flicks

So i've contemplated bringing the heckler blog back, but alas- DON'T FEEL LIKE DOING THE SHIT.
went to a few events last week. heres some flicks:

when glass turns to sand again- a memoir

FLICKER


a tongue of candle
a thigh alabaster promise
and we cannot imagine a time without.
where we chewed flowers in a path of crumbling wills
your girlhood knawed by the petty- his a small hand
but you forgive him memory
believe, confused perhaps that sex can be healing
no i misspoke, you were hoping they could accept a gift
the (y) is for another time, for i have witness so many broken moons-
so few of them knew of themselves as flowers
we collapse time)
did you feel it? a second melts
decades, when we touched ourselves in belief we'd meet.
each tiny alone snatches cuz) they ignore genius,
focus instead on their dreams
(repeat)
on what form will i ghost to capture you?

for sonnets are never vast enough,
sestinas do not hold glory
epics?
love drips your spine,
and your eyes collapse stars
a hand trembles secrets, a mouth of tulips
franker than the solar systems
me, i am tiny, happy against your envelope- no enemy
full of me heartlion
]there are millions who will struggle, but we change time. we do.


2.

you left today. it would be the first time we'd be apart. as we were walking i could not help but notice how your eyes
glowed in the muted sun how you held your head, away as if saying goodbye would break us, maybe that's what i believed.
and as you closed the door, i lingered, wishing there had been more time, i felt as if things had not been said.

i can remember the first time i was in love
it was the summer of my 7th grade year,
she was tiny, her hands could fold into one of my own.
what a beautiful face, so muted, doll like really.
we would meet around the corner so as not to deal with the scrutiny of our skin, those pensive moments
were so charged with desire, or what i understood of it. and we took our roles easy- i pushy, and plucky
with early prizefighter brow, and she soft and giggly - submissive. i think she knew the roles did not fit, could
feel us struggling for our skin. we had terrible teachers though so there was no chance for us to be ourselves
we only small decades out of being created so how could we have been self made.

somehow we knew that our peers would not allow for us to be, they already had begun the age old separation of the different.
for some reason lost to me even now, we avoided this, and made our way to SPIKE'S Jungle, feverish, wanting our embrace
held up in my mind, and as if our story was being plot-ed by the Hollywood Maven, it was her mother coming to the front door,
and explaining to me- i was not to see her again. my brown skin stung, and as i walked away the tears wetting chin, i wished
i could burn away my skin, i could not open my mouth. i could not ask why it had happened. i just took my shame, made it clay
to place in my stomach, stoking.

my shame made it clay to place in my stomach stoking.


i can imagine you as a fourth grader, pulled tight, the glasses riding the rims of your nose, those eyes. from the few picture i've seen
they have always been the same they ease into ether, blaze soft trails, have always been a woman's eyes. i wonder if you kept a journal,
a pulsing record of your time, your crushes, and defeats-did you think of yourself as pretty?
how often per day did you blush?
could you see me in your far away did your thigh redden in the promise of their wanting? we(re)
you able to have a childhood bare foot on spring wet grass, double dutch sneak and read your mother's romance novels.

?
at 15 did you want the kiss, sneakily behind a bush, and of the boys of your childhood did you secretly want their attention?
were you always serious? i am alone tonight, and my thoughts drift pages, stories float like escaping Napalm across the occupied
soil, i keep bringing your face to mind in fear that it will dull, that the colors will bleed away, and i will not able to locate us. i know
it is irrational, but i am allowed for i am alone tonight and missing your voice.

so it started snowing and i went for a walk, taking the trail we made familiar, then to the swings, back to mine. but that only made me
miss you more. did you think about me last night? i got your note, and it made me nearly weep. i'm going to go read now-
sleep well dear-heart.


(this is an exercise in memory)
it was a week before i was to be married, and i was driving around trying to clear my head
after awhile of aimless peak oil i pulled into the now defunct downtown strip club THEATRICAL. the vibe was pleasant for it was a weekday.
dancers were plentiful, and after a time i approached a dancer for a lap dance, she was pretty, and had the ass divine.
we started to sway, both of us convulsing in our roles. as the night moved toward the close,
we made plans for us to meet up after her shift- the price was set, and the hotel picked - i began the descent, mapping what would be a dishonest
marriage. really it must of been doomed from the start for how could i keep a love commitment with so much wanderlust? did i even love her?
i felt and still feel that i did. i just had no understanding of myself, and what could make a love relationship real without playing house, without wearing
the frustration of responsibility. and when we finished, it was rather sweet, not at all as sleazy as it could of been,
we treated each other as if we were more than our roles demanded. sure i had paid for sex, but i had provided a sweetness
that she would rarely see, it was not as if i was an angel, or some such, i just was from a different place,
i related a little more tenderly than my role promised, and it was only because i was coming from outside her deal. although i wasn't a john i was still
paying which made me no more than a john. no more clean than the next john she would encounter? and why? for i would go back to our second floor, climb softly in bed
and pray my soul to keep.
please.









