Evil Diva, Banshee Bitch

Evil Diva

This is me

When I flash my tongue, silver

Razor, sing my blood

My gunfire cracks

Through the canyon

Yes, my throat

I am that bitch in sequins and

I am the naked warrior

I lead the battle with my shrill

Sing death home

Home and howl, keen

Through the night

Through the canteen

And whiskey spews through my nose

And love from my lungs and

Wicked, wicked lies

The green in my eyes

The gold and brown

The earth in the shadows

My hips in the sway

In the mist, my lips

Sing you home

Sing you home

Sing you

"Look at the people. Watch them pass but don't follow them..."

I hate myself right now. I feel like Bukowski only I can't drink, so I'm unable to write poetry or get seduced by multiple women in their twenties even though I am bulging and aging, too.

Why can't I write poetry because I'm not drinking? My friend (and ex-lover or whatever) is a performance poet. He told me he quit drinking for six months once and he couldn't write even one poem. Then he said, Screw sobriety. This is pointless! And I think I agree with him.

What is the point of following all of the ragged rules of boredom and convention? I quit bartending and now I file endless reams of paperwork. Also, I have all of these stupid health problems, I weigh oodles more, I'm constantly fighting with my natural sleep cycle and I'm not getting lotsa loving. Everyone wants to fool around with the bartender/poet but nobody wants to bother with the fucking Program Coordinator. Another friend (and ex-lover or whatever) is a farmer and says this is Mother Nature messing with me so either I learn precise organization (whether or not I value it) or else I'll drown in the next flood or get strangled by red tape.

When I used to be a young hippie punk mama only using herbal remedies, I was raising my son on bar tips and spending our free time mountain climbing or soaking in the springs. Now I'm a paper file organizer, an excel budget designer, a weight gainer, decreasing in health and memory but caring for people with severe anal missle retentions and more importantly, those suffering from hearing the voices and oddly linked thoughts which doctors try to treat with pharmaceuticals. And our studies are being funded by the pharma companies, of course.

Way back in the day (1000 years ago) people like our patients might have been respected as the shaman of the tribe and although they might live in solitude a mile away from the rest of their people and although their predictions may or may not have been true, at least they valued and trusted themselves and were respected by the tribe.

The prediction of a very cold winter or the tribe needing to do battle with another living down the river may have been heard from the schizophrenic shaman's internal voices or sensed by her paranoia or perhaps even connected with her delusion. Maybe it wasn't a truly divine enlightened prediction as much as a statement of the perpetually obvious in a tone that was cryptic. Or maybe this type of future descriptive insight and understanding is brought on by a perfectly proportional brain?

Maybe enlightenment and psychosis are relational. The words psychotic and psychic are separated with nothing more than an O and T. Separated by nothing more than respecting the differences as opposed to prosecuting them or infiltrating them with chemicals (like when I drink after a bad day at work or an old man swallows viagra or those few people who are still employed take Ritalin or Concerta each morning to make it through the day).

Or maybe I just don't know what to do with myself.

(P.S., I found the picture in this post at a site called My Health Guardian.)

(P.P.S. The title is part of a line from a poem written by a lady I used to work with & for.)

Of Course

At work, there is currently a program participant who says "of course" with five different tonalities so that (once you add context) she can make that phrase mean about 8 different things.

Of course =

• I would love to...
• That's what I expected.
• You are correct.
• I'm pleased that we agree.
• (a verbal wave of dismissal)
• Haven't you been listening ?
• Do I have to draw you a picture?
• You are rude and I am too polite to say it outright.

She's also bilingual. I think I'm going to try to speak Spanish with her to see if she has an equivalent elastic phrase in that language... Por supuesto! She is also a voracious reader and since I habitually ask her about what she is reading, she recently lent me a very large and unusual collection of Bill Moyer's interviewing modern poets. I also like her because she is the first person who ever was truly interested when I started talking about the poet Alejandra Pizarnik and she wrote down her name so she could look her up on the internet. Of course!

