I Just Watched The Rebirth Of Mothra

and there was a fight between Mothra and some big three-headed Godzilla-looking critter and everybody was freaking out in Japanese saying, You freed the monster you crazy guy, and, Don't worry Mothra will save us. But Mothra didn't save them, Mothra got his ass beat. He was zapped by three-headed halitosis. And then he died. And then he was reborn, being a Christ-figure and all. Even though they didn't actually say how long he spent in his cocoon, I imagine it was three days. Because moths grow up awful damn fast, he then flew in blue circles around the Satan-figure, and the world was saved and all the people said in Japanese, Amen.

All this happened about two thousand years after Saint Clement of Rome compared Christ to a phoenix in his First Epistle to the Corinthians:

Let us consider that wonderful sign [of the resurrection] which takes place in Eastern lands, that is, in Arabia and the countries round about. There is a certain bird which is called a phœnix. This is the only one of its kind, and lives five hundred years. And when the time of its dissolution draws near that it must die, it builds itself a nest of frankincense, and myrrh, and other spices, into which, when the time is fulfilled, it enters and dies. But as the flesh decays a certain kind of worm is produced, which, being nourished by the juices of the dead bird, brings forth feathers. Then, when it has acquired strength, it takes up that nest in which are the bones of its parent, and bearing these it passes from the land of Arabia into Egypt, to the city called Heliopolis. And, in open day, flying in the sight of all men, it places them on the altar of the sun, and having done this, hastens back to its former abode. The priests then inspect the registers of the dates, and find that it has returned exactly as the five hundredth year was completed.

Do we then deem it any great and wonderful thing for the Maker of all things to raise up again those that have piously served Him in the assurance of a good faith, when even by a bird He shows us the mightiness of His power to fulfil His promise? For [the Scripture] saith in a certain place, “Thou shalt raise me up, and I shall confess unto Thee;” and again, “I laid me down, and slept; I awaked, because Thou art with me;” and again, Job says, “Thou shalt raise up this flesh of mine, which has suffered all these things.”

I would not have thought the people who made The Rebirth of Mothra to know their Apostolic Fathers so well.

And then all the people said in Japanese, It took nature a million years to make this forest and now it is destroyed and even though it will take many years we must fix it and return it to its pristine glory, all praise be to God, because God has made us better than nature and we can do in a few years what it took nature a million years to do, and so we proudly impress upon everybody who watches this movie that we are environmentalists and we care about the environment even though we really think that we are better than the environment. All praise be to God the Father, and to his Son, and to the Holy Spirit which proceeds from the Father through the Son, as opposed to those heretics the Romans and their Frankish papacy who changed the creed to say From the Father and the Son. Amen.

Because My Brother Is A Baboon

as detailed in my previous post, I wrote a poem. It is An Ode to the Baboon.

One time I saw a
commercial and
they painted one
half of a baboon's
face blue like
Braveheart and
lined up a bunch
of chimpanzees across
a field dressed
like medieval English
warriors and when
the baboon bent
over to give them
the old baboon
moon, lightning shot
out from his orange
ass and killed all the
English chimps dead.

My brother wants to live in Florida, where my father also lives, where there are palm trees and sunshine and alligators. Florida is a lot like Africa, where there are palm trees and sunshine and crocodiles and baboons. I think that Florida would be a good second home to a baboon. If ever there is a refugee crisis in the Savannah involving a baboon population, they could send them to Florida. I suspect that they would get along famously there with my brother, once all the chest-thumping and posturing about who gets to be on top was finished.

Yes, I Know That I Just Said

that I wanted to be in Hawaii, but I didn't mean it. What I really meant was that I want to live somewhere with miserable weather. Of course, when I say miserable, I don't mean either International Falls, MN miserable goddamn cold or Death Valley miserable goddamn hot, although if somebody held a gun to my head and forced me to choose between those two I suppose that I would have to go with Minnesota. What I mean when I say miserable weather is the sort of weather that you wake up in the morning and you throw open the curtains and you look outside and you say, today would be a perfectly good day to kill somebody, as it is fitting and proper for the misery of death to occur on a thoroughly miserable day.

Yep, just like Shirley Manson, I'm only happy when it rains. Thank god that God can't get his shit straight here in Iowa. Instead of it being the end of December and snowing, it is the end of December and raining.

My brother recently went to Ireland on his honeymoon. He was supposed to go to Mexico, but a hurricane destroyed the resort that they had reserved, so he said
- Fuck it, I shall go to the Motherland. (The Motherland being either Ireland or Friesland, depending upon the day of the week and the weather associated with the day)

When he came back from the Motherland he said,
- I have met God's daughter, and her name is Guinness. I stayed in her house. She has a gypsy and watches the Simpsons. But gloomy weather is not my pint of beer. I thought it was, but it isn't. Lead me to where the palm trees grow and the sunshine is bright and sunshiney, oh my Lord of creation and of all things that are created in Heaven and on Earth and in that other place. By the way, here's a liter bottle of Jameson. I couldn't think of anything else to buy in Ireland, so I bought you something that you can buy here in the states. But this bottle is from Ireland, see, it doesn't say Imported anywhere on it.

I tried to keep the bottle, as I thought that it should perhaps have a sort of sentimental value, being a gift from the otherwhere and all, but it kept begging me to be drunk. Which I shortly was. And it was. There are drinks that taste different, depending upon where a person buys them. I have heard it said that Heineken is such a drink. For some reason those importers have decided to put the American version in green bottles, thinking perhaps that this gives it a unique look, which it does. As unique as the bottle might be, I have always thought that Heineken was a skunky beer, and have never had a good bottle of Heineken and have never understood how some people swear by the stuff. But then I never understood how some people could label a beer made out of rice "the King of Beers." I refuse to drink a beer made out of rice, unless the beer comes from somewhere in the orient where there are no proper hops to make beer from. Anyway, I recently heard that green bottles are bad for beer, that it allows the wrong sort of light into the brew, and turns it into a urinal mint. Justification! I thought to myself, I have been justified! I knew that I wasn't crazy. That is, not when it comes to beer, and whether or not it tastes like a skunk took a shit in it.

So there are drinks that taste different, depending upon where one buys the drink, and Heineken is such a drink as they don't use green bottles in the Netherlands, or so I have heard. Jameson is not such a drink. It is the same no matter where you buy it, I can now say with some officiality.

