Sunday, July 31st, 2005

Am I the first to do a poetry Mashup? I don't know. Who else would bother? Here is Charles Bukowski vs. Margaret
Atwood. (taken from Open All Night and Morning In The Burned House, respectively)

"You're friend Moses was caught in there doing something to a 5-year-old girl."

Well, all children are sad, but some get over it.

Unfortunately he must have been missing some parts.

and you're trapped in your overturned body

Saturday, July 30, 2005

My guardian angels? I have met three or four of them. They sleep like bats, upside down in the bushes, outside the gates of
Heaven, when they aren’t tailing me. I’m as tired as they are of me giving up booze. “What’s wrong with me and my
malfunctioned heart?” I ask them, when they wake up and shake their wings, following me to the coffee shop. “It’s not
your heart,” the one with the hobo hat says, “it’s your liver. It gets bored with caffeine.”
“That’s not true at all, jocko,” the one with Italian eyes says. “You are stressed out, shy, uncomfortable, and a drunk.
It’s easy to see why. You are scared of people.”
I turned and cuffed him. “NOW YOU’RE LEARNING TO BE SCARED OF ME!!YOU ASSHOLE!” I shouted as he
dropped to his knees, starting to weep. “Wait here.” I said to the other one who had stopped short and was just staring at
the other angel kneeling on the sidewalk, hands covering his face. I went in and the guy behind the counter had my medium
ready for me.

This ryhming isn't making me a dime. I would like to be a food critic. So please enjoy my first restaurant review:

People ask me what my favorite restaurant is. I eat 5 dollar sandwiches, 4 dollar burritos. I’d eat ‘em cheaper if I could find ‘em. I go back to a place if I don’t get the shits or see a guy with his finger in his nose on the line. I read while I eat, so who knows what it all tastes like? I’m just trying to stay alive and get some other stuff done besides shopping and cooking. Maybe I bought a 12 of cheap beer and I need something to help me hold it down. That’s what eating is to me. That's my favorite restaurant.

At 2:30 this afternoon I was spinning dizzy from hunger. I had my Bukoski book of poems and happened across the California Culinary Academy, where people pay to learn how to work in a restaurant. I had to go check out these fools. I sat down at the bar, which was a mistake. I kept seeing my reflection in the mirror; my hair was wild, two days unwashed, my face five days unshaven. I looked werewolfish, unlike the business lunch crowd at the tables with dark blue blazers and dark blue wool skirts. (3 of 12 tables were taken, I was alone at the bar) It’s not often you eat out at a place without windows and a street view. This place is down in a basement, made up to look like a hotel lobby. I had to order quick because the smooth jazz was spoiling my appetite.

I took the pulled pork sandwich special. It came with fries and cost six and a half bucks.
The bbq sauce was boring, the fries were shoestring, tighter than my budget, frozen in a machine down on the Ore-Ida farm. I let them soak in ketchup so they wouldn’t crunch. The best part of the meal was the ice water. No chlorine taste to speak of. The glass was clean. The ice was very cold.

All in all my money would have been better spent a few blocks down on "Pill Street" where they sell C’s and V’s for the same price as lunch, and I wouldn’t have felt a thing for hours. As it was, my stomach was masticating the pulled pork. I should hold off on this review until my bowels move, so I can let folks know how the food really performs, but I went ahead and bought a chocolate old fashioned from the Teriyaki & Donut shop for dessert. That's going to throw everything off. If something comes horribly loose, I won't know who to blame.

If you find yourself in the Tenderloin, what the hell? See what the kids can cook up for you. It's a big building on a corner, young people in white smocks and houndstooth pants will be smoking out front.

Thursday July 28, 2005

I buy shoes with another man's walk installed. Thrift Town has them for $4.99. I got a pair of Rockports; old man shoes. Old men care about comfort, so it seemed a sure bet. Something easy on my canines. Turns out the guy had a big bunion on his left foot. The insole is sunk down in a spot and throws me off. Now I share his pain.

I've had shoes from heel dragger's, club foot's, and pigeon toed's. I had a pair of oxblood numbers with big gold buckles, size fourteen, too big to fit right, but too dandy not to wear. The girls went wild over 'em. I took a set of brown wingtips from the Salvation Army drop box, and wore 'em to a wedding. Florsheim's. I looked real put together. I wouldn't know what to do if I bought new. Walking where no man has walked before is dangerous business.

