Flying Leaps

Good morning, everybody!

I hope that it's all going nicely today. It's Thursday, which always amazes me because, with a twinge of synaethesia, I always think of days like today feels. It's a color like this: 

Now, lest anyone think that Thursday's perceived liaison with this color is a complaint, I can assure you that it is not. It’s distinctive. The sun may be visible on days like this, but it’s not terribly relevant.

So, I started this bit of writing for the blog yestereve, and it went on for hours, but I realized after a time that I likely had other things to do, and I was getting a bit worked up about my subject (about redneck America and the blight of our economic and cultural imperialism and the disgusting depths of our respective and collective sanctimony and how the paradigm of scarcity cripples imagination in worse ways than we’re no longer capable of imagining), typing rapidly and incorrectly, holding my breath through entire sentences (though not this one, thank goodness, because I’d’ve lost consciousness by now) and feeling very motivated, entering something of a self-imposed exile, when Molly came to see me, at which I saved my nearly completed post and we ate berries and talked past midnight until we started to fall asleep and I love her more constantly and I awoke this morning and approached my post to finish it but it was a snarling and seething blob of invective in which I was just getting ready to give those Baby Boomers a piece of my mind and when I remembered:

I quit smoking (for like the bazillionth time) yesterday. Ugh.

No wonder consumerist conformity pisses me off to an unmanageable extent!

I had almost 8 years of being quit, but not really, because I was a social smoker. So, I’m sad that I lost my mock-control of my ongoing low-level nicotine fit.

And I can’t be placated, which is sorrowful, because I’d like to take a placation (NEW WORD ALERT).

Oh, and this is good, and it pertains to the strident post of last night that did not tumble into public view: I’m going to post some writing (later today) that I did (back in 1999) about the town in which I lived as a child (Frederick, Maryland). (Sorry about all of the parentheses. I’m disorganized.)

MY MIND IS CHAFING,

WHICH MEANS THAT I SHOULD

WALK AROUND THE NEIGHBORHOOD

AND BREATHE DEEPLY. AIR ONLY.

THAT’S WHAT THE EXPERTS ALL SAY THAT

PEOPLE IN MY SITUATION OUGHT TO DO,

BUT THEY CAN TAKE A FLYING LEAP.

I WISH THAT I COULD TAKE A FLYING LEAP.

THAT’S WHAT I’LL DO; I SHALL PRETEND THAT

I AM ON AN AIRPLANE, AND THAT I AM GOING

TO VISIT THE MALDIVES. THE INDIAN OCEAN IS

FASCINATING! I WILL GO TO SRI LANKA, TOO.

AND OTHER PLACES AFTER THAT.

Sentimental Entropy

I’ve got a peg on a singular trust: that sequence is either everything or a passable facsimile thereof, and that "correct" collisions of matter and meaning and relative relevance will, in the sweetness of chance, befriend this still-arcane saga.

Select any unit of time—it does not, evidently, matter what the interval—and the chosen amount will amount to a single frame in a film that is recklessly sluggish. I continue, as ever, to strive for improvement of our fortunes, but it actually, well and truly, seems not to matter. A change of perspective, or the addition of for-now-italicized perspicacity, has been, and still is, the “thing” of it.

In response, I have come not only to realize, but also to accept, that I'm fastened to the overarching/underpinning conviction that there's a punchline somewhere. In frustrating proximity, probably. And furthermore, I have observed—with more humiliation than humility—that the extent to which I’ve aggrieved myself may have, at the end of all of this, served as my undoing. Like a scuba diver, surfacing with breath instinctively bated, developing an embolism. That's grim. 

It’s funnier than that, though. I have, in my rather-teensy lifetime, gone from being a person whose “success” was never at issue—my promise was such that I was regaled with hyperbole from all ilk of well-meaning adulty types (themselves incapable of accommodating the fact that I was merely biding my time with trifling muck until I could commit suicide)—to an adulty type whose legion attempts at establishing the level of self-sufficiency requisite to Life These Days have each and all met with ignominy of some sort or another. It seems nasty, but is more accurate than not, to say that, in the actualized primacy of this very-basic capacity, I am a failure.

