Tuesday, August 30, 2005

House of Talk

There are many voices I have
for every moon rising on a mood
which splinters into issues about
the weather and everything under
the atmosphere of that's tense
as white knuckles grabbing
the edge of the kitchen counter,

I am fine and you are so lovely
in your gloves as you new that axe,
your eyes are the softest gaze I've
ever had laid upon me as you scan
my neck, imagining brilliant pencil
dashes that come to resemble
perforation marks, wear every tears
in your outstanding order of dead things,

You piss me off royal and it's all I can do
to stop my fist from flying with an intent
of it's own to make your chin meet knuckles
or have your head meet a boot heel,
all that remains of the sunset is blood red
and the flushed rage of a setting sun that
sets screaming mutely as it sets off to scorch
another side of the planet, it's a car I want
to steal and drive into western towns where
motels rest at the edge of the desert, whiskey
and cigarettes on the bed stand, a revolver
on the pillow, a full box of bullets,


I hope you forgive me and let me
go somewhere to die, just to don't hate
me as much you might be inclined to,
I want only the best in the name of the Savior
and interest rates are good, it was all for you
and yours, but I fucked up, I fucked up bad,
I am worthless as candy wrappers, gum
stuck to the light pole, you are happier without me
calling you up at three or four in the AM and hanging up before you could take a breath, don't
hate me, let leave, I'll find some place to die,



My mouth is dry and tired from
all this talking, and the earth turns
on it's celestial wires all the same
despite protests, the choruses of
denial and rants, the rooms of
this house are full of talk with every
personality saying a line affixed
to the walls, the dry wall, the electrical
lines that go out into the world,
I practice each tone, each attack
and apology, there are no mirrors
in the hallway, no glass in the windows,
wind blows amid hisses and whistles
through the cracks in the brick,
I am silent again, I am voiceless.

Sunday, August 28, 2005

Cop Poem

Cop Poem

Police men have a way of
dividing the world in half
with every hour they walk
the beat or grind it as they drive,

It’s about who they will
or will not put in jail,

Whose nose is arched
like bridges spanning
skylines over grievous waters
or flat and elegant as a small  pocket
on streamlined suit,

It’s about where they can park
when there’s nothing but
trouble on the radio,
or where they have to
drive away from when
the street comes up short on
bricks that were there the day before
and ugliness was an old house
junkies live in and not
the crowd that gathers on the corners
and will not stop glaring
until the glares become sharp sticks,
iron pipes, broken bits,

It’s knowing where your backup is
and where the shortcuts  come out to

and just how far
a dollar will go
on Saturday night.

Friday, August 26, 2005

Snaking under the ri

Snaking under the river to Canada

there were three moons in the sky
in the middle of the day
when darkness fell before
pants did the same,

the world just seemed to spin
like a bicycle tire, spokes
blending in motion against
the racket made by a baseball card,
and I remember something like a smile
on my face as uncut grass and
candy bar wrappers caressed and
pelted my face,

sounds of boots walking over
gravel, coming up the drive way,
the flower bed in front of the porch
where Dad stood with his tie loosened,
hands in his pocket, laughing out loud,
Mom smoking cigarette after cigarette
until it killed her thirty years later,

the officer says
it was a party they raided
that was full of high school kids
drinking beer around the pool,
I was wrestling with a lawn chair
before collapsing
into a giggling puddle of useless water,

Dad keeps laughing
and Mom has a scotch
with her cigarette,
fretting on the porch
about the future and
every bottle I might open
until the end of days,

“give me a kiss” says Dad,
and they argue until
I fall back asleep on the couch,
sawing logs loud as air horns
in traffic tunnels snaking under
the river to Canada.

A City Was Magic in Black and White Magazines


In a hurry and half dumbwith love, he walks through an alley,scratching his scalp,and whistles another country's anthem
in an age when TV headlines have itthat the sky never stops falling,He stops, sings a stanza in French, "My Cherie Amour", and skips mightily passed all the rear entrances and trash bins Simon and Garfunkel would have waxed and waned about in a language that made the obvious things in the city oppressive with meaning secreted among the rheumy lines of grime and gunk,
he laughs, thinks bunk, I need her armsand a good meal with amazing bread,
bottled water, baskets full of cheese, and thensomeone screams in the city,
a woman on a corner screams for life and more money
from whatever carpassed on a wet street, the night was filled
with screams and the hiss of tires slithering up back streets
and alleys that used to be short cuts in another decade
when a city was magic in black and white magazines,
there are many hours until the sun comes rises over the river,
light rays poking between the suspension cables
of sleeping bridges,days to go before something falls from the sky again
with all the heaviness assembled weight can bring on the length of the streets,
minutes away one of our own leaving the coil
that binds us as another joins the chorus,
too young in the first moments to hold sheet music
or know what we're attached to in these blurs that
come alive from their darkness and approach him in the dark,
he sings on,too late,he's asked"Where you from, "and he singstoo loudly to heara metallic clickand a bark of large dogs,he was expecting everyone to join in the chorusbecause love is all that matterswhen everyone knows the words,but instead the nightblackens all at once,a curtain drops,every line is unhingedas doors would bein a fast, devastatingheat coming acrossa flat Nevada desert,a city of jewelsburns high on amountain top,there is onlylight to follow,cordless , stringless musicat the end of corridor filled witha very white light.

