We watched ‘Bite the Bullet’ this evening. I noticed that
in almost all of the shots the horses—and thus the race itself—went from left
to right on the screen ... as if you’re watching it on a map of
***
It was like I’d been there before. I knew there were ten
guards in the next room of the castle. (Beyond that room, who knew how many
more guards there were?) Could I get past them somehow? Maybe allow them into
my room one my one, to kill them one by one? There was no natural solution. I
chose to kill them all one by one because I would gain experience that way. So
I fired a shot into their room; they alerted; I killed one, then another; the
third shot me—and I awoke in the room again. Again!
***
-Is that when you got away?
-That’s when we almost got away. They had another trick in
their books.
-What was it?
-They got in a hot air balloon and, as they rose, the
lassoed me and June by our wrists.
-Wow!
-The rope was losing its slack and soon we would be pulled
up in the air, probably to be dropped onto the rocks of the cliff below.
-So what happened?
-What happened? Why, as June and I were starting to have
our arms pulled, I kicked my shotgun, hoping it would miraculously go off.
-Did it?
-Yes, it did.
-What’d it hit?
-First it hit the rope holding onto June and me just as we
swung out over the cliff; we grabbed onto some roots there.
-Then?
-Then it hit the rope of the balloon’s basket, dropping
it, unattached to anything, a hundred feet to the shore below.
-Wow.
-That’s right.
-How’d you grab roots with your hands tied?
-Get away from me kid, you bother me.
*
“In every set-up,
these magnificent horses are seen crossing the screen, running, walking,
tragically stumbling, always from left to right, as if we are viewing them from
God’s perspective of America itself, like we are reading the great narrative of
American capitalism and competition as we would read the script by Richard
Brooks who also directs, from left to right, from west to east, for ever and
ever left to right, magnificent horses running like America with a goal but
without a known destination, from mark to mark merely, not able to know the end
of the movie, as the early pioneers headed West, Young Man, in something of a
reversal of our originary myths, which appears to
undercut my thesis; but that, too, is the nature of film.”
-Andrew Sarris
***
WHO IS KILLING THE GREAT ASPIRING
RAPPERS OF
All the victims have but one thing in common: they are all
aspiring rappers. Some even sold CDs.
Out there somewhere in the city he lurks, follows,
executes. He must be either a music critic or a rapper jealous of any new
competition.
Could it be Peter Goddard? Brad Wheeler? Kardinal Offishal? K’NAAN?
Or someone no-one has even heard of?
I know we can track this person down and stop him. I don’t
know why the cops aren’t on it already. People! Someone is killing the great
aspiring rappers of
***
I said, “It’s like this.” I held up two fingers of each
hand. “This is my father and his sister, and this is my mother and her sister.
My father’s sister had three children, and my mother’s sister had two. My
parents had four. I don’t know the names of my father’s sister’s children any
more. My mother’s sister had two children. My parents had four children.
Therefore I have five cousins and three siblings. Plus I have, what, four
nephews and a niece. Second cousins, there’s at least four. There’s nothing
unusual about me at all in small groups.”
***
The moment will come possibly maybe in just five little
minutes. There will come the moment when I can write no more; because I’ll be
dead. It’s impossible to know when. What a mess I’ll be leaving behind if it’s
in just five minutes! My desk here will take three hours to clean, and that’s
not a hundredth of my mess....
The number of corpses is overwhelming. Murders
all over, every day. How does one go about getting murdered? I don’t
know the first thing about it....
It’s like DEATH really can’t be talked about
without talking about something else....
***
I’m
not a song that’s rarely sung
The
door that shut the day you went away,
My
tune’s so old it tarnishes in time
The
silence of your humming room
The
paint on me, me, painting of loss,
Is
cracking in webbery silently
It’s
a bed your toes hang off of,
Like
there’s nothing of something
I’m
not a rare ochre label single
Now
that you’ve gone, I have time
I’m
fading off the paper slowly
Will
I ever see you again? Ever? Never?
I’m
circling the last groove of myself endlessly
Will
I think about you every day, forever?
***
Music key to every good
thing.
Key to things I’ll never know.
Why—not how—did she cry at Phil Ochs?
I never asked, even when asked Why.
A million years ago there was a voice.
Crying out as something
misbegotten.
Crying out at something misbegotten.
No answer was ever recorded then.
To cry at “Changes” like she did!
Whatever memory caused those sobs?
And now I’m sole holder of that time.
It’s losses all the way back.
I carry this moment with me daily.
There’s a million questions for
every answer.
If only I had one! One is plenty!
***
Many years before the beginning, Spirit said to Matter,
Ease yourself.
Matter said to Spirit, Look around.