Monday Night Purgatory

I wanted to go to Weeds tonight for the open mike poetry because it was the annual Erotica Valentine's reading but I'm feeling decidely UN-erotic. I've never been very good at writing erotica, either. My work goes quickly pornographic and it doesn't take long to turn completely hardcore. Then Gregorio sent out a message that there would be filming and we should dress up and then possibly fall in love with someone. The pressure was mounting. Then I got my period (see what I mean about the suddenly hardcore) and had to drive to the far south side to visit someone in the hospital. Also, whenever I go to Weeds I end up drinking a bunch of tequilas and the next thing I know it's 4:30 a.m. and I'm getting thrown out of the Old Town Ale House. I wouldn't feel right tomorrow morning asking the patients how much they've been drinking while tequila and lime seep out of my pores and the seven dwarves sing "heigh ho" in my skull while driving sledgehammers against my temples.

I hate working in the mornings. It is decidedly not erotic.

Monsoon

salt sun, dry eye

slips of paper, nylon straps

flapping from the clothesline

over the hill of red ants

mustard hills, cerulean sky

carresses the possessive

wind which laps

the last drop of water

from the breaking-down

bottle buried in

the sand to

the left of the shed

Three o'clock

swells bruised and violet

as lightening rises

from the aqueduct

to bloody the shining beam

of sunlight

water phantoms

chase around the yard

drowning the anthills

dousing the denim

on the line and

at 3:15

the sun splits the cloud

with a roundhouse

imprisming herself

my clothes dry quickly

in the spectrum

spring and sprung

sylph-like sisters sequestered starvation's scions in subterranean schematics

now they don't remember their dreams

now they don't recognize their own screams

better to curl up in a ball in the sunshine

pelting through the windowpane

Happy V.D.

Song

Allen Ginsberg

The weight of the world

is love.

Under the burden

of solitude,

under the burden

of dissatisfaction

the weight,

the weight we carry

is love.

Who can deny?

In dreams

it touches

the body,

in thought

constructs

a miracle,

in imagination

anguishes

till born

in human--

looks out of the heart

burning with purity--

for the burden of life

is love,

but we carry the weight

wearily,

and so must rest

in the arms of love

at last,

must rest in the arms

of love.

No rest

without love,

no sleep

without dreams

of love--

be mad or chill

obsessed with angels

or machines,

the final wish

is love

--cannot be bitter,

cannot deny,

cannot withhold

if denied:

the weight is too heavy

--must give

for no return

as thought

is given

in solitude

in all the excellence

of its excess.

The warm bodies

shine together

in the darkness,

the hand moves

to the center

of the flesh,

the skin trembles

in happiness

and the soul comes

joyful to the eye--

yes, yes,

that's what

I wanted,

I always wanted,

I always wanted,

to return

to the body

where I was born.

Scars Versus Tattoos

1.
Casey is an artist in skin. His arms and chest
Are a mesh of colors. An oil slick in a puddle
I reach across the bar and trace angels and demons
Imprisoned in chains of flames and skulls.

His painted arms are dangerous.
But his cheeks are a network of scars,
Remnants of awkward acne and
A drunken confrontation with a windshield.

2.
Cindy has a fairy tattooed on her belly.
She is gossamer and filligree, dainty
Toes and fingers pointing down and out.
Cindy is muscle hiking, swimming, bossing
Tawny sinew wrapped in gauze and long, black hair.

A thin silver scar climbs from her lip to her nose.
She earned this in an arguement with an 800 lb. brown bear.
She paints herself as a dancing fairy,
But ink won't cover the seams.
She is a woman who picks fights with giants.

3.
Franzo has Betty Paige in all of her jet black glory
Tattooed on his thigh. It was featured in a magazine.
There are skeletal wings in indigo folded on his back,
An angel plucked and starved.

He has a hundred hours in ink all over his body,
But on his shoulders and biceps are scars.
Years of adolescent pain carved out randomly --
Parallelograms, stars and ellipses --
All the tears he shed
In crimson beads which stained his t-shirt.