Gatorade don't do it


Someone has to be the one
breaking the bad news over old bread,
catching us when there’s one arm in the coat
and chewing stale toast.
Seldom do you expect that
the length of the shadow
following you might possibly
be only one of many such shrouds,
all with names and families,
black or grey streaks falling across
sidewalks and brick fences,
each taking turns keeping you in line,
waiting your turn, motherfucker.
It’s getting so bad
that we’ll take a meeting
behind bars and resolve
that this is the year
we will throw away.

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

She said go deep



She said to “go deep”
as she handed me a football
which I dropped then
while I wondered out loud
how and why these goal posts
were erected in our store
to which she said
that she refused to
take her work home
but it was simply wonderful
to bring home life to the job.
As usual, I shrugged
and answered the
phone in my best
late night
broadcast
voice
and found myself
speaking to
a woman who had a book
with a yellow cover
that reminded
her of the dress she wore
seven decades ago
on her first communion,
in the spring,
when flowers bloomed
and relatives started sneezing.
She paused and
then hung up the phone,
and as I put my end down
a kid from the neighborhood
was at the counter
asking me the price
of every book and
pencil in sight
in between segments from
his gasping saga
of buying a tombstone for an
uncle who once got funny with him
in a closet
two holidays ago.
the kid laughed nervously, fast,
breathless, as I said,
and ran out the door
onto the cracked, pricey sidewalk.
My coworker
was doing drum solos
with number 2 pencils
along the glass shelves
that displayed the
heaviest books in the store,
she smiled and riffed,
pinged, rim shot her
way out of a tight
rhythmic problem,
the phone rang again,
she tells me to
get that,
but I get nothing at all
except a headache,
looking up from the counter
after I pick up the receiver,
some middle aged guy
in an MC 5 t-shirt
holding a mounted moose head
over the cash register,
a long stretch of Bullwinkle
waiting to be kissed,
it’s all I can do
not to look up
from the small holes
in the receiver,
it’s still three hours till lunch.




At noon all the cats




At noon all the cats
behind the bushes
and yowl for their rights
to milk and stiff fingers
scratching their heads.

Such faces they make
when there is one can left,
squinting under the sun
that’s not even blinding
the visiting team’s outfield staff.

She learned how to
read when the cuffs came off,
signs in hard English explaining
basic hygiene as it doesn’t get
mentioned in stacks of Elizabethan smut.

One bullet was all he needed,
one clear shot,
a gun would help, he joked,
and then a car pulled out
from a parking spot and
he stepped on the gas,
turning hard with a squeal,
gravel flying.

It’s just another
rumor of fires
behind the hills
where there are still trees
to clear for our houses
and meals with families
from other states.

Cats leave the pool alone
but sing to the moon instead
as jets make their way in
formations ready for desert blitz,

These are nights when
no calls get through,
cell phones go out of range
in the back of your pocket,

Emergency operators are
standing by as you stand there
staring at the phone and trying
to watch the ball game at the same time,

Did you say you’re from Detroit?
Great. That’s where Jimmy Hoffa
was sliced into a dozen Sicilian pizzas,
y’know?

Karl Marx wrote his wife
love poems for each daughter
who died waiting for him to
change the world.

San Diego is a home
that makes sleeping
seem a crime against
drugs and their use.

Goddamnit, I say
move the mountain
to Arizona, to hell with the Cross.

Monday, August 22, 2005

Every Floor Gives Way


You are a card carrying
waste of time
and I am
a prince and a punk
whose words make
noise like coins
falling on marble floors,
a rattle and a snap,
and then silence
like a big room after a wake.

One of us
talks too much
on right-turn radio
where opinions
are all you have
when the facts
are no where
in the vicinity.
The other of us
packs a lunch
every morning,
and by 4pm
notices the
long shadows of
buildings draping
over the park bench
where they
nap until quitting time.
The paper bag
clinks with
the rustle of
broken glass,
a police radio
repeats the name
of another child gone
missing from the
playground,
a child reads the names
of those who died
somewhere at work,
over a city that was
getting ready for lunch,
afternoon naps,
both of us
stare at each other
when the bad news
reaches our table
at the bar,
news stations
offering their best
screaming headlines,

All we ever do is scream
at each
other
I say,
And you
add.
That's the only time
we hear each other


I scratch
where it itches
before asking
you for a kiss
like you gave me
in the days
we were younger
and full of the future.

We'll meet for dinner
at eight you say,
we'll line our pockets
with knowledge
and bread,
dance
together to the news, weather, sports.
all notes
about forms of battle,
we'll raise our
voices
and yell the worth of
our lives and anxieties
into the mix
we'll pass between ourselves
while the
earth turns, cracks, splits apart
and the cries of the night
merge with the sunlight
and becomes a part our day
of yelling and screaming
and every floor
collapsing from under our feet.

