Imperative (Not a Pejorative (not necessarily))

Be a good boy drink all your fruits and vegetables and process the plastics and toxins that you need

For instance: Eat the HoHo and the wrapper to avoid pollution and to bring your nutritional absorption slightly out of the red

Don't worry, by the time you are big enough my baby boy they will be making organic whole wheat Ho-Hos with fresh cream and a triumphant man will address you from the box and claim that finally we are making progress

Saving the planet is something I plan to do before I am fifty. And die. But by then we will have cut you into roughly the shape we want you to be and I am sure you will be totally capable of filing down the detail

Scribble Two:

The essence of this life is the jaw cracking in agony, a slow festering that imobilizes the mouth and cuts down the clavicle.

All I am is hunger, a yawning black maw that cries futility for that which is intolerable to it. A yearning for breadth, for depth. Cut back the flesh and peel the bulbous veins from it's surface- Cmon doc I want to boldly go where no man has gone before.

Startin' something

so hey I am an artist sort of

so word poems from here on out I guess, until I can think of something better. this is the refuse, the post-it note throwaway poem/prose space. So I can wad these ideas up and toss them out

Believe indoctrination
the senseless violence that calls itself victory
and threes are serial injectors, stealing catharsis as trophies

I will not be a king or a martyr or a lunatic or a fool
I live endless, swirled
mired in the paint and slashed in syllables
cut from the cloth that
is the only gift a man will buy you

I write happy poems when
I safely despise every inch of you
when I shine incandescent from within my bulbous veins
not ever sugar makes me manic
spikes the core of me solid

Firenze

It was pouring on election day and my phone died and I was STARVING and frustrated by the minuscule size of italian sidewalks.

then heather found me huddling under san pietro, in the shadow of brunelleschi's dome and opposite Ghiberti's dome. she took me home and wined me (cheap Chianti--better then water!) and then took me out to election night party where i saw a professor and a live country band and ate free food all night.


then dancing and wine and secret bakeries studded in the winding avenues of firenze

Venezia

Oh my Venezia.

well first Milano Centrale-- 14 hours spent in the station sleeping on wooden bench and freezing to death and starving and being generally miserable. it was also a night of superb bladder control. 12pm to 6am though i only lasted till 3am before doing something highly illegal. and to all the sketchy men of Milano Centrale--va funculo! I piss on all of you. such depravation though i tell you.

so of course, first thing in venezia I devoured a gigantic pizza the size of my face--and got into a friendly conversation about Obama. christ it was a delicious day.

then the piazza de san marco and il rialto and the palazzo il doge and wandering wandering wandering, footloose and fancy free and BED under pink sheets in a pink room with a purple plastic rhinestone chandelier. pain di something or other smothered in nutella and six bowls of cornflakes in the morning. gorgeous gorgeous sleep and a beautiful puppy

Milano

So Italy. Mio Dia. Bella

Milano is an ugly little town, exquisitely fuctional shall we say. Covered in graffitti and populated with cheap food joints--with of course the requisite fashion stores. I stood in the shadow of gorgio armani and I can't say I felt inspired.

Heather and I in La Scalla, Il Duomo and other unsavory places--plus the best snack foods in all italy. gram parvesi--if only i could eat you without feeling ill at the end of it. and the delicious delicious cookies. what a repast!

Halloween was a sad affair, i dressed up my voice and we the scots and the aussie lass sat supping in the neighborhood bar with the local kiddies

A Beach in Britain??!

Yea though I have walked along the pebbled shores of pain, my feet remain curiously untroubled.

First though was the literary festival. I kind of enjoy the atmosphere of literary festivals--its so rare to see so many people arrogantly posturing at the same time though I have never been to a political convention either. I'm a registered nonregister if you know what I mean.



Anne Enright is forthright and fabulous. A short haired Irish mother who wields fuck as an adjective, noun and adverb (I have my views on profanity in writing which is as long as you can read it without blushing you're alright)--and a superb voice weaver. She wrote the most wonderful story of a mother and jilted wife that made me want to sigh. Go. Get her short stories. DEVOUR them. shes fantastic

Lionel Shriver (who is in fact a woman) read Richard Yates, the forgotten American short story man of the Sixties. Highlights included watching a trailer for Revolutionary Road which has never been seen before ever, listening to her read the story and then just listening to her, gloomy as all get out and fantastic. A cynic with a sense of humor. Her best advice is that compassion is the writers best tool which I think we forget in this age of our sense of grandeur and our adherence to our petty personal pity parades. Also there was a woman there who had lived in the Village in the Sixties and actually knew Richard Yates--an morose soggy alcoholic apparently--which is more proof to me that anything good or entertaining in this world happened in NYC first

But I ventured into the English countryside--dung patties, cows and huge unexpected red birds flying from out of corn rows and all

Next post- Brighton

Deep Scottish Love (not ever an illegal substance)

having been and returned and slept I think i have more perspective then I did before.

The Highlands are the impeachable majesty of Scotland, the most endurable legacy to their fierce pride that chafes in the memory of generations of Scots. One day- not today or tomorrow- but someday they will walk away from the UK. Its so different in Scotland- none of the polyethnic hybridization that cartwheels through Britain. I dont think I've ever been so concious of absence and it was unnerving.

Having said that I would cheerfully walk forever through the heathered hills. I love sing a longs, even in tiny hostel bars as much as i love wee scottish discotechques full of balding men in pageboy caps that close at 1 am. I want to go down face first in a faerie brook and come out bubbling the other side. if i ever go again, im going hiking in the summer and im swimming in the loch ness.

Don't think I'd ever do a group tour like that again, but thats more my fault then their's. i can get excited by white horses but ill never care (yes that was code). But i know i can do it on my own now, which is more important to me then anything else. as long as i have one friend in this world I can go it alone

Also Edinburgh is the most tiny toy like urban center I have ever seen. Also Sticky Toffee Pudding is worth every ounce of fat that drips down the sides. Shortbread and Oatcakes to see you on your way.

NEXT STOP IRELAND!