Wednesday, July 27, 2005 g

Dear New Hampshire,

I'm having a lot of fun out here, but San Francisco sure is different. The green neon sign is a "Cannabis Club". They legally sell marijuana to people who have a doctor's prescription. You can't tell by the photo, but it smelled very strong outside on the curb. Just like pot.
Remember how you couldn't say the word "Bong" in the smoke shop down on Hampton Beach? I miss those days.

Rus is 70 in September. He came by to have me write some checks for him.

"Got slowed up on 19th. Some jive-ass with his pants down to his pecker was standing in the road while an Okie stood there waving his hands and hollerin' at him."

We drove down to Bill's Place and Rus got diced ham and eggs and I got a hamburger.

"Locke fell out of a tree and broke some ribs." Rus said.

A Guest poem today by Jimmy Santiago Baca. I edited this because he writes long poems that are amazing, but I didn't want to scare my readers with lots of words. Here is his background, from his website.

Born in New Mexico of Chicano and Apache descent, Jimmy Santiago Baca was raised first by his grandmother and was later sent to an orphanage. A runaway at age thirteen, it was after Baca was sentenced to five years in a maximum security prison at the age of twenty-one that he began to turn his life around: there he learned to read and write and found his passion for poetry.

My poems are ristras drying on rooftops-
the long red chili strands
strung together and knotted at the stems
the wind rattles them
and the seeds inside the pods
shake coldly.
I think of my heart-
dry and crackly, the dry seeds of dreams
rasping against the tough red inner skin.

Star light, star bright.

Whatever, kid

I went out to get coffee. A guy was standing in the road looking at the curb. He was probably five five. Overwieght. Clean shaven and salt and pepper hair. He wore a flourescent safety vest over a polo shirt and blue jeans.

"Looking for surveryor's monuments," he said, when I asked him what he was doing.

"What's USA mean?" I asked him.

"Underground Service Alert," he told me.

That way nobody gets hurt.

Human poo. Not only do I have to look at this everyday in my new neighborhood. I have to smell it. Put a flower box out front, they'll kick it over. Let the light burn out, they'll go to sleep. Turn your back, they'll spray paint your house. Park your car, they'll smash your window.

Before I was 25, I had done all this to others.

"How long before they start bombing San Francisco?" I asked the guy who sells books on the street.

"It's either us or L.A." he said.

I called my poem a nerd.

I figured I'd save a few bucks & sleep by the junction box on 16th & Valencia. I had a can of Bud. Since I was feeling good, I took off my sneakers and used them for a pillow.

(Do I really need to give this line breaks to make it a poem? Line breaks, as they've come down to us, imply pompous artifice. They immediately confuse me, because I don't know how to hear the words in my head. I feel like. The poet. Is a really bad. Speaker. Let's take a look at this poem as it would be presented in a poetry class on structure.)

I figured
I'd save
a few bucks & sleep

  by the junction box on 16th
  & Valencia.
    

         I
      had a
  can of Bud.

Since I was feeling good,
                                       I took off my sneakers and used them for        a pillow

(this poem is a nerd.)

I’ve got my poet eyes open all the time lately. I was looking at the statistics of visitors to my website, which my web host breaks down many ways for me, when I came upon this list of key phrases people have typed in search engines which have brought them to my site. I didn’t realize all that stuff could be tracked, but there is a lot of stuff I have left to learn about computers and their powers.

In the interest of poetry, I am showing you the list of key phrases. It really looks like poetry toward the end. However, I am also a bit troubled by some of it. Actually, very troubled. The internet feels my website is a match for people searching for shaven vagina needle crying.

myrobotispregnant.com 41.6 %
jon rolston 28.3 %
myrobotispregnant 28.3 %
scarf hounding burrito 4.1 %
stegasorous 4.1 %
shaven vagina needle crying 4.1 %
penis bandana tied around it 4.1 %
emeryville hip stylist balding men 4.1 %
red button snap cowboy diesel 4.1 %
locker room with its smell of sweaty male semen 4.1 %

I don’t see how semen can be sweaty smelling -unless through the magic of poetry!

please visit www.askmeaboutmygas.com to see the t-shirts my friend has designed and to learn about biodiesel. I am modeling the Mercedes t-shirt.

Have you wondered what makes my poetry different from other, higher quality poetry? I use a simple formula, so it all sounds the same.

