Nadia Part Seven

CATULLUS THE FOOL

You remember the day too, the day you met the fool—a long bather in the pool of mediocrity, a champion sooth sailor of misery’s correct manner, a boy ripe with lust ready to follow the thumping mid-range. You are the entrance.

The truth is he changed; they all do. When a man finds his heart within a woman, they change, but the problem lies with the expectations of the woman to comply. Some women do, but not you. When your lover comes to this crushing realization, you glow with life, a pleasure form of immortality for you, remembrance creates permanence...eternalness. Forever is the time in which you exist, and until your lovers reach this point, you feel nothing.

Your initial intent is not harm, but you are drawn to these flowers of blossoming innocence. They are there in need of an admirer, because you believe girls love trophies. But the fool is special, he, you immortalize. You see a chrysanthemum growing among the weeds in your fields of rye. There isn’t some romantic reminiscence of love; or you lost the man of dreams; or the one that got away, no, he wasn’t special like that at all. He was a boy who needed to be taught the ways of manhood and poetry, a student and you, his mentor, his muse: “...qua sunt totidem mea: deprecor illam/ assidue, verum dispeream nisi amo.” Farewell.

“...because it is just the same with me. I am perpetually crying out upon her, but may I perish if I do not love her.” - Catullus Poem 92

Nadia Part Six

THE POET

She told me once that she traveled the world.
She told me all the places she had been:

A lioness with a mane,
A cobra’s back, a fox’s tail
Tender, defender, loyal
Venomous, always on the run

No one could catch...

Spain, the spiral Barcelona
Kenya, aiding weakened impulses
Mexican salvation in ruins
London, roundabout renegade

...and no one could catch her.
And everyone dared...

In the town of Kalandastan,
You promised an evening of the three passions:
Magnetism, Solar Radiation, and Optimism.

Enough for everyone.
A rattail in my beer.
A junkie priest.
A homeless home.

We are not talking of a second coming.
Or a ravaged revengeful plague.
Or a stroll down a stream.
Or a Kabbahlist’s mystical number.

A monk’s haiku thought
A rebel’s sonnet sword
A devil’s septuplet tongue
An angel’s wasteland edit

And her actions, her verbs, her swollen affection
A rock star without a band, sound, audience
But with all the applause, venue, harmony
She captured me there, inside those walls of that symbolic play.

Action! Cut! Edit...
Exterminate, execute, an exercise.

‘things were much harder then,
we didn’t have money then,
we didn’t have much at all’

And sometimes we were happier
Much more in love
Much more in touch with each other
And we were never alone.

I loved that girl, and she loved the wind
Always moving through me, a slow desert roll
Music from my vanity for our love
Passion screams at my concert, my audience, me:

The fool.

Nadia Part Five

DAWN

Seagulls, a gaggle smear of white-grey on the tan sand stare at you. You pass by behind the scene, an extra on a movie screen and the birds, the theatergoers. Unlike theatergoers, they care not for your drama, your middle, your end of three-part Aristotelian art. You pass; they scatter; they return as the waves remove your footprints.

Sun diamonds shimmer in the distance alerting the cool air to give one last attempt at temperature, and this gives your nose a final refreshing blast, the remainder of the cool air. Your lungs fill as you too feel the struggle, the hopelessness of the day to come.

A wave crashes, an alarm reflector of dawn’s first light. The day has begun.

Nadia Part Four

THE ENTRANCE

Concrete plain, massive, grey, and in the middle an opening: a rotating entrance, people mingle at its mouth, swinging in and out. We met there, the day or should I more accurately state: the evening, at dusk during our setting sun.

You looked very good against the mortar, glowing, a flowered weed climbing through the cracks: majestic, natural and trampled. Against the black and white hues of suits and dress suits, the original costume of the modern slave: distinct and plain, a matching attitude apathetically clothed. We stood staring into the void producing the mediocrity, wondering if we too, were like them? I thought yes, but you, you were different. It was you who cracked the concrete ways of my life; it was you who would.

