Waka Flocka For Shame

And this:




Mentally ill, please someone call a docta/
911 it's emergency go get a docta/
You done know by now boy they call me waka flocka




This man is signed to Warner Bros.

My Life In Ruins

So I promised a recap of my trip to Israel here. It's been almost five months, I know, but the write-up is still on its way. I've needed to let things simmer longer than expected. In the meantime:

---

On my trip up to Portland, Maine last week there was a movie playing with no sound. I resisted at first, but ended up watching a good seventy percent of it. Below is a capsule review:


I Wasn't Sure Of The Title Until I Had IMDB Access

Nia Vardalos lives in Greece and works as a tour guide with a ramshackle bus and a beirdo bus driver. With pressure from her boss's exaggerated gestures, she takes on a motley group of tourists that includes Harland Williams, some fat kid, and no black people. Rounding out the group is Richard Dreyfuss as a magical old man. After a few scenes of awkward but amiable physical comedy from the ensemble, beirdo shaves and is hot and charming all of a sudden - and in love with Nia Vardalos. Will they get together? Meanwhile Richard Dreyfuss teaches everyone to be young again and then has sex with two women at the same time, I think.

Verdict: The most fun movie about a bus trip since The Sweet Hereafter!

---


* I reposted a pair of movie reviews from March of this year. Go check it.

Nat'l Poetry Month

Read the project from the beginning:

National Poetry Month 2010

National Poetry Month Epilogue

This is an epilogue to a month long project. Before you read what's below, check said project from it's conception:

National Poetry Month 2009



I've purposely given myself about two weeks distance before writing an epilogue.
Originally I was planning to tie everything together via sweeping prose poem, one where I would re-explore recurrent themes and where the characters from each poem would bleed into my musings: the repressed socialite and con-artist (4th), the Bill Clinton look-a-like and his admirer (11), even that ill-fated beetle (25). I planned on discussing my real experiences wandering aimless in the Bowery during Christmastime or spending the night across from a barfly fortune-teller, albeit far from Biloxi, MI (you know what I'm talking about, J.P.). But each time I started on this tack, things seemed forced. So I decided to shelve the idea for the time being - who knows, maybe it will pop up on these pages in the future. This project needs some sort of wrap-up however, so here it goes:
What a great experience. I wore myself thin towards the end - at one point I had three nights in a row of seeing the sun come up - but it was worth it. I'm happy with a months' worth of output, of course (less doggerel, than expected), but the process was what I'm really excited about. This project's mix of structure and chance, combined with the pace of the poem-a-day schedule helped me to get a tighter grasp on my strengths, limitations, habits, and needs as a writer. And it was fun. There were a few moments of doubt certainly, a few times I breathed a sigh of relief when I rolled an 11 (tweet), a few poems that, admittedly, were mailed in, but on the whole it was a thoroughly enlightening and enjoyable (and feverish) month. Y'all should try it sometime.
Will there be more poetry on here in the future? Certainly. Not at the same pace as April, maybe, but some smaller-term projects are already in the works. I'm leaving the country for the rest of May starting tomorrow, but there will most definitely be some updates when I return. So stay tuned.
I would never have been able to discipline myself enough to finish this project without the obligation to consistently put out something others would enjoy. So thanks again for your readership and support, kids!

April 30th - The Sea

Seven of Clubs - The Sea
20 - Any form of my choosing...which will be...Shakespearean Sonnet (3)


Undine's Curse (Sex Ruins Everything)

Immortal beauty bathing in a stream

Her termless back and incandescent thigh

Ensnared I christened her my own Undine

Our fevered shapes combined we lay and I

Swore faithfulness with ev'ry waking breath

Unbridled we made rage in meadowed place

And after resting softly 'gainst my breast

Came subtle signs of age upon her face

Swift did I run from my rejected vow

On plaintive feet, atop shivering horses

Then setting sail have I found myself now

Reflecting gravely on our sep'rate curses:

   Here I stand storm-tossed on the sleepless Sea

    The day your beauty fades will you be free?

