woman who danced for men
for twenty-five years, every night, I carried her twenty blocks
east and four south, and she spread her hair along the backseat,
as if somehow that would break the mystery of her shroud
as if men must live through such seductions to keep their namesake,
and survive the smoke as it curls from lips, and smile but look
the other way, no matter how lonely they've become
by the end of the day, no matter what the cost of the bear & bait,
as if anyone could fend off her silky advances & flip down the nightshade,
then slide away to sleep with clockstroke & cool antacid.

I seemed to be outlasting all the wretches, for no other reason
than to scratch together a few dimes, run back to the garage
to punch my card & rendevous to my nearest base of asylum,
without any kin to take me, the last remaining namesake this end
of the Missouri River, with the want of a nail for my kingdom lost,
just a witness in this field of spinning ash & blue, skinless around
the scalp & faceless like so many of these corners, long shots
to a ticket elsewhere, stunned in the midst of the anonymity
of every stranger and their crazed introductions, their demands,
their alibis, their aliases and wigs: beneath their cover, I am offered
these in confidence, should I contact someone who shouldn't hear the news.

In this vein, I took it all in stride, a nightly parade through this
cowering alley, old Leavenworth, ashen in winter, muddied by spring,
so that with summer, I left all my thoughts in the bus stations,
in the alleys, and at the girlie bars, in the fag dens, with the marquis'
with the spinsters, with this street and all its drinking buddies,
with its poker friends, its bartenders, its bookies, its shrinks,
with its Indian chiefs, all pass off and left in the notebooks, painted
lily white, all new and fresh on the clapboards, a new print for its sheets,
lying in a dress of satin, glimmer and found clean like so many other
passing streets, in other seasons, towns of intrigue, fools who wander
from the painful strain of hidden mistakes, streets washed over by ash & blue.

I really have to rework some of the images on this one, never one of my stronger pieces.
There's stuff I like about it but ahh, whatver. I can always improve of some of these pieces.
I don't hang out on Leavenworth Street in Omaha, NE very much anymore.
I don't have the time nor the wherewithal. I guess it's probably no worse than Broadway
in Council Bluffs, and a far cry from the Bowery in New York, or other places I've been in Baltimore or DC, but it's worth a nod. I'm always game for hearing about the places that never sleep, like the Strip in Vegas ir whathaveyou.

Boulevard Review under new owenership

I had to restart this discussion mostly because I had some life-changing circumstances that amounted in the loss of my e-mail addresses. YOu don't use the account and apparently, they sweep it out from under you. They need the web space I guess. But I'm back, as much as I can be for now... I was writing a little bit about movies, the communal experience they create, etc.
Something about the movie Constantine which I have now seen both on the big screen and DVD. The big screen was where it made its mark the loudest I think. Unless you have a big screen television (which I don't) the magnamious nature of that film is somewhat subdued by the glass tube.

I wished I could have said something definitive about Good Night and Good Luck, one of the last suckerpunch movies I had the experience of viewing in the theater. I have this feeling that it's not going to get much more than a head nod out there. Mostly, because it's too true to form. It had little to no humor that I can remember, because George Clooney, David Stratham, Richard Downey Jr. and Patricia Clarkson spent their entire time going right for the jugular. Driving the mechanism forward. You could almost sense the bare bones anchors and pulleys "behind the scenes" were just around the corner. Its intensity held the fort right from the opening scenes.

But I think I need to say something about the chronicling of historical events that Hollywood seems to embrace as parody, political commentary, and the preponderance of the motives the directors hold as justification for releasing just films. Good Night and Good Luck was one such example of this film.