But, dig this—what I’m saying is that that’s okay, because that definition of failure was tailored for those in situations like mine (certainly befitting me, by existing standards); it is seldom wielded publicly, because it’s divisive and rotten, and I can see a real argument for the thinker’s self-serving reluctance. Be that as it may, such discretion is not of any value to me—why not be frank? To consider today’s underfoot underclass as having failed is rather liberating, as it is not a treatise on anything but nomenclature, honest self-appraisal, and the obsolete values of an amorphous capitalistic thought virus. This process has been hell for untold numbers—sufferers and bystanders alike—that it's devastating to comprehend, but seeing myself as a failure actually EMPOWERS me. It allows the punishing yoke of boorish and reactive reeling to shift into revealing what life is rather than what life isn’t.

“Well, that’s great and grand and groovy, Benb, and now we know that you’re a frayed wick or something similarly screwy and ineffective,” says my projected Peanut Gallery. “But,” I protest, with immediacy, verve, and aplomb, “that’s the beauty of it—I haven't any choice but to forge forwardly! I've exhausted my own elastic in response to the vagaries of whatever contortion of my identity is demanded at a given moment. So, all that I can do is my best, in the devout service of maintaining what little stability we've managed to eke from the vast opacity of                                              ."

          (ABSTRACT NOUN)

I have always loved surprises, and ever have I shuddered at the plodding and prosaic attrition that lurks with rattling ubiquity in pockets and envelopes the world over. I can almost hear it breathe, slinking around me when alone in my car, on the toilet, or in the kitchen watching the mercury drop on a perfunctory thermometer. It was such an indelicate certainty that I had identified time as the antipode to spontaneity.

Anyway, I know (and will someday-maybe accept) that I’m in school, and I’ve had to acknowledge that the pervasive presence mentioned above is THE SAME INGREDIENT that

-         makes you so uncomfortable upon hearing certain music that you HAVE TO DANCE.

-         pushes swear words out your damn mouth at the dinner table when the exquisite experience of the food that you’re eating unbinds you and confiscates your manners.

-         turns sentences into paragraphs, for no reason other than that you are capsized with joy at being near the person with whom you’re speaking.

And this fact—that the niggling currents in and out of a day are the feckless eddies of a second, that it is not only a surprise, but the surprise—is a gargantuan surprise. Which is a scorcher of a punchline.

Same Old Novelty

I'm still in Baltimore, but I'm going to make it home. I tell myself that, in and from the throes of a barrage of contrary obstacles. It's humiliating, but the net effect is somehow even more destabilizing. I have done everything "right," and everything has responded by malfunctioning grandly.

And I miss my family A GREAT DEAL.

What is the synthesis that is lacking from all of this blasted life-and-living thing? At the risk of drowning in a stale puddle of metaphorical fluid, I will say through my resigned grimace that it's like an arch minus the keystone. So much will seem during these times to be going so well, and as my stride grows more assured and comfortable with that awareness, I encounter a snare that is (or at least appears to have been) designed for people that dare to be that way. Then commences the horrid cascade of thorny consequences, with trite-but-ever-truer results.

(Like, dig this: since we live in a world of cellphones, it is expected that the owner will be available at ALL TIMES. They take umbrage at your lack of complete, drop-everything accessibility. Why? When things happen faster, people become even more impatient? Fools.

And, as if there were somehow an insufficient basis in the miasma du jour for keeping poor people in perpetual states and senses of lack, there's always a line of profiteers that are interested in exploiting any mistakes that could possibly made. No "trust" or any similar liability--merely unmitigated greed. And suspicion! For instance, combatting "abuse of the system" is a central aspect of political lip service [in this country, at least], and finding help in general is a dehumanizing procedure in which the person seeking assistance is subjected to constant monitoring, viewed as being somehow less than an actual adult. Yet, as this happens and happens, there is no accountability for iniquities that bring people to where today finds or has found them.

