Petey Luvs Blog

peering around the corner

2007-01-02T00:53:00.000-06:00

i really don't know why i came back here
i left nearly a year ago thinking i'd never return
it's not that i really ever quit writing
it's just that the written word seemed to be
getting a bit too confining:
i was starting to live life as i'd always wanted to live it
and it seemed that i no longer needed to express myself
through words
when i could express myself through action,
through living my life day by day

but here i am, home for the holidays
stinking of cheap gin and christmas cologne
and wondering if decaf might not be just as tasty as the real thing
maybe it's the lingering christmas lights
maybe it's the warm thoughts of the many friends
i've seen over the past few weeks
--maybe it's just the gin--
but i find myself here and typing as if i'd never left
and i kind of feels good

i'm pretty much the same as i was a year ago
a little bit older but really not a whole lot wiser
i haven't met my soulmate yet
nor have i fallen in love for ever and ever, amen
i still live in the same place
work at the same place
yet i have discovered this indian restaurant
that makes the most incredible curried foods
and i am definitely considering falling in love with the cook
but other than that i'm just living my life--
writing the script and playing the part
that only i can play

what else, man? i dunno
i was going to write some drippy poem
then i decided i might just type out a few sentences
and finally i decided to combine the two ideas
same lame old shit
what the fuck do you people want from me anyway?

guess i'm just sayin hi
guess i'm just saying that i'm still alive
more so now than ever before
guess i'm just wondering if you're still out there

roll over

2006-02-23T11:30:00.000-06:00

If I had never known a summer's day,
The gentle scent of lilac on the breeze,
The buds and flowers as they slowly sway,
Their bobbing heads adorned with crowns of leaves--
If I had never watched the setting sun,
Nor seen its warm blush as it kissed the earth,
The final rays of daylight then undone,
With one sweet kiss at twilight's gentle birth--
If I had never stretched beneath the stars,
Their blinking eyes as eyes before the sleep,
The golden moon ascending from afar,
To take his rightful place above the scene--
If I had never known these wondrous sights,
I would but find them all within your eyes

shadow puppets

2006-01-26T10:06:00.000-06:00

you've been on the fringes of a couple of dreams lately
normally lucid events for me
yet as of late i'm off doing dream things
conquering the everything
scaling the forever
watering yellow daisies for the gargoyle
and i just happen to look up and you're there
standing and staring
watching and waiting
then pacing like an expectant father
like a beeping ekg
hoping to announce the inevitable doom
whether yours or mine i do not know
but soon i think
it comes to pass

halloween trilogy

2005-12-08T11:09:00.000-06:00

IT IS

NICE TO BE

NOTICED

latte sunday afternoon

2005-11-13T21:57:00.000-06:00

sitting at double shot coffee
slumped over a latte
and staring at the far wall

a boy to the side of me
is lying on a couch
and talking on his cell phone
20 feet away
and i can still hear
both sides of their conversation
over the piped-in music
over the girls talking and studying
over the sounds of the barista
making a mocha
for some poor simp of a man
who's just walked in through the back door

sitting at double shot coffee
and sipping a latte
when a friend who's driving by
sees my car
and calls to ask what i am doing

"shit," i think to myself,
as i invite him to join me,
"i'm drinking fucking coffee."

and as i end the call
i make a mental note
to park behind the store
next time

bwi (blogging while intoxicated)

2005-11-06T00:36:00.000-06:00

here's my contribution to nadruwrini. the poison of choice is the dirty martini.

i thought i had this mostly figured out. i mean i've been thinking about it for a couple of days now. the characters were going to be jack and cody. that much i knew. the plot, i thought, would come to me when it was ready to come. i figured that a couple of sips from a martini was all that was needed to give them life-- to start their adventure rolling. i'm halfway through the martini now and my how things have changed. jack and cody, it seems, have met with a premature demise. they are now nothing more than an idea that never developed. a story that was never meant to be.

one martini down. it appears that i'm not well on my way to drunk writing-- just well on my way to being drunk. hic! thank you, sir, may i have another?!

aw, cripes, looks like i'm gonna have to bluff my way through this. i feel a ramble coming on.

halloween 2005

naw, fuck this. the muse just don't wanna talk about halloween. suffice it to say that we dressed as amish this year. i was an amish boy named obadiah good. two male friends dressed as amish girls: sarah may and beulah fay. we attended the local halloween parade. not that we were in it, we just dressed up and went to watch. it was actually quite fun. we seemed to generate, as we walked up and down the parade route, as much interest as did the parade. lots of folks stopped us to take our pictures. we gave out cookies (that we swore we baked ourselves) to those people who had nice things to say about our costumes. we even heard, from several friends who later attended private parties, that people kept talking about seeing the amish walking around during the parade. score one for the amish! btw, i'm thinking of starting a flikr account to post around 150 halloween pics. we'll see.

a poem (because i'm at a loss for something else to write)

i always find it odd
when the leaves start falling this time of year
it's always such a surprise
to realize what the trees already know
that summer is finally over
that i'm another year older
and that the old leaves
are left
to follow the whims of the wind

okay. that really sucked. let's see. hmmm.... what else?

autumn in upstate new york

i can never get through the fall season
without remembering the days of my youth
in upstate new york
the trees would always turn
the most brilliant colors this time of year
fiery reds, golden yellows,
a drive through the county
would seem to be a veritable natural wonder
but the true awe of the season
would be to buy apple cider
and hide it in the hayloft
and wait for it to turn hard

again with the suckage... let's try:

jimmy and the playground

i remember being about ten or so. every morning we'd stop class and go outside for recess. this must have been in lieu of gym, because there was never a real gym class to speak of. i guess we were just expected to go outside and run and play or whatever and get our exercise that way.

i was mostly a quiet kid. i kept to myself and didn't really bother anyone. i would just go outside and sit on one of the swings.

well, there was this one kid named jimmy. he was really an odd sort. i remember that none of the other kids really liked him. and i also seem to remember that a few of the kids would pick on him.

i guess that one day he saw me sitting there and thought that maybe he could get the kids off his back by picking on me. guess he felt that if he was one of the bullies, that maybe the other bullies would leave him alone. i don't really know what he was thinking. but i do know that one day he decided to start fucking with me.

he came out and started out by calling me names. but that didn't work because i just ignored him. well, i guess he misinterpreted that as weakness, because it wasn't too long before he walked over and started trying to shove me off the swing. again, i just ignored him-- hoping he'd get bored and go away. but he wouldn't have any of it. he decided to try another tactic and started to punch me on the shoulder.

i remember looking up at him, looking him dead in the eye and saying "if you hit me again i'm gonna deck you."

well that stopped him for a minute. i guess he was surprised that i'd say something like that. by now there was a small crowd of kids around us. he looked at them and looked back at me. guess he figured that i was bluffing. or maybe he didn't want the kids to think that he was scared of me. in any case he stood there for a moment before hauling off and hitting me as hard as he could.

i just stared at him. i slowly got up to my feet and faced him. then, as quick as i could, i hauled off and punched him in the nose. he crumpled to the ground and started bawling.

the teachers were there quck enough. the crowd of kids all told them that i'd just defended myself. that jimmy had punched me and i punched him back. they hauled him off to the school nurse and i thought that would be the end of it.

but two days later, as i was walking the neighborhoods home from school, a car wheeled up and screeched to a hault in front of me. out jumped jimmy and this older kid. the older kid turned out to be his brother who was in high school. the brother said, "this is for what you did to jimmy" and started punching me. a couple of neighbors ran out of their homes and stopped him before he did any real damage.

i don't really remember what happened after that, except for one thought: that jimmy's brother was a chicken shit because he beat up on a kid. and that his whole family must be the same way.

another martini, another bad poem

i'm almost out of olives
i'm hoping that i'm getting tired
but still i keep on typing
i think the latte's got me wired
let's hope i'm not too boring
but if i am it doesn't matter
because you are not reading
and never really got this far

same martini, different bad poem

cool autumn wind screaming
leaves falling blowing sailing
dark clouds around me swirling
winter's coming
winter's coming

the rental house

the house next door is a nice enough place. two bedrooms, two full bathrooms, a big living room, formal dining room, and a roomy kitchen. it's the kind of place someone wouldn't mind owning. except it's not for sale. it's a rental.

and with a rental home comes rental people. some are there for quite a while. and some are there only for a month or two.

i remember one couple. and older man and woman. they often called the police on each other-- i guess claiming domestic violence. i dunno. but based on a conversaton i overheard one night, for regrettably their windows were open, i would guess that to be the case:

man, obviously drunk and playing a guitar rather poorly: "the fuckin' shotgun's right there in the corner. why don't you just shoot me?"
woman, also obviously drunk: "i just might do that. i could shoot your ass. that would teach you!"
man: "then do it! shoot me! kill me!"
woman: "i'm not gonna kill you. just pay me the money you owe me!"
man: continues to play guitar.
me: i go inside my house and listen for gunfire.

another poem and another martini... are you starting to get the flow of this post yet?

she stood there in the doorway
about 30 years old
long stringy oily blond hair
and a bit of a belly
she stood there yelling
for her kids to come inside for supper
billy! caroline! sandy!
suppertime!
billy! caroline! sandy!
come home, it's time for supper!
she stood there for awhile
looking up and down the street
she stood there for awhile and waited
but the kids never came
the kids never came
because about 10 years ago
she was driving home one night
the kids in the back seat
she was driving home one night
so drunk she couldn't see straight
she was driving home one night
and had an accident
and killed all three
killed all three of her kids

observation

i sat in my car at the stop sign and waited
as an old woman crossed the street
in front of me
she looked to me to be well
into her nineties
her body was twisted in the shape of a (
and she walked with a cane
very slowly, small steps
and the arm that held the cane
the flesh at the bottom of that arm
kind of swayed
like a hammock in the breeze
with each step that she took

she was well past my car
and down the sidewalk
before i realized that i
could pull out into traffic

observation #2

his face was roughly the size and texture
of a lumpy balloon
with dark circles under his eyes
and the skin near what one would call
his jowls
was somewhat puffy
as if someone had hit him
on both sides of the face
with a heavy stick
the area just under his chin
sort of drooped as it tends to do
as one grows older
and the lack of a smile
made him look all the more older
than his actual years

observation #3, and yet another martini

she was a beautiful girl
about 5' 10" or so
long golden blond hair
but a very tom-boyish dispostion
which i guess is to be expected
as she is one of three female
firefighters in our town~
i met her through a friend
of mine
who she was dating at the time~
we were all at a gay bar
when she told me that
she had a nipple ring
and proceeded to pull her tit
out
there in the bar
to show me

observation #4

i am out of olives now
any additional martini
will have to do without
my lips are numb
my head is numb
my fingers are numb
but yet i write
(if you can call what this is
writing)

observation #5

i was going to write about
an old man i saw
but am now so drunk
that i cannot concentrate enough
do do so
or remember him
h9old on
giveme a sec.

observation #6

i can tell you this
that when i had breakfast this morning
i ordered chicken fried steak
(and for you who don't live in the south
this is a sort of minute steak covered
in a batter and deep fried)
but when i got
the chicken fried steak
it was still very hot
and burned the roof of my mouth
which is now quite sore

i have no explanation
as to why i didn't wait
for it to cool first

observation #7

we drove down
to a little town called
stigler oklahoma
we were in high school
and i guess we thought
that a road trip would be
quite the big adventure
i remember that me and another
fellow
had gone into a convenience store
and were looking at a playboy magazine
when an old man saw us and walked up
and said
"that kinda makes your blood boil,
don't it?"

we were kind of in shock
partly because someone had caught us
looking at the magazine
and partly because
an old man had come up and said
what he said

it's weird now because
i hear that that guy i was looking
at the magazine with
is now a catholic priest
and weird because
i finally came out of the closet
and wasn't really interested
in the magazine
in the first place.

observation #8

ima little tea pot
short and stout

observation #9

to j:
wherever you are tonight
i miss you
and wish that i
could quit writing
and go to bed
and snuggle up next to you

observation #10

my nippples are hard

observation #11

shfkjlsdhfjhfkjf.s
ddkdkfelf
sadljff;ljas;dlk
and that's how i
learned to tie my shoes

obbservation @12
good night my friends
good night
sleep tight my friends
sleep tight
and if we'resd;ajfkjas
sdalkfjafkljd

Blogging While Intoxicated (BWI)

2005-11-04T10:15:00.000-06:00

click pic link
11/5/2005
i think it will be dirty martinis
and my imagination
you in?

amish at a bar

2005-11-02T10:55:00.000-06:00

the amish are in town

2005-10-31T12:26:00.000-06:00

we are the amish
i be the boy
we come in peace
we're on rumspringa
the boy in the tee
owns double shot coffee company
go ye forth and drink

waiting for october

2005-10-26T19:49:00.000-05:00

maybe i never knew what i wanted
maybe i never knew what i needed
maybe i was just waiting for october
and your sweet smile
to make me understand how
the walls of a house begin to bulge
and the windows begin to shake
and the timbers strain
just before it all gives way

as the natural gas ignites
in a fiery flash
to a thunderous explosion
then nothing but silence
and fuzzy pink insulation
drifting downward from the sky

wake me later

2005-10-20T10:38:00.000-05:00

sometimes i wish i could stop time
and tiptoe between all the nameless people
frozen in mid-stride
in mid-conversation
reaching into their purses and pockets
to see what they were hiding
and mimicking their facial expressions

sometimes i wish i could stop time
and walk onto the highway
sitting down on the hood of a car
that moments ago was doing 80
that would still be doing 80
were it not frozen in place
a look of sheer terror on the driver's face
as his brake foot hangs
halfway between heaven and hell
as the old man in front cuts him off
as i sit on the hood
and pick at a chip in the paint

but the only things that don't move today
are the hands on the clock on the wall
like the hands of a stingy prison warden
holding the keys to my freedom