L4yer C4ke w/ Daniel Craig. Just watched this film which now occurs to me as being somewhat over the top, in a way that separates it from Snatch and Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. I didn'tlaugh I think once and I don't imagine its because I had a headache at the time. To me, these movies are, like the style of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, a matter of form over substance. But style is the frame on which a film like this stands. The characters of Morty, Jimmy and Temple are characters which stand out in my mind as definitive. You'll remember Craig because of the hard lines of his chin and cheek bones. The hard edges of his face reflect a familiarity with the likes of Mel Gibson and Steve McQueen. I just heard of Craig a few months ago as the epitome of the new James Bond, but you have to wonder where Hollywood has been keeping him. As a hard character, one with some depth, but mostly the brawn that is required to create a just-under-the-radar kind of icon. I haven't seen the special features on this one yet, and don't know if I really need to. It was an average film, really, just mostly that I haven't really seen a solid one for quite some time, and I thought maybe this one could serve as an outsider.

Honestly, I'm somewhat clueless about how to write about film or cinema and make it sound artful. I'm not saying that I don't have people around me anymore who can talk intelligently about movies. I don't entirely know if and how you do that, other than the fact that there are film journals out there that could get the juices flowing. I have a book that I bought on a whim at one of these chain book stores, Agee on Film, which taught me that someone could be powerfully devoted to "writing about film". I always joked with my father about how we could go into business together, being film analysts,or something in that neighborhood. I still remember watching Bridge on the River Kwai on the Fox Saturday movies. They showed that movie like every week, but the real gist was that I couldn't ask him about a movie that he hadn't seen. That probably goes back into the sixties, and doesn't reach the span and breadth of Agee.
He was writing about every single movie that came out in the late thirties and forties and of course, he probably got them all published in the big newspapers in the country. Seems I can hardly go a week of doing a crossword puzzle without running into his name.
Still my mother was partly responsible for my love of movies, as we used to go to just about every Tuesday matinee during the summer when we grew up, watching greats like The Money Pit, Great Outdoors, Spies Like Us, WarGames, Stargate, Space Camp, Big, The Natural, the list of movies was endless. The older I got the more convoluted the list. Let's face it, once you've seen The Godfather trilogy, GoodFellas, The Killing Fields, Marathon Man, Chinatown, The Two Jakes, The Graduate, Apocalypse Now, Pulp Fiction, Scarface, Four Hundred Blows. Touch of Evil, The Killing or Lolita, your sensibilities about film change dramatically. yet there's so much junk out there too, and I'm not always sure that some of the films I just listed don't fall in to that category.

I have to admit I have an agenda. Might as well just put it out there for all its worth. It's a lofty goal, but not many of my goals are quite as lofty as someday reaching the notice of someone as esteemed as Josh Corey. I was glad the other day that he pointed out a poet named Lilac on his site. A forty-something year old woman from Lebanon ? (you'll see my details are never handy so I go with what I can remember)that travels back and forth between Phoenix and Beirut. What a combination, I mean seems like that stacks the deck in your favor as far as having something to say that hasn't been said. What do I know, though, I was born into white America and have resided there most of my life. I mean, I went to see movies during most of my later teen years, and as anybody knows, spending time in movie theaters doesn't afford you a great deal of color. I'm the guy in the baseball bleachers with the chino pants and the ball cap, sitting underneath the facade to keep from getting sunburned. I'll admit it. Nevertheless, I was classically trained at Creighton University to read and write poems. Four years, I am convinced, is not entirely enough, especially since you have to go through at least two years of core classes before you get to the real grease, that place where all you're doing is reading great poetry and trying to perfect a craft. That was where I wanted to be, where I still like to be.

I heard about Josh Corey and the Cahiers de Corey from a local poet, a guy I have a great deal of respect for on a personal level and as a literal masternmind, Steven Langan. I know he's been in Jacket and Double Take probably among others. I guess I can brag by saying that I knew him before he got published. I also happen to know that's not his main occupation. But I won't go into that, mostly to protect or adhere to something like personal integrity. I could talk about film tonight, but my time is somehwat limited, instead, I plan on creating a poetry blog, at the risk of having my life's work at once scrutinized. But my biggest problem has been getting the written word onto the screen. I still haven't made it into the 21st century as a writer. I have this nice newer model of a laptop, which I have failed to use entirely properly. But I want to get some of this stuff down, so I can look at it. So's other people, should they want to, might see as well.