No Birds


So much depends on sunlight,
a head turning the other way to
avoid a crash of sight lines,
long sails on the bay during
still water days,
hotel keys dropped in the sand.

God is dead asleep
in the hills
along paths the coastline,
the philosophy of dust
contravenes conventional wisdom
those beautiful things
last forever in the shapes we gave them
because the roads to the beach
are lined with abandoned houses
and farm equipment left
from another decade in arid fields
that turn into mire and mud
every time it rains.

Nothing grows here.

Catholic to the bone, look,
there are no holes in my hand,
Jesus must have dirty fingers
after he arose from his ales,
I baptize myself with layers
of deodorant soap, water circles the drain
in a funnel, and then is gone.

The tornado pulls itself
over the land and reconfigures the
towns and farms it ploughs through,
this land is matchsticks and glass
blowing over the hills,
windows blow out buildings,
everyone ducks into cellars
and door frames,

The shoreline boils and churn,
waves are white,
there are no birds in the sky.




A Wild Rotary Blade in his Pants


"I am tired of drying the goddamned cat by hand."

That was what he said. Drying the cat by hand and all he could do
was rant and spew about how much he hated being alive in a city
where no one knew the meaning of the fine phrase "get down." It was enough
to make a man wish that none of the riots of sixties had taken place
if only because it was time for a man to be a man and cram a wild
rotary blade in his pants.

"Why don't we go into the other room where we can can
figures some shit out and shit like that?"

"Fuck you, I want a copy of Commie Grelb Pants magazine
on my coffee table right now..."

I picked up a copy of Gravity's Rainbow and hit him over the head with it,
and kept hitting him until there was nothing to swing at.

Sunday, August 21, 2005

Change for a dollar

Most of the change from the dollar
For the newspaper falls to the floor,
It’s all you can do not swear and smile instead
As the cashier with the greased fingertips
Widens her eyes, eyebrows pitching in
An A frame of worry,

A tiny smile on her face trembling as
She fights back the fear, her mouth
Shrinking to an ‘o’ of ‘oh my”, she giggles, she sobs,
Everyone stares past the candy bars and magazines
To see who made their angel cry,

Oh my back creaks like
A door on a corroded hinge,
My knees crack when I bend,
Snapping twigs are what
People remember for

Every penny is flat at your feet
And red faced as you stare hard
At several Lincoln copper tone beard
Tarnishing under the fluorescent light,
Round taunts lying on two tone tile,

You smile at her, you bend over,
Knees make the sound of snapping twigs,

Oh my goddamned back

Every dime, quarter and nickel
Has rolled under the counter,
Out of sight, having scurried
To some dusty corner
The janitor’s mop couldn’t reach,

I’m making the sounds my father made

And you swear you see him as you stoop
Walking out of an elevator and out the street,
Wearing a nice suit and fine hat from fifty years ago,

Around the time you were born
When all this wear and tear began.


Saturday, August 20, 2005

Florida hat band




when speaking of fronts,
the back must follow
as would a shadow after
a figure in the full brunt
of noon day glare,
pressed together and
poetically obvious to
an eye that registers
each straight line
and ordered fold of evey
woven thing in the vacinity,

in between
only bloodlines
and tissue wrapped
around a matrix of bone,
a unity of
all things happening at once
for the good reasons
writ on chalk boards
in lecture halls,
phenomena not
stopping for slide shows,

a society of immense, overlayed functions
that sustain the apparatus
of the gesture that attempts to
soften the gaze that freezes ambition,
makes desire a dead, cracking flower,
the mouth a riot of
twitches that might
be words had
not so much depended
on the red wheel barrow
glazed with rain water
by chickens gone
platinum in the
depths of the Big City,

large traffic
stops the two sides
of street from meeting
in combat,
and Democracy
sweats like a Florida hat band.

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Zip


By eight in the morning
all you had to do was sing
and think of ways to keep the neighbors
distracted with your long legs
and rumor of a shirt.

I tell that I cannot find the
part in my hair
as the poker playing dogs in
that ugly poster all look
as though they've broken their pose
and look at me from the side
of their eyes,
pupils full of need and confusion
following the stroked of my comb
while I forge a route, a clean, thin
line of scalp so my hair matches the
way your face flairs red
when I mention that you're singing
makes me drunk with memories with all
the sex I've ever had,

I say this and see you
go up like a match,

You sing in a voice that could
make Heaven confess
to sins that would embarrass Lucifer,
turn deserts green with envy,
make fish grow arms and legs
and new lungs so they
can climb from the brine
and walk a mile for
whatever it is you're serving,
all this makes me weak in the knees,
my bones rattle and I shake
with sensations of oceans
leaving me and making me feel spent
and falling into some
idea of subterranean afterlife

When my cell phone rings
a digital chill of a melody
long in the cruel face of
public domain,

Help me find my part, I ask,
no, you answer,
I have fish to feed and children to teach,
but come here and zip me up
I will be there in a zip I say
you will never see the hand that
makes you late for work.