3.
"i'm not frightened of you. you all want to go to bed with me don't you? but it's me who wants to go to bed with you,
but it's me who say so, me who directs, me who rides you, me who cuts your manes with my scissors."

-Frederico Garcia Lorca


did the world sprout without any connection. well the earth, although beautiful pushes for someone to own its rivers, hills and valleys
it seduces the eye with bounty. in this it is an act of evil, even as it is passive, its what happens during the push for ownership those
that make the move, become fragments, push a domino down the steps of fate.
it was in the melee that i fell for her. it was summer,
my first year of college had been a mild success, and i would be embarking on my first tour for reading poems. there was nothing to it really, only reading a moderate set, no a short set, for i knew that if i left them still wishing to hear more than i had earned my fee. first stop was St. Louis, a dismal city, but not without its charms. i wondered around the downtown, looking through shop windows, and bantering with bums. there is a melancholy to the city, as if it knew that its ground was soiled with a blood promise, and there was no denying its history.
the downtown was sparse, more shoppy than i'd expected. the buildings were not old, and not new, but there were only a few skyscrapers. the workers i saw, seemed to be more haughty than most, and the bums were extremely funny in their parroting of the power. i made my way into a coffeehouse. the red awning promised home, so home i went.

the place was cramped, and darkly lit. faces were shadowed, folks dulled by the sitting. at the angles the old men jostled for disaster, each atop of the stories pushing for a way into the light. two of the coffee mavens pulled at chairs, wiped the odd spill, there was nothing there to grasp in their eyes. i took a seat casually flipped through the poems i'd hoped to magic. i watched people more than i worked however, and when the shift changed i could not help but notice this slight brown skinned young woman, more boy than girl as far as figure, but she had the most gorgeous eyes i had ever seen. she seemed more in touch with the regulars than the older women. more alive than anyone i'd seen really. i could not take my eyes off of her. i had the insane feeling of promise as eyes met gaze focused- ala! destiny, i thought that if i looked studious maybe she'd notice, and feel the love flow. of course, it would be too easy- if she did respond to my missive face- but i knew better and decided that direct action would have to be the method. i was after all in her town, surely i could extend a hand and make something happen for the both of us.(note to reader supreme huebris: see book entitled huebris)

she is unfazed by my advances and too busy to fool with my youthful excuberance. i was not defeated by the brush off, i actually felt that i still had a chance.

perhaps you should wait around. i get off around 5.

eureka! i mumbled that would be fine, and mentioned that i had a reading to give at the college, "its in the student hall."

she mentioned that she would get me there in more than enough time, and went i went back to my poems.


my mind fluttered about, ahead of myself, wondering if there was a future that i could control. perhaps hope was in the mode of youth, but i was more than just a young men
i indeed had several steps i would fail to take, but that would only be known later, right now i had a daydream going, and it involved a woman i barely knew named Blue.
the day faded, and her face softened- her eyes, which seemed grey, now had this greenish tinge to them. as key hit the lock, she grabbed my arm, and we swung in together. the city seemed smaller now in her company- more in-tuned with the earth. i do not feign when i say we fell in. it was that fast.

i do not remember the reading, or the going to her place, or the night there after. i do remember the cat, and its very unique way of purring more like a growl.
the light from her window flowed pulsed by the silk blue of her makeshift curtains. it made me feel as if i'd died. i had never seen a young woman's house that was so other worldly in its appointments. art lined the walls, books lined the base of each wall - so many volumes that they all stood on the edge perfectly, as if the floor was an invisible shelf.

how did you sleep?

her voice was music, a sound wave epic.

fine, i answered.

you snore, but you're cute so i think i'll keep you.

she giggled, and it caught me off guard how affectionate she was- snuggled up against me. i began to consider that touring would not be so bad.

your poems are very stark, and sad, it made like you more.

i stayed quiet, i was and still wasn't too comfortable with talking or hearing about the poems. it was something i had to do, i had not considered praise when
i began scribbling in notebooks, doodling words.

i think they enjoyed you. i think you scared them, you seemed so old and beat up.
sometimes i feel like that, i offered.

she kissed me long, and hard, the mouse of her tongue ate at me. her back melted in my hands, and my middle rose- she met me
and we floated the early afternoon.



ra- can you stay here?
i can come back.
do you want to?

her eyes were too much for me.
up until then i had not contemplated any of the feelings coursing through. i guess i never had witnessed a woman's magic, or its hold over me-
yes i wanted to come back.

why? there it was out, she wanted the truth,
i love you. it flew out of my mouth. shocking me.
i will wait for you, i do love you too.



i never saw Blue again.