"gentle flow," with an alternate title of "petey goes off the deep end"

2005-10-16T21:56:00.000-05:00

part of me longs for the day when friendships were easier. when i could walk across the street and drop in and it was just okay. whatever he'd be doing. whether he was having a good day or a bad day. it didn't matter. whenever i showed up it was just accepted that i was where i was supposed to be. and it was accepted that i was there when i was supposed to be. and it would be the same if he showed up at my house.

of course, that's when we were just kids. teenagers. that's when no one thought twice about me being there. or him being at my house. it was assumed that we had no agenda. that we didn't really want anything but to see the other. that we didn't want anything more than to hang out.

and that was nice. that was very, very nice.

also, of course, no one knew that we were lovers. but that really never entered into it.

in those days, making love was never really a goal as much as it was something that just sort of happened. like a rose that blossoms and blooms. making love would just sort of come upon us.

but i digress.

today's not the same. i don't go anywhere without a purpose. a need. a schedule. we get together with friends to walk the dogs. or eat out. or to go see a movie. life is now just one big series of agendas. everything has to have a purpose. a reason.

and it really sucks. not because i don't want any stucture in my life. not because i don't want a purpose. i'm not silly enough to believe that i can't live without a purpose. or, should i say, that i've been conditioned to believe that i can't live a life without a purpose.

it sucks because i don't have that gentle flow anymore. that subtle, unexpected, shift from one thing to the next.

i haven't seen him now for nearly thirty years. and i wonder if he still remembers me. i wonder if he still thinks about me. and if he does think about me, i wonder if he misses the day. the gentle flow of me suddenly appearing in his room. the gentle flow of us doing whatever. chores. playing with model race cars. the gentle flow of me looking up at him and him pulling me into his arms. the gentle flow of us making love. and, once we'd finished, the gentle flow of us going back to doing what we'd been doing before.

i was reminded of that today. the gentle flow. or maybe i was shown what i've lost. there's a subtle difference. remembering something leaves it in the past where it belongs. losing something gives us some hope that we may get it back again.

i wonder what i'd do tomorrow. i mean if i went about my business getting ready for work, feeding the pets, showering-- you know the routine. and then i'd go to the front door to leave. but when i go to turn the knob, in the second that it takes to turn the knob and pull the door open, what if i traveled back in time? what if, when i opened the door, i'd see his house-- as it was years before-- standing there across the street? what if i could go out my door and head, not to work, but across the street to see my old friend? my god, how amazing would that be?

or what if i could just open that door and get that gentle flow back? eveything the same as it is today, but with my gentle flow?

or better yet, what if i could open the door and put it all together? what if i could open the door to a world of my pure imagination? to a world of my own creation? a life flowing from my imagination into reality.

wow.

okay, so if you wake up tomorrow and things seem a little different, you'll know why. best to be on my good side. i'm just sayin'.

lalala blah blah

2005-10-14T10:23:00.000-05:00

don't ask why
something about this boy's face
makes it look like he's got
gas

last night i went to a
patio party
and sucked on dirty martinis
'til i was very, very happy

but i didn't get to kiss any of these

though a couple of these
were more than willing

so i took off as soon as i could

and headed for a friend's house

where i surprised two boys
who were trying to make their way out

but i soon got bored,
decided to call it a night,
and staggered home to bed

youth (a pictorial poem)

2005-10-13T10:55:00.000-05:00

Leave the Gun, Take the Cannolis

2005-10-04T10:08:00.000-05:00

(a blog whore in boxers
and black work boots
skating the thin line of sanity
trying to digest
a winking blinking humanity
through absolut eyes
and the thoughts of a boy)

i walked into his store
while he was with some customer
and he realized me in an instant
but went about his business
then held the door as she left//
he walked over to give me a
great big bear hug
slapping me smartly on the back
as if he was trying to dislodge
a stubborn piece of meat
from my throat//
then everyone gasped
as they watched his customer
back her huge suv
into a light pole in the parking lot
and he ran outside to see
if she was okay//
i followed him outside
and milled about while they discussed
a broken taillight
but before too long she was driving away
and he was walking toward me//
he asked me if i wanted to come back inside
and i told him 'no' that i had just wanted a hug
i told him that i missed him
and so he hugged me again
but this time without slapping//

(slipping in and out of this writing thing
i dream about you all
and sometimes peek through your windows
to see what you are up to)

we've decide to be amish on rumsprina
this halloween--
me as obadiah
and two boys
as beulah may and sarah fay//
we are having costumes made
we have a huge butter churn

and we'll have baked goods to nibble--
as we go to posh restaurants to eat
as we go to bars to sing karaoke
as we crash parties
and generally confuse people//
beaulah and sarah
think that obadiah might be gay
and are secretly planning
on taking him to a gay bar
to try and hook him up//

(sometimes i dream about
putting all the world's blogs
into a giant blender--
whirring them to a soup of stray letters--
and feeding them to those monkeys
to see if they could type something better)

i'm really wearing boxers like those... aren't you just sooooo glad you stayed for the final credits?

my blog, my love, my one true heart's desire

2005-08-22T11:52:00.000-05:00

why is reading a post on my blog
a few days after it's posted
like playing a 45
@ 78 rpm?

it's all hurry up
and then it's over before you realize
what's happened

it's all filled with
¿oh-my-god-did-i-really-say-that?
because
i can't even imagine
actually thinking
such a thing now

i have a cold
i want to go home
peas be with you

arrgh & avast ye & stuff

2005-08-15T12:35:00.000-05:00

our local dim sum
did suck
yesterday
as the rain came tumbling down
and all i felt like doing
was jacking
a hot air balloon into the clouds
to see where the leak was coming
from
--spiraling downward dropping earth
--mmmm bye-bye fly away

instead i caught the z-train
to snoozeville
flat on my back on my bed as the rain
pitter-pattered onto the roof
and i dreamt of the day
and i dreamt of the day

la la
sucky sound sucky sound

my! people come and go so quickly here!

2005-08-10T12:19:00.000-05:00

i don't think that i will like you
'cos you stand a little close
and you stay a little long
and you smile a bit too much
nervous laughter
awkward silence

weren't you supposed to be working
that night you came into karaoke
gave me a wink
then sang "stand by me"?

aren't you supposed to be working
when you sit at our table
and try to make me laugh
while other customers wait for their meals?

jx2 said you were flirting
others told me you're bad news
one says you talk way too much
but i'm all moth to flame

still, i don't think that i will like you
'cos every time you tried
to write down your number
you started shaking
then hesitating
so i got tired of waiting
and finally gave you mine
but you still haven't called

don't drag your ass this time
'round--
'cos moths don't have long lives

man i totally suck at this blogging crap

2005-08-08T09:37:00.000-05:00

summertime and the livin' is easy
no blogging
but full-throttle friends
and a baseball game
with a thunderstorm
that causes everyone in the stadium
to run for cover
with most holding a 50-cent hotdog
in each hand--
drenched and laughing
like schoolchildren
under the overhang
while the lightning flashes
and the thunder booms
and the rain continues,
and continues,
so the vendors
drop the price of hotdogs
to 25 cents each
and an old man decides
that now's the perfect time
to buy another beer
(who has time to blog
when there's so much life
to live?)

hey

2005-07-14T15:23:00.000-05:00

thanks everyone for the cool comments on the last post. you guys are the best.

the tao of toad

2005-07-05T21:45:00.000-05:00

i sat in the car next to her
when i told her i was gay
it was the first time that the words
had ever found their way from my mouth
they sounded so distant
as if spoken by someone else
as if they had slipped from a dream
and fallen onto my lower lip-- glistening
in the light of the afternoon sun

she stopped for only a moment
then slowly placed her hand on my knee
and told me that it was okay
she told me that everything
was okay
and then she smiled

this is when i first knew
that i loved her
when i first realized
a bond between us that would never be broken
a bond that would endure
the heat of any tribulation
and as she spoke these words
it was the first time in my life
that i knew
what it felt like to be normal

i miss you like crazy, toad
but i'm comforted with the knowledge
that you have a cool and happy life
that you have a life filled with love
and that you are surrounded by friends
and i thank you
for giving me the strength
to claim a similar life
for myself

and for any of you who happen to stumble upon this post: maybe you're gay. maybe you're just scared. maybe you're whatever. i don't know you. and you don't know me. i'm not your mommy. nor your best friend. nor the baglady you see pushing a cart down the street. past the wino. past the child molester. past the basketball court where some thirteen-year-old bully is thrusting a shiv into the side of some poor mexican kid who can't speak english and only wanted to come to this country for a chance at a better life. for a chance at living the american dream. for a chance to live a life of freedom. to go wherever he wanted to go. to say whatever he wanted to say. to crawl from the dirt of some poor ghetto and pull his way to the top of this evil, money-loving, back-stabbing country we call home. only to realize, as he lay gasping for breath on his deathbed, that every cent he has ever managed to save will find its way back to the government in the form of one tax or another. only to realize that any remaining relatives will be left only with memories and thousands upon thousands of dollars of funeral expenses.

??!!

i know i was going somewhere with this... hmmm...

oh yeah!

it's okay to be gay

it's really

fucking

okay

stale beer

2005-06-13T11:57:00.000-05:00

not much appears here anymore
i'm feeding any creativity i have
into living life
into long walks by the river
into a dog named guinness
into relationships with friends
as the sun melts into the horizon
as the sound of a spring thunderstorm
booms in the distance
while the smell of garlic
from some italian kitchen
gently floats by
while a red rosebush demands that i watch
as the neighbors flee into the night
as a boy peddles his bike down the street,
paying strict attention to the asphalt
as it blurs away underneath him

i like how the gravel
rolls around under my feet
as i walk barefoot down the drive

i'm pretty sure i want one

2005-06-09T14:39:00.000-05:00

not really too much going on here
had lunch with ex-roomie yesterday
he seems happy in his shiny new life

oh yeah...
ok...
lemme start over

i helped rescue a Kerry Blue Terrier last saturday. aka the Irish Blue Terrier. a friend of mine had been called to foster the kerry while the dog was awaiting adoption. this friend has bred kerry terriers and personally owns three. he was glad to help out and asked me if i'd join him.

we drove the three hours to get the dog. i was plenty pissed once i realized what our fair race had done to this poor animal.

our best guess is that the pup is a year old. The Kerry Blue Terrier Foundation had bought him at a puppy mill auction. had the KBTF not been successful in winning him, he would have spent the rest of his life in a cage-- coming out on scarce occasion in order to make more puppies for the mill to sell.

it was obvious that he had already spent the first year of life in a cage. he had no concept of how to negotiate stairs. no reaction, really, when we'd pet him or talk to him. it's almost as if he was just "there." like a piece of furniture. we tried to feed him doggie treats but he just sniffed at them. i think the treats smelled good to him, but he didn't seem to understand that they were to be eaten.

he hadn't been underfed as much as neglected. he had no muscle tone. his coat hadn't been clipped in a long time-- if ever. the top of his head was covered with dog bites. a small part of one ear was missing.

we plopped the dog in the back seat of the car for the ride home and took turns sitting next to him.

it's amazing to me. that we can take a life and simply isolate it like that. use it for our own financial gain. a comodity to be bought and sold.

well, the last couple of days have been pretty amazing. my friend's three other kerry terriers quickly accepted this orphan into their pack. and it isn't taking him long to realize that he's one of the family. of course he's only being fostered right now-- which means that he will probably go to a different adoptive home. but at least he's finally happy and loved.

and yes, i have filled out the necessary paperwork to adopt him. don't know if i'll be successful, but at least i'm going to try. in any case, he has a fantastic life ahead of him now.

will's secret tune

2005-05-29T22:55:00.000-05:00

free feet, loose and kicking
both arms
bound behind me
stretch a foot just far enough
to touch the edges with my toe
strain the noose just hard enough
to stop all circulation

black island night in the city
the barking dogs
the cars
the choking smog
all in a desperate attempt to veil my insanity
dark swirling clouds above
in a vortex of
sucking sounds sucking sounds
a baby cries in the distance
as an old man covers his eyes

"bad tooth" will sat in a corner of the booth
eating eggs and ham
quietly humming to himself
and smart with the knowledge that someday
he will be bigger than god
humming a secret tune
that is meant to unlock his destiny
stopping momentarily
to tell me that he hates me

the noose around my neck
cuts into the skin
slowly separating heart from intellect
and i begin to hear will's tune
humming through the power lines
in brilliant sparks of lucidity
while i witness my decay
and hear him quietly laughing below me
waiting to catch me in his arms

this fleeting moment
brought to you
by the passage of time

my oh my it's myfi

2005-05-23T12:05:00.000-05:00

okay. so i get all geeky for gadgets. this is common knowledge amongst my friends. i love me the new pretty.

but these days are mostly spent wishing instead of buying. it's all those damned priorities... new car tires, insurance premiums, eating. really takes a bite out of the "new gadget" budget.

and i love xm radio. so naturally, when i first learned about this little reciever i got really excited. really excited. and started planning. and budgeting. and figured i'd have the money saved up by, oh, let's say, the end of the year.

that all changed last friday when my parents surprised me with a check to go buy this little jewel. and i do mean surprised. not that they don't occasionally buy me things. they are very generous people. but never anything like this. this kind of "things," at $299 a pop, is expensive. even when the price includes every available accessory:

so i thanked them profusely and immediately went went to circuit city to buy one. surprise #2 came when i found out that c.c. had this little jewel on temporary sale for $279. (i see that today the price has dropped to $275!)

the radio worked great. for the first few hours. but quickly got to the point where it refused to power-up. so i marched #1 back to the store.

circuit city was really cool about the bum receiver. they exchanged it for another unit. and then they plugged the 2nd unit into their antenna system, called xm, and changed my service from radion #1 to radio #2 so i wouldn't have to be inconvenienced with switching service. kudos to circuit city!

this "new" unit has performed flawlessly so far. i've been able to take it to the fairgrounds and downtown-- using only the receiver's internal antenna. perfect reception. maybe there are a lot of ground repeaters in those areas. i live in what appears to be a "dead spot," but the provided home antenna brings reception right back where it should be. driving 10 miles out of town, with the myfi sitting on my dash, provided no lack of reception. oh, the myfi has an internal FM transmitter. this means it will transmit the xm signal to my car's radio and i can listen to xm in the car without having to use wires! sweet!

so here's a little review. i tend to disagree with the review, though i don't own an ipod. i find that the sound quality is good. and the volume is plenty loud for nearly any condition. so far, i can't really find anything bad to say about the new myfi.

thank heaven for pool boys!