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Cloudless Black Tablature


There is nothing that drink won't fix
but the bars are closed on Sundays
so it's holy water instead of vodka
we'll soak our cam shafts in,

Yes, the library looks like a spinning top,

Regular posse mode gives broken disc
half chance to shred party dress with
flower vase shard and splatter guitar vexing
because every nerve is a note plucked with
a pick foregrounding power lines crossing
the white moon alone in cloudless black tablature,

Where there was language commerce has ploughed under,

Peculiar pajama party pizza slice Romeo
melts like cheese, runny and gooey at the
ends of centuries he had to chew on for tests
he was late for and gazed into rooms watching
friends at desks drum number 2 pencils against
top lips moaning grieving over
the Battle of Gettysburg all over again,

Meet the author and kiss him until
his wife writes her own book and
you may in turn change your taste
in scents and spices.

Tennis shoes on power lines,

Vacant room overlooking train yard
the way you were going 'til something
nameless crawled into your suitcase
and made it weigh more than your mortgage,
dollar signs made of brass and iron,

A bent 'h',

Let's leave the cross where it is
and move the mountain instead
one spoon at time, several times a day,
seven days a week,
we have too much shore line as it is,

Shelves full of empty aerosol cans,

Bird cages are left open
and there are feathers
spinning down from the rafters,
we cover our sandwiches
with duck billed hats,
there is a line drive to center field,
vacant skyscrapers in the background,
proud as men facing a firing squad,
A hand job going both ways,

A box of pencils,
a jar of paint thinner,
a gum eraser,

Lips around a straw,
Sammy Davis Jr. felt painting,
white men fishing before the black perspective of the news,
morning comes to the last dark crevice behind the dumpster,

Modified rolling pin sawdust splayer grinds off
another batch of odes and codes and stanzas that corrode
in the places they are positioned like pistons proud and
erect like men who are thoroughly fucked
with what this life has in store for them,

An apple on a plate, sliced into four parts.



Monday, August 8, 2005

His Love for The World


Slate Magazine: "His Love for The World

After we bow
our heads
under the railroad cross
and crawl across
the stone mason's floor
and boundless black sand,


He will love
me just a little bit more
as I hold my breath,
lift my last sword
and thunder stick,
stab my palms with
quills to write home with,
He will love us all
as he would love a storm
that breaks every limb of tree
that smites the eye
that sees only lands
pure and white with sterility,

He will love us
then love us
all the more until

There is no more
skin to bruise cut
or otherwise rent
with the talking points
of our crusade,
no more flesh to humble
in piles of limbs
and heads saying
prayers that return
to the lips of
the doomed which say them,

Not until
the last flag
is laid over
the last box
and are no more hands
with fingers enough
to grip
and squeeze the trigger.


"

Sunday, August 7, 2005

Cloudless black tablature


(A cubist musing)

There is nothing that drink won’t fix
but the bars are closed on Sundays
so it’s holy water instead of vodka
we’ll soak our cam shafts in,

Yes, the library looks like a spinning top,

Regular posse mode gives broken disc
half chance to shred party dress with
flower vase shard and splatter guitar vexing
because every nerve is a note plucked with
a pick foregrounding power lines crossing
the white moon alone in cloudless black tablature,

Where there was language commerce has ploughed under,

Peculiar pajama party pizza slice Romeo
melts like cheese, runny and gooey at the
ends of centuries he had to chew on for tests
he was late for and gazed into rooms watching
friends at desks drum number 2 pencils against
top lips moaning grieving over
the Battle of Gettysburg all over again,

Meet the author and kiss him until
his wife writes her own book and
you may in turn change your taste
in scents and spices.

Tennis shoes on power lines,

Vacant room overlooking train yard
the way you were going ‘til something
nameless crawled into your suitcase
and made it weigh more than your mortgage,
dollar signs made of brass and iron,

A bent “h”,

Let’s leave the cross where it is
and move the mountain instead
one spoon at time, several times a day,
seven days a week,
we have too much shore line as it is,

Shelves full of empty aerosol cans,

Bird cages are left open
and there are feathers
spinning down from the rafters,
we cover our sandwiches
with duck billed hats,
there is a line drive to centerfield,
vacant skyscrapers in the background,
proud as men facing a firing squad,

A hand job going both ways,

A box of pencils,
a jar of paint thinner,
a gum eraser,

Lips around a straw,
Sammy Davis Jr. felt painting,
white men fishing before the black perspective of the news,
morning comes to the last dark crevice behind the dumpster,

Modified rolling pin sawdust splayer grinds off
another batch of odes and codes and stanzas that corrode
in the places they are positioned like pistons proud and
erect like men who are thoroughly fucked
with what this life has in store for them,

An apple on a plate, sliced into four parts.