(benediction) i would think of that summer from time to time, and realize what we were asking of each other could not
of been sustained by our youth. it occurred to me that the extreme mental violence i had committed on her by never showing up - i was to do this particular crime several times after, and only now through this love i share with you dear-heart. do i have the courage to take this first instance of my descent, no my self-inflicted demise scar my innocence.






4. or (and what is this supposed to be?) an imaginary letter as if men told the truth.
a play for play of my demise?
the sly treatise on sex and its additives, the mode of desire when couples tell their stories. possession still holds me in its vice
for it appalls me that other men have touched you, have brought to the watering, what kind of gene build patriarchy hold me in, logically it would not be too healthy for a woman of your age to have not come. is there a relationship with you that i secretly despise, or the possible prowess in bed- for you have had some tremendous trembles in my arms as well. besides my logical mind says she would marry you. after just a small week knowing you intimately, but no, that means nothing, for they never would of asked- and she never wanted marriage.
but it is their cocks that fascinate me, for it is the sucking of them by you that rises into my mind, and causes the feelings of possession.

why that particular act. you have said that you enjoy it, but have not been prone to blowjobs. is it that sensual, and special to me that i secretly wish to be the only cock you've had? why do men hold such a providence with a woman's sexual experience. why do women feel they must avoid the subject entirely/ or lie about the partners they've had. i know i am not the first man to have these feelings, but i wish to conquer this mindfuck, for it is the last linchpin of my ill-formed self -esteem. flashing images of one of your men between your legs fisting away, the times i have held a woman's ass to my cock and plunged. but what sweetness we have shared, what a great re-connection. it feels very much like i have never had sex before, but i know it is not shared by you. you do not feel a virgin when i hold you against mine, it is not that you feel, but the terrible reminder of other times, the rise and hot that has always made you sexual, that kept you fucking even as the relationships grew death, and you fell away.

i wish to own your history and color it me.
so the first children born into feminist politics, well mature feminist politics were born 1974-75. that would be me, or folks born during that time. may be that's why i'm writing this, its exercise in redefinition. a sign that whatever was pushing women toward demanding an equality so richly deserved got into me too.
perhaps i was born knowing women to be equal by some beacon in my mother's womb, and that's what pushes me to respond to my demise and attempt to snuff it out with paper and pen.(many folks will find trouble with this).

deconstructing is hiphop, yes, it is modern, even in the growing retro-ness of culture, a conservative push politicians, ministers, army, navy-
even the homemade bombs tearing at the face of Iraq are retro, the people pushed to the edge of atomic strike out, they know no flag, so they strike out to color their sky, to wave their anger toward the unknown enemy-greed. greed acts just as lust, there is no logic, only gain, only the gathering. the instant. but how can something so vile produce an orgasm? the singular expression of joy, and pleasure. if you can count your orgasms then you haven't been living?
hysteria?

I WANT TO BE LES McCANN:: or The Forging of a Key

THERE is so much about Les McCann that i love, the piano is such a draw first off. ever since i saw Stevie as a child i was infatuated with the piano. it wasn't how beautiful it sounded, because its really when you think about it too powerful to be consider strictly beautiful. its lush and rhythmic - more drum, and skill and magic - its the command center of instruments. for you just know that the piano player never misses a note, writes most of the songs etc. when i got older and found out that horn players- the one that comes to mind is Miles composed core compositions on the piano, made sketches for future work on the piano - my love affair was cemented.

a good friend of mine gave me a piano last year, and while i couldn't afford to tune it, i would play it from time to time - waiting for my opportunity to get lesson. when i moved i moved it, and while it began to be a holding stand for records, it was mine.
enter Les.