First, my father moved to Florida. He refused to explain himself. I think that it might have something to do with sunshine and palm trees. And then my brother came back from Ireland preaching the counter-virtue of melancholy drizzle and clouds. When I heard this I said,
- Why don't you just get it over with. Wear your ass as a hat and move to Florida, you geriatric traitor, you Benedict Arnold. So strike your flag you monkey and turn into the wind. As for me, I may sink but I'll be damned if I'll strike! I have not yet begun to fight, you surrendering baboon. Why don't you just move to France while you're at it? That's where the dissipation's at, and sunshine too, there on the Mediterranean. Why am I even talking to you? Florida's already got you, doesn't it? You've heard the siren's call, that's what you have. Idiot never read the Odyssey, all you had to do was ask me and I would have told you to plug your ears with wax and tie yourself to the mast, but no you didn't ask and now you want to jump into the ocean with those dinosaurs of fishes the sharks, a person would think that as many times as you've seen Jurassic Park you would know better than to swim about with dinosaurs. But then, baboons don't think like that, do they? They have trouble putting two and two together, being monkeys and all, and therefore incapable of things like logic.

ps - Goddammit all to hell, I have just been informed by somebody that supposedly knows such things that Heineken over in the Dutch-lands is in green bottles as well. That's the problem with hearsay, I guess. Saint Clement of Rome learned that when he wrote about a phoenix, thereby assuring his not being included in the bible.

Thinking Of Hawaii

Because it is winter, and I want it to be spring.
It is spring in Hawaii. Or if it isn't,
there is very little difference.
Thinking of Hawaii, I wrote a ditty.
I call it, A Hawaii Ditty.

I hope you enjoy.

I will throw
a pineapple and
you will catch it.

I will throw
a pineapple and
you will eat the first.

I will throw
a pineapple and
you will tell me to stop.

Anybody Else Get Those Feelings

like in summer and you're in your car with the window rolled down and your arm hanging out, maybe doing that thing with your hand where you try to make it surf on the wind coming around the windshield and the world's all kosher pretty and beautiful and the sky is blue and maybe there's a cloud or two but they're white and puffy and up high and high and then all of a sudden the pressure drops and you realize good Christ but it's getting cold and you get goosebumps and shit and your spine starts shivering and stuff?

Except that it isn't summer and you aren't outside and it doesn't have anything to do with the weather?

I've been having that tingly shit all day. I wonder why.

Excuse The Brand-New Shitty Look

At least, if you're running anything other than 800x600 resolution. I am trying to figure out how to make my page prettypretty in ALL the resolutions. But until then, you'll just have to put up with it, I guess.

So there, have a sorry.

A(n) Eulogy

Granddad, as of last Friday
you are dead. I can't say
that I knew you because
I didn't know you-- you let
the woman that you married
after your first wife died

do your talking,
but it wasn't your talking.
It was her talking
and you made good children,
five between you and your first wife;
I have always preferred them

over the four you inherited
when you married your second.
Now I think that you never spoke
and there was a reason why you
never spoke. Now I think
it is not a coincidence

that you died two days
before Christmas when your
first wife died two days after,
all those years before. Now I wish
you good luck, and I wish
that you had spoken.

Ninja Rock, continued

Seppuku is the ancient art of killing yourself if you get super pissed and can't find anybody else to kill.

Step 1: Get a frisbee from the store or friend.
Step 2: Clean the Frisbee.
Step 3: Make sure your parents aren't around.
Step 4: Put something slippery on it, like butter or cream.
Step 5: Get really super pissed.
Step 6: Fold the Frisbee hard (this is crucial).
Step 7: Keep folded and insert Frisbee into mouth hard.
Step 8: Push hard until you can't see it.
Step 9: Wait.
Step 10: Die.

If you succeed everybody will be like "Holy Crap!"

You can get the t-shirt that I saw this on here.

Ninja Rock

My name is Robert and I can't stop thinking about ninjas. These guys are cool; and by cool, I mean totally sweet.

Facts:

1. Ninjas are mammals.
2. Ninjas fight ALL the time.
3. The purpose of the ninja is to flip out and kill people.

Note: I unabashedly stole this from http://www.realultimatepower.net

Santa Gets A Bad Rap

How can anybody not believe in somebody that delivers presents to (as I've heard it recently) 832 homes per second on Christmas Eve?

After all, cloning is what elves do best.

That, and making reindeer fly.
Speaking of flying reindeer, there was one in Henrik Ibsen's play Peer Gynt. I don't recall it having anything to do with Santa Claus, however.

That, and possibly making toys.

Making toys is what the Chinese do best.

That, and clothes.

When it comes to cars however, it's better to stick with the Japanese. Or the Germans.

When it comes to illegal and incomprehensibly inexpensive firearms, it's better to stick with the Russians.

Making and distributing cheapcheap assault rifles is what the Russians do best.

Anyway, back to Santa...
He gets a bad rap. The other day I was playing a video game where Santa was evil! Can you believe it? An evil Santa? I couldn't believe it either, which completely suspended my Suspension Of Disbelief. I decided that I just couldn't bear to play such a shitty, unrealistic game any more, so I gave it to a friend as an early Christmas gift.

Giving shitty Christmas gifts is what I do best.

Practical Principles Pertaining To Everything, Part Eight

The best part of wearing underwear is keeping the stains from getting on your pants.

Anonymous, Episode Seven (To Be Followed Immediately By A Christmas Lyric)

I'm getting some for Christmas.
Santa promised.

Unfortunately, Santa doesn't talk to me, much less make promises.

Pfah.

O to live the life of some other nameless people.

Medea said Pfah too. And then she killed her children.

I don't think that I shall go that far,
though I have yet to decide whether that makes me better or worse a person than she was.

Not that it matters, as she was a myth.

Mythical people are not the sort of people that you want to compare your own personhood to, as they are of course Mythical.
Mythical means Not Real.

Princess Leia said Pfah too. And then she kissed her brother.

I don't think that I shall kiss my brother,
though I have yet to decide whether that makes me better or worse a person than she was.

O to have Mythical People talk to me.
O to have Mythical People tell me that I will be getting some.

Some would be good to have. Or possess.
Better to receive, as it were. Or is it give?
I never do get that straight.

O to be a Mythical People that I could talk to person.
O to be a Mythical Person that I could have some to give.

O Mythical Giver, you are straight.
O Mythical Receiver,

I remember your face
in the night, your
forehead and your tongue
and it was right, though
it was supposed
to be illuminated,
you and I,
regardless.

Anonymous, Episode Six

i fell in love
with a boston girl
because i thought
one of her
ancestors may
have been involved
in the tea party.

it wasn't until
she threw my tv
out the third-story
window to my
apartment that
i realized the
odds against it.

A Couple Of Nights Ago I Met A Fellow

named Ether.

I thought that was an interesting name and tried to smell him (as discreetly as possible), in order to determine whether or not his odor perhaps was the reason for the name. As near as I could tell, it wasn't.

Then he called me Lenin.

I said,
- What?

- Lenin. It's a compliment.

- If you say so. I suppose it could be, depending on which Lenin you're talking about.

- Lennon, not Lenin.

- Alrighty then. Now that that's that, it's all better, what?

- Sorry. It's supposed to be a compliment.

- That's good to know / You said that already. So why Lennon?

- Have you taken a look in the mirror lately?