Friday, August 5, 2005

LEAD PIPE CINCY


Five steps
down but
who is smoking three
on a match songbook
waxy buildup
and navy blue.

This is no way
to mop the floor
or wipe that smile
from your face
as we dig for
the penny caught
in the snuggest bug palace.

The trains
don't go
to Del Mar
in July
in the heat
of the races
doggedly horsing half smiles
and cigar strands
of moonless romance.

Days from now
it's all the same
snow you've been
plowing back into the street.

Contemplate other facts
and areas of growth
like pants too tight
this time of night.

Money doesn't
grow on trees
nor does freedom come
from a barrel
of monkeys
but banana pants bosses down
run it all down,
for keeps.

You see
all the sins
of the saints
in the mold
in the bread laid
before the dead priest's body,
now eat.

Five steps up chopping wood
front style like biker skronk melon
shredded on skunk bud, mac,
my cloistered quiver requires a point.

Sunday, July 31, 2005

The rocket's red glare

The rocket's red glarehow drunk could be getbefore we began to look attractive to the flies that buzz around our heads ,against the broad strokesof red and henna coded cloudsthat set the horizon on fireas the sun sinksjust a tip under the blurred line of the planetwhere earth and skyare a duo that play one masterful rondoafter anotherone of us stands upto God and his whispering minionsthat he is tired ofsuffering the resultsof a good ideagone postal.i raise my head from my palms,stop studying the waymy shoe laces arecoming untied,i gather a sense thatthere is more to lifethan gas , food and lodgingbut would settlefor any thing because i hadnone of the aboveand no love for curbsand the drainage dreamsthey inspire, i ask "IS THERE AN ARE ART SHOWCLOSING SOMEWHERE TONIGHT??"the other one of uswas still drinking as he careened up the street,one side to the other,all the billboards should read "tilt","LOVE STRAYSAND STAYS ARID"he yells at a passing bus,i laugh, Jesus what a jerk,i will take the busand play music in my skulluntil it comes,i will be serene and leanon the vernacularthat's so spectacularwhen I'm in the bagand full of mean remarks,i will behave,i will be silent,nothing will upset me,i am invisible on the bus line,but even as my mantrais uttered and foldedinto a vest pocket of the soulover where the heart still beatswith what remains ofmy sense of my self andvirtues beyond the bulge of my wallet,a car approachesthrough the intersection,it veers closer,i sing to the streetlights,the fixtures on the power lines,the car slows down,i'm on the twelfth chorus of "Cherokee",something breaks in my lapand then I am wetwith waterneither painful nor holy,the car speeds awayinto the slim v perspectivethat runs right to the water's edge,i am wetyet am i blessedin such a state,i hum another chorus, my lap drenchedwith tap water andbits of burst balloon,and now it's darkafter eight pm in Julywhen the fireworks go offfrom the end of the pier,where i wanted to beto make a phone callunder the rocket's red glare.

Sunday, July 24, 2005

More from Netflix: Spielberg's Big Bang



The absence of any new movies compelling enough to fill column inches by film critics has a few them stirring matters up in the buzz-community with controversy that is more self-serving that satisfying as something to read: is Steven Spielberg exploiting 9/11 with his added element of terrorism and “sleeper cells” in his remake of War of the Worlds?

The question is inevitable, really. Had 9/11 not happened, there would writers searching for a lapse in ethical production with a question or two about whether the director was exploiting the Oklahoma bombing for topical subtext, with the Michigan Militia taking the place of Al Qaeda as the sublimated fifth column represented in the film. But 9/11 and Al Qaeda it is, and there defenders to Spielberg’s use of the attack as an undercurrent in is remake. Slate’s reviewer, David Edelstein, one of the better film critics working, goes overboard and maintains that Spielberg had earned the right to tailor his film to mirror the current paranoid state. It’s the sort of argument that uses every item on the shelf one can throw at, which makes the defense breathless, barely aware of its own absurdity. The first question to Edelstein's quick-draw defense is who among us hadn't earned the right to discuss, depict, interpret and frame the attack by dint surviving it , witnessing it, grieving and raging over it? Spielberg has his right to conceptualize his meanings of 9/11 all he wants, but his right to the material supersedes no one else's who was here, on this soil, American-born.

Precisely how Spielberg "earned the right" to invoke 9/11 in War of the Words isn't clear in David Edelstein's defense. Despite what the headline of the story implies, there is no gauntlet that Spielberg had to run, no set of noble tasks he had to perform, no spectacularly patriotic deeds he had to commit in order to gain the moral right to refer to 9/11 in his work. As is, the only rights he needed are those afforded him by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights; the fact that he's a fantastically successful director whose name means large profits didn't hurt him either. I doubt there was much mulling over his "right" to make transparent allusions to 9/11 while the film was in production, or even under discussion. For all the rest of it, War of the Worlds is typical Spielberg fair, blatantly pushing hot buttons, skirting the edge of the gross and edgy, but reeling back from the abyss for the fabled Hollywood Uplift that have made analyzing his films useless beyond a certain technical appraisal. Spielberg makes spectacles, loud, noisy, and fast paced, unencumbered by character depth or situations that don't fall into a play book of tropes we haven't already seen in his movies since 1941 or ET. The stab for significance, for a resonating theme against recent national catastrophe, is to be expected, but one cannot seriously argue that this makes for a new level in Spielberg's film making. He's tried his hand at being an important movie maker, but he remains someone who loves all the technologized smoke-and-mirrors over the examination of one real human detail.

