Why Not The Raybeats?


(image via The Raybeats

Dirt Cheap: Poem For Free:



The Argument For Love

you get wet.
you get a boner.
you fuck,
you blow,
you reverse and go forward at once,
you sit back sweaty
and wonder who the fuck is sitting next to you.

*****

we love heartbreak.

we break each others' hearts, chipping
away at that sculpture of the perfect
mate.

we love to argue.

we like throwing things against the wall
to emphasise our points.
we revel in dressing up wrong
to look like right, like they were twins
you could accidentally mix up.

*****

I love you, I love you not.

I am not steady on my feet.

Your day is not mine and mine
is not yours.
Couples
(look, that blip there, that's me...)
are only about couples
when there's a common enemy.

*****

They sing songs into each others' mouths.

They touch each other knowingly,
they fuck like yesterday were tomorrow,
they sing to themselves but think
of the other.
They feel better, they live longer,
they die happier, they might even
have kids.

They will fast-forward their lives
later because that's how it happens:
one minute here, twenty years
later it's the feet that are killing you.

*****

She waits,
because I will arrive.
I arrive because she waits.

Wha's This? More Feckin' Poetry?



"The intelligent man who is proud
of his intelligence is like a
condemned man who is proud of his
large cell."
— Simone Weil, "Human Personality"


In prison, you write words in your mind
and live lives in your mind
and travel only in dreams
but you get good biscuits with sausage gravy
on Sunday mornings
and use of the weight room
one hour and fourty five minutes per day.

You mete out your hours like
they were the shavings of wittling,
and there is no extrospection.
The heart sings silently and rarily.

In prison, you live outside.
Outside of society, outside
of reality and yet inside
the outside looks so inviting.

It is as if you were dead.

If you've ever wondered what the world
will do when you are finally gone
all you need to do
is listen to those bars close shut
in front of you.

In prison, you live the lie of being alive.
You listen to the breathing in the bunk
above you, and realise that breathing
is just a symptom of living,
not proof itself.

Blast Off!



Well it's take awhile but Hunter S Thompson has finally left the building.

And for a kick, the first chapter from The Rum Diaries.

Wonder if they'll ever name an airport after him like Ronald Reagan, John Lennon, Louis Armstrong, etc.

Hoi, Nederlands!



Spinvis -Smalfilm

Ik ben een vrouw van veertig met een sigaret
ik heb een buitenaardse stof in mijn bloed
ik werd verleden jaar ontvoerd door een ruimteschip
en sindsdien gaat het met mij niet zo goed
ik weet wel waar ze wonen
want je kunt het zien als je de letters van hun naam omdraait
de waarheid is een raadsel
en dat gaat als volgt
het is een goeie vriend maar altijd te laat.

Ik heb een eigen flat
ik heb de radio aan
het is alweer woensdag
ik heb een Golf GTI
een tijdje terug reed ik een fietser dood
maar gelukkig heeft geen mens me gezien
het komt maar zelden voor dat ik een zin afmaak
maar je maakt me echt niks wijs
het noodlot is een raadsel
en dat gaat als volgt
het kost je niks en toch altijd prijs.

Als ik uitga ben ik fotograaf
en ik ben schrijver als ik vrienden bezoek
op het ogenblik zit ik heel even zonder werk
maar binnenkort begin ik aan mijn eerste boek
in de spiegel neem ik soms alvast de pose aan
voor de foto op de achterkant
dromen zijn een raadsel
en dat gaat als volgt
het smelt in je hoofd en niet in je hand.

Ik ben een monoliet
ik ben de wetenschap
ik ben een grote man van 50 jaar
vandaag knipte ik een muis in twee
en die naaide ik toen mooi weer aan elkaar
maar soms vanuit een hoek kijken mij dingen aan
vanuit de schaduw van de kathedraal
alles is een raadsel
maar ik weet nog niet in wat voor vorm
en in welke taal.

Ik ben al heel erg oud
en ik mis mijn vrouw
en mijn oude handen trillen heel de dag
beneden kun je kaarten bij de automaat
alhoewel dat van mijn dochter niet mag
dan zeggen ze dat ik zo goed de kaarten schud
en dan lach ik elke keer maar weer mee
ik ken een raadsel over eenzaamheid
het gaat als volgt
wat doet pijn en telt voor twee.

Poems, Poems, Poems. Won't These People Ever Shut Up?



Why Smoking Is Addictive And Travel Is Cheap

By the powers invested in me
for offers that can't be refused,
here is the cigarette and the blindfold:
The cost of your destination is one lifetime.
Please pay in advance.

A little word with your travel agent
will speed things up to the point of no return
from your end of the bargain,
you are to speak fiction
and make truth seem uninteresting at best.

Take a walk to the urinals of never;
bladders emptied at bargain prices.
Keep your chin up for the mug shots,
look danger in the lungs,
check out the interior pipes
and return them when the weekend is over.

You can't smoke just one,
time is too short.

*****

Wireless Mothers of Jesus

In other words, they only listen if
they've finished talking,
authoritative claptraps, saliva lips,
causing droopy eyes,
changing channels make believe
if they're
outside all day in cafes, sitting
sculpted into leather beneath
the sun, the old Madonnas
on cellphones, cellulite sweating
into the vast universe of important rules
they ignore in all their chatter.

*****

The Fate of Bad Ideas

They populate: conventional avenues of thought
get too crowded, the overflow is squeezed
onto side streets and dead ends.

Sometimes they fade into an irrecognizable
blur of too many faces
shouting each other down in smoky rooms
or sterile television studios.

They make babies out of broken homes,
malnourished and ideas unwashed of bromides,
they grow up to be messianic on occasion
or otherwise leave alot of corpses in their wake.