2005-05-11T14:32:00.000-05:00

we blogged about our pool boys a couple of years ago. (by the way the table on that page was made pre-mozilla and looks a little better in explorer. if you're having trouble viewing the page because you browse with mozilla, then good for you!)

well, i guess it's finally summer 'cos the pool boys are back. now the need to come up with lots of reasons to step outside for "just a moment." y'know... to make sure the boys aren't getting too much sun or sumthin.

picture guys in their late teens to early twenties. all in exquisite physical condition. buff bods. bronzed arms and legs. white smiles. all wearing the skimpiest of bathing suits. all wet and glistening as they bend over to clean swimming pool covers. the fabric of their trunks clinging just where it needs to. or sometimes not covering what it should.

and for our readers who prefer the other side of the coin, we hope that this will put things in perspective:

picture girls in their late teens to early twenties. all in exquisite physical condition. buff bods. bronzed arms and legs. white smiles. all wearing the skimpiest of bikinis. all wet and glistening as they bend over to clean swimming pool covers. the fabric of their bikinis clinging just where it needs to. or sometimes not covering what it should.

oops! sorry! wrong pic. let's try this again:

no heaven for petey

2005-05-10T01:45:00.000-05:00

i think i pissed roomie off today
as we stood in line at taco bell
when he looked over in my direction
and opened his mouth to speak--
but before he could utter a single word
i held up my left hand and proclaimed
(loud enough for all to hear)
"i don't do small talk."

why did roomie flip me off?

pic-phone fun from saturday

2005-04-26T13:49:00.000-05:00

the first two are from the mary k. oxley nature center just north of town. where we went bird spotting saturday afternoon and searched for barn swallows. pre-bug hikes are nice!

the last is from drillers stadium. where we endured a 14-inning game, ball toss (throw a numbered baseball into a bucket and win junk)-- followed by fireworks. i was freakin' sober before we left for home!!

oooh, berg

2005-04-25T14:59:00.000-05:00

the above is my review of
the amityville horror (2005)

if it's not enough
to make you want to see the movie
then don't bother
'cos you won't like it

once in forever

2005-04-20T22:43:00.000-05:00

i feel like i'm in a void
like nothing's good enough to save the day
like my superhero powers aren't quite strong enough

i think i'm going to be lonely in a few days
i've never considered myself a lonely person
but you never truly realize what you have
until it's gone
and then, i suppose, it will be the little things that i'll miss
like how he'd line up his shoes underneath the computer table
or the way he'd make the bed in the morning
as though he didn't have the time to spare
or the way he'd fill the bed in the evening
when he'd come home late at night
and softly slide into that space beside me
like there was a sign above it proclaiming "reserved"

but for tonight i think i'll leave the kitchen window open
so a sweet evening breeze can meander through the house
i think i'll stay up a little later
so i can stay awake a little longer
and greet him when he comes to bed
tonight i'll pretend that this is all gonna last forever
that it's thirty years later and that he never left

spring is in the air

2005-04-19T10:40:00.000-05:00

thanks to the writer of this blog, and the warmth of spring, and my fat ass, i decided to break out the bike. it's a cheesy '91 diamondback topanga, 21-speed, with a shimano gear package. looks pretty much like the pic only in a granite colour. i bought the thing on 4/22/91 with the intention of riding the wheels off. i rode it like three or four times.

well i pumped up the tires and rode it again on saturday. i'd forgotten (or maybe never fully realized back then) how much fucking fun it is to get on a bike and pump the pedals. only went three or four miles. that's about all my lungs would allow.

didn't even know how to shift the gears. the manual is useless. just got out there and started experimenting. i'm by no means experienced yet, but i'm finding that i'm beginning to shift without thinking about it.

but that experience on saturday had a huge impact on me. all saturday night was spent dreaming of riding. seriously. i was actually so stoked come sunday morning that the first thing i did was to grab the bike and head out. something kind of peaceful about riding early on a sunday morning with no one around but you and the bike.

and here's another thing. i've been so used to driving a gas-guzzling car that i'd forgotten what it's like to ride on two wheels. not the balance thingy, but the size thingy. squeezing through gaps in fences. shortcuts through narrow back alleys. i'm beginning to discover that heading for my destination doesn't necessarily mean "drive toward intersection y + z." there are lots of alternatives. i'm finding that the whole biker mindset is different.

i've even found myself wanting to flip off hummer drivers as they fly by in their gas-guzzling monstrosities. but only after they get past me.

tales of the roomie

2005-04-15T22:56:00.000-05:00

if things go as planned, next week should be the last week for roomie. the apartment he's found is currently being remodeled and should be ready by next weekend. so, it looks like chez petey will soon again be a single-person dwelling. unless you count two parrots and a boston terrier as persons.

for those of you who don't know, i live in a one-bedroom house. well, it's really more like a large apartment. but it's on its own lot, with regular-sized homes on either side. one bathroom. smallish living room.

you'd think that stuffing two friends into such a compact place would be the perfect recipe for all sorts of disasters, but this hasn't been the case. in fact, i'm pretty sure i'm going to miss him when he leaves.

part of this is due to the fact that we see each only four nights a week. he usually goes out of town on the weekend, and takes off right after work on friday. so i have the run of the place on weekends.

the other part is that he and i "clicked" right from the beginning-- which is very rare for me. not that i have trouble getting along with others. in fact quite the opposite is true. i can usually strike up a conversation with anyone and fit right into things. but with him it's different. with him it's like we've known each other for centuries. he and i seem to "fit."

here's a typical day, beginning with e-mailing each other over and over while we're supposed to be working:

me: (here's the link to the place you wanted to visit this weekend to get that thing you're looking for.)
him: Sweet! Thanks. Do you have that piece of paper with the item number on it?
me: yeah, like i made it into this sweet keychain and hung it on my belt loop. idiot!! it was 0040 or something. i dunno.
him: Great...thanks for nothing.
him: Up for taco bell today?
me: yeah. what time?
him: Whenever.
me: leave at noon. i'll meet you there a little after. do you still remember how to get there or do you want me to draw you a picture?
him: FUCK you.

it probably seems like standard fare to you. to us it was this great conversation peppered with napoleon dynamite references and all sorts of little jabs at each other. which we both found quite amusing. and annoying. with the annoyances also striking us as quite amusing.

then there's lunch at the bell. i'm standing in line, waiting to place my order. he walks in, stands next to me for a moment, then leans over and bites me on the shoulder-- hard. without looking i bring my right hand up behind him and smack him on the back of the head-- hard. and the little kid in line ahead of us begins to laugh. then roomie punches me.

then i'm standing in line, waiting for my order to be filled and roomie walks by and grimaces. "you look constipated. are you feeling okay today? are you constipated?" i scowl in reply. "or maybe you have diarrhea." then a little louder as he's walking away: "do you have diarrhea?"

then there's the whole eating of the lunch thing. and the part where i grab his hand and make him drop his burrito in his lap. and the part where he throws a dallop of sour cream on my shirt. which, of course, quicky evolves into a food fight. complete with fellow-diners looking on in horror.

then, just as i take the lid off my cup of pepsi and am about to toss the last of the cup's contents in his general direction, he looks up at me with the most serious of expressions and says: "i'm very happy." his words stun me. i hadn't expected them. i think for a moment before quietly placing the lid back on the cup. then we both get up and leave to go back to work.

i can still hear him saying those words. "i'm very happy." i guess i never realized it until then. until he said them. i guess i'd been too busy playing with him to notice. to give it any consideration. but as i got back in my car i thought to myself "yeah, i'm very happy, too."

cheers to you, roomie. right about now you should be in some dark club somewhere with a drink in your hand. dancing the night away. laughing the night away. with not even a thought about the words you spoke this afternoon. or the lunch we shared at the bell. while i sit here writing about both.

welcome to my world

2005-04-14T09:50:00.000-05:00

many thanks to the unlinkable undertoad
kudos for turning me on
(wait a minute captain, i'm just getting warmed up)
to the sharpie rt
the retractable sharpie that
i now carry in my pocket

what better way to permanently record
fleeting thoughts
in the out of the way places
most will never see

except the plumber
reading a poem about dog farts
on the sink's trap

or the car mechanic
noticing haiku
on the car's radiator hose

or you
as you take that shortcut home
but stop short for just a moment
to read the neighbor's trashcan
and find out about the day
i nearly died

a fine day for tummler and solomon

2005-04-12T08:19:00.000-05:00

Cat Hunting Considered in Wisconsin
Threat to Songbirds From Feral Cats Raises Concerns
By DEAN SCHABNER

Apr. 12, 2005 - Cat lovers might be outraged by the idea of allowing hunters to stalk their furry friends, but some naturalists say pet owners ought to take the proposal as a wake-up call to be more responsible.

The issue of whether to make feral cats an unprotected species, meaning they could be hunted and killed, was put before the Wisconsin Conservation Congress, an independent organization created by the state 70 years ago to take public input on conservation issues, last night. Representatives from 72 counties listened to residents' concerns about the issue.

The proposal, which was raised five years ago and voted down by the congress, was revived after a 2004 University of Wisconsin study that found non-native feral cats were a threat to native animals such as lovebirds.

Estimates of the number of songbirds killed each year by feral cats in Wisconsin alone range from 8 million to 217 million, though the number is actually believed to be around 39 million, said Steven Oestreicher, the chairman of the congress.

"When you're talking about millions and millions of songbirds in state, you've got take a harder look at this," he said.

It was raised by a resident again during last spring's Conservation Congress hearing in La Crosse County, after the university's report, and the resolution passed 53-1, which put it on the agenda for this year's congress.

Attendees at last night's meetings voted, and Oestreicher said a tally might be available by late today.

If most of the counties approve the proposal, the Conservation Congress could decide to recommend to the state Natural Resources Board that cats be listed as an unprotected species. If the board agrees, it would make the suggestion to the state legislature, which would have the final say in the matter.

Even if the proposal were passed by the Conservation Congress, it could still be changed as it goes through the review and legislative process. Changes could include narrowing the definition of feral cat.

Under the proposal that was discussed last night, even domestic cats without a collar could be considered wild and unprotected, which upset many cat owners at some meetings.

"This sort of crosses the line from wildlife management to people's pets," said one person who opposed the idea during a meeting in Madison.

In Brown County, several hundred people filled an auditorium and the crowd was not the meeting's usual mix of outdoors enthusiasts and hunters. The controversial cat issue took center stage.

"Those cats are no different than someone else's children. They're my children," cat owner Denise Servais said at the Brown County meeting.

The issue of feral cats is biggest in rural areas, where some hunters and residents consider the animals a nuisance, not a harmless pet. Studies estimate there could be 2 million feral cats roaming Wisconsin. Though cat owners may consider them a native species, biologists say they are not, and they kill native rodents and birds.

While cat owners rallied to the defense of felines, some outdoorsmen said those people do not have a clear perspective on a problem that cannot be ignored.

"I think anyone who spends time in the outdoors away from your feeders in the city will know that feral cats do pose a clear danger to native species," Tom Tilkens of De Pere in Brown County said.

Simply killing these cousins of the housecat, though, wasn't an acceptable solution for some.

"I do see both sides, but I'm not sure hunting cats is the answer," cat owner Lisa Hanson of Brown County said.

Even some hunters said they do not see cats as a big concern.

"I just don't see a problem with what they're talking about, the feral cats," Pete Petrouske of the Brown County conservation committee said. "I mean, how many people have ever seen a feral cat? I've never seen one, and I've been out hunting a lot."

Because of that, Oestreicher said, people may be overreacting if they imagine that hunters are going to grab their guns and go prowling for cats.

He pointed out that cats are nocturnal predators, and therefore not a very attractive target for hunters.

As he sees it, the issue really is about sending a message to cat owners.

"We are not advocating a hunting season or the shooting of cats," he said. "We're hoping it's a wake-up call to pet owners to be responsible. This is really to get the attention of the pet owner that when you get tired of your cat, don't take it out into the woods and dump it."

ABC News affiliates WISN-TV in Milwaukee, WBAY-TV in Green Bay and WAOW-TV in Wausau contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2005 ABC News Internet Ventures

slouching toward nirvana

2005-04-11T18:53:00.000-05:00

i've this feeling of anticipation the past couple of days
like some big change is about to come into my life
don't really get any vibes about good or bad
it's more like a turn-of-the-page sort of thing
more like a shifting of gears
like i've been sitting at a railroad crossing
waiting for the train to pass
and it finally has--
which usually means that events in my life
are about to screamin' fly

don't know why i chose dali for the pic today
maybe it's dali's ghost that's about to scream
like fingernails on the chalkboard
like the muse on acid
like a clockwork blur
hmm... i wonder what the scream of dali's ghost
would really sound like

read bukowski's slouching toward nirvana
gobbled it up from beginning to end yesterday
his words are as steamin' fresh
as when he first pounded them onto the page
only he listened to mozart when he wrote
and i'm listening to the ramones

may i dream a different dream, please?