April 29th - Leaving a tip

Two of Hearts - Leaving a tip
20 - Any form of my choosing...which will be...Rondelet (19)


Don't Be This Guy

My steak is burnt.
Can she expect a good tip when
my steak is burnt?
I'd not even pay if it weren't
frowned upon to eat it and then
depart. So sorry, no tip "Gwen" -
my steak is burnt.

Next

April 28th - Pizza

Two of Diamonds  - Pizza

6 - Mainstream Rap

Pizza In The Hot Tub

Pizza on the back porch

Pizza in the hot tub

Pizza in the bedroom

Before and after making love

Pizza with my Hennessey

Onions and

Broccoli

Love the smell of fish

So I always order anchovies

As a shorty I learned to fold it

The proper way to hold it

Before you put your mouth on it

You might want to blow it

I always order extra cheese

Cause I got the extra cream

And you know that extra cheese

Makes a body want to scream (Ooooh)

I take a bite of mushroom

And sausage (no homo)

Throwin' out the crust

Cause I can always buy mo'

Going through more boxes than one Donatello

You know better late night food?

Really? Hello!

Lo Mein? No 'meng'

KFC's for chickenheads

Give me pizza any day

On the couch or in my bed

And in the morning I'll put whatever on hold

Walk into the kitchen and I'll eat a slice cold

Later douse it in Sriracha

And reheat a pie for lunch

Shit attacks my mouth

Like a Money Train double punch

Artichoke and Pepperoni

Is my number one

Only like it plain?

I feel bad for you son

I've tried ninety nine toppings

(but Hawaiian aint one)

Pizza in the bathroom

Pizza in the hot tub

Pizza in my Cadillac

Gettin my dick rubbed

Pizza watching Scarface

Order three just in case

Roll a blunt

Light it up

Eat another to the face

Next

April 27th - Ironic Mustaches

Nine of Spades - Ironic Mustaches
11 - Tweet


Ironic Mustaches

Today an old man came into Starbucks. He had a Hitler mustache. It was not ironic.


https://twitter.com/almostcarlos

Next

April 26th - White Christmas

Three Of Diamonds - White Christmas
15 - Dylanesque Rant

Alas. Though fully-realized in my head, I simply don't have the time to finish this one tonight. So here's a rough version the first verse/stanza, a truncated second, and some explanations on where it's going. Maybe a completed version will end up on these pages in the near future (hold me to it D., S.)


Grey Christmas

Rolled out on the sidewalk in front of Pete's
I check my watch as I get to my feet
Thinking of her Irish curls and 'The Gift of the Magi'
It's my father's, it's stopped as I now recall and I
Continue my wassail down eighteenth street
Is 'Szechuan Aroma' serving nativity feast?
'Cause those ducks in  the window sure look like Christmas geese
Got a whim to read The Good Book but the library's closing
After Mass by some New England fireplace she's dozing
But out of our deal I got the city at least
As I pass by The Old Town there's bustle and noises:
A piano, some sleigh bells and partridge voices
Of hatchet-faced women with combs in their hair
Minds on late-night shopping uptown somewhere
While the weary world rejoices
"...Why doth thy presence me defeat..." I hear somebody say
Christmas Eve was white this year but now the snow is grey


Here's where it breaks down.


He continues further downtown to McSorley's where he encounters a boxer-nosed bartender and a sad handful of patrons, dirty as miners, but never grown old. Smokey Robinson's "I Believe in Christmas Eve" is playing softly on the jukebox, and he notices the sawdust-free tiled floor. Filled with a Woody Guthrie flight of fancy, he begins:
Loudly addressing the near empty bar
I stand to play my invisible guitar
"See what your greed for money has done"
The Bartender yells "Be Good or Be Gone"
Scabs on his face tell me I've pushed him too far
The tab that I've wrought, more than I can repay
Christmas Eve was white this year, the air in here is grey

After getting thrown out of McSorley's "golden doors" he walks down to the Bowery and comments on how much it has changed. The closed-up lighting wholeseller storefronts remind him of Lord and Taylor shop windows, of walking up Fifth Avenue with his "Della", of peaceful snowfall in Rockefeller Center. Then there's a bad pun, a quote from O Holy Night and another nativity reference and then he:
Head(s) East across a city in decay
Christmas Eve was white this year but now the streets are grey