And for all of the heartless, stratified hogwash about an "ownership" society being bandied about in these last years, I've seen nary a shred of detectable ownership regarding privilege. It's anybody's privilege not to recognize his or her own privilege, but it's a prison that separates a person from people. And does so ever more with the passage of time; as the true consequences of an impropriety reverberate through decades, that betrayal is ever more likely to be dismissed as something from the past [blame for the victim's struggle with residue of the past], and is less likely to be examined authentically [disenfranchisement]. THIS IS A FLAWED SYSTEM. It's dripping with the very privilege that survives in the absence of its acknowledgment, and nobody at all actually benefits.)

That was indeed a lengthy digression.

Anyway, I'm happy with my negative bottom line, but just because that's the way that things have gone lately, and I owe it to every person that cares about me to have a happy life. So, I dedicate my only self to that premise. It won't deter me from looking, but it might enhance the quality of my family's life in this awfully meantime.
I hope that everybody's doing great today.

Love, Benb xoxoxoxoxo

Revisited Currency

I've been so kinda sad and screwed up over the passing of my friend Glenn that I haven't been able to think in any organized manner over these last two weeks.

What is there to say about it? Glenn Sorvisto was like no other person that ever existed, but I guess that that's true for/about everybody (cf. that whole snowflake milieu), so I'll have to expound, and this is where it gets inarticulate and intangibly sorrowful. And there's advance dread about it, so I'll get to it after an interval during which I'll perform mundane tasks and tend to reponsibilities like getting dressed.

I think that there are too many stories to tell, each of which is too difficult to parlay, so what follows is what I have gleaned as the gist of my friend.

Glenn was disarming, in many senses and senselessnesses of that word. While striking in appearance (not only handsome, but also with a peerless sense of style that featured, among many other items, alligator shoes, an easter-grass bowler hat, and simultaneous boisterous plaids), his personality was truly artful. A dazzling array of people each knew and remember Glenn differently. 

To many, Glenn is remembered for a loose-limbed eschewal of decorum that seemed to verge on haplessness—embodying a defiant and devilishly funny maelstrom of caustic and extemporaneous alchemy. Like a song that swings with such ferocity that it threatens constantly to come apart, until it is made apparent that such swinging is actually fundamental to the song. None of it was orchestrated but for every separate and collective memory of it.

Dozens were the occasions on which I experienced genuine discomfort in Glenn's company, although hindsight reveals its majesty. I'd say so now if I could: 

"YES, Glenn! I am so grateful that you smoked a cigarette in the banquet hall during that wedding ceremony. And inside the DMV that one time." 

Or, "It was brave of you to walk into that liquor store, grab a 6-pack of beer, and walk past the cashier, saying, 'Mañana!' Repeatedly. Until the clerk was so overcome with laughter that he allowed you to leave without paying."

These are among the more minor incidents to which I bore involuntary witness in the company of Glenn Sorvisto.

But that's all shallow nonsense on so many levels, because Glenn the person was so loving and gentle and kind that it's extraordinary for us human people to have been blessed with his presence for as long as we were. In all of the apparent chaos that surrounded him, there was always immense comfort. Glenn subverted my understanding of decency, because he was nothing if not singularly decent. He was deceptively sensitive and keenly thoughtful, even (especially?) in moments of alleged ignorance. He was always himself. He gave himself over to being himself.

There are bazillions of stories, but I don't feel like telling them at the moment, and I know that my facts are only as factual as the distance that separates me from them. I think about his love, Jody, and their incredible 18-year romance. I think about all of the friends that we shared, and the different ways in which each and all of these people experience this loss.

And a world without Glenn Sorvisto appears all the more daunting. But then, I remember that, irrespective of how daunting is any future, it remains inexorably destined for the same pile of pasts and precedents that houses hobbled former futures.