Dolphins in captivity swim against their cages,
Butt against the walls. They do this repeatedly,
Even though they bleed with yearning. Anguish
For the wide, indigo ocean. Each strike leaves a mark.
They scar along their flanks randomly --
Parallelograms, stars and ellipses.

headache

strobe light massacre spasms sparking metal friction fictions whine while bodies surge anonymous, unyielding and assaulting my perimeter

~~~

cats and cold, computers and christmas and wars

breakdowns, meltdowns, shakedowns and overdrawn again

some one's smearing bengay in my sinuses

some one's shish-kabobing my temples

sledgehammering railroad spikes through my scapula

~~~

i want it to stop

escape into the weeping november fields the abandoned woods where bodies wash up

or stick in clumps of river brush and maple babies

underneath the airtight bridge

build me a log cabin,

but no I couldn't bear the splintering thwack of the axe violating logs

lets' crawl into a tipi and make out

until the icy rain lets up

In Progress...

Once I have loved you there is no turning back.
We are cell memory, fused fibers
And silver maple roots pushing through the plumbing.

A network of neurons stretch anew
Electrifying agonists across brains and plains
Disavowing logic in favor of
A finger-smudged photograph
And the heavy smell of wet wool
And wrists entwined.

Yes, I think you may have authored me
Ordered my chapters, driven my plot
And reset my rhythm
Each, but especially all of you.

You can read your own fortune
In the width and hue, the number
Of my rings smelling green, sharp
And lightning shot through and
Split.
Shattered.
Chemically changed.

Once, I was a conductor, bonding
Now I deionize in the soil
Disintegrating, deactivating,
A home for fungii

And small mammals.

My roots reaching back and through...

(I'm still editing this. I wrote it while watching an episode of Frontline about an undertaker / poet and I'm really liking some parts of it and hating others. Anywho...)

Rule of Law

You Fit Into Me

You fit into me

like a hook into an eye

a fish hook

an open eye

-Margaret Atwood

Twit is my inspiration. Go see his original which spawned this hellion.

just one more?

he precedes himself in sleep pleads his case to my subconscious seduces me with my own id and then comes closer casually in reality as if he needn't try

no, that's a lie

the part about reality in reality he chases me for as long as it takes closing his ears to seven thousand "no"s which pass from my lips he has kissed seven thousand times and i hold him in contempt because he doesn't hold me but i always seem to weaken to collapse to fall into bed again accidentally at request number seven thousand and one

i like to piss him off i purposefully court his ire and always ask him how his girlfriend is but he comes again and again and there really are no girlfriends music is his mistress he is his own best friend which is good since he has neither money nor emotion and he rambles on about politics for hours watching cspan until my teeth chatter i will not take off my clothes until he turns off the television his secret fantasy is getting head on his mushy gold couch while watching cheney's impeachment hearings

i have asked him seven thousand times to leave me in peace and peacefully seven thousand times he has refused

This is piercing gravity
Ripping through the abdomen
And shooting tingling nothingness
And heaviness
And tears

Over spilled milk and traffic
Sneering adolescent teeth
Still jagged edged from their proximity
To breaking gums

Please leave me to my whiskey
And pulpy novels and peanut butter.
Please leave me alone
To dream of war-torn streets
And baskets full of heads.

of Montreal and etcetera

Yesterday, I saw of Montreal at Pitchfork Festival. What an amazing band!

Go to their website and listen to their music. Go right now as it is melodic, dramatic and highly danceable. (There is more music and some video on their MySpace page.)

Then, keep looking at their website. Watch their tour locations AND GO SEE THEM PERFORM LIVE. Darth Vadar, leather bustiers, interpretive dancers/ performance artist, gian absurd prosthetic appendages -- pop sugar psychodrama -- these are just some of the fabulous visual comfittes awaiting you at their live show.


And to all of my gentle readers in Europe, go to that touring schedule ASAP! They will be coming to a stage near you through July and into early August.