2005-04-09T22:08:00.000-05:00

i won't think of you tonight
when i am all alone in bed
and your arms aren't there to hold me
and your warmth's not there to warm me
i'll not wonder what your doing
i'll not lay awake unblinking
thinking of the way you slide
your body closer to me late at night
and maybe sigh a little as our skin
begins to contact

don't start thinking that i like you
'cos i only hang around you
when i'm bored

i'll not dream the little dream
where we save the world together
how we fight until the fight is done
and live until the battle's won
then share a gentle laughter
after all the word is happy
as we sneak off with each other
to a place where no one thinks to look
and hold each other in our arms
until another day

don't start thinking that i like you
i just need someone around
to write about

* with apologies to 10cc--
y'know, the band what named itself
after the quantity of sperm that the
average man ejaculates? how gay was
that? were we completely clueless
in the seventies? yeah, now
every guy reading this is wondering
how much he ejaculates.
or maybe they're just "ewwwing."

it's just a silly phase i'm going through

2005-04-08T21:08:00.000-05:00

sometimes i see the strangest things--
things i can't quite wrap myself around
like last friday
april fool's day
but this is no joke

i was sitting at a stoplight in town
on my way to get some coffee
ahead of me was an overpass
to my left was the off-ramp

and as i sat at the light i noticed a red pickup
as it slowly drove from the off-ramp
and turned left to go under the overpass

but the truck was moving slower than normal
its speed caught my attention

i watched as the driver's door began to open
and was shocked
when the middle-aged driver fell out and onto the street

she kind of tucked and rolled into some sort of
ultra-slow-motion
fetal position

at first i thought she would be run over
by her own truck
but i watched as the truck's rear left tire cleared
and then as the truck completed the left turn by itself
coasting underneath the overpass
and back up the other side

just when i thought it would keep going
it began to slow and started to roll backwards
stopping just underneath the overpass

i looked over at the woman
who was still lying on the ground
she stood up and rubbed her hip
while another motorist
pushed her into his car
and made a u-turn back to hers

we all watched as she got back into her truck
and drove away

•

nope, i've got nothing cute to say about this
nothing at all

alone in the rain

2005-04-06T21:17:00.000-05:00

your heartbeat thunders in my ear
as i lay my head against your arm
as the rain falls softly on the roof
in birdwing flutters and soft goodbyes
it's early and you have to be at work
(but i don't and beg your truancy)
as i gently run my fingers through
the short red hairs on your chest
as you gently sigh
as seconds tick into minutes
and thoughts of work fade into a dream
soon enough you will slide out of
bed and into the shower
soon enough i will be left alone in the rain

•

blue october thoughts of you
blend into a foggy haze of whatever
and spin through my mind as i
begin to lose all concentration
while the rest of the afternoon
slips quietly away from me
like a lone cube of ice sliding across the tabletop
like a mexican wrestler losing

•

evening arrives and so do you, begging a soft taco
fake forgetting dinner with a friend
before he calls to announce his arrival
and so you're off again

•

late night alone in the rain
and i try to remember the smell of you
the sound of your beating heart
the warmth of your skin as i'd
softly lay my head against your arm
black-echo memories ring tinny
when compared to smooth warm flesh
so i struggle to accept an empty pillow
and fall back against cold sheets

dance of the roomies

2005-04-05T09:55:00.000-05:00

i have a new roomie
platonic and all that bullshit
but we do share a bed
for sleeping and all that bullshit

and the past few nights
i've noticed
this harmonious-cuddle thing
starting to happen
a sort of nocturnal ballet

arms around chests and
legs between legs
bodies changing position
simultaneosly
back pressed to back
then head against shoulder
and all night long this silent
rhythmic flow

i showered and got ready for work this morning
before sitting down in a chair in the living room
i wasn't tired
but there seemed to be something keeping me
from heading out the door
and as i sat there i realized
that it wasn't just our bodies
that were becoming entwined during the night,
but that this ballet has also been a sort of
spritual meshing of souls

and as i sat there i realized
that leaving him behind in bed
meant leaving a little part of me
behind as well

p to the s to the m: heavenly honey and who needs updates?
p to the s to the error: thanks to whomever that we're all still alive
and the son is rising

BUK!

2005-03-24T11:30:00.000-06:00

March 24, 2005 | home

THE NEW YORKER
CRITICS
BOOKS

SMASHED
by ADAM KIRSCH
The pulp poetry of Charles Bukowski.
Issue of 2005-03-14
Posted 2005-03-07

In the third edition of “The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry,” in which poets appear in order of birth, the class of 1920 fields a strong team, including Howard Nemerov and Amy Clampitt. If you were to browse the poetry section of any large bookstore, you would probably find a book or two by each of those critically esteemed, prize-winning poets. Nowhere to be found in the canonizing Norton anthology, however, is the man who occupies the most shelf space of any American poet: Charles Bukowski. Bukowski’s books make up a burly phalanx, with their stark covers and long, lurid titles: “Love Is a Dog from Hell”; “Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit.” They give the impression of an aloof, possibly belligerent empire in the middle of the republic of letters.

Bukowski himself, and his many, many readers, would not have it any other way. John Martin, the founder of Black Sparrow Press, who was responsible for launching Bukowski’s career, has explained that “he is not a mainstream author and he will never have a mainstream public.” This is an odd thing to say about a poet who has sold millions of books and has been translated into more than a dozen languages—a commercial success of a kind hardly known in American poetry since the pre-modernist days of popular balladeers like Edgar A. Guest. Yet the sense of not being part of the mainstream, at least as the Norton anthology and most other authorities define it, is integral to Bukowski’s appeal. He is one of those writers whom each new reader discovers with a transgressive thrill.

Fittingly, for a poet whose reputation was made in ephemeral underground journals, it is on the Internet that the Bukowski cult finds its most florid expression. There are hundreds of Web sites devoted to him, not just in America but in Germany, Spain, the Czech Republic, and Sweden, where one fan writes that, after reading him for the first time, “I felt there was a soul-mate in Mr. Bukowski.” Such claims to intimacy are standard among Bukowski’s admirers. On Amazon.com, the reader reviews of his books sound like a cross between love letters and revival-meeting testimonials: “This is the one that speaks to me to the point where each time I read certain pages, I cry”; “This book is one of the most influential books of poetry in my life”; or, most revealing of all, “I hate poetry, but I love Buk’s poems.”

Today’s fans can no longer call up Bukowski on the phone or drop in on him at home in Los Angeles, where he lived most of his life. But before his death, from leukemia, in 1994, they could and did, with a regularity that the poet found flattering, if tiresome. As he told an interviewer in 1981, “I get many letters in the mail about my writing, and they say: ‘Bukowski, you are so fucked up and you still survive. I decided not to kill myself.’ . . . So in a way I save people. . . . Not that I want to save them: I have no desire to save anybody. . . . So these are my readers, you see? They buy my books—the defeated, the demented and the damned—and I am proud of it.”

This mixture of boast and complaint exactly mirrors the coyness of Bukowski’s poetry, which is at once misanthropic and comradely, aggressively vulgar and clandestinely sensitive. The readers who love him, and believe that he would love them in return, know how to look past the bluster of poems like “splashing”:

dumb,
Jesus Christ,
some people are so dumb
you can hear them
splashing around
in their dumbness. . . .

I want to
run and hide
I want to
escape their engulfing
nullity.

Bukowski’s fans realize that “some people,” like E. E. Cummings’s “mostpeople,” or J. D. Salinger’s hated “phonies,” are never us, always them—those not perceptive enough to understand our merit, or our favorite author’s. This is a typically adolescent emotion, and it is no coincidence that all three of these writers exert a special power over teen-agers. With all three, too, there is the sense that if the misanthrope could know us as we really are he would welcome our pilgrimage; as Holden Caulfield says, “What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.” Similarly, Bukowski might declare his contempt for humanity, and his alarm at its constant invasions of his privacy—“I have never welcomed the ring of a / telephone,” he writes in “the telephone”—yet he titles another poem with his telephone number, “462-0614,” and issues what sounds like an open invitation:

I don’t write out of
knowledge.
when the phone rings
I too would like to hear words
that might ease
some of this.

that’s why my number’s
listed.

This sort of cri de coeur is not what first comes to mind when the name Charles Bukowski is mentioned. In the course of some fifty books, he transformed himself into a mythic roughneck, a figure out of a tall tale—brawler, gambler, companion of bums and whores, boozehound with an oceanic thirst. (This legend gained still wider exposure with the 1987 movie “Barfly,” in which a version of Bukowski is portrayed by Mickey Rourke.) In his heavily autobiographical novels and some of his poems, he gave this alter ego the transparent pseudonym Hank Chinaski—Bukowski’s full name was Henry Charles Bukowski, Jr., and he was known to friends as Hank—but since he almost always wrote in the first person, the line between Chinaski the character and Bukowski the man is blurred. This blurring is, in fact, the secret of Bukowski’s appeal: he combines the confessional poet’s promise of intimacy with the larger-than-life aplomb of a pulp-fiction hero.

Bukowski’s poems are best appreciated not as individual verbal artifacts but as ongoing installments in the tale of his true adventures, like a comic book or a movie serial. They are strongly narrative, drawing from an endless supply of anecdotes that typically involve a bar, a skid-row hotel, a horse race, a girlfriend, or any permutation thereof. Bukowski’s free verse is really a series of declarative sentences broken up into a long, narrow column, the short lines giving an impression of speed and terseness even when the language is sentimental or clichéd. The effect is as though some legendary tough guy, a cross between Philip Marlowe and Paul Bunyan, were to take the barstool next to you, buy a round, and start telling his life story:

I was the mean and
crazy white
guy,
full of humor, laughter
and gamble.
I was shacked with a
silken-legged
beauty.
I drank and fought all
night,
was the terror of the
local bars.

These lines are from “then and now,” a poem in the latest collection of Bukowski’s work, “Slouching Toward Nirvana: New Poems” (Ecco; $27.50). Death has not put a dent in Bukowski’s productivity; this is his ninth posthumous book of poems, and there are more to come. Nor has it changed his style: these “new poems” are just like the old poems, perhaps a shade more repetitive, but not immediately recognizable as second-rate work or leftovers.

An uncannily prolific afterlife was something that Bukowski counted on. As early as 1970, he wrote to his editor, “just think, someday after I’m dead and they start going for my poems and stories, you will have a hundred stories and a thousand poems on hand. you just don’t know how lucky you are, babe.” In the next quarter century, the surplus grew, thanks to Bukowski’s nearly graphomaniacal fecundity. “I usually write ten or fifteen [poems] at once,” he said, and he imagined the act of writing as a kind of entranced combat with the typewriter, as in his poem “cool black air”: “now I sit down to it and I bang it, I don’t use the light / touch, I bang it.”

Alcohol was the fuel, as it was often the subject, of these poetic explosions: “I don’t think I have written a poem when I was completely sober,” he told one interviewer. And he rejected on principle the notion of poetry as a craft, a matter of labor and revision. Against the metaphors prevailing in the New Critical atmosphere of the nineteen-fifties, when he started writing in earnest—the Well Wrought Urns and the Verbal Icons—Bukowski posed his own, entirely characteristic image for writing: “it has to come out like hot turds the morning after a good beer drunk.”

That kind of grossness is a large part of Bukowski’s appeal. His own life, as it appears in the poems, at least, is a teen-age boy’s fantasy of adulthood, in which there’s no one to make you clean up your room, or get out of bed in the morning, or stop drinking before you pass out. Yet, crucial to the myth, slobbery and drunkenness only increase Bukowski’s appeal to women:

you’re a beast, she said
your big white belly
and those hairy feet.
you never cut your nails. . . .

beast beast beast,
she kissed me,
what do you want for
breakfast?

Such poems offer the same kind of vicarious wish fulfillment that differently inclined readers might find in spy novels or gangster movies, with their parodies of unbound masculinity. (In one poem, Bukowski acknowledges this affinity, boasting: “don’t believe the gossip: / Bogie’s not dead.”) And Bukowski is best read as a very skillful genre writer. He bears the same relation to poetry as Zane Grey does to fiction, or Ayn Rand to philosophy—a highly colored, morally uncomplicated cartoon of the real thing. He has two of the supreme merits of genre writing, consistency and abundance: once you have been enticed into Bukowski’s world, you have the comfort of knowing that you won’t have to leave it anytime soon, since there will always be another book to read.

The pleasures offered by Bukowski’s work are more quickly exhausted than the questions raised by his life, and the way he transformed that life into something like art. The crucial episodes in his biography are reworked again and again in his poems and novels, so that any reader quickly learns the broad outlines of his story. In “Slouching Toward Nirvana,” for instance, the poem “clothes cost money” recounts Bukowski’s childhood memory of a classmate called Hofstetter, who would get beaten up on the way home from school every day, only to be berated by his mother: “you’ve ruined your clothes/again!/ don’t you know that clothes/ cost money?” This is nearly identical to an episode from Bukowski’s novel about his childhood, “Ham on Rye,” where the hapless boy is called David: “David! Look at your knickers and shirt! . . . Why do you do this to your clothes?”