The whole thing ends with him on the esplanade somewhere far downtown, looking out on the ice floating in the East River (this happens from time to time), with the urge to skate upon it - quick flashback to Minnesota childhood - and then up at a snow-covered Statue of Liberty. There's a few phrases lifted (in proper Dylan fashion) from Emma Lazarus' New Colossus as well as another nod to Woody Guthrie's 1913 Massacre, dawn breaks, and then of course the modified refrain:
Christmas Eve was white this year but now the morning's grey

Woody Guthrie at McSorley's

Next

April 25th - Slavery/Emancipation

Four of Diamonds - Slavery/Emancipation
2 - Haiku

A beetle struggles
prone, and then is crushed: the soft
cracking of carapace

Next

April 24th - Rasputin

Jack of Diamonds - Rasputin
3 - Shakespearean Sonnet

The title, though it's silly and Alexandrine:
Ra Ra Rasputin Russia's Greatest Love Machine

What some saw as a rank infectious plan
You safeguarded the heir to Russia's life

The Tsar proclaimed you "Our friend, "Holy man"
And trusted you as husband to his wife

Demanding power in exchange for pleasure

Controlling country business from within

You taught her with your hand on Russia's treasure:

The only path to divine grace is sin.

But even black arts can't o'erpower Time
As Cronos stands poised sickle fast in hand

A twofold harvest fated to be thine

The Furies born from blood upon the sand.
    Though throng of bounty none shall ever know,

    Your scattered seed will never cease to grow.

Next

April 23rd - Tobacco

Jack of Clubs - Tobacco
16 - Beat Poem

"It Was My Comfort In Those Miserable Times"

When perched at what seems like the end of the world

When striking another match out of habit

When shaking not sure for what reason

When impotently watching pass young milk legs

When staring dagger-eyed ravenous, ranting at a romantic rival  moon

Or kneeling before it begging forgiveness for broken oaths

After slithering like a pair of serpents sniffing each other with our  tongues, aware as I watched that moment fall backwards  into the kaleidoscope of memory

When holed up in a tired tobacco going-nowhere-novel room,  listening to John Lennon sing about Sir Walter Raleigh  and being tired

At those furious times of wanting control, peacefully lighting a  cigarette in order to give up six minutes of my life and by  the time it burned to the filter losing more than six  minutes

Or now

In this bar

In a fury of coughs

Feeling at once connected

To the past and present

To all those wanting control

To trenches smelling of excitement and excrement, flames hidden  in infantrymen fingers

To the lungs of a tense child in a somber family restaurant in  Osaka, Japan

To the thick haze in Terminal C of Charles De Gaulle Airport

To businessmen and women like huddled pigeons puffing away  below the subway overhang of rainy Manhattan morning

To their bosses in silent towers savoring lonely cigars

To the quivering lips of blind revolutionaries, backs resting  against Argentinean brickwork

To the quivering lips of their young executioners

To the underside of the doomed fingernails of Roanoke Island  colonial pilgrims

To Biloxi, Mississippi, to a bar where good ole boys with faces as  red as Croatoan Injuns guardedly enjoy each others'  company, spitting snuff

To the shisha-scented belly of some aging dancer in an unnamed  underground Tunis hookah lounge

To the sweating tank-topped golden skin of a crooked Laotian  dice game on the steps of some late-night basilica in back- alley America

To the beaches of Lagos

To the cafes of Madrid

To that same Biloxi, Mississippi bar, where now I'm half drunk  with a young woman who claims to be a gypsy and is  trying to read my fortune, not listening when I'm telling her that  I already know when I'm going to die, and she's turning  over a card with her yellow cigarette-holder fingers. It's  The Hanged Man and I whisper “get over with it,” and the  next card is Death. Grabbing from her yellowed hands  that skeletal black knight and up standing on the table  kicking over volcano ashtrays I scream, “Strike, Man,  Strike”

To you, Sir Walter

Where you're not in your cell, you're away

On some new beach in some new world

Watching pass young bronze legs

Fingering your scallop-shell of quiet

Dreaming about your City of Gold

While you imagine the words

“My soul will be-a dry before

But after it will thirst no more”

You too pack your pipe

Next

April 22nd - Potential Energy

Ace of Hearts - Potential Energy
1 - Pretentious Doggerel


Botch!