Nadia Part Three

SCAR

Out there...across the sea— that is where they are... that is where they are... that is where...your mantra for many years.

Why did they leave you?

Who took them away? And there you remained in your twelfth year paralyzed for the remainder of your days. At least some days feel that heavy, you think.

That was the summer you swam every day, all day: body-surfing until your knees scraped raw, and your breath: part salt, part surf. In the tumultuous waves is where you forgot the scar—memory. The waves beat against your fury twisting your body and slamming it on the seabed. This was relief. And when the surf was too low to surf, you swam out sea until you sank. The sinking into the deep azure comforted your scar, and when your air ran out, you sprinted for the surface, air.

Then you’d float on your back and dream, the only time you would. Sleep then was black and unforgiving. There is a comfort in dreams; in knowing you can create new realities. And that is why you would wake before the dawn to swim, to be near the dreams, to be in comfort.

The ocean makes sense; she wraps herself around you, a large salty blanket and a home. She protects and forgives, judgeless: the only cure for the sufferer. A dive into her redeems the sleepless black nightmare, and your emergence through her cool sheen mends.

Nadia Part Two

BLUE

Sitting, you look over the calm blue water as the swells line up bringing in your past, wave after wave.

A dream wakes you into your twelfth year of life. Your aunt and uncle stand above, an aura silhouetted by sick cerulean curtains. Are you in a coffin? It is cold, very cold; drips of sweat dribble off your brow, saline drops trickle through your lashes. Drip. Blink. Drip. Blink.

Pain scrapes tracks across your bones, the hub: your heart. This is unlike anything else, unlike broken fingers, or face kissing shattered windshield spurs, or convulsive radioactive cancer therapy slams—this is loneliness and emptiness.

A green-cerulean wave crashes churning shades of browns and whites into murky smooth ripples, a wet-cement smoothing of the shore. Will the dawn ever break?

Nadia Part One

A WINTER MORNING

Overcast eyes, cloudy and grey, a desolate cool beach morning unsure how the day will begin—and like your eyes, so is your heart. You are a woman.
You wake up before dawn and walk along the cool, dark water’s edge. Waves spray salty mist across the flat newly groomed sand, in your face and on your tongue. Low tide smells of rotting seal corpse, fishy and spoiled, yet refreshing. The smell reminds you of the many mornings when walks transformed into cleansing swims. When waves pounded out your frustration, a mother’s caress, a mother’s tough love, because the water has redeeming qualities, reminiscent cool stinging prickles of salt that burnt off the night-before’s layer of skin.
But today, like those recently, do not follow with a swim. You are a wanderer now, in search of driftwood not to carve nor to store on empty racks inside a tomb, garage. You admire. Where did it come from? Where is it going; or will it be seen again?
Water coats your feet. You never wear shoes and your rolled pant legs stick to your calves, rubbing salty sand up and down as you walk.
A flock of toddler sandpipers run an instinctual choreography in and out with the waves, the dance of their mass, grey-brown reflectors of the dawn. Their little legs so close to the sand, reminds you more of your youth when the earth was closer to you and yet, today the earth and you are closer than ever before.

you must!

you must listen, read and write
you must turn right
you must act like this
you must act like that
you must constantly be on the defense

you must forgive
you must have compassion
you must help
you must need help
you must not be you

you must buy this
you must not buy that
you must buy this

you must consume
you must telephone, fax, email
you must be home when called
you must not be home
you must be the answering machine
you must reply

you must recycle
you must produce, reproduce
you must waste
you must not do this
you must not do that
you must be alone
you must be watching TV

you must not speak until spoken to
you must have a plan
you must be spontaneous
you must be different

you must be different

you must laugh
you must be funny
you must be social
you must be dysfunctional
you must be joking