No Fun Intended

The vicissitudes of January in Maine bother the heck out of me. I will admit, however reluctantly, that I am grateful to be living on this frigid overcast unday, but just because my vocally espousing the alternative (i.e., not living) would abnegate all of the specific goodnesses, general greatness and so forth of this milieu, but today is like a hackneyed quip at which there is a perceived obligation to respond pleasantly, even though such denial is incrementally lethal.

This post was going to comprise bits that I'd begun but was too exhausted to complete, but no.

Instead, I'll talk about something else, in the hopes that it will improve my altogether-turdly disposition.

Ready? I bet you are.

I'm gonna write a book. (You don't have to read it or anything.)

"What kind of book?" is a rhetorical question that I refuse answer until the sentence that follows this sentence.

It'll be an encyclopædia that contains "facts" and "opinions" (including theories).

The subject? Popular music, because current studies indicate that popularity is sexier than intercourse itself.

Aaaannnd…because a claim of objectivity, like a clumsy generalization, is itself a recipe for betrayal on its own terms (never trust anything that identifies itself as "true" or "accurate," because I could broadcast the "fact" that I would bite myself if I were a dog, and the audience would have NO BASIS for dissension), there can be a caveat in the book's opening pages about the urgent importance of metaphor to describe "untranslatable" sentiments, events, trends, ad nauseam.


I posted an entry just now, for nobody's benefit, but then I removed it, for nobody's benefit. And I badly want to conclude this post, but first I'll tell you about young Desmond's new family of not-exactly-visible friends. What I find most thrilling about them is, I'll admit, a bit shallow. I will leave you with their names, preceded by household-member "type":

The Churches

Father: Sushi Church

Mother: Berkland Church

Child: Trash Night Church

Oh, how I swoon.

All the World's an Age

Aging occurs. At all times. Are we left with any choice but to embrace it? Frankly, no. But does that work?

As we’ve seen, in an age during which ageless stars perish at ostensible ages, most of us unwitting players in a left-behind series would scratch our wispily covered heads if only they retained any aherence to a commonly held belief that everybody actually lives an actual life. I know that I don’t have a lick of confidence in that system’s universal application. There’s too much perceived entitlement to exemption from decay. But none of us have that.

I would say that my parents’ generation—the “Baby Boomers”—are largely responsible for this mainstream resuscitation of the same “Fountain of Youth” fixation that led Ponce de Leon to “discover” Florida—which is one of history’s great ironies, considering. (The Baby Boomers have also made life extremely difficult for every subsequent generation, but more about that in other posts.)

Here’s my attitude about it: In order to be young, young people NEED for old people to BE OLD. And this boisterous denial of aging, while a feeble tendril of denying mortality, is the PITS for every beholder.

David Bowie (née Jones, it's been suggested), recently 65, had always conducted himself relatively honorably in this realm. He continued to have things like ideas, and when that wasn’t the case, he had the decency and good sense to run off and be in a play or what have you.

In 2002, however, he wrote a song entitled “Never Get Old.” I’ve never heard the song, but I was around near the time of its composition, and I believe that there was even talk of "Never Get Old" being the album’s title. Anyway, I have read the lyrics, and it’s self-aware and all that, but I can’t help but feel critical toward his even suggesting such a trite, stale idea. Just think of the ways in which the world could experience incalculable betterment with an attitude shift as represented by a song called “Get Old.”

Yes. Get the fuck OLD. Be as excited about turning 61 as you were about turning 7. Of course, you’re still able to be you—even more so, actually, now that you’re not trying to magically transcend the aging process.  

So, have a wonderful day becoming old, please. I will, starting now. Or then, I mean. Meant.

The 2012 Time Capsule

Desmond, Ivor, Molly, and I have been attempting all day to construct a time "capsule" in as much of a nod to sadly outdated past predictions of the future as a way to sanctify the mundane in our lives.


Trouble is that we've been mired in this bog/fog/clog all the livelong day. But we'll have something going soon. It's an issue of focus, even though none of us had a drop to drink last nite.