Spirit said to Matter, Look inside.
Matter said to Spirit, Let’s hold hands.
Spirit said to Matter, Good idea.
Matter said to Spirit, Let’s never be apart.
Matter said to Spirit, Look: A sunset.
Spirit said to Matter, How about a number game?
Matter said to Spirit, What’s 100
times 100?
Spirit said to Matter, An angel on a pin.
Matter said to Spirit, Hold on. Hold on.
Spirit said to Matter, Let’s hold onto this feeling.
And so it came to pass.
***
Tim Hortons is running their
annual springtime “Roll Up the Rim to Win” contest.
You roll up your paper cup’s rim and you can win stuff, usually coffee or a donut,
if anything. So anyway, I’ve had quite a streak of luck. Three wins, then
nothing, then another win. Four out of five!
I go home the night of my fourth win. After dinner, as my
wife and I are settling in for some casual television viewing, I say to her,
“Say, you know I’ve won four out of my last five Roll Up
the Rims to Win?”
“Four out of five?”
“Yeah. Missed
one, but three wins, a loss, a win.”
“But, what about the loss?”
“Please, honey.”
“You missed one. Why couldn’t you have made it five out of
five?”
“It’s chance!”
“It should have been five out of five.”
“Honey, please!”
“You loser.”
“Don’t.”
“Such a fucking loser I married.”
“Does this have to happen every night?”
“Are you contradicting me, boy?”
“No, ma’am, it’s just—”
“You know what you have to get now.”
I nod.
I return with it and give it to her.
“Four out of five,” she mutters. “You regret the day you
were born.”
“I regret the day I was born.”
“Roll Up the Rim indeed. Roll up
your pant legs.”
I roll up my pant legs. She aims her blows well, re-breaking
the wounds from last night.
“Creep, creep. Now get down, worm. On all fours.”
This again.
“Face away! mister four out of
five.”
She inserts the whip handle.
“You like that?”
“Yes, mistress, please.”
She pulls it out and harshly and furiously slashes the
switch between my legs.
“What was I
thinking?” she cries. “A fucking loser! I married a
fucking loser! Four out of five! What a shit!”
***
99
When
someone called my name
I
looked around for who?
I
heard her call my name
She’s
nowhere to be seen
Three
thousand miles away
Too
far to call my name
’Twas just some random noise
I’d
carved into her voice
With
wanting as my adze
But
no she’s gone away
Yet
still that calling voice
Is
crawling through my mind
As
I alone compose
This
song she’ll never see
Three
thousand miles away
And
wondering not aloud
About
illusions cast
A
hundred years ago
And
asking in my song
A
simple question: does
She
ever hear my call?
***
I’ve never before been so humiliated.
“Get in the plane!” the instructor cried.
I said, “You mean this crate?”
“Yes!” he shouted. “Pretend it’s a plane!”
I crawled into the crate and looked out at him hopefully,
expecting some praise but there was none.
“Now what do you do?” he shouted.
“I guess ... I wait for it to get in the air?”
“It’s already in the air, you idiot!”
“It is?”
“Don’t you read briefings?”
“I don’t know how to read. I’m a shepherd.”
“The people they send me! So you don’t know a thing about
what you’re doing in the plane?”
“Well, yeah. I’m supposed to hijack it and fly it into
some building, right?”
“Finally, a sign of
intelligence.
Yes. How do you get to the pilot?”
“The what?”
“The guy who’s flying the
plane!”
“Oh! Well, I guess I.... Is he
above me now?”
“Of course not! He’s at the front of the
plane!”
“Which way is the front?”
The instructor took off his hat, crumpled it, threw it to
the ground, stomped on it. “The way you’re facing! Now
what? Are you crying?”
“You’re so mean!”
“Get out of that crate!”
Never before, so humiliated!
***
You know, I can understand what's going on whenever I see
something on the tv about
midwifery. You see, they always say they got everything always under control
because if there's any like complications all they got to do is call up the
hospital or something and everything's okay.
You know, I can understand this totally, from experience.
You see, I remember when 'speed-dial' came in back in the eighties. It was a
boon to me and my friends. We spend all our time lighting one another's hair on
fire and it was okay, because we had 911 on speed-dial.
***
When
I’s a lad, the King was just
a man;
Then
blossomed he to some thing like a God;
Then
wond’rously became a Living God.
It
wasn’t my perception made it so,
Or
not alone my sense of holiness
Became
he to the thing he always was,
The
Living God I hushed four lines ago,
But
rather changes of his nascent forme
Containing
wisdom’s works in line and verse
Could
set well-set for print and distribute.
