The Magical Headache

the space ain’t mine
the space-age rind
you were in the dream
wearing some strange blue pants

in the Play Dome
please-a-saurus

kind of like bewildering oneself
too shy to Heart
to hear dripping

skuzzy beneath pantaloons
you already have that part covered

which anchors as well as
sings it’s name to drug dealers

we are out back of this
in carts downstole wholesale
explaining minks to pardonable succlusion

writing the pot odes
I flesh colorfully
linking oafish cormorants to
the will of the people
illustrated through blended
French Vanilla play-things
pardonable offences many
3-syllabled words make us sanguine
and ready to be fucked

The Ape Consciousness on the
radio knows this
To disinstall it’s image from
the landing gear we try being nice
then if that doesn’t work

the alchoholic refreshments arrive

tugging the skies that build us
rodeo fragments

in the Blizzard cop-to
ranging over many helipads
like dogs marking their territory

cards protect us from our feelings
dazzling all over wendy filmic
getting glossary contact from
fibro mialga speech patterns

Could you hide something?
here put this down your vocals
I smuggled in a little skepticism

_____

The Conscience Of The Race

Theology wedded to itself is happily
some Taco Bell trickery

this is the simulation of events
that would happen were it the bloody case

That we are fat and alone
in post-industrial nightmare

I cheat to get back to safe
Hey No Fair on Sirius

Seriously we’re patrolling some
dirty waters, organising

the fat black night
into faltering pairs of
rummage sale tagged flow

could you borrow this forever please?

Well I don't have much to say. Let's see. I had naughty thoughts in my bed then go up and drank coffee, walked the Corgie, who always wants to smell things and sometimes pee on them, very strategically mind you. I took a shower and rode my bike to Jimmy Johns. I had a Beach Club, pretty good. Some kind of Satanic mix was playing at the Exclusive Company. I bought these cd's:

Kate Bush: The Kick Inside
Harry Partch: Revelation In The Courthouse Park
Deerhoof: Apple O'

also:
K. Silem Mohammad: Breathalyzer, at Wal Mart. (Kidding!)

The Simpsons: The Complete Seventh Season.

From the library, Twin Peaks, Season One Discs 1-3, A Story of Floating Weeds/Floating Weeds (Ozu), Alphaville (Godard), Dylan: Modern Times, Low: Drums And Guns.

Picked up The Onion, Arthur.

Got a little carried away with the old media acquisition.

Happy Holidays. The first few seconds of this are what are mine are usually like.

Damn right. (Scroll down). You know those hacks at Pitchfork be readin my ass. But seriously, compared to the usual list of SNL-aspirant smugabees, this proves why Pitchfork is at least still worth looking at. And now here's where I say that I normally don't give two fucks about "lists man" but ok I was checking a few and will continue to do so because I'm rooting for Person Pitch to get the recognition it deserves.

I was going to blog about "The Menards Guy", but really what can you say. So here he is.

"The breast milk is whiter than the evening shade."

(This is from an episode of the early 1990s sitcom Evening Shade where I appear as Arkansas' Poet Laureate, reading The Autobiography of Alan Alda to the entire cast to mark the occasion of the show's 100th episode. Burt told me afterward that he doesn't usually like poetry readings but he would be checking out some more of my stuff. Later that night he, Marilu Henner and I were joined by Tom Bosley at local watering-hole Hank's Room (owned by then Home Run King, Hank Aaron). I hadn't seen Tom since our days at Iowa teaching workshops with the likes of Jimmy Wright and Phil Roth. This appearance was an important step in my climb to the top of the poetry world.)

I have a receding treasure-trail.

I didn't hear alot of albums from this year, or at least it seems like I missed so much more than I heard, but I can't imagine that any of them are better than Person Pitch by Panda Bear. I was going to write a review of Person Pitch but I almost don't want to ruin it. All I can say is listen to it. It's a wondrously great, inventive, inspiring release. Right down to the great National Geographic collages, and the list of artists in the liner notes. The Times New Viking album was good, though I haven't found myself listening to it as much since the initial goodness. I like the Dan Deacon song that song that samples Woody Woodpecker. I like what I've heard so far from the Fiery Furnaces album.

I heard what I think was a pretty good song from In Rainbows, though I'm not someone who salivates for all things Radiohead. I really liked Jusitice on Jimmy Kimmel Live, which can be found on the YouTube, as well as a Kenneth Anger-ish Fiery Furnaces video for the first single from Widow City. The new Black Dice is pretty good.

Now that I think of it, I liked alot of things. I evened liked Arcade Fire on Austin City Limits (actually I thought that was fucking amazing) and Feist on that commercial, or from that commercial, or in that commercial, or appearing on that..., or rather Feist inspite of the fact that she was hawking iPods during the halftime of some football game, or rather just the song "1234". Yeah it's almost the "Stay" of this decade, but it shys just far enough south of that. The National seem like they might be a good band. The new Animal Collective, which I did go out and buy the day it came out, is kinding of making me go "eh" right now but that may change. At the risk of seeming... square?... "#1" seems to have been a poor choice to perform on Conan. Am I becoming more commercial? I didn't think I was. Oh well I'm just glad neo-garage is on the way out and is being replaced by what seems like more of a bent toward maybe eclecticism and even conceptualism (though we know that "rock" as it can still roughly be called gets carried away with "concepts"). And people are beginning to see what a one-trick-pony the White Stripes are.

Oh and Joanna Newsom. I still love her. She was fucking amazing at The Pabst.

And the My Bloody Valentine reunion? I'm trying not to get my hopes up.

I can't think of anything positive to write. I need help. Commision me to write a poem

I am a Young Hot Shot, writing the Young Hot Shot poems that shoot and ping and leave your shitty retinas smoking. You are befuddled and scratching your head. I just whip off my ray-bans and cackle in your direction.

I am invited to read in Norway, where I single-handedly revive the Norwegian Poetry Scene with my reading of Cat Piss In A Didgeridoo's Dead Dying Laser Cornhole. Think William Carlos Williams crossed with "Eruption" crossed with Goya crossed with Carrot Top. Having inaugurated Language Prop Poetry, I travel on to LA.

While taking a steam with Robert Pinsky and Robert Evans, hashing out the details of a new Laureateship-themed Reality Webcom, throwing out the names of possible co-stars, a Chris Elliot here a David Spade there, I spot my future wife Kelly McGillis.

Off come the ray-bans, my shorts and my future in show business. I do the one thing you should never do when you are the Young Hot Shot. Walking backward lockstep with Pinsky and Evans, fingers snapping in time to a lean walking bassline. I reach back, pull out a diamond-studded pool cue and line up my shot. Paul Newman is jaded, outside the frame.

In essence I reach for Cupid's Rifle, not Cupid's Arrow. My come-ons all fall off Kelly McGillis like so much jello from a lunch tray. She is the lunch tray. I shoot a ping, then a zip, then zap, then ping-zim-Zinn. All of it fails utterly to impress Kelly McGillis.

She is walking away on Lyle Alzado's arm. I am crest-fallen, shrinking back to being just another young poet, another dreamer with a few too many twinkles in his eye, all little-kid wonder and prozac fueled slacker ranting.