you must conform
you must want money
you must spend more than you make
you must not look poor
you must be poor
you must let the rich get richer
you must be getting poorer

you must not think
you must think
you must not think out loud

you must use
you must be used
you must choose
you must embellish, lie
you must have choices

you must be horny
you must be having sex
you must sin, lust
you must win

you must believe
you must ask for forgiveness
you must have faith
you must be right

you must escape
you must concede
you must be a prisoner
you must agree

you must fear
you must be sad
you must die
you must be mad
you must live long

you must pay taxes
you must be free
you must sell your freedom
you must give it away
you must not be free

you must be too young
you must be too old
you must be just right

you must never admit you’re wrong
you must enjoy every second
you must be too busy to enjoy every second

you must marry the perfect person
you must divorce
you must suffer
you must be me
you must not be me

you must be tired
you must sleep, dream, wake
you must be wired

you must you must
you must increase your bust
you must be slim
you must diet
you must eat
you must not enjoy food
you must be a vegetarian

you must exercise
you must be lazy
you must have an eating disorder

you must be criticized
you must criticize
you must be the wrong size
you must be circumcised

you must wipe
you must wash your hands
you must brush your teeth
you must not reek

you must breath
you must calm down
you must be angry
you must leave

you must do drugs
you should say no
you must be on drugs

you must scream
you must not be listening
you must must
you must
but do i?

Death, Deception and Cold Water

no longer needed…

they tell me.

need a farce
for an
abstract
capitalist good-
bye:

nothing
personal,
it’s business

an unethical
dis
burse
ment of cold water, relieving blame

there is a big picture
and I am the photographer’s
assistant’s assistant

but my rutted ass needs a lift
a lift to a higher ground, and
sometimes dreams are made
from another’s motivation.

the wall

a wall
about this high
finger high
and not many
make it over

life can be so simple
and so hard to overcome

The squanderer not a wanderer or the grasshopper

not good at saving money
but pages from the daily paper
thrown away too many
gone bys and they are gone
and I am closer to the end
and the grave dirt smells fresh
and I am not done
I haven't begun starting
always chapters full of page ones
or books with chapter ones
and I haven’t even begun
damn this place of fleeting space
should of…why don't you
this ride is near over
this place has almost forgot me
hasn't even had a chance to remember
me know me

Nice day for hunting Indians, doth thou agreest, Walter? Yep. 

the long sad line of mediocrity

we explode balking into this life
a victim of his & hers mediocrity

a creation of momentary bland joy
each escaping their own senses
a struggle between lukewarm emotions
and room-temperature thoughts

oh, it was so intense that both yawned
turned on the nightly news when done
used some night cream
to remove slightly smeared make-up
and in the excitement, tossed their pet rock
then dreamt of your future:

one day our child will be in debt too, they smile
drive an SUV...or a minivan, she chimes in
yes, and the two hour commute to work, bliss
on sundays a confession about the neighbors spouse
or the shortage of clean pressed white
short sleeved shirts in the closet

the constant reminders of a sterile culture:

they'll talk to their friends at a BBQ
about their favorite reality shows
or about the NFL, NBA, MLB -there are no other sports
or yawn, Golf- a good walked ruined, I heard
maybe by then puritan attire will be trendy again,
sure hope so, love those simple whites
and complex blacks, no grey areas to consider
do admit, I look dashing in my grey wool slacks

and soulful patriotism too:
go USA! go USA! into war, over the seas
over here, over there... american flags
and ribbon stickers of all colors
pasted next to the honor roll bumper collage
all made in china

the morals of your maturation process:

we will do our best to ignore our problems
and especially yours, because our baby would never...
promise? pinky swear. okay.

and so it was drawn on that day
your long sad line of mediocrity.