This all started with my rarely (if ever) satiable curiosity about what happens in unseen/unheralded places. This curiosity is what leads to the phone's being answered when, by all probable accounts, it's a telemarketer or some vile Newsmax survey taker on the other end of the line. As we now "own" this house, I've taken to "exploring" it freely, which is not to say that I'll ever do all of the exploring that I would like to do.


There's an area beneath our stairs, for instance, where nothing is, as far as we know, excepting an envelope of space confined by walls. i've been yearning to experience the majesty of that tiny, esoteric nook for quite some time.


Molly has humored me extensively through our 8.3 years together, indulging my off-kilter theories and flights of fancy without judgment. This time, however, required a bit of doing, as our place is a wreck with all of its wallpaper removed and such. In the end, it was our dear friend and next-door neighbor, Maggie Sutton, whose suggestion really optimized the adventure. I'll paraphrase: "It's okay, because no matter what you find, you can leave something behind. Et voila! The Time Capsule. Contents forthcoming.


Here we are:


* 1 compact disc (a mix that I assembled and named "Philomena" as part of a project in which the songs on a disc would define a person's characteristics)


* 1 necktie


* 1 pair toddler's underwear


*1 Lindt Chocolate Bar packaging


*1 Electrical Outlet Cover


*1 Experian Credit Report, vandalized by Desmond


*1 Hot Wheels™ Vehicle


*1 "Feel Good" Card about How to Make Your Life Seem Meaningful


* 1 AA Battery


* 1 Alphabet Block, with letters and shit on it


* 2 DSL Filters


* 1 Family Portrait by Desmond Gallaher (ink on paper)


We deposited these things, sans "capsule," despite having found NOTHING in that "hiding place." And we were thrilled at what these items might convey to their future finders.

Ahh.

Bite My Knee

The last few weeks have been preternaturally stressful, with my synapses snapping like twigs under the feet of an oaf. 

Today, however, brought us into May, and heralded the appearance of a significant thing that I made with my pal Mick. It's a record of my poetry, recited over backings from Mick and me. It's called "Bite My Knee"―I'd love for you to hear it, and you can do that here. It’s also on other digital-music sites and excitements, like iTunes.

Amazon made me put [explicit] on it, which makes me wanna puke.

Naming Names

The MTV job is a fascinating thing. As I've said, I'm concocting a character who's got feelings about his feelings. It is surreal and excellent. It's also curious, as I've always loved writing about music.


I've developed some stellar classifications for music, as well. Notable among these is Bearskin Rock, which pertains to that particularly grotseque "laid back" seventies style, and is the exclusive purview of people that will get it on ONLY ON ANIMAL HIDES. Think Poco. Think Kenny Logout. Eww.
 
Gerund Rock is the subgenre of music on which I'm currently perseverating. A de facto gossamer for the obnoxious alloy of engineered poignancy & privileged mock-substance, gerund-object nomenclature made its debut (as far as I can tell, and correct me if I'm wrong) with Throwing Muses in the 1980s. (Monikers based upon well-worn/familiar phrases [Living Colour, Talking Heads, and the execrable Moving Pictures] don't count, so don't even try it.)


In any case, there was something novel about it, as there tended to be whenever assumptions about language were challenged; curiously, the group's name would sometimes reflect a beholder's confusion surrounding such trifling redefinition, with the surreptitious insertion of an article (usually, the) by some-or-other fuddy-duddy preceding the actual name.


This was all fine, and not even really noticeable, until Counting Crows happened to us, like a pungent dribble of piss from on high, in 199? (they were all the same years, when you think about it). 