- Can't say that I have, no. Frightening things, mirrors. They give me the shivers.

- Oh.

- Yeah.

- Well, it's a compliment, anyway. Hey look, there's a rat that's been in my sleeve all night. I think he wants some of my beer. Earlier he was drinking my captain n' coke. Just wait a minute, Squeedge, I've got your beer right here. Calm down already. Say hello to Squeedge, Lennon.

- Hello.

- Stop being such a rude bastard and say hello to Lennon, Squeedge. No, you're not getting your beer until you say it.


Which got me to thinking about the other people that I've been compared to in my life. For the curious, this has been the first time that anyone's said that I look like Lennon. Note as well that all of these comparisons, with the exception of James Spader, were years and years ago, when I was popular with the ladies.

1.) Dolph Lundgren
2.) Ricky Schroeder
3.) Garfield - My voice
4.) Jim Morrison - The way I walk
5.) James Spader - Both my voice and how I look
6.) Christian Slater - Not what I say so much as how I say it
And, although nobody ever actually compared me to this guy, I used to think, back when I still had hair that reached my shoulder-blades, that I looked like
7.) the guitarist from Candlebox

So is there anybody relatively interesting that you've been compared to? Let us know. The world awaits.

It Has Come To My Attention

that I did not post a single entry yesterday. Where the hell was I? I don't remember.

This is an apology.

You see, I recently lost my wallet. Which means that I lost both my social security card and my driver's license. The social security I can do without. The license I cannot.

Last night was poetry night at Java Joe's. Last month, as you may remember, I went to poetry night in Lamoni. In Lamoni, they do not serve alcohol where they read poetry. I resolved after that night never to go to poetry night without a drink again, because audiences are some scary damn people when you haven't had anything to drink.

Last night was poetry night at Java Joe's. I lost my wallet. That means, because nobody believes that I am as old as I am, that I cannot purchase the drink at the location itself.

Thus was born the concept of Bring Your Own Booze. But I did not have any beer in the house to bring. In point of fact, the only liquid entertainment that I could lay claim to consisted of a 750ml bottle of Jameson, the triple-distilled Irish whiskey. It wasn't full, of course, but then it wasn't empty either.

Anyway, enough about that.

I gifted the book, just like I said I would. At least I think I did. I remember taking it with me. And now it isn't in my apartment. Which would have to mean that it was gifted, yes? Oh dear. How does a person inquire into that sort of thing? Shall I just ask her whether or not I actually gave it to her? Or shall I just pretend like I did, and nobody will be any the wiser until that embarassing moment in several years when I mention something about it and she tells me the truth and then I say,
- Oh bother. There is a rumbly in my tumbly, and I must seek out some breakfast honey. Goodbye, Piglet.

Anonymous, Episode Five

This is a bunghole.
This is a bung.
Put the bung in the bunghole.
Screw.
It should form an airtight seal.

Postscript

I keep expecting one extraordinary person from Idaho, a person that (I have it on good authority) reads this column semi-regularly, to say to me something not unlike,
-Would you stop acting like a retard and climb?

Except that she probably wouldn't use the word retard. And she might be well into the sangria when she said it, inebriation not diminishing the fidelity of the statement in any way; providing only one, to my memory (bearing in mind, of course, that this is my memory, and thus not entirely to be trusted), example of perhaps too much inhabiting the sauce, when she emailed me entirely appropriate pictures of everybody that she had such pictures of, and then begged my not posting them all over my column, she is the very model of a woman who can, as they say, hold her liquor.

Goddammit I miss her exquisitely blunt self.

ps - she told me once that she wished I had chosen to play guitar instead of lounging about with the dregs of society, the "one-percenters."

There Is A Book

on my floor. I haven't read it yet. It is Richard Siken's Crush. It is placed two feet in front of my couch, cover-side up, in line with the place where my leftmost couch cushion meets the middle couch cushion. It has been in this position for two weeks.

That's not entirely accurate. I read the first three poems. And the introduction by Louise Gluck.

So why haven't I read it yet? Why have I allowed it to remain in one position, on my floor, for such a lengthy period of time? It is because it has become more than a book. That's right. It is an example of what Catholics like to call trans-substantiation. Exactly two weeks ago, give or take a couple of days, this book of poetry, the fruition of one man's obsession, metamorphed into something entirely sacred and untouchable. It became an icon, a window into the sublime. It found shape in symbol. It realized itself, its unwordly potential, its transcendence of language, its apocryphal humanism, when it was read by a particular friend of mine, a friend who wondered aloud at the consumptive lyrics contained therein.

Which friend later subvocally bestowed upon me the honorific "asshat" and supervocally said,
- Take me home right the fuck NOW.

I'm telling you, it wasn't my fault. I didn't realize it was a date. How could I invite a woman over to my apartment and not realize that it was a date? Because I'm dense that way. What I wanted was her input on the selection of poems for a journal. Because she, the woman that was at my apartment, is one of the three most intelligent women that I've ever met, her opinion was important to me. The other two being from high school, I haven't seen them since: Jaya Agrawal and Sarah Moore. Jaya was the valedictorian of my class. I had a thing for her, because she had a statue of Ganesh in her locker. I'm actually not really convinced that Jaya ranks up there in the top three, since her brilliance was obviously due to her spending entirely too much time studying. I think that's unfair, competing against brilliant people who didn't study at all. Sarah, on the other hand, while she did study as well, began to slack off by the time that I knew her. She became rather fond of dissolution after that. The last I heard about her was from my brother. He said he saw her once a couple of years after high school. She was beating some sap with a hammer because he couldn't pay her for some money he borrowed or something. And then she got him naked and walked him home so he could get the money from his parents. So these two are the company that this friend of mine keeps, up there in the top three brilliant women that I've known.

Note: There is another, but her genius isn't the same as those others. She's different. I don't know how to explain it, other than to say that she's different. It isn't really an intellectual sort of thing with her.

And now the book is where my friend left it, on the floor. And now I am contemplating whether something should perhaps be done with said book, loathe as I am to interrupt its divine communion.

I would appreciate any ideas that you dearest of readers may offer, as to its imaginably great fate.

If nobody endeavors to propose any, I suppose that I will make a Christmas gift of it. Perhaps even gifted to my aforementioned friend, with the intention of affecting a favorable re-judgement.

Practical Principles Pertaining To Everything, Part Seven

Don't fuck with me.

I self-destruct when people fuck with me.

Cheers.

Because You Don't Know Enough About Me Already

I thought that I would leave you with a little something to contemplate over the weekend:



How evil are you?

ps - I figure it's because I picked Canada as my weapon of choice.