For those of you who didn't get the gaming reference, don't feel bad. In fact, be glad; your teenage years were probably a lot more exciting than mine. For rest of us, we know that when you roll a 1 on a twenty-sided die, no good can come of it. Such conventions hold true here as well. I may have straddled the pretentious doggerel line in the past, but today I get to step, nay, bound over it. Enjoy?






U = mgh

!
B
A
N
G
!



And then
Upraising
The broken shards
Re-
Energizing
Re-
Energizing
Re-

We
Can calculate our
Potential differences
But O!
In a
System
Of n pairs of
Two
Bodies

(n+[n-1])/2
≠
(you+me)

Next

April 21st - Not-So-Bodacious Babes

Five of Diamonds - Not-So-Bodacious Babes
15 - Dylanesque Rant

(with apologies to Temporary Like Achilles)


Somebody Come Up With A Dylanesque Title

Baby you are so mysterious

why do you insist on wearing that veil?

Is there something concealed under it

you're afraid will make my face go pale?

Why don't you just try and trust me if you think you can

You're alright by me babe

I'm no superficial man

A unibrow is visible, thickly

shading your never focused eyes

Don't know if you have psoriasis but

your ears do peel from time to time

Do you really think you're succeeding with what you're tryin' to hide?

You're alright by me babe

I'm not the superficial kind

Well have you

Rotten teeth?

A bulbous nose?

Is your complexion far from fair?

A cleft lip or a cleft chin

Covered in moles?

You're no Helen? I don't care

Your body's pale and bulky and has hair

in places where hair shouldn't grow

When you took off your shoes for me there was an odor

from your behemoth big toe

But even afterwards don't you see I'm still your biggest fan?

You're alright by me babe

I'm no superficial man

(Harmonica Break)

You walk with a hobo's gait

and dress yourself in other people's wedding gowns

Your voice scares away children

but Honey I'm still sticking around

Take off that mask right now and I bet I won't be stricken blind

You're alright by me babe

I'm not the superficial kind

Next

April 20th - Victories (Small)

Seven of Hearts - Victories (Small)
9 - Free Verse



Small Victories I

Kissing an ear
That you've wanted to kiss
For a long while

Next

April 19th - Character Sketch of a Starbucks Regular

Six of Spades - Character Sketch of a Starbucks Regular
2 - Haiku

Since I don't know his name:

That middle-aged white guy who comes in right after we open and leaves his book on the table as he goes out three or four times for a cigarette, who looks worse for the wear, for whom I have a strange affinity as if he could be my future self


I'll be you one day:
the shakes, reading Tolstoy this
sleepy autumn dawn

Next

April 18th - Det. James McNulty

Seven of Spades - Det. James McNulty
15 - Dylanesque rant

A few words about this posting:
- If you are going to read this, please do so out loud in your best Bob Dylan impression
- This poem is dedicated to Aaron Heilman, Dad
- The Wire is a great television show. Perhaps the best television show of the last decade. The following poem gives away some key pieces of plot exposition from the first season. So, if you have never seen The Wire and it is somewhere on your Netflix cue, I - grudgingly - urge you not to read this Dylanesque rant.