Then, it became, like, the thing, you know, to do. These two are uniquely unsettling:
Flogging Molly
Breaking Benjamin


There are heaps of others, and it's become accepted practice:
Smoking Popes
Framing Hanley
Saving Abel
Racing Kites
Asking Alexandria


I like changing the names of existing groups to fit this formula:
Mounting Goats
Marilyng Manson
Hooting Blowfish


And thinking of orginals: 
Remaining Anonymous
Bering Strait
Curling Iron
Carrying Items
Eating Disorders
Failing Auditions
Hurling Epithets
Lansing Michigan

HERE ARE POEMS:


corners of june

waiting for warmth in a

salad of springtime i’m

wilting and verdant at

once and at length a col-

lapse at the starting gate

artless and slave to fate

delicate durable

gathering strength

so a line breaks but everybody’s got a thing what’s yours my

underwear is in bunches in knots but was stolen by my trousers and

doesn’t even remember my name

nobody’s ready (reluctance or something) i

know how they feel but i’ve made it my lot that it’s

nothing when vacant embraces are currency—

simply a symptom of nothing of note

what’s the story now let’s get

apt what’s anybody’s story i don’t want

to hear any more stories unless you can tell me

straight up that they’re not about glamour or romance or god

damned hollywood or however much you like the

parking or the ambience at whichever (whatever) stripmall

houses your fav-o-rite store what color

are your shoes? what color is

your skin? what color

suits me best? i’m dying to know because

surely it can’t possibly

feel good

or be good

unless it looks good.

after june will come another june dressed as july and it will

try to fool us by presenting itself as a warmer being but i and

ideally you can and will see very clearly indeed through that se-

ductive swelter sun and haze and all of the other excuses for

not wearing clothes, to the heart, which is rotting, of things.

neighbors and bedfellows

larger than sentences, smaller than words is the

void into which i see slip my conclusions.

choices make choices themselves without asking, like

ornery children set kitchens ablaze.

think of decisions as ornaments hanging on

christmas-tree people like all of us all—

withering constant, we yield to the ages and

give them permission to speak what we were.

i’m on a plane that’s descending to earth and i

try not to speculate; what does that make me?

the clouds are arranged in precise little rows in the

manner of crops—did they sprout from the sea?

people are more than the sums of their mysteries.

ask me a question and answer yourself.

I don’t like boston or people in college;

I want to be stupider, stupider still.

More of Them

oh my gosh i'm working i'm working 
it feels so good to finally be able to procrastinate in a merited manner
i'm joking but only as much as you'll find it amusing


Dig this: I'm doing pseudonymous writing for MTV as their Nerd Rock Correspondent. Thrilled am I. It's crazy. My name is 'Benjamin Daniels'; 'Daniel' is my middle name, and nobody saw fit to consider prior to application of said nom de plume that there just might be an erstwhile MTV personality named "Benjamin Daniels"—and there is! Life, I am frequently assured, is full of coincidental matter.


(Which reminds me—isn't coincidence in the temporal sense of the beholder? On past occasions of smoking cigarettes outdoors, before returning indoors, I would ask my companions, "Shall we coincide?")


Okay. I'm also editing manuscripts for a start-up publishing company. Aaaaaaaaand I'm still doing the freelance (a modest craze), which sort-of ensures that I am unlikely to ever feel stable. I was refused for disability, and they've threatened to take away my Medicaid (the total annual cost of my medicines exceeds $100,000 USD) and food supplement. But I haven't even been paid! And my tax return, due on Friday, is due also to be eaten, most thoughtlessly, by the watersewerelectricphoneinternetmortgagecomputer entities (I refuse to see them as being people) just as soon as it arrives. I am told that solvency is overrated, but it's been years since I've accepted that as a valid opinion.


The rain fell today, onto the snow, creating a town-sized puddle in which every pedestrian (however momentary the stint of their schlepping) was submerged well past their ankles. I call it "Soup of the Day." And now it's going to be March, and I would love a bona fide reason to be cheerful. I shouldn't say that, because I LOVE my family, but I'm hard-pressed to pretend that this current situation's anything other than absolute crap.


But I have to put some more old poems on here. I still don't have most of them, on account of my computer being in the shop, but that matters less than a whole lot else.