Even with all the references and metaphors to terrorists and sleeper cells, War of the Worlds is exactly the sort of expensive wind up toy we expect from Spielberg and his sort; a mechanized, mindless engine of activity that will pursue its own demise, clamorously so. As it goes, Spielberg consistently demonstrates mastery with the big effects and visual garnishes he loves to deploy. They're eye-popping treats, and sometimes there is even a horrible beauty in the crammed images even as he strains, preens and exerts his directorial will for effect. The rain of clothes in the forest as the family flees a Tripod attack in particular is haunting for any number of reasons, not the least being that it's a well composed scene that appears at the right point in the proceedings. 

Subtext , ambiguity and philosophical-laced irony are not his strong suits, however, and what attempts there are in his works to grapple with the uncrossable essences of life are either complete muddles, demonstrated with his curious and garbled "collaboration" with Kubrick AI , or rescind all claims at problematized edginess by an arbitrary insertion of family-values endings, viewable in Minority Report. Other praised "mature" works like Saving Private Ryan and Schindler's List never rise above the ham-handed when it comes to offering wisdom to an audience, and that's Spielberg's flaw; he tries to think and succeeds principally in dressing up civics-course clichés with 100 million dollar budgets. There are those who will make a case for Spielberg as having more gravitas than he's been given credit for, but it's the sort of argument that produces language much too eloquent for the cause at hand; they don't sound as if they really believe the hype and overstate the case. Hollywood would prefer that he most successful American director in history be an intellectual as well as an entertainer , but little in the gale of words coming to Spielberg's defense obscures the obvious, that he is a technician, an extremely competent craftsman who occasionally make satisfying, crowd pleasing entertainments. The final scene, with the reappearance of the assumed dead son at Grandma and Grandpa's house in the only Boston neighborhood that hadn't been torched by the aliens, was nearly enough to ruin the film for me. As sheer spectacle, WOTW has the slick allure of a disaster movie, but Spielberg feels required to assure us that the central characters are all okay in the end. The son's reemergence was as sloppy and cynical a ploy as the resurrection of ET.


Spielberg's right to use 9/11 references isn't disputed here, it's the pretense that what he's offering up is anything more than entertainment with an overlay of topicality. Spielberg has tried his hand several times to be Serious Director, and the results--Pvt. Ryan, The Color Purple, Schindler's List-- are notable for the fact that  tries so hard  hard for significance. The fatal flaw with these films, I think, is his inability to abandon visual hugeness and instead explore an idea of human concern. War of the Worlds works well it does because he's back with the kind of material he does wonders with, the sci-fi action-adventure. The secret in this formula is to keep the number of ideas you're working with to a minimum, keep your focus, and keep things moving at a brisk, efficient pace. It's a darker vision, it's topical and fraught with a sharper paranoia and alarm than before, but it's intended, finally, as escapist fare, expensively mounted. I don't attack Spielberg for doing what does when it comes together, but we ought not to pretend that his intentions are nobler than woman who cuts your hair or the man who bags your groceries

Tuesday, July 19, 2005

Cecil Taylor


Nothing fits the cadence that
quits before a fist can pound

hard ivory blocks for truth
that is both black and white

and a chronic wash of riffing tones
flying in formation around the
shape of your head as you forget dreams
and addresses of friends you need to call,

drums lay it down, high hat , snare rattle,
a road that takes you out of town

to further reaches past the beaches
and downtown corners where you
cars and their screeches
as they stop for pedestrians
chatting up phantoms with
empty cell phones, wasting
minutes as they cross,

fingers building and knocking down
chords and melodies to the rhythm

that has ceased to be a way to move forward
and is now a quaking way to meet
the man in the moon,

piano jazz in the thick of cocktails
that muddy the distinctions between
a screaming blues sting
or the sideways , shard -ridden
gray-hued murk of Dachau's
lost voice and string quartets,

a music that's constantly waking up
in night sweats, angular and hallow
in the chest,

are there shadows dancing
with one another as this
music plays?