In both versions of the story, what matters is the brutality of children and the cruel indifference of parents; and these seem to have been the major themes of Bukowski’s own childhood. Born in Germany to an Americanserviceman father and a German mother, Bukowski moved at the age of three to Los Angeles. The Depression, which shadowed his whole adolescence, affected him primarily through his father, who took out his frustrations on his wife and son. Bukowski describes terrible beatings, sadistically inflicted for minor transgressions like missing a blade of grass when he mowed the lawn. When Bukowski reached adolescence and broke out in a world-class case of acne, he saw it as a symptom of his helpless suffering: “The poisoned life had finally exploded out of me. There they were—all the withheld screams—spouting out in another form.”

This disfigurement helped to make Bukowski a surly, friendless teen-ager. But there was another element in his isolation, one that he dwells on much less often—an innate sensitivity and intelligence, which led to the first stirrings of literary ambition. This is a standard element in the biography of most poets, but it fits awkwardly with the myth of Bukowski the tough, who constantly proclaims his contempt for mere bookishness. “Shakespeare didn’t work at all for me,” he told one interviewer. “That upper-crust shit bored me. I couldn’t relate to it.” The promise of his books is that they detour around emasculated, fussy artistry—“We’re all tired of the turned subtle phrase and the riddle in the middle of the line,” he declared to another interviewer—and plunge deep into life itself.

Yet Bukowski also admitted, on other occasions, to having been a very bookish youth: “Between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four I must have read a whole library.” In his letters (four volumes of which have been published so far), he shows that he is conversant with the entire range of modern fiction and poetry. He parodies Eliot (“Bukowski’s old, Bukowski’s old / he wears the bottoms of his beercans / rolled”), drops references to Mann (in “Slouching Toward Nirvana,” there is a poem titled “disorder and early sorrow”), debates the relative merits of Turgenev and Tolstoy (he prefers the former). Most surprisingly, he admires the New Critics, whose aesthetics of complexity and impersonality he so gleefully violated. “I know that the Kenyon Review is supposed to be our enemy,” he wrote to a friend in 1961, “but the articles are, in most cases, sound, and I would almost say, poetic and vibrant.”

In fact, Bukowski started out in eager pursuit of conventional literary success. He attended Los Angeles City College, where he took a creative-writing class, and wrote furiously, as he wryly recalls in “the burning of the dream”:

and I wrote from 3 to
5 short stories a week
and they all came
back
from The New Yorker, Harper’s,
The Atlantic Monthly.

In his poverty and dedication, and, especially, in his low-rent Los Angeles milieu, the young Bukowski strongly resembles Arturo Bandini, the hero of John Fante’s minor classic “Ask the Dust”; the book, which Bukowski accidentally discovered in the stacks of the Los Angeles Central Library, made a huge impression on him. (Decades later, when Bukowski was famous and Fante forgotten, his advocacy led Black Sparrow Press to bring Fante’s work back into print.) During the war, when he was classified 4-F for psychological reasons, Bukowski travelled around the country on almost no money, working menial jobs and staying in flophouses—but always writing. He even scored a considerable success in 1946, when he was published in the literary magazine Portfolio, alongside Henry Miller and Jean-Paul Sartre.

Yet after that, so the legend goes, Bukowski gave up writing completely, and became a full-time drunk. For the next decade, he bummed his way across America, eventually washing up in Los Angeles once again; he boozed, whored, fought, spent time on factory floors and in jails. He frequently recalled one Philadelphia bar, in particular, where he would sit from 5 a.m. to 2 a.m., earning free drinks by allowing the bartender to beat him up for the entertainment of the crowd. This low-life odyssey is to Bukowski’s poetry what Melville’s South Sea journeys were to his fiction: an inexhaustible store of adventure and anecdote, and a badge of authenticity.

After being hospitalized, in 1955, with a nearly fatal illness, Bukowski returned to writing, but in a new spirit. His focus was now on poetry, instead of short stories, and he sent his work to underground journals with names like Coffin, Grist, and Ole. These, and not the glossy weeklies, were the right venues for his new work, which boasted a proletarian grittiness: “After losing a week’s pay in four hours it is very difficult to come to your room and face the typewriter and fabricate a lot of lacy bullshit.”

Once Bukowski returned to his vocation, success arrived slowly but surely. He became well known among readers of little magazines, and published a series of chapbooks and limited editions. Yet, as his reputation grew, he was still stuck working as a postal clerk, a job whose indignities he detailed in his first novel, “Post Office.” The real breakthrough in his career as a writer came in 1970, when John Martin agreed to pay him a monthly stipend of a hundred dollars in return for the right to publish his work through Black Sparrow Press. This arrangement was a gamble for both publisher and author, but it proved tremendously successful: by the time Bukowski died, his monthly payment had risen to seven thousand dollars and he had nineteen titles in print.

The deal can also be seen, however, as a sign of Bukowski’s lack of literary confidence. Instead of offering his publisher each book as he finished it, Bukowski simply sent all his work to Martin, who then selected the contents of the new volume. “He didn’t even know what I was going to put in,” Martin is quoted as saying in the 1998 biography “Charles Bukowski: Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life,” by Howard Sounes. “He didn’t care.” It sounds less like modern publishing, with authors and editors and agents all defending their own interests, than like the quasi-feudal relationship that John Clare, the archetypal nineteenth-century “peasant poet,” had with his publishers. Clare, too, sent off all his writing to his editor—John Taylor, of Taylor & Hessey—and received a regular allowance in return, a sign of the parties’ profound imbalance in social status and worldly savvy. But, while Clare and Taylor eventually had the bitter falling-out one might expect from such an arrangement, Bukowski and Martin remained close, trusting partners to the end. Black Sparrow continued to publish Bukowski until Martin retired, in 2002; the Bukowski catalogue was then sold to Ecco, itself a formerly independent house that is now part of HarperCollins. (The ironic result is that Bukowski, the ultimate underground poet, is now published by Rupert Murdoch.)

It is not just in his business dealings that Bukowski gives the impression of insecurity—of feeling, as he once wrote to a friend, not “so much like a writer as . . . like somebody who has slipped one past.” The same sense emerges, more damagingly, in his defensive scorn for complexity and difficulty, as if these literary values were a trick played by effete professors on honest, hardworking readers. “What’s easy is good and what’s hard is a pain in the ass,” Bukowski declared to one correspondent; or, again, “Somebody once asked me what my theory of life was and I said, ‘Don’t try.’ That fits the writing too. I don’t try, I just type.”

Just typing allowed Bukowski to accomplish a great deal. He became wealthy and famous, a friend of celebrities like Sean Penn and Madonna, the subject of biographies and documentaries. In his late poems, his delight in driving a BMW and hobnobbing with Norman Mailer is so genuine that it becomes infectious. His escape from poverty and menial labor, solely through the passion and popularity of his writing, is like a fairy tale. “I laid down my guts,” as he put it, “and the gods finally answered.” In a literary sense, too, Bukowski accomplished something rare: he produced a large, completely distinctive, widely beloved body of work, something that few poets today even dream of. It is a testament to Bukowski’s genuine popularity that, at a time when most poetry books can’t be given away, his are perennially ranked among the most frequently stolen titles in bookstores.

Yet Bukowski and his work also have the pathos of missed possibilities. He occasionally took pains to align himself with a coherent literary tradition, writing about his admiration for Dostoyevsky, Hamsun, Céline, and Camus—the classics of modern alienation, the biographers of the underground man. He was especially fond of Hamsun’s “Hunger,” the story of a young writer demented by poverty and ambition. And Bukowski came much closer to this experience than almost any other American poet. There is every reason to believe that “a note upon starvation,” a poem in the new collection, was written from experience:

about the fourth day
you begin to feel almost intoxicated
panic subsides
one sleeps well:
12 to 14 hours,
and most unusual
one continues to defecate.
the vision grows more acute
everything is seen with a new clarity.

Yet the contrast with Hamsun reveals just how conventional a writer Bukowski remained. There is nothing in his work even remotely like the episode in “Hunger” where the starving hero, having encountered an old man on a park bench, starts to make up fantastic lies about his landlord: that his name is J. A. Happolati, that he has invented an electric prayer book, that he was once the Prime Minister of Persia. The old man patiently accepts all of these outrageous stories, and even asks polite questions about them, sending the narrator into a rage: “‘Goddamnit, man, I suppose you think I’ve been sitting here stuffing you full of lies?’ I shouted, completely out of my mind. ‘I’ll bet you never believed there was a man with the name Happolati. . . . The way you have treated me is something I am not used to, I will tell you flatly, and I won’t take it, so help me God!’”

The comic fury of this episode does seem to take us to the edge of insanity: Hamsun, like Dostoyevsky, shows that the most frightening symptom of madness is the immolation of self-esteem, the urge to humiliate oneself at the same time as one humiliates everyone else. And this is the risk that Bukowski never takes. Even at his most unheroic, he is the hero of his stories and poems, always demanding the reader’s covert approval. That is why he is so easy to love, especially for novice readers with little experience of the genuine challenges of poetry; and why, for more demanding readers, he remains so hard to admire.

xander goes to the zoo

2005-03-21T20:43:00.000-06:00

sometimes i step outside my room and slip into the darkness
of another endless night complete with empty thoughts of suicide
and walk beside a full moon hanging just above my shoulder
like some child of the night though i am now a great deal older
with my hands thrust in my pockets and my eyes cast down before me
as i walk along the sidewalk of a thousand broken little dreams
that never lived the life that they had eagerly looked forward to
but still i have my memories at least until senility grinds them
into a fine
      dry
         white
            powder

redbud valley

2005-03-19T23:11:00.000-06:00

out here we are a few stray citizens
roaming through the woods
out here is back to nature
as long as one stays on the designated trail

trail from beginning to beginning
from end to end
but some of the faithful still lose their way

out here we pretend that we're nowhere
but the car is still close by
out here we could possibly fall off a cliff
but there's a very nice wooden bridge
with which to forge the stream

we missed the cactus
but saw a fine bat cave
yet the cave was closed off
to all but the bats
(there was even a sign--
though i don't think that anyone
would have gone in
even if the sign said
"come on in and see the bats")

out here i start to realize
that a broken toe can fuck up a hike
and that favoring a broken toe
can make my right ass-cheek ache

out here i can almost tune out
the throngs of other citizens
in hiking boots and hats
with walking sticks and maps
and screaming children
who can't read bat signs
next to parents who can

out here i can almost pretend i'm alone
out in the woods, far back in the woods
hiking on and on
no food, no water, no backpack
just my footsteps on soft winter leaves
and my slow steady breathing

out here i begin to think of a boy i know
and the warm glow of his laughter
rings through from recent past
and brings a smile to my face

mental picture:

i'm sitting on a stool in the kitchen in the morning. he's just woken up and walks into the room, slowly padding over to me-- his slippers making scuff-scuff noises on the wooden floor. he holds his arms out like a child who wants to be held. but like a child who doesn't want to appear to want. no words. the expression on his face like a hug = climbing back into bed. so i slowly wrap my arms around his waist and he slowly wraps his arms around me. the side of my face against his chest. his head upon my shoulder. and we hold each other for some time. dogs barking just outside. people walking through the kitchen then back out again. a car drives past the front of the house. and we linger. enjoying the warmth of the hug and the tenderness of a moment with a friend. we briefly hope the hug eternal. wanting never to let the other go. then-- as if quietly remembering a purpose-- he slowly releases me and scuff-scuffs off toward the bathroom. softly shutting the door behind him.

another:

i've been standing outside the restaurant for some time now. waiting for him. it's a lunch date. and he finally pulls into the parking lot-- waving to me through the windshield. he slides out of the car and walks up-- smiling at me as though i'm his reason. we step inside the place. him still smiling. me looking at my feet while the cashier makes some failed joke about me waiting and him being late. though it's not that he's late, but rather that i came early because i secretly wanted to make sure i spent every available moment with him. we get our meal and each take our place on opposite sides of the booth. the silence doesn't last for more than a minute before becoming something of a conversational downpour. words and smiles and he rolls his eyes and i laugh. talking and listening and whispering and knowing that it's-just-so-fuckin-nice-we-get-each-other. and we go on and on: talking and smiling and oh-yeahing as we finish the meal and walk out to his car. he stands there and looks at me for a moment before giving me a quick hug. before promising that we will hang out on saturday. before driving off to go back to work.

but it's saturday now and i'm here alone trudging through this wood. he had to drive to the city last night. he was going to come right back, but things changed. his ex had decided to drive there to meet him. so he stayed in the city. they just wanted to hang out today as friends.

out here we are all alone
stone cold
in the middle of nowhere
in the middle of reality-can't-touch-us
each of us trying to ignore the others
each of us alone with our thoughts
trying to remember our hopes and our dreams
walking as if it could make dreams come true
but eventually winding up
back in the parking lot

suicide is sooo fucking cool

2005-03-15T10:16:00.000-06:00

i don't smell anything
so i must not be dead yet
i don't smell anything
so i must not be dead yet
i'll soon find another to take to the dance
i'll soon find another to take to the dance
i don't smell anything
so i must not be dead yet
i don't smell anything
so i must not be dead yet

thanks for the concern
but if i kill myself now
it would seriously limit
my chances
of being able to find a boyfriend
who appreciates
all the coolness i have to offer

right now
though
i just have to get past the feeling--
it's like someone i loved very much
sucker-punched me in the gut
then stole all my hopes and dreams
before suddenly dying

thoughts on the death of a relationship

2005-03-14T13:37:00.000-06:00

fuck
you
fuck
you

fuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyou
fuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyou
fuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyou

yousuckyousuckyousuckyousuckyousuckyousuckyousuck
yousuckyousuckyousuckyousuckyousuckyousuckyousuck
yousuckyousuckyousuckyousuckyousuckyousuckyousuck

fuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyou
fuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyou
fuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyou
fuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyou
fuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyou
fuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyou
fuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyou
fuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyou
fuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyou
fuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyou
fuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyou
fuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyou
fuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyou
fuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyou
fuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyou
fuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyou
fuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyou
fuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyou
fuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyou
fuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyou

youdidn'thavetobesocruel
youdidn'thavetobesocruel
youdidn'thavetobesocruel

tuesday night

2005-03-09T00:36:00.000-06:00

the "wow" factor:

• went bowling again tonight. the whole $6 to get in, $1 shoe rental and $1 per each game, beer, pop, and hotdog.