Remember to remember me
Standing still in your past
Floating fast like a hummingbird
 

I'm Braggin I'm Always In Love

I absolutely love this song by Wilco, off their newest release A Ghost is Born:

Hummingbird

His goal in life was to be an echo

Riding alone, town after town, toll after toll

A fixed bayonet through the great southwest to forget her

She appears in his dreams

But in his car and in his arms

A dream can mean anything

A cheap sunset on a television set can upset her

But he never could

Remember to remember me

Standing still in your past

Floating fast like a hummingbird

His goal in life was to be an echo

The type of sound that floats around and then back down

Like a feather

But in the deep chrome canyons of the loudest Manhattans

No one could hear him

Or anything

So he slept on a mountain

In a sleeping bag underneath the stars

He would lie awake and count them

And the gray fountain spray of the great Milky Way

Would never let him

Die alone

Remember to remember me

Standing still in your past

Floating fast like a hummingbird

Remember to remember me

Standing still in your past

Floating fast like a hummingbird

A hummingbird

A hummingbird

French Propaganda Ministry booklet to extol the virtues of the Americans who came in Frances time of need. (July 4, 1918) 

the lost art of effort

Don't Read This!

It is not worth the effort.

No, really, stop.

You are going to look for meaning

and not find it quick enough.

which means, you'll be disappointed,

and who needs to be disappointed these days.

there is already so much disappointment in the world,

why invite it in?

have a drink, relax.

you've worked so hard this week.

you deserve a cool relaxing drink.

sit down in your favorite seat.

that's it. relax.

now grab the clicker and press 'on'

oh, that feels good!

another drink, sure

go ahead, you worked your eight today

you earned it, relax.

I wonder what happened today in the world?

Let's watch some news:

CNN? MSNBC? FOX?

let's just stay local,

I'm tired of hearing about the war.

There is never anything interesting happening.

No fires, No car chases, some gang member killed, yawn.

Adopt a dog-- so cute, so sad.

Someone else will adopt the little cutie.

Eat dinner: it's pre-made, prepackaged and pre-warmed.

Let's watch the cooking channel, dee-lish!

Someday when you have more time,

you'll cook a meal like that or

better yet, after you win the lottery,

you'll pay someone to do it for you.

Yeah, when you win the lottery,

things'll be different then...

no more 40 hours a week,

the commute, the boss...poof!

all gone. then you can get

all the premium channels on digital cable

and get that big leather seat,

with the remote hiding place in the arm. (so cool)

no, better yet, get that big plasma

for outside, so you can watch while you

swim in your new pool! that's the life--

nothing to do, but relax.

people cooking for you,

kickin’ it with a drink,

chillin’ out watching the tube.

Now, that's the good life.

Well, if you made it this far,

you must be a gluten

for punishment.

Stop. Oh, please stop.

A reality show is on.

Quick, you don't want to miss out

on pre-taped and edited reality.

Are you still here?

I want to be an idol

You need to be a good role model

I want to be pretty

Someone you don’t respect already thinks so

I want to be a survivor

You made it this far, and now you want a medal

I want to be rich

More is never enough for the discontent

I want to laugh at those

who have more than me

(someone is laughing at you)

I want to feel pity

for someone poorer than me

(someone feels pity for you)

I want to laugh at the person

who doesn’t know the joke is on him.

(one day that person is you)

Are you still here?

Well, you better change the channel,

this show is over.

Girl Afraid 

my thousandth death 

My Thousand Deaths

...life denies me that hope, and even that adverb. (JLB 32)

It happened. Today. My thousandth death. And only twenty-seven years old. As I leapt through the guardrail, temporarily in my auto, on a five-hundred foot overpass. Actually, my death came when my vehicle smashed into the Caltrans’ tractor at the bottom (approximately at 487 feet), as my body flew through the windshield and impaled my body over the scoop, quickly crushed by the also flying vehicle. Vince, the police officer who arrived to the scene first, believed my unidentifiable corpse, a freshly poured daiquiri. He proceeded to make his own blended drink as his In-N-Out lunch made a comeback tour.