Saturday, July 2, 2005

Bombs bursting in air


Bombs bursting in air

Something smells like gas
everytime he comes on TV,

our world in the political sense
is smaller and less comprehensible,

he does shadow animals against
the a map of the earth, making it

seem as if a vulture was swooping
where an arrow points to a California town

that reads "You Are Here!", black wings
and thumbnail talons ready to scratch

place names right off the surface,
a room mate lights a cigarette,

"That shit will kill you" I say while
I wave a hand in air that doesn't move,

he puffs, jettisons a hard white stream,
points to the set,

"Look who has an army and navy" he says
and walks out the door onto a dark street

where turntables and hard rock guitars
do tricks with the language that will not

address them directly, I smell gas
and get the feeling of having wings

suddenly and without reason, my drink is spilled,
more people with bombs are killed,

a vote hardly seems worth the chad that
hangs from it,

every state has something rotten
at the core, it's bombs in the air,

collapsing buildings, planes off their flight plans,
we can clean up this mess with enough gasoline,

who's revolution is it anyway?

Bombs bursting in air

Bombs bursting in air

Something smells like gas
everytime he comes on TV,

our world in the political sense
is smaller and less comprehensible,

he does shadow animals against
the a map of the earth, making it

seem as if a vulture was swooping
where an arrow points to a California town

that reads "You Are Here!", black wings
and thumbnail talons ready to scratch

place names right off the surface,
a room mate lights a cigarette,

"That shit will kill you" I say while
I wave a hand in air that doesn't move,

he puffs, jettisons a hard white stream,
points to the set,

"Look who has an army and navy" he says
and walks out the door onto a dark street

where turntables and hard rock guitars
do tricks with the language that will not

address them directly, I smell gas
and get the feeling of having wings

suddenly and without reason, my drink is spilled,
more people with bombs are killed,

a vote hardly seems worth the chad that
hangs from it,

every state has something rotten
at the core, it's bombs in the air,

collapsing buildings, planes off their flight plans,
we can clean up this mess with enough gasoline,

who's revolution is it anyway?

Monday, June 27, 2005

off we go

when there is no daylight
at the edge of the bed,
my hair wakes up
before I do , ablaze with sunrise.

therefore, your orange juice
is precious, sweet and
quenching in the pulp,
light dims to a readable gleam,
my hair lies flat on my head,
you make lunch for your daughters,

there is still so much to do,
you say,
what shall we do
and where is the microphone
we were promised,
I mean, we need
to go off on a toot
and scream for justice
from roof tops that
will not throw us off
or collapse as we raise
our voice above the static,
here, wipe your chin, silly man...

Emily sneaks a doll into her lunch box
and
Violette looks unhappy
as only beauty could make
and I was on my third
cup of coffee, my second cigarette
when the earth
began to shake, the ceiling
began to shake
the walls began to vibrate
like engines raging in small rooms, door closed,
we scream and cower,
cuddly and ready for a quake.

trash pick up
you say,
I wish they
wouldn't push those
huge dumpsters against
the apartment building, not an earthquake?
asks Violette,
no dearest you answer,
we still have to go to school?
she queries,
yes you reply,
we all have someplace to be
with many important things to do.
.

I rise from the floor,
gaze in the mirror at my hair askance,
ready to
sit at my desk,
answer the phone
and ask everyone who
calls how there day has been so far.




Wednesday, June 22, 2005

by the bay

my voice leaves me
and i breathe no more,

you are on wings
and on a prayer,

a memory with wings
that flies over the bay,

gulls that scud the surface
of the bay, picking up fish,

my voice sings with no words,
every note of my blues

ascends a register,
i clench my fists, i speak your name.

your mother cries, your father weeps,
yes, your eyes are the bluest

they've ever been,

boats with sails cruise to the horizon
in the middle of the day,

we eat fruit and weep by the bay,

expecting you to come along, somehow,
because you always did

in darkest hour or brightest day,
a cornerstone is gone,

our house tilts a little more,

but the skies are clear, i say at last,
they are the bluest they've every been...
"

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

People Who Hang Up

It's love that breaks against the rocks
and not foam nor water of any kind,
it's a baptism of ire that makes the horizon

burn in coalish, motionless plumes.

Stained cotton from every beach front window.

We were smoking joints

in the guts of the canyons,
the mired trai1s to
the sea kissed shale.

All the blues from Chicago knife

and gunshot histories are folk lore
all the kids
destroy with their breathing.

Even at dinner time,
forks are next to plates
whose owners wonder
what's eating their neighbors
with all the strange phone calls
about what's going on the beach.

The armies of the night couldn't
scare up a quarter
of the beaches America
has landed on
searching for something
to talk about
on acres
of empty cable talk shows
where anyone in a tight suit and big glasses
can explain away the bombs bursting in air
with sarcasm
and ad -libs.

Thursday, June 2, 2005

Beside Ourselves

We cannot stop scratching
the skin where it itches

anymore than cars can't
but rust when parked outdoors
in rainy climes,

each dime I have goes to no
good purpose

which is to buy you
more things whose name
you purr with that slight tremble in the vowels,

here's a wooden owl for you
to sit next to, it has clock
where the stomach should be,

it's eyes move from side to side
like yours do when the drugs
are especially wicked,

there's dust the knees
my favorite slacks,
and there's a hole in an elbow
of my jacket from leaning
on lunch counters
as I ready magazines about fame,

you call me again
and it's been years
since I've seen you
and I leave the phone
on the pillow while
I leave the room to shave,

you've said it all before
and I heard it each time
you spoke your ills
into being ,

nothing dies in your mind,
your demons are arisen,

nothing is deadened
in any inch of my skin,

desire burns
for years dispite the cities
I've moved to ,

my demons
put on my shoes
and my best pairs of pants
to walk the earth
looking for a date
on the first calendar they find.