Here are some lyrics from Suffer for Fashion:


We just want to emote til we're dead
I know we suffer for fashion
or whatever
we dont' want these days to ever end
we just want to emasculate them forever
forever, forever
pretty sirens don't go flat

it's not supposed to happen like that
not like that
not like that
not like that
we've got to keep it physical

(Oh, and I also saw my old favorites De La Soul -- freaking amazing!!! They put on a very infectious, energetic and interactive show.)

Wesley and Walt and Madness and Joy

Happy Birthday wishes to Walt Whitman and Wesley Willis from here and into the Great Beyond.

Wesley Willis was a Chicago musician. He used to hang out at Borderline when I worked there, making music on his hand-held keyboard, putting together the Wesley Willis Fiasco and selling his art. He was also famous for head butts, but I refused them -- insisting that I had way too much responsibility to be walking around with the headache I was sure to receive. Because of my refusal, I got hugs -- and Wesley Willis gave the best hugs.

Once, he gave me a very scary poem about war with a drawing, but it seems to have vaporized in one of my cross-country moves. Wesley died in 2003 -- which really was a shit-can year for big, strong men.

The drawing above is by Wesley. You can see more of his art on his website.

Once upon a time, I was cursing in Morning Star Baptist Church

I called the evangelist a stupid crucifuck

Reverend Richard Price preached about my vulgar language

He told the congregation in the sanctuary that I got a nasty filthy mouth

Don't curse in God's house

And as for Walt Whitman .... well, we all know Walt Whitman. I sing the body electric. Here is a passage by the Granddaddy himself from One Hour to Madness and Joy:

ONE hour to madness and joy!
O furious! O confine me not!
(What is this that frees me so in storms?
What do my shouts amid lightnings and raging winds mean?)

******************

O something unprov’d! something in a trance!
O madness amorous! O trembling!
O to escape utterly from others’ anchors and holds!
To drive free! to love free! to dash reckless and dangerous!
To court destruction with taunts—with invitations!
To ascend—to leap to the heavens of the love indicated to me!
To rise thither with my inebriate Soul!
To be lost, if it must be so!
To feed the remainder of life with one hour of fulness and freedom!
With one brief hour of madness and joy.

Betrayal

Poor Odysseus traveled for 10 weary years to be reunited with his Penelope. Oh, how nauseatingly romantic. She sat silently weaving at home while he fought a war to determine who got pissing rights on Helen of Troy. He sailed the Mediterranean and had a couple of LTRs with strong women. And where would Odysseus have been without the kindness of those women with large hearts and larger ovaries -- magical women of strength and passion??? Instead he ran home to namby-pamby Penelope, who never did anything interesting at all ... including support Odysseus.

I shouldn't rag on a weak woman for being pragmatic. She was limited by the reality of life as a mortal female in Ancient Greece. Odysseus WAS gone for 17 years. Yet it seems that all she did in that time was weave and fall victim to suitors. They moved into her home, plotted against her son and she just sat there -- passive and weaving.

How did Calypso feel, after taking care of Odysseus' dumb, wandering, arrogant ass for 7 years? He just up and left her for Penelope. Who was this love of his life? Why did he abandon the women who stood with him when Poseidon and logic betrayed him? (Speaking of that, what kind of sailor would piss off Poseidon? Is that an examle of Odysseus' famous wisdom?)

I don't believe that Calypso imprisoned Odysseus. That stuff Homer said about him crying in the day and falling madly in love with her at night? I think we all know what that's about. Zeus understood that Odysseus didn't want to leave Calypso's Cave of Delights, so he sent Hermes to convince Calypso to build the man a ship and send him home. Off he went, only to be wrecked for about the hundredth time by Poseidon.

What about Circe? Sure, she turned his men into pigs according to the (misogynist) Greek version of events. (Since when does a woman need sorcery to turn a man into a pig?) They were in love and she bore him a son. Before he left, she gave him all kinds of useful advice, including access to the underworld and thus safe passage -- since Poseidon had it in for him. And so Odysseus betrayed another strong woman who came to his aid so that he could go home to simpering Penelope.