CAUTION!: SPOILERS BELOW FROM SEASON ONE OF THE WIRE

Officer McNulty (with Jacques Levy)

On the beat in Western district
You made yourself a name
Detective James McNulty, you've got
Bawl'more in your veins
You're cocksure in your knowledge
Of the courtrooms and the streets
You know how to push your boss
Or make the most brutal man go meek
You know sometimes at a crime scene
The only fitting word is, “Fuck”
You know quite a few things Jim, but
You're about to wake up

Irish in your bloodlines
Handsome in the face
Even if you have to make some waves
You'll do it for the case


Jimmy, Jimmy
Are you the one good cop left in Maryland?
Jimmy Jimmy
When all this is over
There'll be blood upon your hands

When you first laid eyes on Stringer Bell
You were sure you had his number
A top man in the Barksdale crew
Notorious drug runners
D'Angelo was up on murder two
A duke in Barksdale's kingdom
By bribing a security guard,
Stringer bought him his freedom
So you took this injustice to the desk
Your old friend the Judge
Who leaked it to the media
Gave the department a good nudge
Your dissent made the Major a
Very unhappy man
Vowing to confiscate your badge
In anyway he can
You forced you bosses to put forth
A message of their power
They put you on a special task force,
One designed to flounder

Oh McNulty you were never
One for saving face
Sent your own kids after
Stringer Bell
You did it for the case

Jimmy, Jimmy

You know very well that Justice is a journey

Jimmy, Jimmy

You're still in love with your ex-wife

But you fuck the state's attorney

The lieutenant's name was Daniels
He was a man of upright notions
But to some extent his hands were tied
Wanting a promotion
His number one was Kima Greggs
A woman you respected
She was good cop as could be found and
She was one you hadn't bedded
Lester Freamon seemed a house cat
But he changed before your eyes
Sitting whittling dollhouse chairs
A superhero in disguise
Good police though you all were
You situation was dire
Until you cloned some beepers
Until the advent of the wire
You lied and guilt-tripped, mutinied
To keep the case from going cold
Your buddy Bunk, he said it best
“Man's gotta have a code”


When Omar vowed to get revenge
Shot Stinkum in the face
Jim you looked the other way
You did it for the case

Jimmy, Jimmy

I know you only did what you thought was right

Jimmy, Jimmy

Now that it's all over

Will you sleep at night? 

How quickly things do fall apart
When hot on Justice's trail
The Major hatched a cunning scheme
designed to make you fail
Santangelo, your partner then,
now made to play the Judas
And though he told you of the plan
The knowledge borne was fruitless
Sting operations went awry and
Kima Gregg nearly got kil't
You didn't visit the hospital
Yeah, you were too filled with guilt
The Judge no longer had your back
And Daniels lost his power
His bosses sabotaged the case
in the eleventh hour
But arrests were made and things looked good
You went above the heads
Of those bosses to the FBI you thought you'd finally
Put this thing to bed
A meeting setup by your bureau friend who had given you
the wire and the cables
You expected to find Justice done
You found moneychanger's tables
They'd be pleased to keep the murderers free
if a senator took the fall
You screamed, “West Baltimore is dying
While you try to pin some politician to the wall?”

Walked out upon the District A.
Almost spit into his face
Did suicide to your career
But man, it was for the case

Jimmy, Jimmy
Loss of idealism is a lot like a punch straight to the gut
Jimmy, Jimmy
“Do yourself a favor and
Keep your fool mouth shut."


You cracked it though, you brought them down
You even had some fun
But all these bodies piled up
Was Justice really done?
D'Angelo he took the rap
and he's looking at twenty years
But Jim you knew all along
He was just a cog in their gears
While Stringer Bell's still on the streets
Now taking full control
Of Barksdale's operation
Crack will continue to flow
Daniels is still a lieutenant
While Kima tends her wounds
Santangelo, for sticking up
was made a boy in blue
Bunk and Freamon they are partners now
chasing after brand new perps
The system may be hopeless but
they still have legs that work
Lester and Bunk keep up the good fight
from Greenspring to the pier
While you're buoyed to your police boat
Tanning, drinking beer
“Officer”, Marine Unit
Wasn't that your greatest fear?


In the ocean, much like narcissus
You look at your own face
You mucked it all up, didn't you Jim
All for that futile case


Oh, Jimmy, Jimmy
Part with your life before your badge or your gun
Jimmy, Oh, Jimmy
Don't know where you'll end up next
I've just seen season one

(Harmonica break till end) 

Next