I'll start with a love poem. It's from 1998. I had been stunned into aliveness. The title came 5 years later, on the heels of torment that had been unfathomable.




5 years in every direction

i love you and you love yourself in

beams of freckled fringency, with

waves of subtle stringency, with

flat, distinctive englishness, your

landscapes pocked with canvas bare in

summer seas of stars and blood, a

lilted, spacious leavening – these

fruits with roots in heaven bring what’s

told in its unfolding.

(The font just changed, but that's because I've got a recalcitrant touchscreen.)

This next poem is old as shit, which means (in this case) that it's from 1995, when I was seventeen. I don't even think that I was sad when I wrote it, but there you are, and here we go:

Mean Either

fearing not sleep but a missed opportunity

free of diseases but free of immunity

scared and ensnared by a spurious unity

pleading despair to a jury of ghosts

scattered in dollops the reasons for everything

baked underwater i wait for the phone to ring

time that elapsed when i thought myself practicing

rose-tinted glasses proposing a toast

Now another, just 'cause it's a just cause. This is a poem about Molly, whom I adore. This is also old, but not that old (2003). When I met Molly, everything became very exciting very fast. It remains so, and all of my irascibility, so evident in this post, dissipates when I imagine her sleeping and the sound of her voice.

capital letters

it was helpful for me to remind my

self when starting to write this that it

doesn’t have to be new because well

everything was always here in its way

(rusted-out and lethal fire escapes/droppings

on windowsills and awnings/stubblefaced

dirtyshirt laundrysoon me/sink full of

dishes rinsed and unwashed/dying pen and

dead lighter/words and words used and used
/sealed bottle of vitamins /eight o'clock twilight
/hours-old coffee to go/obscenely mild june
/cars parked over crushed containers/people 
attired in various oblivions/sneezes and the 
odd blessing/lilac and refuse and swears in 
the wind/fingernails bitten beyond the quick

/floors and unpacked-box tabletops)—

but what no one would ever know to

look is that every moment that i am

alive is precious beyond prediction

and dizzy with its fullness of you


Thus refined (and in much-better mood), I'll attach a Deep Freeze Mice song onto this post. It's the opening track of their 4th record, The Gates of Lunch. 
"Red Light for the Greens"

Poems (the first of several installments)

One at a time, I'm posting these. Then I'll archive them into a separate area.

this is from 2003.

if you’re looking

check yourself first if

you’re looking for sense

in the city today, always

down the wrong avenue

or via some flawful ex-

press stratagem. where

is it or has it gone?

it’s moping and bored on a

windowsill, potentially.

it’s in every properly running

fridge and faucet, rumored

and pending substantiation.

it’s somewhere spayed

and then neutered and

suited up fancy, it

might be suggested.

it’s in a yesterday

cup of residue, cold and

colder just the same,

dreaming of spring,

somebody is certain.

it may or might be where

inert emotion’s settled

with the silt and the spit in a

disuseful subway station,

scary and sustaining

the roaches and the rats.

is it in a fleeting equity

that kisses each

creature with a last

heavy blink until

each tomorrow? it’s

possible. nothing is

not. nothing suffers

only to be seen so doing.

Watch and Observe

I have allowed my slothful typing skills to deter my posting to this blog. Also, the fact that my computer is captive to a nearby computer-repair store. But, it is no longer a single shit that I give about any of that.  

How does a person curry favor with the cosmos? I'm speaking in terms of climate. This winter, a brutal and surreal creature, has fragmented us, kinda. We're still very much ourselves and everything, but that's just such an unsettled milieu. In order to like winter, I think that we'd have to sacrifice all of the parts of ourselves that are unique and beautiful at the altar of some allegorical Voldemort. Our disdain for cold just means that we should fucking move. (It's not as if anyone would issue sincere protestation.) I tire of being jubilant when the weather doesn't punish me. I prefer nice things and nice people, and I really couldn't care less about what that makes me.

Sakes alive, have I ever digressed! The true identity of this posting is positive indeed, and I will prove it.