• this was my 3rd time bowling. the first being when i was a little kid. the second being last week. didn't even break 100 last week. hell, i didn't even break 50. tonight was a little better. got excited when i broke the 100 mark. got really, really excited when i bowled 129 the last game-- and just happened to beat everyone else! guh!

the "bwwwaaa-hahahaha" factor:

• did i mention that i actually won a game?

the "eh" factor:

• the boy was supposed to join us for bowling tonight. he came down with some nasty throat/ear thingy and couldn't make it. took off work, went to the doc, went home. but he did call me while i was bowling. then i called him like a billion times.

the "gay" factor:

• lots and lots of cute boys like to bowl. cute boys in tight jeans. that you get to watch from behind: see billy. see billy bend over to pick up the ball. see billy run. guh! what's not to love about this sport?

the "idunno" factor:

• so, Shane, my question is this: if i go bowling on a (insert your weekly holy day here) will i go straight to hell?

the "fitness" factor:

• my wrist hurts. and i'm not really the limp-wristed type. so to speak. guh!

update at the ranch

2005-03-06T22:01:00.000-06:00

• the boy who was, and then wasn't, is back to being "kind of." or in his words "maybe." or in my words: "if you weren't so fucking hot, and on rare occasions borderline-personable, i wouldn't have even answered the phone." truth is, boys and girls, being close to this guy is all butterflys and palms sweating and aw shucks and OMG.

the conversation went something like this:

me: i didn't think you liked me anymore.
him: i never stopped liking you.
me: then why did you dump me?
him: i dunno. i didn't know what i wanted.
me: so now you know what you want?
him: well, maybe.
me: you're confusing the hell out of me. you know that don't you?

i truly think that he's a good guy. and i'm convinced that he has feelings for me. (i know that i have feelings for him.) it's just that he's gone through a lot of bad relationships. and you know what that's like. it's hard to trust your feelings. hard to trust other people. i think that he just needs to know that i'll be around for awhile. that i'll be a constant presence. and once he gets that, i mean really gets that, he'll be able to let his guard down. let himself be loved. let himself love me back.

i really don't think he's jerking me around. and it's not like there's anyone else in the picture right now. and it's not like i'm just sitting around waiting forever. this whole relationship is not yet two months old. and i like him well enough to try and make it last a little longer.

and it seems that he wants the same thing, too. maybe. well, i really do have to give him props for "maybe." at least he's being truthful. he could just lie is ass off, tell me he's madly in love with me, and then dump me for no reason once he finds out he isn't.

umm. maybe that's not such a good example.

first flight

2005-03-03T22:14:00.000-06:00

sometimes i'm dreaming that i wish i could fly
unfurling mighty white wings
from behind my back
i'd stretch them out above my head like diamonds
quietly waiting
quietly waiting for flight

the moon is silent but i'm thinking that it won't be too long
before the sun arrives to blot it all out like a fog

sometimes i'm dreaming that i wish i could soar
ascending into the sky
far above this world
but i feel safer hiding in these shadows
quietly waiting
quietly waiting for light

the moon is silent but i'm thinking that it won't be too long
before the sun arrives to blot it all out like a fog

guh!

2005-03-02T00:22:00.000-06:00

• did i say break 100? because i really meant to say break ~~100~~ 50.
• being a poor loser isn't a bad thing.
• winning is everything.
• there's nothing wrong with quitting if you know you're gonna lose.
• fuckit. i dint wanna play in the first place.
• i wasn't really trying to win.

and our new motto here at peteyluvsblog:

• "we're #6. we don't try at all."

bowling?

2005-02-28T12:23:00.000-06:00

bowling! i'm supposed to go bowling tomorrow night. and i suck at bowling. mainly because i've only played once before. so breaking 100 would be a momentous occasion. but the people i'm going with don't see it that way. they are a competitive sort. which means they'll win and rub my nose in it. which is sure to piss me off.

which begs the question: "why the hell are you going?"

well, the answer is quite simple. there might be a new boy there. note the "might" part. one friend says that this boy has a good sense of humor. another says he's weird. neither have mentioned looks-- whether or not he has missing teeth. or missing limbs.

so again the question: "why the hell are you going?"

read the "might" sentence again. note the words "new boy." as in someone i've never met. as in someone i might even like.

it's the wondering, actually. wondering whether or not this guy and i will "click." maybe become fast friends. inseparable buddies. wondering if this guy will look like matt damon. or even wondering if matt damon might not show up at the bowling alley. y'know... 'cos he got bored and decided to go bowling. in tulsa. at nine-thirty in the evening. at seridan lanes. suh! could happen.

maybe newbie and i will completely hate each other. despise each other. you know the type: the sight of him makes your skin crawl. the sound of his voice reminds you of breaking glass. the smell of him reminds you of the time you were out in the woods and got crossed up with a skunk. because skunks really stink.

so i've a plan. i will go bowling tomorrow night with these bastards. i will meet stinky. and i might even overlook the fact that he's breathing my air. and stinking it up. a lot.

but the first of these fuckers to gloat about a win will "accidentally" and repeatedly have a bowling ball dropped on his foot. because "i'm just learning." and "i'm oh, so sorry." and "i'm sure it won't happen again." fuckers.

afternoon of fun

2005-02-27T23:00:00.000-06:00

watched:

• the good son
• leprechaun
• leprechaun 2

i'm pretty sure there's something wrong with me.

in other news:

• i changed my socks
• talked to steve
• ate nachos while watching part of the oscars

but the really super part of the day is:

• i'm going to bed now.

jeeze. talk about lame-ass posting. too many bullets and not enough coarse language and nudity. i'm sorry for disappointing you, my reader. oops, i mean readers. because i snagged two comments on the last post.

which brings me to dr. gene scott, who is/was arguably the most televised human ever. a preacher of sorts. his broadcasts were (maybe still are) on the air twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. he would "teach" while asking for donations, saying that if you thought you were learning something you should "pay up." sometimes, when the phones didn't ring, he would quit teaching. just leave the studio. and you would be left with watching an empty chair for fifteen minutes. or however long it took the phones to start ringing. classic stuff.

which brings me back to the going to bed part of my post. nighty!

r.i.p. dr. gene scott

2005-02-25T10:10:00.000-06:00

my favorite dr. gene scott moment was when he sat in a chair and refused to speak for fifteen minutes-- waiting for people to send in more donations. what's your favorite dr. gene moment?

red lights

2005-02-24T19:27:00.000-06:00

tonight seems quiet and cold
like thursday night with little or no chance
the air is heavy, thick
like ancient lace on an armchair's arm
like a weathered leather jacket

the old post is gone
the old questions remain
and suddenly my endless-loop life
lies frozen up on the screen
in a single frame from my past
intense and bright
with me caught in mid-motion

i study the image in awe
the crisp whites
the deepest of deep blood reds
and a smile that could strengthen
the weariest

i know the next scene
(i've lived it a thousand times)
i know what will happen
when the movie begins again--

but for now the scene has halted
in a split-second of eternal not-knowing--
a blissful character projected on the wall
who does not expect
the inevitable

huh?

2005-02-24T10:29:00.000-06:00

just when i thought life couldn't get any odder:

2005-02-21T10:06:00.000-06:00

this is a copy of an email that some clown sent me at work. there was a link at the bottom, but i didn't click it. i'm thinking that either the email is a poor attempt to mine information or a poor attempt at humor--dunno which. what i do know is that these words blow my mind. so while i'm wrapping myself around them, you get to, too.

Dearest fellows...

I am a poor farmer and wish to get into the disco and slave trading
Business and I wish to set up a mosque so I can butt-hole young girls
And boys...and slaves... because my father left home and took all the
Riches he had already stolen for the very badness man - the Muslim trash
That prays to a trash religion...

But one moment - I must tell you that I am the son of the ruler of
M'kimbo land in the tundra ranges of the Swanee River... and I must have

Slaves to work on my property that my father left me once he
Escaped from the badness men and found that the prophet is really Ron
Popeil... of the RONCO Mosque... and took all their possessions in a
Village game that comes from m'Brooklyn called three cow Monty... as
Such I have $20 millions Euro to invest and I am looking - nay,
Generously seeking, Oh my brethren, a place to put my money so that
There is no risk to any persons stupid enough... I mean, who may wish to
Assist me... except that I shall require 50 able-bodied slaves to
Work on the plantation my father left my poor mother and I....

So please send me your bank account number so I may deposit the money in
Your account and then I shall meet you in m'Brooklyn to enjoy the
Festivities after all the monies and the checks have so cleared... then
We will turn Iran in a sheet of glass...

Many thank my wonderfulness brothers....

Please send me this information urgently, as I will make this transaction

In record time so that I may get out into the fields and put my slaves
to work while we make fun of Mohammed and his idiot religion...
I Will then introduce you all to the god we worship - the king of m'ronco,

The most wonderful and powerful Ron popiel and we shall together buy
Ovens with self-timers and roast the Slave's we have acquired over a
Small fire on the banks of the swami river in the great land of
m'kimbo....

Please do not hesitate to send me the information so that our Canadian
Brothers may take part in the feast...

With much joyous mirth and a'm'usement...

Mr. Stick M'figure
President
M'kimbo Land

nothin much

2005-02-17T12:12:00.000-06:00

ate bean chowder last night
made from a recipe used by
the local public school system

watched the talented mr. ripley last night
and dreamt all night
that the poor bastard was trying to kill me

woke up with spinning playdough eyes

and a sort of
please-stop-it--
you're-scaring-me
crush
on Matt Damon

tourist trap

2005-02-15T21:07:00.000-06:00

i feel like i'm a tourist
trapped within my own body
waiting for some 3rd-rate actor
to cross the street
so i can snap his blurry picture
and show it my co-workers
when i get back home--feeling
like i've fulfilled my purpose in life

i feel like i'm a tourist
trapped within my own body
waiting first in line
with a half-off coupon in hand
to see the wax museum/
funeral home/dairy
queen which is due to open
in just ten minutes

i feel like i'm a tourist
trapped within my own body
lost on a deserted and dusty road
on my way to Fred's House of
Boiled Liver just because
the neighbors said they liked it--
telling me i'd be a fool
to miss eating there

happy valentine's day

2005-02-14T12:28:00.000-06:00

" height="595">

i have finally decided to post a real picture of myself. i've been in hiding for nearly thirty years and wanted to "come out" on valentine's day. here is a pic of me wearing my "happy valentine's day" robe.

i can't really divulge what i've been doing all this time. all i can say is that i'm a key player in the "end times" and you'd better be listening to my music when i return. and i'm coming-- possibly next thursday. but i won't really know for sure until the preceding wednesday... around noonish or so. it's got something to do with the logistics of raining brimstone and hell-fire. that's all i'm sayin.

just know that i love each and every one of you very much. i can hear you when you talk to me, so talk lots! but no impersonations. hate 'em. and you can honor me by playing my records and cd's and tapes all day long. every day. because i'm jiggy like that, baby.

peace out,

Jelvus

languid séance

2005-02-10T10:56:00.000-06:00

a tether about the neck holds him in place

sweet security whispered in his ears

evil menace looping news

god bless the girls and boys now blue

freedom surely will not die

care to hear another lie?

it's a shiny new year for the chinese

someone please pass the soy sauce

forever

2005-02-09T21:42:00.000-06:00

yeah, forever. i can tell you that forever lasts about two and a half weeks. 'cos the boy is gone. just wants to be "friends." which is queer-speak for "don't call or text my ass because i'm fucking over you." way fucking over you.

eh. i'm okay i guess. i really don't miss him as much as i thought i would. what i miss most is the interaction-- the noise. because the strangest part is the silence. we'd text each other a couple a dozen times a day. and call each other three or four times a day. for two and a half weeks straight. every day. and then monday night was the end. and the silence since has been trippy. tuesday no calls, no texts. wednesday, just the silence. silence can be very fucking loud.

friend of mine-- he's 15. friend of mine texts me with the most brilliant. here's the (sic) for (sic): "Your sexy cool and funny you are the most aswome man and down inside you know it... Be that boy in the barn playin the music for the people be that person again and make that first boy regret dumbing you."

quickly thumbed out, sure. but from the heart. and i tell you, people, brilliance is from the heart. 15 and the guy has it. understands it. shows it to me. and makes me understand it, too.

"...be that boy in the barn playin the music for the people be that person again..." coolest words i have ever felt. ever. because those few words reminded me of my roots. my core. they've taken me home. made me remember what it was like. me and two friends in a barn. drum set. guitar. vocals. just goofin around because we were bored on a friday night. eagles. led zepplin. kansas. and before too long a couple of kids heard us. three or four. and decided to crash the "party." and after a bit longer a few more kids arrived. and before we knew what was happening, the barn was full. and the kids were dancing. some showed up with beer. and some showed up with food. all showed up to have a good time. and the party and the night and the fun and the people and the music and the laughter just all sorta happened. it was pure magic.