Oh The Excitement

Oh, the sheer magic of the moment

when a girl tells you she's a rock star and then says,
- This is my friend here, his name is Alibaster and he's brilliant. Omaha sucks. How old do you think I am and don't say twelve, because I'm twenty-two. Drink Jaegermeister. Do I look like your average stereotypical goth chick? I'm not. I'm industrial metal. He's from Missouri. I'm from Jersey. No, not California, I just go to Oregon a lot. Iowa is so much better than Nebraska because your last call isn't until two. Omaha sucks. What sort of music do you listen to?

my reply being, of course, ambiguous, because ambiguity gets me so very far with the ladies:
- The kind you listen to alone in your apartment at 3 am and get drunk with.

Practical Principles Pertaining To Everything, Part Six

There is no modern porn movie better than Debbie Does Dallas.

I've Been Thinking About Poetry Lately

Forgive me.

Specifically, or in order to paint you as precise a painting as possible of what it is that whizzes about in my wibblewobble-laden whirlygig, prose poetry.

What is prose poetry, exactly?

Forgive me again, but due to my thinking and the nature of my very own process of thinking, this post may not make a whole lot of sense.

But then again, if it's a straight sort of thing that you're after, you really should be reading Silliman's blog anyway, and not mine. As opposed to possessing a train of thought like most people, I like to think of mine more as a kangaroo of thought. Anyhow,

What is it? I know what people seem to think it is, and that is poetry without line breaks. But that really seems too simplistic an explanation, doesn't it? I can't help but think that, if we (being people in general, and poets specifically) equate the prose vs. poetry dichotomy with a paragraph-format vs. line-break dialectic, we are boxing ourselves in somehow. Almost as if we are diminishing the poetic genre. Don't ask me how, I don't know. I haven't come up with an explanation yet.

Before you ask, yes, I have read quite a bit of "prose poetry," and I tend to like the form. My current favorites are Todd Colby's "Lives of the Ventilators," from his book Tremble & Shine.

I was speaking about this with Barry Benson the other day and he said that prose-poetry had to contain "poetic elements," whatever that means. I'm assuming he means vivid imagery, alliteration, a natural rhythm (by natural I do not mean fixed. I hate fixed meters. Unless, of course, the first line contains the word "Nantucket"). But then I'm not sure that he knows what he's talking about, because most of what I have read that is considered prose poetry doesn't contain those things.

I don't know. I don't know I don't know I don't know. I want to take a nap. I want to have a drink, and THEN take a nap.

But if we say then, as we must by accepting the notion of a prose poetry, that line breaks don't determine the poetic; if we can consider Charles Baudelaire's "Be Drunk" to be poetry:

 You have to be always drunk. That's all there is to it--it's the
only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks
your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually
drunk.
But on what?  Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be
drunk.
And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of
a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again,
drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave,
the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything
that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is
singing, everything that is speaking. . .ask what time it is and
wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you:  "It is time to be
drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be
continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish."

Then surely we can consider Ted Kooser's "A Happy Birthday" to be prose:

This evening, I sat by an open window
and read till the light was gone and the book
was no more than a part of the darkness.
I could easily have switched on a lamp,
but I wanted to ride this day down into night,
to sit alone and smooth the unreadable page
with the pale gray ghost of my hand.

There really isn't a whole lot of difference, formulaically speaking, between them. But if we are willing to go that far, so as to say that they really are the same thing genre-wise, then why cling to the 500-word-limit convention for prose-poetry? Why not say that Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" is a fine example of it as well? It certainly contains moving imagery. Hell, the very title of the story is an illustration of the overriding metaphor that is the story. And if that, then why not Thomas Mann's Death in Venice?

And then on the other side, the "poetic" side of things, we must admit that the entirety of the twentieth century has been a demonstration against poetic convention. That is, meter no longer makes a poem. Rhyme no longer makes a poem. In fact, nothing anymore makes a poem a poem except line-breaks. But line-breaks, as implied by the acceptance of the "proem" form (hehe. proem. oh god), no longer make a poem a poem either. So then really, damn near every poet who has written in the twentieth-century, with the exception of those old die-hards, those few reactionaries that have refused to give up their beloved Victorian England, has been writing prose.

Holy hairy horseshit, Herbert. I suddenly feel very, very sick. I feel like I have drunk not one, but TWO Pan-Galactic Gargle Blasters (in other words, like I have had my brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick. Twice).


ps - I really am very sorry about this entire thing.

pps - I really do try not to do this to people.

ppps - Alrighty then. Moving on.

pppps - Poetry. I too dislike it.

ppppps - Have I mentioned what e e cummings said about galloping?

Love's Big Book Of Bona-Fide Uselessness, Chapter 3

Is the poet a victim of galloping egocentricity or is he just plain simpleminded?
- e e cummings

Love's Big Book Of Bona-Fide Uselessness, Chapter 2

Is the poet a victim of galloping egocentricity or is he just plain simpleminded?
- e e cummings

Wow. I Never In A Hundred-Million-Billion Years Would Have Guessed

You scored as The Vaginal-Reference-Making Dyke. You are the lesbian who can connect your vagina to nearly every object in the entire universe, creative and a little creepy you always astonish your friends.

What Type of Lesbian Are You? (Inspired by Curve Mag.)
created with QuizFarm.com

It Has Been Decided

Tomorrow I shall buy a wall-map, provided that I can find one, of Reykjavik. Because Reykjavik just rolls off the tongue. I have always wanted to visit Reykjavik. But I am poor, and so I must settle for a map. I shall put it on my wall. Hence, a wall-map. While it is on my wall, I shall look at it.

When I am at the place that sells maps, wherever that might be, I shall decide whether or not to buy a map of St. Petersburg. No, not the one in Florida. The one in Russia. I have always wanted to visit there, as well.

Recently I learned that St. Petersburg and Leningrad are the same place. I didn't know what to say. I was stunned. This got my mind to wondering whether there are other cities out there in the world that have been renamed. It turns out that there are. Did you know that Istanbul and Constantinople are the same? Whoa. The city that at one point in time was considered the greatest city in the world is now...Istanbul. Whoever's in charge over there should change it back. Come to think of it, it explains that song by They Might Be Giants:

Istanbul was Constantinople
Now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Now it's Turkish delight on a moonlit night

I guess I never stopped to actually listen to the lyrics.

Stalingrad is Volgograd. What happened was Kruschev didn't like Stalin too much so he renamed the city to Volgograd. I think that this was a mistake. They should change the name back. Nobody should be able to kill as many people as Stalin did and not have a city named after them. Imagine, if you will:

Shaoshan, China as Des Mao.
Kompong Thom, Cambodia as Pol Pot-Topia.
Braunau, Austria -- Hitlerstad.
Budapest, Hungary -- Attila-vania.
Sighisoara, Romania -- Vladville.
Batshireet, Mongolia -- Genghis Grove.
etcetera

Dammit, I knew I should have been a civil engineer.

Scratch That Bit About

Dali's cookbook Les Diners de Gala being the third cookbook on my cookbook shelf, next to The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook and Patrick's 101 Things to Do with Ramen Noodles. I just looked it up on Abebooks.

