Poetry Audio R.I.P. DUKES OF HAZZARD

Written a few years ago—and posting this here after hearing a Bobcat Goldthwait/Dana Gould routine at Largo last night.

New Poem: GUILTY PART THREE

made you hold your pain inside

made you believe I wasn’t reliable

caused you to doubt my emotional maturity

caused you to consider better alternatives

> 

had you return borrowed furniture

insisted you do this out of spite

knew you’d be coming Saturday morning

wanted you to discover I wouldn’t be there

> 

your three hour trip north

was a three hour trip south

I should have taken instead

of being a thoughtless boyfriend

one last time

SLATE’s Matthew Dessem enters Hope Hicks’s mind.

Excerpt from Dessem’s satirical column written from the POV of Hope Hicks being approached by a reporter from THE NEW YORK TIMES:

“But Ms. Hicks,” she said, putting her hand on my shoulder. “We are on your side. We just have no way of explicitly expressing our sympathies, because we’re still dining out on an antiquated conception of press neutrality, so the public has infer the conscious and unconscious biases informing our coverage based on how far we bend over backwards to treat your decision whether or not to ignore a congressional subpoena like you’re Hamlet in the fucking chapel or something. We shall also arrange a glossy photoshoot.”

Poetry Video LIFE DURING TRUMPTIME 2019

https://youtu.be/6FLVl5A_n3o

New Poem: ANOTHER STATE OF OUR NATION

we luxuriate in insulation from reality

confident of being too rich and/or too white

to suffer from separation of families,

raids by police or ICE,

imprisonment in various kinds of holding areas

once known as concentration camps

>

we don’t talk much about impeachment 

in our crisp four-dimensional suburb

except to regard it as mere gnat buzz

because it’s more important 

to complain on social media

that Robert Pattinson as Batman

or the final season of GAME OF THRONES 

should be overruled, nullified, invalidated

while the dangerous President 

is allowed to finish his term

>

reality doesn’t suit our lifestyle 

Revised Older Poem: FOR POET ANONYMOUS

“It’s better to be king for a night

than schmuck for a lifetime.”—

line written by Paul D. Zimmerman

for Martin Scorsese’s  THE KING OF COMEDY

Once you had time for nobodies like me.

Hell, I even liked/respected you enough to 

give you a lift in downtown Austin 

when we were both participants in

a poetry festival eighteen years ago.

But you wanted to be appreciated by the right people.

And I went through a phase in my life

where I was too easily angered by

the right people openly despising the wrong people 

instead of realizing what I couldn't change

and what others didn't want to change--

and going about my business.

So I became enraged at you in a public place

when you were surrounded by the people

you never wanted to be separated from.

And I--

in just over a minute--

built a wall between us

far too high to ever be breached.

Eventually, I stopped trying to

either beg for a clean slate

or continue being frustrated

over your relentless resolve

to keep miscreants like me

out of future poetry conversations.

I acknowledge I hurt you
with my belligerence and wrath.

And all I can do now 

is to write this poem

from permanent exile

and keep going about my business.

Mel Gibson’s current career, explained.

Marina Hyde via THE GUARDIAN:  

Mel Gibson not only has a slate of talked-about projects on the go – despite his numerous racist, sexist, homophobic, violence-threatening, violence-admitting, Holocaust-questioning meltdowns over the years – but that this particular one sees him play the paterfamilias of the “Rothchild” family, an astronomically rich New York clan.  

Over to Mel’s spokesman [Alan Nierob]who delivers one of the more shameless statements I have seen, even in his line of work: “‘Rothchild’ is not about the actual Rothschild family,” this ran, “and the only similarities between the two are that they are wealthy and their names are similar.”

Right. Totally. Imagine the misfortune of the movie-makers landing on the epicentre of this particular antisemitic trope, changing one letter in a way that, arguably, makes the point even more sledgehammer, and then casting Mel Actual Gibson in it. What are the chances? You simply can’t legislate for unforeseeable sensitivities.

“Whatever has happened in the past it doesn’t seem to affect his international value at all,” mused the producer of one of the star’s new projects this week, before delivering perhaps the most deathlessly understated verdict on Mel Gibson. “He might be a little polarising on some things.”

Poetry Audio: ANOTHER SCREENWRITER’S LAMENT