Let’s look at my process below, with an unfinished poem entitled COFFFEE & DONUTS.

"I went down to Coffee & Donuts
And sat by the window"

Here is my set up. Very quotidian; inspired by the actual donut shop I went to, the one with a big sign saying “COFFEE & DONUTS”. I assume it is the name of the business.

You can start a lot of poems by writing down what you did earlier in the day.

“I was wiping my butt
With the scratchy cheap toilet paper”

might be an interesting start to a poem. The thing is, you never know, because it is the end of the poem that makes everything that came before it great. Which is why I have not yet finished my COFFEE & DONUTS poem. I am looking to take the reader, (myself) out of this uninspiring donut shop, to make it worthwhile having gone there. I am looking to give value to my writing. Otherwise I could just write COFFEE & DONUTS and be done with it. But I don’t roll that way. I’m one of those Meaning Poets.

So here are some possible conclusions:

“Unaware of the time I’ve wasted.”

Lets look at it in it’s poetic form, shall we?

“I went down to Coffee & Donuts
And sat by the window
Unaware of the time I’ve wasted.”

Now we have a mood. It’s a bit melancholy in the donut shop all of a sudden. To bring out the contrast, we could talk about the donuts.

“The maple glaze chipping off”

Or the cashier might fill out our little poem.

“With silver tongs like chop sticks
she answered my prayer for sweetness”

This of course reveals the pitfall of poetry; namely, one works too hard to describe the woman sticking a donut in a bag.

"I went down to COFFEE & DONUTS
The woman stuck my donut in a bag
And I sat down by the window."

This poem is getting crazy. Where is the point? It isn’t poetry yet, because there is no emotion. Some people like it like that. Men, mostly. Men who don’t pursue the arts, but spend time reading manuals on rebuilds instead. They would love this poem exactly how it is.

But these men won’t buy my little leather chapbooks. Too gay.

So, as I work to become the only living American poet earning a fantastic living from his poetry, I am at a cross roads. Do I start writing Haynes manuals, and call it poetry?

“Locate the motor mounts
They should be along the edge”

I guess that is what you call selling out. It may happen that my dream becomes only half true. I write the poetry I want, and lose money buying donuts in the process.

Is my poem done? Do I want to be so depressing? I mean really, let’s read what I’ve got so far.

"I went down to COFFEE & DONUTS
The woman stuck my donut in a bag
And I sat down by the window."

DEPRESSING! I love donut shops. I love chocolate old fashioneds, and plain cakes. I love the bad coffee I load up with half & half and white sugar. These little places are the only places that still serve coffee in a Styrofoam cup. (here is a total aside. I have noticed junkies on the street with the wooden stir sticks and a Bic pen cap, and maybe some copper scouring pad stuck in it, that they use to administer drugs, I assume. Can someone please explain it to me?)

“I went down to COFFEE & DONUTS
And all kinds of crimes were going on around me
But I love donuts, and was happy.”

Okay, this version admits that yes, someone was selling twelve pairs of stolen sunglasses for two hundred dollars at the next table. These were obviously high end sunglasses because the man got his price. But there is hope and love in this poem now, and that is going to be my final version.

I hope you enjoyed this rare opportunity to get inside the poets mind and understand how to write poetry like I do.

Talk about salt. How it is formed, where it is found. Imagine yourself small enough to fall through one single perforation in the top of the shaker, and the crystals are the size of bricks at your feet. By licking them, you can build a set of stairs that will support you when you climb back out.

From above we see that while most Americans are in bed by ten thirty, enough people are awake to light up the coast lines like two edges of an un-zippered jacket. If only we could lay down under our little piece of the continent and look up dresses.

Majuscule shouting down the hallway for someone to answer the phone
disappeared when land lines were cast away.

(poetry occasionally requires strange words and indirect thought. This is because there is nothing to write.)

We've read my poem where I claim orange and a binge rhyme. We've read Jack Spicer's guest poem. (If you haven't, you're behind. Scroll down to catch up. May 19th, July 5th) The two connect because I create a rhyme with sound, not vision. Spicer said, "No one listens to poetry." The word he chose was "listens", not "reads". No one listens to poetry, even if they do read it. So my victory is not understood as a victory. By those who are confused, I'm regarded as a bad poet; visually "orange" and "a binge" do not rhyme.

Open your ear hole, I am undefeated.