Then
all us commonfolk could mark the sense
And
mark, “Our King’s a Holy Man,” except
For
some who only saw a halo’s mark
Above
his blessed head; these reprobates
Were
moved en masse to islands to the north,
Preventing
sick infecting of ourselves.
And
so for years the birds sang sweet and clear
That
our great K-ng (his name unutter’ble
For
fear the winds would dissipate The Word)
Did
reign, whilst animals did cleave
Unto
their mates by twos or threes or fours.
A
paramilitary force considered me
Of
use in self-agreement, for my heart
Was
theirs and theirs of mine; we learned
Of
cells and I.E.D.s to prep ourselves
Defensively
against whatever threat
Should
-en our K-ng (for we had learned belief
Can
pervert-like invert the
But
why, you
ask, if all were so
Enthralled
with He your K-ng was such
preparedness
Necessary? Military why
The need? Because around our landlocked land
There
dwelt a larger land in infidel-
-Ity who’d not (as you can guess) come
’round
To
righteousness, such they oppressors were,
And
so we spent our days yplanning “tricks”
To
make them be illuminate or dead;
In
cells we operated, such that just
Two levels up were not aware of
nor our names
Nor
ranks, and even then we weren’t to breathe
A
word about what special opping plans
We
might have in the stew and spark to do,
Because
our foes had spies afoot (although
We
never seemed to catch a one), anear
(Although
we never prisoned but a none),
Aseeing (though we couldn’t pluck a
soul
From
borders), and in touch (although a hand
We
never shackled manacled or gripped).
My
comrade and myself concocted plans
I
share here for the first time anywhere:
We’d
’jack an aeroplane from out the sky,
A
plane of diplomat ambassadors
(Not
ours but theirs) as they attempted to
Return
with safety to their shit-stain lands,
And
blow it up, that plane, with no regrets;
O
what they’d say about our hero act!
O
who would not remember us eterne?
O
where in all the lands would we be slight?
O
how our heritage’d be sung in song!
Thus
quietly we schemed, just he and me
And
one who true to W-rd had pledged himself,
Intent
on time and place for great’st effect,
Until
we settled down and bought our tix,
And
sep’rately we boarded us the plane.
From
where I sat, L3, I couldn’t see
My
comrade seven rows behind nor could
I
see my other comrade up in seat
G3,
and soon the plane was in the air.
When
I’s a lad, I lived a life of such
Excitement
every day was newly born
Or
so it seemed; the coolness of the grass
Beneath
my feet could lift me through the air,
And
mornings were the summer sun and winters
Were
the moon I stretched to touch; I knew
Too
much for anyone to know without
A salty
cry (and yet I can’t recall
The
weeping that I must have done for now
I
see my youth and want to weep at how
It
must have been). And now those times are past,
And
there I was enweaponed on a plane,
To
strike a blow against the infidels,
To
let the world at large, if world-at-large
Existed
past the borders of surround,
Envision
passion mine for W-rd the K-ng,
And
know my kith and kin impressed with what
I’d
done, parade perhaps, in any case
A
handsome epitaph upon a stone.
The
plane was in the air and soon above
Our
hated domiciles (that is to say
The
domiciles we hated, namely theirs)
And
soon we’d blow the airplane into bits
Foreseeing
news reports about our deed;
What
news reports? There won’t be any way
For
anyone to know just what you’ve done
Or
why! You’re organized in cells which means
There’s
none to tell your tale or left to claim
Responsibility! so
said a little voice
Within
my head, some undigested bit-
Of-beef
complaint, some concept truly mine
Yet
seemingly from somewhere else entire.
I
panicked then, determining to stop
The
blast some minutes off, but how? My friends
Were
not available for contact in the plan
We’d
sworn to hold until our fiery deaths.
But
still I rose and moved on up the aisle,
To
where my forward friend did sit: too late.
So
once upon a time, an amateur
Astronomer
one night saw something bright:
With
unseen worlds surrounding it, a star
Exploding
to a nova.
Packing up his gear
He
made a note precisely noting down
The
latitude and longitude and time
Intending
to next day report his find.
He
slept next morn as wife swept up his pants
And
tossed them in the wash with note inside.
So
now I’m here in Hell as punishment,
And
no-one down below knows of my deed,
Because
we never told a soul our plans,
And
emptiness is all around my self.
The
forces here are wanting me repent,
But
why repent when fame’s eluded me?
The
plane exploded, killing all aboard,
And
no-one knows who did this wicked deed!
I’d
cut myself away from everything,
I’d
severed ties to everything of care.
I
know there’s irony in bucketfuls
And
so a word of warning (where? To whom?)
To
always write your plans destruction of,
And
give them all to someone whom you trust!
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