A few become ad campaigns:
that's how beers and cars
got to meet so many telegenic women
and left the rest of us standing on the sidelines.

*****

Album Du Jour



And for those who are missing it:

The Brecon Jazz Festival

More Poems That Won't Get Fed To The Publishing Dogs

ACCIDENTAL 2005

I.

Can you imagine if we walked out of the womb?
If we squared the shoulders or fixed the make up
shook the hair, straightened the lapels,
and the spotlight was on us and the womb.
Can you imagine the angst already,
is the spotlight on the womb or me?

Imagine every promise you've made,
and imagine diamonds and coal.

When I wake up in the middle of the night,
the first thing I do is look at the clock.
Should I sleep more? Should I get up?
Am I banging on the womb to get out or stay in?

Imagine every promise made to you.
On the fingertips and the eyelids,
or unconvincingly with a shove in the ribs.

When they say the kid has promise,
they mean his past is irrelevant.
There are many ways to chose to forget
but if I enumerate them, I haven't forgotten.

I want the promise of a better world
and I want it in the last 10 seconds
counting down to what?

The new, that's what.

The new me, the new you, the new world.
That's what they gave the new kid,
we deserve as much.

II.

Later on, we pass out cigars.
We pass out cigars because they symbolise success.
Either a baby or another year done,
we won't know the outcome.

If you measure
you fail
and you will measure again
and fail again
because the measuring
is the failure.

The years that pass are years
you are still alive.
Think about the people who die
on New Year's Eve
without ever knowing the outcome.

*****

MADRID

I.

The gypsies are like humidity,
clinging to the skin, dripping need.

"Please help feed my baby," she mumbles,
rocking cloth in her arms.

A man steps forward.

"That's no baby!" he exclaims,
ripping the cloth from her arms
to expose a doll.

II.

After two months of dirt, my shoes
will be shined in a park in Madrid
because a man snapped up with a towel
and offered.

Two months of a half dozen towns'
dirt clogging my stride and time
now, for the cracked teeth smiling
at me si señor,
to shine the shoes.

He turned dirt to shine, muck
to a sublime shade and spat
and shook his skinny elbows
back and forth.

*****

That's all for now kids. More te folly in the coming days and years.

No Woman No Cry



Wow kids, you git to watch a drunken boat poem created right here on the page...


WHY I DON' WANNA BE A WOMAN

I.

Alotta blood.
The womb is mysterious but bloody.

II.

Whose gonna kill the snakes?

III.

Psychopoetics of Metaphor: Freudian Aesthetics and
Rimbaud.

Let's unravel cautiously.

Otherwise the scabs might crack.

IV.

I don' wanna be a woman because I'm a man,
you hear what a man I yam?
I can shriek, I can bellow,
I can howl.
I can wear a tie and no one will think I'm a dyke.

V.

She told me, shetoldmeshetoldme LOOK
I'm a woman!
I've got tits!

VI.

"What's good about women?" some guy spits
out on the corner of 1st and 2nd.
Peel him open.
He's had a bad ride.

VII.

Sex v. Making Love, et al.

VIII.

I hate it when she says she loves me
because I know she doesn't.
The statute has already run out.

But give us a breather,
that string instrument still,
shhhh.

She loves me, she loves me not.

IX.

The difference it makes,
warm, bold, hot,
cold or indifferent,
that's alot
to chew,
I'd rather not.

X.

Love a woman, hug a woman,
let her know
what a woman
she is,
but don't
let go
to never wanting to be a woman.

Bush Reveals The Earth Is Flat



(image via Parapolitics

In an interview at the White House on Monday with a group of Texas newspaper reporters, President Jesus Bush appeared to endorse the old and seemingly disproven theory that the world is flat.

Recalling his days as Texas governor, Bush said in the interview, according to a transcript, "I felt that even though hundreds of years of history would show otherwise, we should be letting our children know that in reality, the world is flat." Asked again by a reporter whether he believed that both sides in the debate between the earth being flat and not being flat were right, Bush replied that he did, "and just because school textbooks debunk the world is flat theory doesn't mean it can't be true."

Bush was pressed as to whether he accepted the view that the flatness of the earth was revealed to him in a secret conversation with God, he did not directly answer. "I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought," he said, adding that it's quite possible that terrorist-loving Democrats had created the whole round earth theory simply to discredit God and to keep people from getting to scared of falling off the edge of the earth.

On Tuesday, the president's conservative Christian supporters and the leading institute advancing flat earth theories embraced Bush's comments, while scientists and advocates of the round earth theory disparaged them. At the White House, where the flatness of earth has been discussed in a weekly Bible study group, Bush's science adviser, John Marburger III, sought to play down the president's remarks as common sense and old news.

Marburger said in a telephone interview that "although every picture taken of earth from space makes the earth appear circular, the truth of the matter is, this has always been little more than a Democrat photoshopping conspiracy" and "if Democrats believe the earth is round, the earth must logically be flat because the Democrats are wrong about everything." Marburger also said that Bush's remarks should be interpreted to mean that the president believes that the fact of the earth being flat, not round, should be discussed as part of the "core curriculum" in science classes.

Bush also noted later in a speech to demonstrate the truth of the earth being flat that "A quarter is a flat object. However, if you spin a quarter on its axis, the shadow made by a light overhead is in the shape of a circle.

Suppose that the earth is flat, as per our initial hypothesis. Now suppose that the earth is in constant motion. In fact, it is widely acknowledged that the earth is spinning at the tremendous rate of approximately 1000 miles per hour. Given these assmptions, what shape shadow should the earth cast upon the moon during a lunar eclipse? Clearly, the earth should cast a circular shadow!