$2500.00!!! Jesus Christ himself in person and his wee friend Biff, that is a pricey book. I guess I'll have to wait until somebody gives it to me for Christmas. My birthday works too.

I can't help but wonder why, however, the author of A Bohemian Manifesto, one Laren Stover, would even choose to mention that Dali had a cookbook. It seems cruel somehow, seeing as the people that she is nominally writing her book for (Bohemians) are notoriously dirt-fucking poor. As in, they don't have enough money to pay for electricity, much less buy a $2500!! book.

Unless, of course, she isn't really writing to a Bohemian audience, but is in fact writing to an audience of people that have plenty o' money and just want to look and act Bohemian, because Bohemians are so unutterably cool.

You know what else is cool?

Poets.

Sexy beasts, those poets.
You should ask one to show you exactly how sexy they are sometime.

A Bohemian Manifesto, continued

No, I do not consider myself Bohemian. Bohemian is something that you buy at J.C. Penny's.

Come to think of it, depending on the day, I can be bought at J.C. Penny's too.

Whatever.

I Recently Bought A Book

and it was A Bohemian Manifesto, by Laren Stover. Why would I be reading such trash? Because it is trash, duh. I thought it might be amusing. It is. Especially this line:

Because they are so egotistically romantic, Bohemians...can't discriminate between love and lust. They cannot, in fact, discriminate between love and art.

heh. It's funny because it's true. On another note, I learned something from reading it. I learned that both Alice B. Toklas and Salvador Dali published cookbooks. I think that I shall buy them. They shall be my second and third cookbooks, respectively, and go on the shelf next to 101 Things to Do with Ramen Noodles.

Love's Big Book Of Bona-Fide Uselessness, Chapter 1

Is the poet a victim of galloping egocentricity or is he just plain simpleminded?
- e e cummings

Anonymous, Episode Four

This here's a poem
about my experiences
traveling back and forth
and back across this
country in a little car,
fifteen kabillion
miles, and it only took
me fifteen minutes
to write it.

I Wonder What Ever Happened To That Guy

You know the guy.
He's The Guy.
He's the cool me.
Yeah, him. I wonder what happened to him.

Nowadays, I have that line running over and over and over
in my head, that line from Morphine (I miss you,
Mark Sandman, you were better than anybody
I never met. kisses.):

I got guilt, I got fear, I got
regret

Speaking of celebrities, am I the only person in the world who prefers a Scarlett Johansson via Lost in Translation to an Angelina Jolie starring in anything?

I don't care what people think. Jim Carrey is the finest actor of my generation.

And why am I thinking of Angeline Jolie tonight? Because I saw Mr. and Mrs. Smith over the weekend, that's why. The best lines from the movie:

Mr. Smith: I didn't go to MIT. I was an art history major at Notre Dame.
Mrs. Smith: You were an art major?
Mr. Smith: History! History! It's respectable.

Breakfast, 13 December

2 hard-boiled eggs.
Jameson and ginger ale.

I'm Just A Panic-Stricken Waste, I'm Such A Jerk

I think I have an ulcer. What makes me think I have an ulcer? I have a pain in my chest/stomach, in the solar-plexus region. And I found blood. On my ass. Yes, I explore my ass a lot.

So I have an ulcer. I've been trying to figure out why. As near as I can tell, it could be one of two reasons: 1) my diet, which consists of A) ramen noodles, B) alcohol, C) nicotine, and D) caffeine, or 2) stress. What could be stressing me? Not a lot. Just that I was a fucking jerk to the first woman who's been decent to me in how long? Too long. So now I feel shitty. Real shitty. And I have an ulcer. Maybe it's a combination of those two things. Maybe I need to eat greeny vegetables. Maybe I need more sleep. Maybe I really hope it's #2, because I very much enjoy B, C, and D, and would hate to give them up.

Oh Lawdy, the drama that I make of my life.

Pornography: In Memoriam

I remember the first time that I saw a porn magazine. I was in the third grade. I was over at a friend's house. His name was John Crees. The reason I remember his name, and not anybody else's from the third grade, is because I thought it was interesting. It sounds like 'creek,' but it isn't. He owned every Star Wars toy ever made. And he had a Colecovision. I thought that was cool, even if he was an ass to his mom. His mom was disabled or some shit. I didn't know what was wrong with her, just that she was skinny and had trouble walking. She was always at home. She didn't work. The only time that I ever really talked to her was after she lost one of her fillings while chewing on a jolly rancher. I thought it was stupid that somebody would chew on a jolly rancher. They're meant to be sucked. A person could hurt their teeth trying to chew on something that's meant to be sucked. Even I knew that, and I was only in the third grade. After she was finished complaining about her teeth, she asked me if my mom ever watched the daytime soaps. I told her that I didn't know. I didn't think so. The only shows that I remember my mom watching were Murder, She Wrote and Scarecrow and Mrs. King. John's mom then talked about how much she liked that show too. Scarecrow and Mrs. King. I didn't know what to make of it. I didn't understand why she would be telling me what shows she watched. I didn't care. I didn't watch the show. I liked to watch The A-Team and The Dukes of Hazzard. Those other shows were boring shows about boring women. Why would I care about that? Why would I care about whether or not somebody watched them?

John's mom wasn't married. There was sometimes a man around the apartment, but he wasn't John's dad. Or at least, John never called him dad. Maybe he was her boyfriend. Maybe he was a new husband. All I know is that this guy never spoke up when John yelled at his mom. He would just sit at the kitchen table, not speaking. John yelled a lot. He would be playing a game, and she would tell him to do something, and he would flip out. He'd throw the controller across the room and go into an epileptic-like Tourette seizure. I couldn't believe that he'd say things like that to his mom. I couldn't believe that this adult guy sitting at the table would let him say things like that. But I didn't care, really. He had every Star Wars toy ever made. And he had a Colecovision.

One day I was walking to his house. There was a car on fire in front of his apartment building. John was standing in front of the car, looking at it. I walked to where he was and stood beside him, looking at it. It was the first time that I had ever seen a car on fire. It was the first time that I had seen glass melt. We stood there for a while, and then John said,
-I sold all my Star Wars toys.

I didn't say anything. I was jealous of whoever this person was that got all John's stuff. I couldn't understand why, if John was going to get rid of everything that he owned, he didn't give it to me. We watched the windshield melt. We watched the side-windows melt. I didn't say anything. When we heard the sirens, John said,
-Come on. I've got something to show you.

We went to his apartment. He took me downstairs, into his bedroom. He pulled a Playboy out from under his bed and started flipping through it.
-Look at this. You ever seen anything like this before?

I said that I hadn't, and then I asked,
-Why do they have all that hair down there?

-I don't know. I think it's so that when you're going to stick it inside her, the hair tickles you and you get hard.