I am not a fan of senseless violence, for that matter, senseless gore. As far as senses go, I touched, saw, heard and tasted (strawberry, my favorite flavor of daiquiri), everything but smell in that description— I omitted the burning oil smell, it didn’t flow, lyrical that is.

As an astute reader, as I know you are, my thousandth death must, you presume, leads to a first death, in fact nine-hundred and ninety-nine (you are also a fantastic mathematician, I see). I will not fail you. Without another pause or witty phrase, welcome to my life and my nine-hundred and ninety-nine deaths:

Intellectual Trading Cards, How Punk Is That? 

“When all actions are mathematically calculated, they also take on a stupid quality”

“When all actions are mathematically calculated, they also take on a stupid quality” – taken from Theodor W. Adorno (1974), Minima Moralia. Reflections from Damaged Life. (First published in German in 1951.) London (NLB)

Theodor W. Adorno (1903-69) argued that capitalism fed people with the products of a 'culture industry' - the opposite of 'true' art - to keep them passively satisfied and politically apathetic…Boiled down to its most obvious modern-day application, the argument would be that television leads people away from talking to each other or questioning the oppression in their lives. Instead they get up and go to work (if they are employed), come home and switch on TV, absorb TV's nonsense until bedtime, and then the daily cycle starts again.

http://www.ldb.org/adorno.htm

http://www.theory.org.uk/ctr-ador.htm

Inspired the poem below... 

IF THE SANTA MARIA HADN'T SANK

“No future no future/ No future for you/ No future no future/ No future for me”

- Jones/Cook/Rotten/Matlock

My Fellow Man,

Have Faith.

Have Faith.

Have Faith.

The World is Yours to Conqueror

Or to be Conquered.

To Enslave

Or to be a Slave.

All I want is what is mine

All I want is…

All I have is, theirs

All I am is…

And the World wants nothing of You

Nothing of You, but Your audience,

Your believership, Your consumership,

Your Santa Maria.

Have Faith.

My fellow man,

Have Faith.

Have Faith.

Cut us off in traffic

Cheat us out of pennies.

You’ll get ahead;

You will get ahead.

You need nothing

You want everything

You want it now

You can’t have it now!

You now want it more

You now have less

You now will give more to have it

You now will give even more.

Less than less, a debt incurable

And they’ll tell You, You still need it

And You still believe, because Your neighbors all have one

Or so You believe, and if they don’t—You will have it first.

And their envy will be Yours

for the moment.

And You believe You beat everyone to the prize,

to the golden one.

And You are saved

And You are forgiven

And Your religion was right

And then You realize…

And then You realize:

What You bought

And what was sold—

was You.

Have Faith.

Have Faith,

My fellow man.

Have Faith.

But You believe:

No one else has what I have

I was the first

They are all the followers.

And You continue:

I am the leader

I am ahead of the game,

I am the one who is winning.

And then You get cut off in traffic

And then You realize, yet again:

You were marketed

Your favorite song from Your youth, made You do it.

Maybe someone understands You.

Finally, You are related to

Your cause is no longer a struggle

A rebel no more.

Your rebellion lost to Your own revolution

Your high school reunion of marketeers—

Beat You.

Your revolution sold and bought by You.

You the original—You the leader

You, the fucker that cuts people off

With complete disregard, wearing Your

god-save-the-universe-bumper-faith-but-You-first sticker.

Have Faith.

Have Faith;

Have Faith,

My fellow man.

And then You realize:

You spoke out of turn…

Too many times;

You gave away the punch line…

Too many times;

You touched Your best friend’s wife…

Too many times;

You ignored Your family…

Too many times;

You wanted more and more and more…

Too many times;

You wanted what You thought was best for all of us…

Too many times;

You wanted what was best for You…

Too many times.

And then You realize, this time:

It is too late for You

To have faith…

In You, Your fellow man.

Damsel, I say unto you, arise...