28.9.04

McKinley's park is meant to stay in the dark.

The wind talks a good game on the street, but the heavy, white cumulus stay still in the sky. See, I've been reading Algren's Nonconformity, so I'm apt to believe those with their heads aloft in the clouds may be impervious to the wind at street-level. There's a new pome of mine somewhat related, but I can't figure out how to make it indent on this blog page, so you'll have to catch it elsewhere. Yeah, I still attempt poetry (see below entries), even if I haven't made it out to any recent events (still hung-over, I think, from last month's 'fest').

This morning I walked around Chinatown seeking a replacement for the old Chairman Mao hat I used to love, but no dice. I mean, they have similar hats, but they're all bejeweled and marketed for ladies these days. Earlier, heading NE on Archer Ave. from McKinley Park, I saw the Sears behind bright billboards hiding the homeless living below. There is a bar right at Archer and Damen called El Toro Loco, or "the crazy bull," advertising excellent service for pretty ladies. Like a lot of the S. & SW. sides of town, there is not much else.

Today is Nyla's birthday (26) & I'm taking her to dinner & wine. No cake left in the rain today, which reminds me of a time circa. 1993 Longfellow & I stumbled around a Bowling Green drinkery speaking the lyrics of "MacArthur Park" as pickup lines to unsuspecting college girls. If you are wont to use such tactics (pick-up lines), don't use our approach. You're better off being direct, like the greek-letter-clad meatnecks in college who wooed away the aforementioned ladies with, "So, wanna get a 6-er and screw, or don't you drink?"




27.9.04

2 new, 2 pomes

working again is nice, if not not enough. Still find time for etching things ...



at the dedication of the Haymarket sculpture


“… as innocent and as guilty
as meaningful and as meaningless as any
other flower in the western field.”
-- Gwendolyn Brooks


predestined to the abstract, you take the middle
ground the politicians love to clutch. At last
landmark, immediately small

colossus to the noon-rush restaurant-
goers put-off to walk around
you to meals written off as

expenditure for the storied corporate moneydroppers
whose buildings line streets just E. of here where
a century and some years

ago fire-eaters raked
muck to pester meat
barons into

concessions never gained. You are smoothed
over hands & arms
building

or destroying, monument only to
revisionism, the city’s ambivalence
to declare

a uniform text,
accounting of events, the truth
buried bleeding beneath cement.





sleepless block 2309


in the wee hours, my
words don’t come. Traffic

distant on The Drive still
hums & just

outside, cicadas buzz; cool breeze & below
me streetlights the only lights. half-past

one, words don’t come. “write through,” they said
in school -- I do -- but words

don’t come. my lover shifts soundly
sleeping now & words don’t come. no muse

could help me – they really don’t exist, just
humbug & in hours I’m off to work, but words don’t

come. I’ll pay for this
then, but that’s still

future. for now, stare at my
notebook, no ink, hear a leak drop

from the sink & words don’t come & all old tricks
of “writing through”

are mere excuse, just things to do until
words come. to wit, this line

should be a start – huh-uh – the words, they up
& didn’t come. Perhaps to sip fruited herbal

tea – it seemed to help
McGrath that once – but I’m not into

that new-age crap, just
stuck here empty, insomniac

& jonesing, Jack. C’mon. Give
my words back.



21.9.04

Kiss me, I'm Bulemic

2 weeks ago, Nyla and I began one of those trendy "eat-all-the-bloody-meat-you-can-and-lose-big-weight" diets. I lost eight pounds and she lost six. Min said, "Are you crazy? Starch is all I eat." I guess some of us aren't blessed with such a killer metabolism. The diet itself was a good thought.
While it lasted. A few days back, our cravings beyond our control, we went to a Leona's and gorged on crusty pizza. They make quite a crust at Leona's, buttery and cornmeal-laden. 3 days later, I am 4 pounds heavier. In two months I turn 33 and I'm all of a sudden paying attention to these things like some 17 year-old cheerleader. Nyla texts me, "Y R U such a big GIRL?!?!?!?!"
Today is our 6-month anniversary, speaking of paying attention to girly things. Clinging to the last fibres of my boy-cred, she is kinda cheesed that I won't do anything with her this Sunday until after the Stillers game.
Fuggeddaboudit, We're going to the Red Lion and get some Beer and Sex and Chips and Gravy.

17.9.04

Rhymes & the Football grass

I don't know what it is when summer ends and the air gets cooler and my moods fluctuate with the performance of my favorite sports team. I find myself doing things I normally wouldn't, like setting foot inside so-named 'sports bars,' yelling obscenities at plasma televisions and getting drunk when the sun is still directly overhead. Perhaps one can take the boy out of the Rust Belt, but can't remove the Rust Belt from the boy.

I went the other day to the unveiling of a small, unassuming landmark to the Haymarket Riot (I'd call it a 'monument,' but it's not, as it's message is ambiguous (no doubt in deference to the CPD's continued insistence the innocent who were executed really threw the bombs)) . Suit-wearing headshots elbowed their way to the news cameras and so-called 'anarchists' wore black and brandished posterboard signs. What a crazy 120 years, I thought, during which time the voice of dissent has evolved from risking one's life to speak out for the oppressed to tying up downtown traffic with bikes for an hour or so every fourth friday. Surely, somewhere in the ether, Eugene Debs is proud. Me? I hear the job market looks up in Calgary, but is there a Steelers bar?