That made sense to me. John put the magazine away, and we played his Colecovision. When I tried to come over the next day, Saturday, nobody answered the door. When I looked in his window, the apartment was empty. On Monday I looked for him in school. He wasn't in class. He wasn't in school on Tuesday either. He wasn't in school ever again.

I made new friends. One of them taught me how to steal, how to smoke. When I was caught shoplifting my mother forbid me ever speaking to that friend again. Without my friend to provide me with cigarettes, I was forced to quit smoking. I made enemies. Once, the teacher left our class to speak to somebody in the office. I was in the back of the room. I've always preferred the back. It's the only place where you can see everything that happens in the room. On this day I was playing with my lunch money on my desk. The kid sitting next to me said,
-You're crazy like Murdock in The A-Team.

I hit him. He hit me. The teacher came back into the room and separated us. I had the worse of it. I started crying. She took us to the office. We each got a week's worth of detention. Our parents weren't called. On the way home I saw a box on the side of the road, in front of somebody's house. I looked in the box. It was full of magazines. Some of the magazines were Playboys. I tucked them under my coat, where my mother wouldn't see them.

AnimalSex: Volume 2

It's 80 degrees in Mexico, D.F. today.
It's 5 below in Des Moines, Iowa today.
It could be worse.
It could be snowing homosexual necrophiliac mallard ducks.

Yes, you read that correctly.
The world gets a little crazier every day.

On a personal note, I was a witness to one of those "attempted rape flights." Except that there wasn't actually a flight because this female had nested and laid eggs already in one of my hostas. It was just a gang-rape. I decided henceforth that duck sounded like a fine idea for dinner.

Fuck nature.

String Around My Finger

Note to self:

Buy one of those drink flask things.
Put alcohol in it.
Take alcohol flask thing to poetry readings at coffee-
shops because goddamn people are scary when I'm
reading and haven't had anything to drink, and coffee-
shops are notoriously alcohol- and nicotine-free zones.

Practical Principles Pertaining To Everything, Part Five

Use as many really big words as possible in your poems. It makes you sound smart. And people enjoy reading them. It doesn't matter if the words make any sense or not. Rules regarding the use of poetic devices are superseded by the exercise of polysyllabicisms. People read those words and they say,
-Boy I wish I was as smart as that person.

Here's an example, so you understand what I'm talking about:

the juxtaposition of a rhinoceros
and snufflumpagus is manifestly
and miasmatically obscene,
discretely. bespectacled visions are
jettisoned upon my pineal gland:
louisiana cardinal-crested woody
woodpeckers, big birds, hoarfrost
within the gangrenous crevasse
between my two biggest toes.
let the sublimation begin.
commence the kingdom, omaha,
nebraska, mutual. we are not
a polis. we are not a polar-cap,
to be debated. we are prescience,
phantasm, sono-vision, categoric
and contaminated, uncontained.

Does Anybody Else Out There

wish that you were Frida Kahlo, so that you could say,
-Yes, it's true. I fucked Trotsky.

Except you would say it in Spanish.
And you would be a woman.
And you would be dead.

Ahem. Right. Maybe it's just me.
Could be. I suppose it probably is.

Anonymous, Episode Three

Call me Holly. It's short
for Holiday, because
every one of my four children,
one daughter and three
boys, were born on a
national holiday,
which is short for Debra. K.

AnimalSex: Volume 1

What do you get when you cross a rhinoceros and a penguin?

The Continuing Adventures Of Dusty Crazybull

Characters:
Rebecca
Love

Scene:
A motel. Love is working the counter. Rebecca has just walked in. It is snowing outside. Rebecca is winterized: parka, stocking cap, gloves. She removes her hat and gloves.

Rebecca: I need a room.
Love: Oh yeah?
Rebecca: Yeah. You look familiar. I've seen you before.
Love: Probably here. You come in a lot.
Rebecca: No, not here. Do you know Brigit Nielson?
Love: Yeah. Isn't she dating Flava Flav or something?
Rebecca: No, not her. The other Brigit Nielson.
Love: Oh. No, I don't know her.
Rebecca: I know I know you.
Love: Yeah. Probably from here. You come in a lot.
Rebecca: No, not from here. Look, just give me a room.
Love: Alright. I need to see your license.
Rebecca: Sure. But I need to warn you, it's fake.
Love: It's fake? Let me see the real one.
Rebecca: Alright. Here you go.
Love: Shut the hell up. This isn't you. Let me see the other one.
Rebecca: Alright. Here you go. I can't pass for that other lady?
Love: No.
Rebecca: Oh. I'll keep that in mind, seeing as it's me, and it's a picture of me.
Love: Damn. So this isn't you then? It looks like you.
Rebecca: Yeah, that's me too.
Love: They're both you?
Rebecca: Yeah. I really couldn't pass for this other lady?
Love: I thought you said that other lady was you.
Rebecca: It is. I am. It's an older picture. Can I get a room?
Love: Oh. Damn. Yeah. How many people you got with you?
Rebecca: Just me.
Love: Last time you had a guy. Dusty Crazyhorse. You don't have him with you this time?
Rebecca: Crazybull. He's my brother.
Love: Right. So how come your last name is Rodriguez?
Rebecca: I was married.
Love: Right. Okay. Here's your receipt. Sign here. Damn.
Rebecca: Two oh three?
Love: Two oh three.
[Rebecca starts to walk away.]
Love: You want your key?
Rebecca: Yes I do.
[Rebecca gets the key and starts to walk away.]
Love: Don't forget your hat.
Rebecca: Damn. Do you see how tired I am?
[Rebecca walks away.]

Anonymous, Episode Two

Man A: Captain Dumbfuck's home.
Man B: He'll be there tonight?
Man A: Yeah.
Man B: Let's take his corvette. Think he'll be pissed?
Man A: Yeah.
Man B: What'll he do to us when he finds out?
Man A: He's been trying to get me to taste his superhero supershit for as long as I've known him.
Man B: Fuck. Supershit is so much worse than regular shit.

The Future Is A Monkey

Think about it. I have.

There has always been a question lurking in the recesses of my mind, a question that has refused to go away, a question that many science-fiction movies and books and television shows have tried to answer: What will humanity evolve into? What is the next step?

After watching these movies and television shows and reading the books, I decided that if the greatest minds in conceptual fiction couldn't figure it out, what would be the harm in letting myself have a go at it?

After much deliberation, after much time spent in the company of both grey matter and white matter, after much pounding and skull-screeching and mind-numbing barbarism, I didn't figure it out. I was clueless. The best I could do was think that maybe we will all have really big heads.

Then one morning I was on the throne, as I am most mornings, looking at the wall that separates me from my next-door neighbors, and I had a Eureka! moment. It really is a shame that such moments have to come when I'm in the middle of doing that sort of thing, because my immediate compulsion is to stand up, shout Eureka!, and run down the street.