Stopping at sidewalk sales to see if they're selling something stolen
from me or a friend.

Bum comes mumbling
open palm his storefront
selling white junk in twisted plastic
or a can of soda for fifty cents

"I need six dollars to get me and my nine year old daughter
a place to sleep tonight. I spent twelve hours
on this drawing. It's done with a Bic pen."

"Bad news," I told him. "I only give money to people with guns."

I've trained termites to chew in patterns
and like a million monkeys
they've made a sentence

Snow turned the ground to devilcake mud. ‘for too long, the lead in the paint made the old houses sink into the ground. Those damn old days fall into boxes. Crawford Notch is what they called his mother. She was a whore. Sold it for money. Just like the men did.

(I’m sorry about getting high. This is meant as my entry in the New Hampshire Poetry Contest. I am anxiously awaiting your entries! See June 19th for official rules.)

( I put up a missed connection on Craigslist. Here it is, in case you missed it. I can't seem to write poetry lately.)

Saw you on CL, you didn't recognize me - (portsmouth)

This is for you, you beautiful white mountain state -

Late Friday night I was creating an illuminated "Will Work for Food" sign on cardboard when I got online. Instead of researching incunabula for inspiration, I thought I'd look for yard sales tomorrow morning. And there you were, over on the right: New Hamp. I clicked on you, but you can't feel a thing, can you, since I left. It hurts me too. I want you to know that.
It's been four years. Too long. I'm coming back in September, I hope you don't ignore me. Yes, it's just for a visit. I've told you, I live with California now. This is my home. You were too moody. Hot then cold...no, I shouldn't be critical. Anyway, I love you for that now. And I made mistakes. A wicked lot. Fuck it...I'm sorry. I want you to know you were my first, you MADE me, and that I’ll never forget you.

* this is in or around san francisco
* no -- it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

Why do white guys smell like farts?

(This one is a poem, not a joke; there is no punchline.)

Wednesday, July 6th, 2005

Why do retarded people dress so badly? To increase the weirdness? Or do they read different magazines than I do?

(Sometimes poetry won't come, so I'll work on my comedy routine in those instances)

(I reread this, and don't think I got my humor across. It was something a friend said to me, that made me laugh. I haven't presented it very well. The point is, there is probably a hipness out there I haven't read about and don't understand. As a Mission Hipster, to admit this is the death of me. The intention was to mock myself, one who understands style through magazines.)

Today we have a guest poem, from Jack Spicer’s Thing Language.

This ocean, humiliating in its disguises
Tougher than anything.
No one listens to poetry. The ocean
Does not mean to be listened to. A drop
Or crash of water. It means
Nothing.
It
Is bread and butter
Pepper and salt. The death
That young men hope for. Aimlessly
It pounds the shore. White and aimless signals. No
One listens to poetry.

-It is like saying “I want to be a troubadour”. No one is a poet anymore. No one but me. I write the unreadable. Because I do it so well, the words are able to come off the page, and crawl into kitchens, where they startle you, my poems there on your floor in the morning. I will be read.
            jon rolston, (poet since July 1st.)

Monday, July 4th 2005

I’ve killed animals,
I’ve played with fire.
I’m not a woman.

(this is one of those “I am” poems. “I am woman, hear me roar.” Or, for me, “I am hipster, here me roar, in numbers too great too ignore.” I say what I am, and what I am not. It ends up defining woman as much as man. One could argue that it boxes men in as killers, but I was thinking about how lucky I am not to have to be in Iraq right now, trying to liberate Muslims. I believe in killing people who want to kill me, but not killing people who live in a town with people who want to kill me if I come to their country with weapons and change out their government. I pictured myself arguing with a male U.S. soldier, who thought I was worthless because I didn’t believe in this war. This is my poem to him. Happy Independence Day.)

Sunday July 3rd, 2005

Whoever mopped the place had been doing it wrong for years.

Saturday, July 2nd, 2005

God didn’t give white boys the blues.
He gave them Metal.

(for further explanation, please click on the stories link and look for this date as the title.)

Friday, July 1, 2005

I was sitting outside General Hospital,
Drinking coffee with cream and sugar,
When a man going through his backpack on the bench
Asked if I want to buy some green buds.

¥       ¥       ¥      ¥     ¥

You hot girls
with your fat asses
Squeeze into some white pants
And let me get a look at you

(These poems aren't related, except for green buds and white pants)