Wednesday, June 1, 2005

Part Time Heaven

I have been to heaven
on my days off
and just missed the ceremonies
and the best big band music ever
as a cadet angels finally earned
their wings and raised them
to fly in formation against
a sun that is never crossed by clouds,
all I could see were the workmen sweeping up,
emptying the latrines , and
ridding the clouds of evidence
of all that downy androgny.

Back on earth
I park myself
at the coffee house
because it was still
a day off and read the newspaper
between hot sips on scalding coffee,
making note of headline announcing
that the world had stopped going to hell
because we've run out of hand baskets.
"Don't get yer hopes up, boyo" says Josh,
a Swedish massage therapist
taking a drag from his third cigarette
in five minutes, " that ain't the good news
we've been hoping for 'cuz all that
bad faith and congealed karma is
all clotted and clogged and it's all
about to burst and before you
know it
it'll be 9-11 everyday".
I start talking about the weather
as Josh goes back to furiously scribbling
in his spiral notebook, I mention
that the clouds look very fluffy
and maternal, like the softest
place where a man could lay his
head and find that center of rest
that eludes him in the night
as he wrestles with the sheets
and argues with voices that
have no intention of going to sleep.
Josh lights another cigarette,
mumbles something about
vectors and dreams, death and devastation.

It's spring, I say,
flowers are blooming,
hormones are kicking into gear,
men and women and boys
and girls are exhibiting
an unnatural kindness
to one another in the streets
and I swear the water tastes
sweeter these sunny days
in May, but Josh grumbles,
his head in a shroud of fumes and disgust,
his knuckles white as they hold the
pen that tears across the notebook page,
his writing looks like tattoo scars,

I arise to get another cup
of coffee,
and happen to look up
when a feather
falls, there's a flock of unknown birds
flying in perfect V formations
against the sun emerging
from behind cloud banks,

all to make this
the best day to wake up to
if I'd been sleeping all this time
until now.

Wednesday, May 18, 2005

The hands of my watch have stopped

The hands of my watch have stopped
dead on the dial, frozen on the face of it

and the spoon full of steaming soup
is an inch from my mouth, arrested.

Anticipation is suddenly my middle name on
my license as the spoon drips back into the bowel,

clueless to how many hours have passed by us
like so many cars leaving the city once a factory whistle blares

or someone yawns the right number of times
as the sun drifts to the horizon, to sink beneath the sea.

The cat looks to be posing for cute posters of
cats knocking things over, like it's done tonight with

that drink that is stuck in mid air , in front of the TV
with the beer ad on where no can even lick the suds

from their mustaches because time has stopped for the time
because you're out of the room,

on a cell phone ,
smoking a Camel.

You are probably conspiring with a girl friend
to stuff me in burlap bag and leave me

on a corner in a bad neighborhood, thinking gypsies
or blues musicians will find me and give me something

to do besides moon over your image, holding my breath
until you come back into the room,

just like your doing now, coming through the door
reeking of filter tips, cell phone in your grip,

looking at me askance when you see me exhale,
blowing out candles in the process, oh yeah,

I mean it's okay, really, I'm just glad you're back
from the break you took in the middle of my proposal

which means that all the breakable things left in the air
in your absence can now come crashing down to the

hard tile floor, all the bric-a-brac and my world particularly
getting bruised, bent and shattered and breaking wide, wide open,

my heart is broken again
when it's time to swim

and there's nothing funny about this at all,
I mean,

you're kind of cute, the way you
reduce me to rubble
even in my finest
courting clothes.

Flight Home

I give you sun when it
should be cloudy all day
so now the mountains
are full of snow that
has fallen too long over
the slopes, the cliffs,
every ravaged turn of
twisted road.

Satellite transmissions cannot
penetrate the clouds that
have wrapped the peaks of
the highest Sierra,
I call all of your names
when I see the shadow of the
plane fleetly cross the field,
a speck of a car moves
up slim sliver of a road
that follows a huge ravine
of brown land, I cannot jam his radio,
my wings are stiff as my neck,
I call your name.

There's five hours of
thumbed magazines
and fast food wrappers
remaining where I sat
trying to control the weather
and flow of information,
but I can see that California
still looks the same
once we've landed ,
grey autumn skies
and mirthless cheer on every
face coming off the ramp,

Did you enjoy
the snow I gave you as I flew over your state,
did you miss your favorite shows,
did you read the books
you said you bought?
Some things are left hanging
and there's nothing left to say
or do except leave like they do
in bad plays ,
and it seems that everything for awhile
is suspended, free of intention
until you snap to as if from sleep
and see that
there are things
you cannot wake up from.

"