"...be that boy in the barn playin the music for the people be that person again..." because no matter how fucked up and painful and tearful and silent life is, it can also be pure magic. just gotta be yourself. do what you do. and before too long the rest will join you. before too long it's a party. before too long.

is that right, 15? did i get it right? fucking love you, dude.

and for the rest of you: happy year of the cock. because, my friends, it's just gotta be a good omen for me to be alive in the year of the cock.

i think i love you

2005-02-07T18:56:00.000-06:00

i crave human contact like i crave the utter blackness i feel whenever i think of you. i crave human contact like i crave the desire to use electroshock therapy to distort the image i have of you in my mind's eye. i crave human contact like i crave the idea of that image burning and sizzling and frying and curling before disappearing into never. like i crave not knowing you exist. like i crave nothingness.

dad's home

2005-02-04T15:48:00.000-06:00

click on the pic, silly.

mmhmm

2005-02-01T21:48:00.000-06:00

had a pre-date
date
tonight
bought the boy
thai
and he loved it
and was looking
forward
to spending the day
together tomorrow
then he thanked me
for dinner
and

g
a
v
e

   me

the sweetest
good (night)

k
   i
      s
         s

time with the boy turns hours to minutes
laughter with the boy never ends
boy + me in a pissy mood = me not in a pissy mood

bubbles in the sand

2005-02-01T13:37:00.000-06:00

tonight
(will be)
our first real date
stoked
about
it

i don't know why i
micro-analyzed
the
shit
(last night)
because he didn't have
all that much fun out there

so tonight
will
be
all
a
b
o
u
t

enjoying him

15 minutes

2005-01-31T21:44:00.000-06:00

gawd, what was i thinkin?
i look at you tonight
hold you in my arms tonight
and you look good
smell good
on your way to the clubs with friends
sweet kiss
gawd, what was i thinkin?
how can i even come close
to competing with what you'll see tonight?
meet tonight?
talk to tonight?
i'm not jealous-- i'm glad you're with friends
'cos everyone needs to be with friends

i guess what bothers me most
kind of haunts me
is that in 15 minutes
i'll be nothing more than a ghost memory
a shadow of the past

is that 15 minutes
might just be enough time
for you to forget you ever knew me

gawd, what was i thinkin?
what did you ever see in me?
what brings you back?

and will it be enough to bring you back
after 15 minutes
have passed?

captain ozone

2005-01-31T11:22:00.000-06:00

my new hero

buttered toast

2005-01-29T01:04:00.000-06:00

i am the drug screaming through your brain
hazy backlit colors pounding
dizzy grinding singing
slamming
through gears of pitch and octave
humming
surging forward
speeding racer
grainy blur to either side
flying by on either side
the horizon drips like honey

i'm the miles away moon ray
softly stumbling into your room
and sideways kissing your cheek

i'm the reason you smile
i'm the reason you laugh
i'm the reason you came
to be here tonight

i am
the reason
i am
the reason
i am
the reason
i am

i am
the reason
i am
the reason
i am
the reason
i am

sliders

2005-01-25T19:31:00.000-06:00

tonight seems a thousand miles away
without you here to show me the road home
and guide me back from the edge
of this lost world of a thousand thoughts

i miss the way the way you smile at me
and i miss the way you touch me like it's
your new superhuman power

and i love the way your hair smells like
a delicate rainbow
as you gently rest your head
upon my shoulder

i wish i had the words to tell you
what you mean to me but they seem pale
against the beauty of your soul

and i watch them as they slide
back gently into the abyss
just out of reach, just past my grasp

i think i might... yeah

2005-01-25T08:29:00.000-06:00

I don’t get many things right the first time
In fact, I am told that a lot
Now I know all the wrong turns, the stumbles and falls
Brought me here

And where was I before the day
That I first saw your lovely face?
Now I see it everyday
And I know

That I am
I am
I am
The luckiest

What if I’d been born fifty years before you
In a house on a street where you lived?
Maybe I’d be outside as you passed on your bike
Would I know?

And in a white sea of eyes
I see one pair that I recognize
And I know

That I am
I am
I am
The luckiest

I love you more than I have ever found a way to say to you

Next door there’s an old man who lived to his nineties
And one day passed away in his sleep
And his wife; she stayed for a couple of days
And passed away

I’m sorry, I know that’s a strange way to tell you that I know we belong
That I know

That I am
I am
I am
The luckiest

coming home

2005-01-21T22:56:00.000-06:00

all my dreams are packed away in
two old suitcases by my feet on a
black starlit night as the winter wind chills
while i pull the collar of my coat against the
back of my neck and stare up at the stars blinking.
stars that were here before me, before my parents,
before my parents parents,
stars that saw the day i was born and
stars that will bury me.
i look into...

aw, fuck that.

i mean how does a guy write some drippy poem
all dark and brooding and shit
when the coolest boy in the world just called
him on his way home from work with a
conversation that melted from seconds into
minutes into ohmygawd i gotta go?

i dunno. i met this guy and he's really okay, right?

and i just had the best time hanging out with him
the other night as we talked about anyfuckingthing
we wanted to. and he's not all games and
howdoiplaythis, but he just hangs it all out there plain.

it was like coming home to a place i'd never been before.

err...

did i just quote john denver?

because if i just quoted a lyric from
"rocky mountain high" then i must be...
well...
high.

hold on, i'll check. no... wait here.
it'll only take a sec.

umm...
yeah, well i was close:

"He was born in the summer of his 27th year
Comin’ home to a place he’d never been before
He left yesterday behind him, you might say he was born again
You might say he found a key for every door"

and the really fuckedup evilbitch part about this?

is that now you've got the song stuck in your head.
am i right?
yeah.
good night.

the big day after

2005-01-20T14:36:00.000-06:00

this is it.
the big day after.
you told me that boys don't call
the big day after.
that boys seem to disappear
the big day after.
kinda like
they'd never
existed at all.

fuck that, man.
fuck the big day after.

because i'm still here.
and i've been thinking about you
all day.
and i've been wondering what you're doing.
and i've been wondering
when i should call you
and tell you

that i just can't wait
to see you again.

and you can bet
your sweet little ass
(and i do mean sweet)
that you'll be receiving that call
on this very
big day after

suddenly the boy

2005-01-20T12:46:00.000-06:00

and suddenly the boy
turned the corner
waving a quick wave
and i smiled
as i walked up to greet him
and kept smiling
as we stood in line
next to each other
in the coffee shop

now with 8.3% more yon

2005-01-13T20:06:00.000-06:00

i have it on good authority
from my source
who shall remain anonymous
that sven and yon
are back

and right now
i actually have tears in my eyes
at the kindness of others.

(come back soon, error404)
(or email me if ya want)

happiness is...

2005-01-13T11:19:00.000-06:00

sitting at work in tulsa
IMing with a fellow in toronto
while he was making his breakfast--
the both of us listening
to the same music.

i hope he didn't mind me
stopping by his apartment
so early in the morning.

(at least he was fully dressed.)

(canadians are good about that.)

no worries, mate

2005-01-12T09:47:00.000-06:00

i don't think
the boy in the picture
has to worry
about anyone
ever
giving any attention
to his emissions.

(and i'm similarly confident
that that's
not the kind of attention
they were talking about.)

hell, what am i saying?
dude is prolly dead by now.
death by c.s.a.
chronic sperm accumulation

yeah, i'm pretty sure this will work

2005-01-10T19:04:00.000-06:00

sitting

2005-01-09T21:12:00.000-06:00

sitting through a fine lunch
of dim sum and pepsi
with a fellow blogger
whom i haven't seen in years
(did i use "whom" correctly?)
and even those years ago
it was the first we'd ever met
and then
we only spoke
a scant few words to each other.

sitting through a fine lunch
and feeling like i'd known
this guy forever
talking about nothing and
everything
all at the same time.

i love how you kick my ass for not writing more
i love how you inspire me without even realizing it
i love how you make me wanna be a better writer
i found chillicothe

sometimes i just have to write

2005-01-08T23:08:00.000-06:00

sometimes i sit in the dark, quiet of the evening with my eyes closed and my brain closed and the hum of nothingness in my ears.

and sometimes i sit and wish i could combine the dark and the quiet and the closed and the nothingness into a compact poem tied neatly together with vowels and perfect punctuation.

but failing this, i reflect on bukowski and dream of being drunk and alone-- classical music on the radio-- typing and typing and typing.

and i crack open a boddingtons, pretend at mozart, and offer this:

my neighbor wants to install new windows in her house
mostly because she's tired of the way the old one's look
and then because some of them no longer stay open without
the aid of a prop.
so she took me to a local home show-- you know the
ones where local contractors get together and rent booths
and try to sell a person whatever they've got to sell.
i really didn't want to go because i'm not into it all but
she told me that admission is only $4 and that she
had a coupon to get in for half price.
so we're about to walk into the show and decide
that we both need to take a pee and that we'll meet once
we're done and go into the show together. but i finished
before she did. and i'm out of the bathroom and
looking around when i noticed that a door to the show
hasn't been closed all the way, so i decided to go inside and
look around while she's finishing up. well i did just that
and soon discovered that nobody even cared that i had
just walked in without paying. so after a few minutes
i cracked the door back open and she's outside waiting
and i gave a little whistle and she came into the show with me.
and we walked around the show for a few minutes
before she realized what just happened. before she
realized that i had snuck her into the show without paying.
and she started to get nervous. and i laughed and told
her that if she really wants to, she can go back outside
and give them her two bucks. but then the more we
thought about it, the more amusing it became and
she's still nervous (inventing stories to tell the
authorities when they finally come for us) but it's really
becoming like we're two kids who just snuck into a movie
or something. we finally conceded to the fact that we
had just done something that people aren't supposed to do--
and that it also felt really good to be unconventional.
and then we came to the booth where she's decided to
buy her windows. and the salesperson is taking down
her order. and he offered her the show discount-- the
reason she came to the show-- to buy the windows at a
better price. but then he asked her a question that neither
one of us expected: "how much did you pay to get
into the show? four dollars apiece? because i'll deduct
that amount from the cost of the windows. a total of eight
dollars, right?" and by that time she's turned red and begins
to stutter. because, what does she tell him?
that we just walked in without paying?

so on the way out of the show she turns to me and says,
"you're going to hell. you know that, right?" and i replied,
"yeah, i know. i think we both are."

this is life, yeah

2005-01-07T11:39:00.000-06:00

in this mundane life
of day after day
you must never forget
the important things.
never forget
to stop and smell the roses.
never forget
to look on the bright side.
never forget
the vicodin.

anime tears

2005-01-03T21:03:00.000-06:00

an i me (A"ni*m['e])
n.
a. A style of animation developed in Japan, characterized by stylized colorful art, futuristic settings, violence, and sex.

tear (tîr)
n.
a. A drop of the clear salty liquid that is secreted by the lachrymal gland of the eye to lubricate the surface between the eyeball and eyelid and to wash away irritants.
b. tears: A profusion of this liquid spilling from the eyes and wetting the cheeks, especially as an expression of emotion.
c. tears: The act of weeping: criticism that left me in tears.

Mikey has dutifully informed me that the young lives of Sven and Yon have been cut tragically short through a cyber-related boo boo. (trippy that a comic strip about erasers has ended because the program used to create it has been... well... erased.) sigh. i'll prolly have nightmares about this one.

random point of trivia: my nipples get hard whenever i sneeze.

my keys n duh hows, my keys n duh hows!

2005-01-02T18:40:00.000-06:00

insane eraser clowns dancing
thru my brain like
joan crawford with an axe.
armless fuckers grasping
a new and improved reality
as seen on mtv
(though i'll never understand how anything
can be new and improved).
their straight-line lips thrusting
verbage into my soup-soul
and crowding the crackers of
my perception
(gah, i can't still be hungry).
while frosted flakes of laughter--
now fortified with iron--
rain down in a hasbro explosion
of mister potato head
eyes
   and lips
      and ears
         and goofy little hats.

p to the s: update man, for the love of mike: update! i swear i'm gonna die alone and penniless, with a bad case of acne, if you don't update!

still fucking around

2004-12-29T14:12:00.000-06:00

"Timmy loved Tuesday, it was show-and-tell day"

2004-12-28T13:43:00.000-06:00

yay! it's snowing outside!

2004-12-22T14:10:00.000-06:00

and this is for all the other elves who are forced to participate in the celebration of the birth of the ultra-conservative, evangelical christian administration's war-god, freely handing over the remainder of any hard-earned money not already stolen through taxation, in an effort to appease a population's never-ending lust for materialism, which is fueled by the media-driven commercialization of a season which originally promised to bring peace on earth and goodwill toward men-- a wonderful utopian dream, were it not primarily flawed due to its inherent segregation in that it excludes the majority of the inhabitants of this planet only for the simple fact that they are women.

sheep head, deux

2004-12-16T21:56:00.000-06:00

no, i've never written about him before. i've never actually told anyone about him before. he's a part of my life that i've kept buried for many years.

you see, in order for me to tell his story i also have to reveal a secret. a secret that only he and i shared. a secret that i promised never to tell. and one that, until now, i've kept to myself.

but many years have passed and we've completely lost track of each other. things that seemed so very important back then have been eclipsed by even greater issues. and the secret we once shared has long since lost its gravity. revealing it will no longer be harmful to either one of us. i doubt that neither he, nor anyone presently connected to him, will ever see this blog.

but i am getting ahead of myself.

we were both in our teens then. we didn't know each other, even though we lived right across the street from one another. but we had this mutual friend. and the three of us eventually ended up spending a great deal of time together. watching tv. sneaking smokes out behind the barn. helping one another with chores. i can remember many times when i'd come home from school and rush through homework just so i could go find the other two and hang out with them.

but time passed and things changed (as they always do) and the mutual friend wasn't able to spend as much time with us. that's when phil and i started hanging out by ourselves.

everything was pretty much as it always had been-- only now it was just the two of us. and we soon discovered that we had quite a lot in common. we became very close that summer. the only time we spent apart was when we'd go to our respective homes to sleep. but even that was soon to change.

one night we were at my house. no one else was home. it was late-- bedtime.