Oh.... but Penelope was a romanticized ideal of a good wife who was set before us as a metaphorical example. Faithful Penelope who tricked the suitors so Odysseus could finally reclaim his rightful place as king of Ithaca ... thank Athena her epic hero showed up at the 11th hour. Otherwise, who knows...

But I don't hate Penelope. I hate Odyssesus for having acted like such a chicken shit and his betrayals of the women who helped him through 10 years of travel.

I hate that I have insomnia again. Over the years, it seems that I've come to the aid of several of the sons of pain and at least one of them should be keeping watch so that I can sleep tonight. But they've all set sail for Ithaca and tonight they're either holding themselves or namby-pamby bitches (read: not me). I am so very tired.

Siren Song
Margaret Atwood

This is the one song everyone

would like to learn: the song

that is irresistible:

the song that forces men

to leap overboard in squadrons

even though they see beached skulls

the song nobody knows

because anyone who had heard it

is dead, and the others can’t remember.

Shall I tell you the secret

and if I do, will you get me

out of this bird suit?

I don’t enjoy it here

squatting on this island

looking picturesque and mythical

with these two feathery maniacs,

I don’t enjoy singing

this trio, fatal and valuable.

I will tell the secret to you,

to you, only to you.

Come closer. This song

is a cry for help: Help me!

Only you, only you can,

you are unique

at last. Alas

it is a boring song

but it works every time.

Valentine's Poetry

It's Wednesday ... Happy VD!

Anticipation of Separation

This is the rustle of the whisper
of the trickle
of the warm wet bead
crawling across your breastbone
while you wait for the faint bass
in the chest next to your ear
and you hear the intake,
the manifold,
the murmur of so much air
embracing his lungs
and you miss the moment
before it ends.
Drowning in the blues of faded cotton sheets.

He holds my hand against nightmares.
He develops superhuman strength
and mythic proportions and somehow
and illogically my merman embraces me again
against my jealousy and
despite his lying lips we live
within truth breathing underwater
and manifesting the pulse
of the city within
without and pierced through the core
again and again and again….

It's Wednesday. Eat Your Poetry.

Sitting On The Back Porch With Oyá and Buk

Don’t ask her why the static in her hair
Makes cracklings that tell her where to
Lead the Boys of Wabansia Ave. I am
Leaning over the railing and the neighbor
Says, “Tell you what, that slut’s
Out of her mind, out of her tree
As she sways by, overhearing such phrases
Doesn’t faze her.

Hair so fine and electric.
Hat’s off and skirts up
As mambo music bougarabous
And the djembe waits for an answer
Resounding in the brass balls
Of an old bandleader gone
To the shadows of Oya’s yard
Clinging to all nine of her skirts
As the wind carries the eggy smell
Of Hell.

*********

"Don’t ask. Tell.
I tell you such fine music waits in the shadows of hell."

--Charles Bukowski

2/3

He digs himself in until entwined
in loose wisps of my windblown brain
while January pierces the sternum of
her hunched charges running to and fro
from granite obelisk to the web of damp tunnels and trains.

The city is a Freudian dream …
the countryside favors a Euclidian proof
and nature’s complex repetitions
and partitions and unifications of
angles acute, right and obtuse.

The city is endless rectangles, cubes,
and lopsided love triangles
which evolve into pentagrams
and turn themselves inside
out on those who traced them
in fleshy absentia.

Where is your geometry, baby?
Why so many angles?
I invoke protective circles
but your voice always gains
the border. You permeate
my molecules, you infect and you spread.
You don’t deserve my fever
and yet I’m laid out,
burning to the touch and
shivering, shivering, shuddering
while January blows me
to and fro across bridges
and into rectangles.

You’re harder than street drugs,
your euphoria shorter.
You chase me through the dreamscape,
and then you always drive my car.
How did you get my keys?

Go away. Go to the opposite hemisphere.
Go away but come home soon.

Wednesday Is Poetry Day

Today's offering is a haiku.



Him

He vexes icy
Breath with rhythms and sugar-lipped
Lies alone in snow.