Monthly Archives: September 2013

Blog Post No. 4.1

Post No. 4.1.0

emperor of ice

Welcome back to Uncle Tom’s Blog Cabin. Yes, where was eye, in this silly iStream of things… This Post is from the “Lost Hard Drive”, my recently-crashed MacBook! It served me well, iSuppose, but I lost a number of pieces that weren’t backed up, so this is sort of re-imagined, Post No. 4.1.0. I really don’t know how to do this darn Blog-thing, let alone function―expletive repeated―since that dismal day I had to go computerless! And I hardly give a fancy rat’s ass! ibid. see poem below:

 

Rat’s Ass

for Peter Kadyk Overton

Meaning by itself has none.
As surely as I sit myself down to write,
it is done. We were raised to think
aesthetics matter, but they don’t,
capricious only, mere foibles,
seductions of the mind.

Something about this day was crucial
and then not. I tricked myself into being.
Yet, I am comfortable here on this bench,
it is my favorite place to be on a warm
autumn’s day, I feel like a traveler.

Funny though, how there can be so little
to say and even less to do, with so much
expected of us, always active and engaged,
with all due respect, I should like to say,
I don’t give a rat’s ass.

That was, “Rat’s Ass”, circa 1991. Yeah, those were the days, over 20 years later, still struggling on… So it is, with great purpose & fortitude, I send out this next Blog Post from Mission Control, here in San Francisco. I’m not sure exactly with what, “purpose & fortitude”, but that is in the spirit of it, the very nature of the thing-in-itself!

Who Has Time.2.

iBlog-on, slog-on… Yet find myself wandering & wondering why, just why do we have to spend so much time at computers!? (When did our lives get hijacked into the Matrix?) It’s like I died 15 years ago and haven’t done a thing since! Oh well, such is the nature of “progress”. So much for slow, painstaking synthesis of actually “drawing” things as they seem… The Man on his Blue Guitar.

It used to be that Henry Mancini’s Sleepworld or SleepTrain had the edge, selling us nice new fresh mattresses, (songs) reminding us that we spend 1/2 our lives in bed! Some people even sleep there, so I’ve been told. But now the metric wrench has shifted and tossed us all into the Quantum Gearbox of Facebooking. Most of the time people are unwilling to even look each other squarely in the eyes, unless of course, they’ve been pre-screened and properly “liked” on some pseudo-cosmopolitan website. Welcome aboard Virgin Air! Absolutely, “No Liking Allowed”, prior to sign-in and passcode verification!

 

La Jolla Cove 1983

Yet, here I am, pouring out my soul in this ditch-witch blog-portal to know-where!? No what iMean? iSurely don’t. “And stop calling me, Shirley!” We’re still social party animals, after all, and iKnow we haven’t met, formally, but somehow, we need each other. (I used to write letters to my mother, but as she’s long-since gone up, now I’m writing them to you!) We may, in fact, be more a part of one another than we could ever realize. Maybe that is what “religion” is all about in the best sense of the word-world and we have always known this…

Now, I’m just interloping and interpolating and percolating from the last lost Post before the MacBook Air Crash a month ago or so. Somehow, willing or not, we’ve all thrown our hats into this ring-around-the-hard-drive-rat-race, slouching & morphing toward Bethlehem. And the great part is that we are free to do this, but what do we make of it? Pure vanity or hubris? Instant gratifuckation and redemption in pay-pal land? Not likely, it’s more like Egypt, it’s evolutionary. We will all be set “free” by computers & technology even as we are enslaved by them! And, we’re gonna like it! “There’s an app for that!”

Where there’s a will, there’re at least three lawyers & a cockfight! Whoops, how did that get in there? Must’ve slipped in out of some iCloudburst silver linings foul-play-book in the southern hemisphere… under the Northern Lights! How do I know? Welcome to the interwebs.