Anyway, I have figured it out. In a golden blaze of intellectual glory all the heavens opened their dark maws before me, the atomic giblets exploding forth in a frothy jismatic display of Truth! Verily the Won Troth! The Question to Which the Answer is Forty-Two!

In an aside, if a black hole can be likened to an asshole, a white hole can be likened to...

A monkey! Yes, the next step in the evolutionary ladder is a monkey! Not just any monkey, no no, but a chimpanzee monkey. It makes so much sense. Everybody loves chimpanzees. They are just the damnedest little guys. And when you get them smoking, or you dress them up like nazis...Well, there isn't anything funnier in the whole wide universe than a chimpanzee French libertine using a guillotine to chop the heads off of the aristocracy.

The way I figure it, the reason that everybody loves chimpanzees is because everybody secretly wants to be a chimpanzee. Let your inner monkey free, they say. Let your inner chimpanzee free, I say. And every major religion always says, Be careful what you wish for, because there's this crazy pseudo-karmic law wherein you most likely get what it is that you most want. But what if everybody really wants to be a chimpanzee? We will be chimpanzees. It is the next step. Prepare thyselfs.

But where is the evidence, Love? Is the question that I next asked myself. A revelation, no matter how intensely and uncomfortably and obviously undeniably unquestionable, will nevertheless undoubtedly be subjected to a hemorrhagic peer review process. I needed proof before the community would accept this for what it is. And I found it.

Do you remember when those chimpanzees were celebrating their birthdays at an animal sanctuary and broke free and went crazy nuts vicious and mauled the birthday-givers? Here, let me remind you. This is taken from the Boston Globe:

Ferocity of chimpanzee attack stuns medics, leaves questions...
'I had no idea a chimpanzee was capable of doing that to a human," said Kern County Fire Captain Curt Merrell...
Davis, who remained in critical condition Friday, was badly disfigured. According to his wife, he lost all the fingers from both hands, an eye, part of his nose, cheek and lips, and part of his buttocks. His foot was mutilated and his heel bone was cracked.

Of course, they don't tell you about Mr. Davis having his testicles bitten off. Whatever.

What? I can assure you that this is indeed proof. I know that you are thinking, that's just an example of a feral animal. Feral animals, as you know, can be quite dangerous. Yes, they can be. A pack of wild, ex-domesticated dogs can be extremely dangerous. But the attack isn't what bothered people about this. People really wouldn't have noticed so much had the chimps simply killed the guy and been about their merrily-savage newly-found free way. What bothered people was because it seemed so deliberate. I mean, the chimps ate his testicles. And bit his nose off. And his ass. Sucked an eye out. I cannot imagine a dog doing that. Or any other animal either, outside of the ape family.

Let's recap. A feral dog might attack you. A feral cat might attack you. A feral dog or cat would not hamstring you and then when you are on the ground screaming as though your life depended on it, which it probably does, urinate in your mouth out of spite. I have a creepy feeling that a chimpanzee just might. Which is why we love those little guys. As opposed to other animals turning feral and becoming savage because humans taught them how, chimpanzees turn feral by letting free their inner person. They don't need to be taught how. Just like people have a 'lizard brain,' chimpanzees have a 'human brain.' And nothing is more obscenely flattering to a person than realizing that maybe life as a person isn't such a bad thing after all if a higher-lifeform chooses, subconsciously or not, to indulge in a little humanity.

It's true. You should listen to me. I am the voice in the wilderness. It's all part of the cycle. What goes around comes around. The circle of life. What has been, will be again. It's true.


...frothy display of jismatic fury? How does the Almighty, creator of all of Creation, come up with these things? There really is nothing stranger than reality. Sometimes I think that the good Lord is a good Lunatic. Maybe he should be put in an asylum. He is obviously unstable, creating things like that. Couldn't he have shown me the Truth! in a less sexually explicit way?

Practical Principles Pertaining To Everything, Part Four

When in doubt, ask for a blindfold and a cigarette.

Oh God, Tell Me It Isn't True

Tell me that I'm an exception, please please PLEASE!.

children who have poor handwriting in first grade are likely to have trouble with written expression when they are older

-Taken from the University of Washington Office of News and Information.

I have often been accused of being a doctor. Were I to attempt to disguise myself as such, there is no doubt in my mind that I could. Like Matt Damon in Catch Me If You Can. When I was in the army they made me re-learn how to sign my name. I thought that was stupid, and promptly forgot the brain-manipulation as soon as I was on the airplane home. One good part of being in the army was that I met some interesting people.

One person I met was from a small town outside Dallas. He got ran over by a car and sued the insurance for a half-million dollars. Then he spent it all on the girls in his high-school, because he didn't know any other girls to spend it on. He felt pretty shitty about that, and used the change in his pocket to buy some booze. He told me that they don't card minors down there like they do everywhere else. He spent a week in the cups before he was run over again. He sued the insurance for a half-million dollars. He said that this time he learned his lesson, so he went into the army. When he was in the army he got a nasty bad case of shin splints. They were so bad that his shin-bones started to pull apart. The army kicked him out. The last time I saw him he told me he was going to use his money to build a skatepark.

Another person I met was from Toledo. He was a smoker, just like I was. He and I used to sneak cigarettes, because you aren't allowed to smoke during your first six weeks in the army. I thought that constituted cruel and unusual punishment. They should at least tell you that in the brochures, so you know exactly what sort of terror and nightsweats you'll have to deal with. He was kicked out for fraternizing with a girl from Charlie Company. You are apparently not supposed to do that sort of thing. They lined us all up on the grounds and then paraded Charlie Company, which was exclusively female, in front of us. This was when they said,
-You are not allowed to touch any of these women. Fraternization is against the rules.

I don't think that any of us actually believed them when they said it. It wasn't until they kicked out Toledo that we got the fear. I think that he would have gotten away with it if he just would have shut up. One morning when we were coming back from PT we saw Charlie Company entering their barracks. Every one of the women had a small plastic bag.

Toledo asked,
-Why they have those bags?

Somebody else said,
-I heard they got the crabs.

-All of them have the crabs?

-That's the way I heard it.

This was when Toledo started freaking out.
-I don't want to have the crabs! I don't want them! Please tell me I don't have them. Drill Sergeant Valentine, I think I need to see the doc.

He was crying. I think that maybe he was scared of getting VD or something, even though crabs really aren't VD.

The last time I saw Toledo, he was in a stall in the bathroom. He said,
-Love, I just crapped and pissed at the same time. I've never done that before. What's it mean, Love?

I told him that I didn't know, having never crapped and pissed at the same time either.

Do I Smell A Challenge?