Roberta Flack's first record has the tune - COMPARED TO WHAT. so one day on a digging adventure i found a copy of McCann's version. it floored me, and made me realize that what i was loved about Flack's version was the push of the piano, the piano riff drives that tune, and turns it into a fuck classic- you can put that song on today and people will dance to it.


well. i have moved again, and i had to leave the piano there. had not the space, nor the energy to move it to the new digs. i feel like i took a step back, like i had spurned a long time lover just when i was finally understanding how to love.

modo nigga, and the white spookems

i live on the edge of ohio city, and one of the most fascinating things about the west side is the genre splice that is culture over here. sure there is the race camps- latino, black, whites, arabs. but then there are sub genres- whites who hang with just blacks. blacks who date hood white girls, but only hang out with ricans. etc.

i'm sure you get the drift, but what is not melding is astro blacks and everyone else. the art kids are alone in the skittles rainbow. SO. imagine a woman, mid thirties walking at night down Lorain AVE- no one hits on her, but the city itself is threatening . . . nostalgia. lets say she grew up on this very street.

THE SKETCH


II. she hung up but only after. there were no meeting of the minds place for her. being born here should make a difference, but she had been away and time makes things pass, for it is the past. the street split ten meters across the whole dark of it. lit in odd specks from windows, cigarettes. old liquor poured into Fel’s nose, touching at it with her own baggage, the men she had loved and this smell were one it seemed. and she walked on the corner cross blinking the red of cyclops . . . littered in odd glances the whispering lust tasting at her face, body. the military wool of her sea coat keeping every turn the wind made, in. her lips now. Fel had made the mistake of licking their dry and citystruck surface thirty minutes before, and paying for it with an ever widening crack splitting her top lip halves. she had learned to walk fast here. the city with its clasping men, dead eyes, her face. it was this in her head menacing steps now, she pushed it back, turned the corner into distant music. a blue light pitched a john’s shadow and suckapuss counting his day away, bills in hand. her clutching at her nine to five skirt flailing about ankles, his belt and zipper singing his sold shame. if he really was, for Fel thought he should be, for the woman in her street judgment would of sucked it and paid. she lit a square, pushing the tobacco out cool smoke, but she had since stopped for its hard aesthetic and smoked now for the heat it brought. they jane began to rough talk the man, needle him with the role he played. Fel laughed at this, for hadn’t it just been the other way around. the corner spilled further, black against the striking moon. the people, their eyes bright with secret deaths no man ever know. just simple freedom as it would seem to the dead, and they tasted it gulps from the watchers’ shot glasses. light snow had begun to fall, old men scrunched their faces lit each others’ cigarettes and talked on. the young crept for doorways and the out halls of apartment buildings, their mothers out in these same streets, only to come home when the moon gave way, as grandmothers scoured the corners for their daughters’ sons. they had been born to the prize of abandonment, and those who were not mimicked the former, only to begin the string of defeats again.) Fel had been able to compartmentalize these things that glare to the outside, (for it was not really hers to face while others denied it) for it bit into the very heart of it if she did not and the men who had seen her father kill and be killed (and those who killed only to be killed again) saw it as their burden, a solid proof as to why they continued to suffer. Fel made her way to an empty stoop, perching on the second stair to take in herself again. and of her what could this street have told her? her dance was held in the eyes of these women, everything in them a haughty up and moving with gravity instead and still chasing each other with high laughter. three of them to match the three penny men, their nickel stories pitched high on broken shoulders, their faces lifted with each note the talking grave.) when had she stopped knowing them. she hadn’t. and could not place it. ‘Skrow could place it.’ she said aloud, but still to no one. she had always knew them as hers, but still they were not. and of their color which shade was her? and of their death, which life was owed to her. (and that would not be solved today. for it is not in stories) it was to be kept just out of reach. dangling above them as their place trembled beneath. she knew that she had been here, and it had turned her into . . . ? she had not noticed the almost a hundred blocks she’d walked, and the time stood still for the sun had long since gone down and night flowed hour into hour – the same. a bent man with his bags and junky walk sat beside her. his metal keys stapled to his denim jacket front, and the stench cologne clashed with his eyes, (which he blinked now, then again.) he had no teeth. – ‘ you got no watch?’ he drooled. and wiped it up with a tie (handkerchief), holding it to his face, then blinking. she ignored him. and inched away(politely). ‘ you got no watch. you stuck here? or you lookinggggg? ‘ he turned his head the gray strands of hair on end. ‘ you got some nerves . . . we talk or take. ‘ and turned his head and gave her a sniff. yeah. thanks. Fel said, dryly adding, and you shouldn’t talk when you take. and smiled. a couple of less creative sentences from the bum had Fel mumbling, “what a fucking night. this shit grows on trees over here.” and he was gone. walk.



I

SWEET OIL