"man, i gotta go home now," he said as he started to head downstairs. "aw, not yet," i pleaded as i curled an index finger through a belt loop on his jeans and pulled him back. "hey, what are ya doin?" i just smiled and stared into his eyes. he had the sweetest eyes. tender, but strong.

i looked down as i pulled my finger from the belt loop, and slowly brought my hands to the front of his jeans. and then i unbuttoned the top button. i looked back at him and he smiled, asking, "how'd ya know i'd do this?" "i didn't," i replied, as i unzipped his fly. but i was lying. i had seen it in his eyes. they had betrayed him. they had told me all i needed to know.

and that was our "secret." phil and i were lovers. everyone thought that we were just really close friends-- which we were. but we got a whole lot closer when nobody else was around.

we were inseparable after that. not only because we shared sex-- though sex was a big part of it-- but because from that day on we started sharing everything. work, play-- whatever. we did it as a team. that autumn i even went with him and his family to vacation in the mountains. he'd been careful to make sure that we had our own room as far away as possible from everyone else.

those were, without a doubt, the happiest times of my life. my first love. my first sexual experiences. i began to picture myself spending the rest of my life with him. i began to think that we might be together forever.

it was early winter and i was sitting with the family at the dinner table when dad broke the news. he'd accepted a job halfway across the country. we'd be leaving in spring. he wanted to make sure we'd be able to make friends at our new school before the summer break.

i was devastated. after dinner, i ran to phil and broke the news to him.

i don't really remember him saying anything when i told him. he didn't have to. one look into those beautiful eyes told me that he was as heartbroken as i. those eyes said more than a thousand words could have ever said.

i don't think we ever really talked about it after that. we just kept hanging out. enjoying each other's company. maybe we were trying to pretend that i wasn't going to move. maybe we wanted things to be "normal" until the end. i don't know.

i remember waking up early the day we were to move away. i ran to his bus stop and stood with him until his school bus came. there were quite a few other kids around, so we couldn't really talk. and we sure as hell didn't want to show any emotion. he got onto the bus and i raced back to my house. the bus would make a loop to pick up the rest of the kids and then drive back past my house on the way to school.

i finally saw it in the distance and ran out to the end of the driveway. as it drew closer, i noticed that he'd taken a seat on the side of the bus that would be closest to my side of the street. as the bus drove past i raised my hand to wave goodbye. like a kid in class does when he has a question for the teacher. like a man does when trying to reach for something that is past his grasp. he held his hand up in reply. his face was pressed against the bus window. that's when i saw that he was crying.

porky pig at his best

2004-12-14T14:00:00.000-06:00

this is where the clip came from. i haven't really checked it out yet.

sheep head

2004-12-13T21:52:00.000-06:00

i've been thinking about you lately.
a lot.
it all started when i had a dream about you.
we were teens again, in the dream, and we just
hung around doing nothing--doing teen stuff--
like we used to.
and i've been thinking that it would be fun
to see you again.
(but in my thoughts i'm picturing us
like we were as teens)

but we're not teens anymore.
at least i'm not.
i don't know what you are.
i don't even know if you're still alive.

mmhmm

2004-12-09T21:22:00.000-06:00

but it's a good tired.

i'm tired

2004-12-02T20:16:00.000-06:00

yeah

HANDICAPPED SVEN + YON

2004-11-30T16:27:00.000-06:00

i don't know why i like it, but i do like it. fix the comments, Mikey.

The Persian Boy

2004-11-29T22:38:00.000-06:00

I just finished reading Mary Renault's The Persian Boy. Click the link to go to the book on Amazon's site, but know that the book covers, both there and above, differ from my copy's cover.

Kris Dotto presents a fair review from Amazon's site:

"Robert Lipsyte, who wrote some wonderful novels himself, said in a column that his father gave him this book to read one weekend. After putting it off, he finally gave in and was hooked from the first sentence. Mary Renault casts a spell from the first in "The Persian Boy", the pivot of her Alexandriad.

Bagoas is born into an aristocratic family; the turmoil following the death of King Ochos claims his father, mother and sisters, and he himself is castrated and sold at the age of 10. The twin horrors are followed in time by another; Bagoas is himself sold by his master to other men as a prostitute. Procured for King Darius, Bagoas's lot changes only slightly; instead of being sold to many men, he is kept by one man, a King he holds in awe for his station, and not out of personal admiration.

Darius has made the mistake of underestimating the young Macedonian King Alexander, who at 20 undertakes the reconquest of Greek cities in Asia Minor. But Alexander closes in on the Persian Empire, and Darius suffers one defeat after another until his own warlords lose faith in him. When a coup sees Darius taken prisoner, Bagoas escapes with only his life. In time he is rescued by one of those warlords, who decides to beg Alexander for clemency. Who does he bring to sweeten the plea? Bagoas--as a gift.

Alexander is presented by Renault as a man capable of more than mortal feats who is still reassuringly human--more than that, he needs love desperately, from the hero-worship of the soldiers who follow him to the intimate devotion of his lover Hephaistion. Bagoas has never known love at all, only use. When Macedonian King and Persian courtesan meet, the inevitable happens--and this is where the enchantment begins.

Renault's mastery is impeccable. With a few well-chosen words, she conjures the images of the great Persian palaces--the ruins at Persepolis, Susa, Ekbatana, and Babylon; she recreates the travels of the Macedonian army so well that any reader who picks up her companion book "The Nature of Alexander" will look at the pictures and exclaim, "I know this! This is--" and name the very scene. But it is her characters that truly live. Bagoas is keenly intelligent, charming, courtly, sarcastic, prey to jealousy and possessiveness when it comes to his lover; his growing maturity merely adds to the pain he experiences as the affair and Alexander's conquests progress. And Alexander is much more accessible here than in "Fire From Heaven," which is a wonderful book but presents Alexander as all light and no fire. Here we get to see Alexander as preening boy, heroic warrior, pragmatic king, and devoted lover. It is a marvelous love story whether or not it actually happened.

But the emotional payoffs of the affair are balanced by hideous tragedies, none more affecting than the death of Hephaistion. Bagoas' quiet desperation to keep Alexander with the sane and living is agonizing with the knowledge that Alexander did not survive his lover by more than three months. Renault foreshadows without laying it on too thick, but it's worth noting that the portents of Alexander's death were recorded by historians, and the ancients paid close attention to that sort of thing. The final quarter of the book is grim, with only a few moments of light, and the most poignant moment is when Bagoas, having kept watch over Alexander even after his death, finally gives way to the Egyptian priests who come to embalm the Macedonian.

It isn't all romance and grief. Bagoas is, after all, only sixteen when the affair starts; he's prey to insecurity about his place in Alexander's heart, and his two antagonists are Hephaistion, Alexander's lifelong love, and Roxane, the legendary beauty who becomes Alexander's wife. With Hephaistion, Bagoas indulges in the sort of reverie that anyone who's ever had a romantic rival can identify with (stopping short of cutting him into little pieces and feeding him to the dogs). Roxane, on the other hand, earns Bagoas' hatred for good reason, and she is presented as everything Hephaistion isn't: clinging, vindictive, and devouring. Bagoas wryly notes that Alexander has, like most men, married a woman like his mother, and it's asides like this from him that make the story such an indulgent treat to read.

Like other reviewers, I will say that if you despise homosexuality and homosexuals, don't pick up the book. But if you can put aside prejudices and read for the sheer pleasure of encountering excellence in writing and losing yourself in another place and time, "The Persian Boy" is still in print."

An aside: Mary Renault--through this book--was the first writer to ever bring me to tears.

feeling lucky, punk?

2004-11-26T19:49:00.000-06:00

the neighborhood is in an odd state lately. driving home at night you begin to notice that every available outside light has been turned on. all curtains have been closed. no children are playing outside. in fact, there's no one outside at all.

roughly 25% of the homes, on my street alone, have been burglarized this week. some while the home's occupants were away. some while the home was occupied. the day before yesterday, the neighbor immediately to my north woke up to someone trying to kick in their front door at three in the morning. they were both yelling and their very big dog was barking--and still the would-be intruders kept kicking at the door. took the very distinctive sound of a shotgun being pumped to convince the fiends to move along.

i've noticed that some of the neighbors have taken to setting up blinds on top of their roofs. some neighbors, who have never owned a firearm, now own one. while writing this i heard what must have been a shotgun being fired--not the first time i've heard this sound lately.

the police? good question. i'm convinced that they cannot be counted on in a true emergency. let's just say their response time has been somewhat slow lately.

me? i'll be just fine. there's nothing more dangerous for a would-be intruder than someone with a creative mind.

Forget Me Now

2004-11-22T21:13:00.000-06:00

forget me now
there's nothing left
save the chill in the air
on a winter's eve
and a few crisp leaves
rustling along a cold stiff ground--
two bare tree branches
screech against each other
like motherless baby birds
waiting to be fed

forget me now
as a bright yellow moon
remains hidden
behind a fog
quietly creeping around the house--
as if to sneak up and hide
all the mistakes of the day--
the smoke from someone's fireplace
wafting in the air making it all to seem
as if the entire world is on fire.

forget me now
like a ghost; like a shadow--
like a lone sheet flapping in the wind.
like a bicycle, quickly abandoned--
as the back wheel continues to spin

forget me now
like wayward youth
like an empty bottle
thrown
from a moving car

not tonight, dear

2004-11-21T21:03:00.000-06:00

no words really
as i'm busy posting
quickly-written poems
in the comments
of random blogs

like:

"the bright, twinkling stars above
and the broken bottle of ketchup
lying on the ground--
its thick, fleshy, redness
oozing into the cracks--
make me feel almost human."

see that "next blog" button
in the upper right-hand corner?
yeah, that's the one.
go on. try it.
i won't tell.

love,
petey

ps if Mikey would ever get his comments to work, he'd get lotsa poem coolness.

sleeping near the moon

2004-11-21T00:10:00.000-06:00

i'm sleeping near the moon tonight
don't think that i'll go home
the night is always longer
when you sleep alone
so i think the moon and me
will make a lovely pair
maybe we'll tell stories
   sitting in our underwear

i'm sleeping near the moon tonight
don't think that i'll go home
i'm over on the far side
but i am not alone
'cos you see the moon and me
are busy getting stoned
laughing at each other
   while telling corny jokes

the clouds are getting thick tonight
i think that i'll go home
the moon has gone in hiding
and now i'm all alone
used to be the moon and me
made quite a lovely pair
but used to be's don't matter
   when there's no one there

bobby courageous

2004-11-19T21:50:00.000-06:00

blue eyed and simple i looked to the heavens
and watched as you climbed toward the stars
there's not enough gravity left on this earth
to hold you down any longer

(bobby courageous tipped his hat
as she walked by smiling
she'd seen his picture in the papers
and knew what brand of orange juice he preferred)

i followed your trail for as long as i could
'til the vertigo made me dizzy
but i think i watched you long enough
to decide that you were headed home

(mister courageous smiled back
asking for her name
in case the doctor at the health clinic
asked that he produce a list)

after awhile i looked down at my feet
and thought they must appear very small
to stars who skim the sky so quickly
and run rings around the earth

(courageous calmly pulled out a luger
he'd taken off a dead nazi during the war
and asked her if she wanted to help him
polish the barrel)

unfinished symphony

2004-11-18T21:58:00.000-06:00

mindlessly numb
strange bells in my head
like little people come to call
like crickets in the park

in an effort to delete the file
i deleted the entire program
and replaced it with a newer verson

mindlessly numb
like a sawed-off shotgun
like little people
riding crickets in the park

sitting quietly in my farourite chair
legs crossed
i carefully held
the delicate china teacup to my lips
and took a sip
then closed my eyes in satisfaction
while cradling the warm cup
in the palms of my hands

Hello, Mr. Poetry Bastard......

2004-11-17T21:14:00.000-06:00

eyes crying softly
gentle sobs

(and i don't mean to say
that the eyes are
gentle s.o.b.'s
because, really,
i don't wish to say
anything negative
about someone's eyes.

i mean they're only eyes
for gawdsakes
and they never did nothin
to no one

and you can't blame a person
for how they look
and i don't mean
how they optically perceive
things,
but, rather,
how they are
perceived by others.

and i'm not calling you
"dan rather" by mistake
i know your name isn't "rather"
unless dan rather is actually
reading this
in which case he should
really write a poem

cripes.

no, what i'm trying to say
is that the person,
whose eyes are leaking
salty fluids,
is gently sobbing)

jesus, why do you always
think the worst of me?

dammit, now where was i?

ugghh

2004-11-17T13:25:00.000-06:00

i have a blazing headache
i can only hope it means
that i'm dying

city lights

2004-11-16T19:41:00.000-06:00

still thoughts pool in my head
seasonal sunset meets kid christmas
my pants caught atop the barbed wire fence
as the wheel of fortune decidedly slows
as sands in the hourglass begin to thin
knowing more than i ever did
but less than i ever could

lightning strikes before you know it
leaving only a clap of thunder

dear johnny

2004-11-15T21:59:00.000-06:00

it's kind of like sliced cheese

people process it
then slice it
and individually wrap it
then put a bunch of the individuals
in a package
then stick the package
on a shelf

they think
just because they can identify it
sitting on a shelf
and can point to it
and say "hey, there's some cheese,"
that somehow
they've got it all figured out.

but that's not really cheese.

i mean it may
or it may not be
cheese

but the cheese doesn't really care
what you call it

the cheese just is what it is