It is a challenge. See the Dec. 1 post over at Cahiers de Corey. He says, speaking about colons (the punctuation mark. you are a naughty naughty person to think those things), and I quote:

The least "poetic" of punctuations except perhaps for its bastard brother, the semicolon

A challenge it is. I shall exorcise the colon-demon and his bastard brother the semicolon-demon through the frequent and overly exuberant utilization of said devilishly evil punctuations within the body of at least one poem.

kangaroo? : eagle.
eagle? : clothing.
it is only clothing;

kangaroo clothing,
kangaroo suited
clothing, fitted and

formed. clothing? :
eagle clothing, white
and toiletwater or

canada rockymountain
riverwater green /
blue. once i stubbed

my toe on an under-
rivercurrent, coiled,
bowlingball,

invisible: blue
striations seeping,
green striations leeching

into springwater
abundant, red; you
ripped my thickest toe-

nail, ball. but the eagle
isn't in the water;
the eagle is above

the water, the eagle
is waterless: icewater
only his eyes. kangaroo?

seated: ground, brown,
earth; sated: a view
of the sky.

Anonymous, Episode One

What is this Anonymous thing? It is a semi-regular column wherein I explore the mystery of the human condition by documenting random snippets of conversation that I have had the extreme misfortune of overhearing.

As the project is a serious project regarding a serious subject (the human condition), I will approach it with a historian's mindset. That is, in order to properly communicate the historical significance of any particular observation, certain artistic liberties will be taken.

For example:

a man said,

-I fucked your cat last night.

I thought that this was interesting, and relevant to the stated purpose of the project, and so I transcribed it. However, understanding that brevity is the soul of clarity, and also the soul of any well-executed enterprise utilizing the internet as its medium, I did not record the entirety of the conversation, which was this:

Man A: I fucked your wife last night.
Man B: Congratulations. The reason I wasn't home was because I was at your house fucking the cat.
Man A: You fucked Mr. Whiskers?
Man B: God's honest truth.
Man A: You are a dirty bastard. You stay the hell away from my cat.

I Used To Like To Run Around Naked

I would do it everywhere. But it's gotten to where I don't anymore. Why is that? Is it because there isn't anybody to really truly enjoy it? I could do it anyway, but the only people who would see me would be strangers, and what's the point then? It's not as if some woman would start whistling at me or something. Or take me back to her place and give me a spongebath.

Running around naked can be a dirty business sometimes.
There is nothing in this cold December world better than being on the receiving end of a hot soapy sudsy spongebath, given by a truly risk-taking woman, after getting splashed slushy gritty by cars running down Martin Luther King, Jr. Parkway.

When I was in highschool I watched The Fisher King and got inspired. I used to get a whole bunch of friends together in order to go out into Earlham College's soccer field and get naked while looking at the clouds and the moon and the clouds covering the moon. It was fun. It was even more fun when I managed to blackmail girls into going with us.

One morning after I woke up my mother asked me if I hadn't been streaking at Earlham the night before. I admitted that I had, and asked where she had come by her information. She refused to tell me. I, in turn, refused to be intimidated by her insinuations that this was something that I shouldn't be doing. I am glad that I didn't, because the next night saw the biggest turnout ever. It seemed as if the entire town of Richmond Indiana congregated onto that one field. Or at least the entire high school, minus the fascist, bureaucratic teaching staff, which might as well have been the entire town as far as I was concerned anyway. I think the reason so many people showed up was because this particular night was the Fourth of July, and the naked festivities involved bottle-rockets, saturn missiles, and roman candles.

Just as there should be rules governing the mixing of alcohols, there should be rules concerning the mixing of nudity, particularly those body parts left most exposed by said nudity, and explosives. This was effectively demonstrated to the involved parties with the concussive flash-burning, by a plastic-tipped whistling moon-rocket, of Analisa's left breast. Analisa was somebody that I had never met before. I meet people in the most unusual circumstances. I learned her name as I was helping her walk from the field, gather her scattered articles of clothing, dress in her clothing because she found it somewhat difficult to raise her left arm to the height required to put on her shirt, and then walk to my house, being the closest house to the center of excess, where she might be able to lie down for a bit in order to recuperate before heading home.

She didn't want to go to the hospital, and I didn't want to take her to the hospital. How would we have explained what had happened? We both understood that most adults frown on those sorts of behaviors, and so we decided that it would be better not to try to explain it to them in the first place.

When we got to my place I tried talking to her, as I found these conditions to be cunducive to the potential of a potential. She said she didn't feel like talking. I understood. However, with the excitement of meeting a new person quickly fading, and color rapidly returning to her face, I desired to be back in the center of whatever action was occurring on the field. I told her to make her home my home, and then I left.

To this day I haven't been able to figure out whether she was just embarassed at the turn of events, or if it was because we belonged to divergent social circles, but I never saw her again.

Back at the field, nothing was happening. The girls had decided that what had happened to Analisa looked entirely too painful to endure, and the guys all realized that had that happened to one of them, in a different but altogether possible place, they would no longer be guys, and so the fireworks were discontinued. Without fireworks there was only nudity. Some people, apparently, cannot be naked without a reason to be naked. I've never understood that. I could sit and look at a naked person all day long. It doesn't matter what sex they are, either. Hell, I could look at myself naked all day long. The self-conscious ones were the first to go. Once they left, others left. Once the others left, everybody left, except for the die-hards that I had turned on to this whole business earlier. We remained, looking at the moon and the clouds and the clouds covering the moon.

I never saw most of those self-conscious people again either.

Anyway, I don't go about naked so much anymore. I'm not sure when that changed. Maybe it was when I realized that most adults frown on that sort of behavior. A specific subset of 'most adults' would be 'most cops'. If I were a woman, it might not be so bad. At least cops give a woman something to wear when they arrest her. Like in the movie Splash, when they gave Daryl Hannah a long t-shirt that covered everything. Unlike Daryl Hannah, I didn't get anything to wear. I didn't even get a private cell. What I got was a sleepless night on a cold bench. What I got was fear: fear of moving, fear of standing up, fear of using the john, fear of criminals, fear of the law.

I'm trying to not be afraid of things anymore. As one of my twelve self-imposed steps on the road to recovery from fear, I need to go be naked in public. But I'm not sure that I can do it by myself. I think I need a little moral support. By that, I mean 'physically present' moral support, and not just 'with you in spirit, man'. So, if anybody's going to be in central Iowa this summer and wants to get naked in public with a poet, let me know. I'll put the light on. We'll look at the moon. And if we get arrested, provided that you're a woman, at least you'll get a t-shirt, right?

Practical Principles Pertaining To Everything, Part Three

If a woman is staring at you, it does not necessarily mean that she wants to have sex.

Nothing kills the moment faster than when you're dryfucking some strange woman's leg and she screams RAPE!! and stabs you in the neck with a disposable blue ballpoint pen.

And nothing is more inconvenient than for the rest of your life, to everybody who asks (and everybody will ask), having to come up with a believable explanation as to why it is exactly that you have a funny little circular blue tattoo on your neck.