Don’t forget to check-out & buy something from my, ah, collection; if iEver get that part of my website together… Yes, in this regard, I must ask for help from the world-community, in the most sincere & evolutionary of terms. Ironically, it is, with our funny world, that wee working people, who are supposed to be “honored” for actually “working”, are never really able to retire. After 30 years in the trenches, doing carpentry and a million other jobs… I’m physically unable to hoist myself up sides of buildings, dangling over the prospect of further incapacitations and certain death, for the sake of someone, uhm, up-there… whoever he or she may be, who has all the money. It’s just ridiculous and we know this, so it is in the spirit of all of us, being able to have dreams and actually achieve them… Not only the born-wealthy folks…

END.2

END #1

 

 

 

As I said somewhere before, I’m into content, structure and iambic filibusters! I’m a poet & carpenter and see no cloture in the near infinity! What do we expect, we’re only human or some close approximation thereof. This is why I am, “The Fortunate Son”. I definitely mean the things I’m saying, I just can’t necessarily remember what they were or ever get back, to edit and endorse them…

Well, I’ve got to go, they’re just about to start another war, this could be “The Big One” and I don’t want to miss it! So, here’s another vintage nugget from the 90‘s entitled: “The Damned”. Please read it if you like, on my “Poems” section.

The Damned

The Damned

A quarter-pounder for the Family Guy

I

This was a period (.) of pedantry.
This was a period of flippantry
which came to be remembered lovingly
by the membered and dis-membered alike.
They wore post-it notes and khakis, they
drank Red Dog Piña Coladas of the mind
with their lights on and their game on
and everything was on! They felt at home
because they were, at home!

Evenings, morning and afternoons waxing portentous
for city blocks turned cell blocks, turned to cinders.

Navigators & Escalades & Cherokees & Hummers
John Deere hydraulic hammers hummed, lubed-up
and ready! Locked & loaded, crossing over one after another,
parking and jamming purchasing and partaking of the
first steamy-hot penetrations of the slab, Gaea,
the Mother of All Inner & Outer Everything!

II

They were very fond of saying they
enjoyed the Full Driving Experience!
And what they were told never to forget
they could never quite remember…
so they lived in the past with extended
warranties, and cheap credit filled the lands
w/ hedge funds & tasty cherry-slush!

The lives of the owners were well-insured
and many rules and stipulations were made
for those who were deemed to need them
by those who didn’t. Some were imprisoned
for trying to get a piece and whatever
went around stayed around
just as foul as that!

III

While many were out mining
the stores, a Zone was created
where occasional Stalkers would toss
their towels, ‘trembling in tenderness’.
But most were busy by day & busy by night
telling the whole world how busy they were
selling art for art’s sake up and down
the rivers.

Meanwhile more & more poems
were being created that ended with a question
mark? Always, an upward lilting intonation?
as if? they weren’t really… sure?
Gradually though, form followed no one,
feeding mostly upon function dictated
by the former which followed itself
around, hopelessly.

“Loose Weight and Gain Space!”
went the advertising. “Might Makes Maybe.”
was the basic ideology, deus ex machina
“Clear and Hold”!

IV

Farting in their hot tubs
they were promised heaven
on the installment plan
with no exit strategy.
It all made good sound sense
and sounded good at the time.
It was, as they came to say,
“A savings celebration for everyone
who was anyone! A Pay-&-Save
Revolution!”

Their marbles were laced
with magnificent possibilities
and their bumpers plastered
with a syntax of bathos: “If you
think the system is working,” one sucker
stuck, “just ask someone who isn’t
and still makes more moolah
than you ever will!”

V

Goodness gracious! said Henny-penny, The markets are falling;
I must go & tell the King! Oo! cried, Cocky-locky, Goosey-poosey and
especially Foxy-woxy as they went along, higgledy-piggledy,
The dollar is falling, the dollar is falling down!

And so it went, when
it wasn’t all over the place
it was all over their face,
just as phat & bloody as that!
Because they were pre-approved
and pre-determined
to get their Burger’s Worth!

Finally the mouses took leave
their senses and the screens
all went dim sum!

Lost without their clickers,
they went roaming the floppy
streets and subliminal cul-de-sacs
with unspeakable ennui.

I saw a dove with radioactive
wings and a fish with frog’s legs!
A chicken eating range-fed,
oven-roasted tofu buffalo-chips
and an elephant in a duty-free
china shop buying up ivory stock!
I saw a man eating his own flesh
with rabid dogs, happy as fleas.
Cremation is perfect…

cremation is perfect, said
the poet from behind the counter,
For Thine is the Kingdom and thine
is with, extra cheese, Right?

My bartender came over to
tell me it was last call forever,
he was leaving and never returning,
never returning, because…

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a Whopper.