I HAVE WORK! Yes! Writing and editing and omg! From home!

WE HAVE OIL! It's mindblowing and miraculous. Molly and I have resolved already not to repeat this humiliating hand-to-mouth next year, by way of situating ourselves in a considerably milder place.

DESMOND AND IVOR ARE AWESOME!  Caught on tape, for all to enjoy, is their cooking program. It's posted on here somewheres via that link. As my beyond-awesome mother says, "Watch and observe."

http://s1204.photobucket.com/albums/bb411/mrfyfitz/February%20Love/?action=view&current=SAM_8069.mp4

Alright Already

excuses reasons

excuse this reasoned excuse

Sorry about that hiatus. I didn't mean to do that.

Okay, well—we live in a town called Brunswick, Maine. Everybody must know this by now. We've been in Maine for 5.3 lonely years, and we'd like to change all of that soon. As we shovel from yesterday's wintry deposit, we're preparing for tonight's installment. I've grown somewhat bitter about all, albeit in a wholesome and jesty way (e.g, people that like it here are referred to now as Snow Humpers.)

How did we get here? Why, maybe? Well, we really didn't see ourselves as having anywhere else to go, and I'll write more about that disastrous chapter someday soon.

We made a decision in August of 2008 to purchase a home, just before everything in the area collapsed economically. I had left my stable position at a Crisis-Stabilization Unit for other work (which appeared at that time to be both lucrative and abundantly forthcoming). Most important was that the house was smack in the middle of a village. A flaaaaaat village. With all amenities in near-obnoxious proximity. This would enable us to perform various errands without suffering beholden to the vagaries of vehicles, which was (and remains) truly amazing (Molly has never been [and doesn't want to be] licensed to drive; I have all of those health problems that, legally speaking, should preclude my driving [but really, any moron could be like

"E. 

F P. 

T O Z. 

L P E D." 

when given a vision test]). I do declare. 

At any rate, here's our house (even though it looks like a lengthy link):

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=17+everett+st.+brunswick,+me+04011-2403&layer=c&sll=43.913113,-69.965974&cbp=13,161.93,,0,0.03&cbll=43.913278,-69.966052&hl=en&sspn=0.006295,0.006295&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=17+Everett+St,+Brunswick,+Cumberland,+Maine+04011&ll=43.913267,-69.966066&spn=0.004498,0.009645&t=h&z=17&iwloc=A&panoid=Cv3SUbzhBj2lRNm86GQodw

Due to the continual good graces of loved ones, we have managed to eke something approaching survival out of the swirling completeness of atrophy entropy dystrophy that's about as much a part of our dayafterday as Nitrogen is of air. We're poor, and have largely been just hanging on, and that is no secret. Corners are cut (if not ignored) wherever possible, and I pray that my continued diligence in finding viable work will lead to more-promising pastures (this has already begun to happen, but I'll probably address that later). Every expense for us has been a source of discomfort. Abysmal and/or dismal, truly—I could very easily go on and on about how this doesn't feel like actual life and what's the point anyhow, but I'd much rather not do that, especially when there are such good stories to share, and especially when impecunity dovetails so neatly into the first of them:

Because of our propitious in-town location, I've seen fit to forgo the $1-per-bag weekly trash service pickup, discarding our refuse instead in nearby municipal and/or commercial facilities. I justify the questionable ethics by stating indignantly that it's a quality-of-life issue for all involved. (Actually, it's just poverty.) This was a veritable boon for some time (years, actually), saving us untold dozens of dollars that we could splurge flagrantly on utilities. To wit, it's a rather popular strategy, judging by the mongrel assortment of bags and items in said dumpster. (To everyone's credit, cardboard is separated from other waste and deposited into a different bin.)

Then, two Sundays ago, a police car pulled into our driveway for unknown reasons. My first thought was that it regarded the family's vehicle. I have a car, purchased quite inexpensively from a wonderful and generous friend whom we've yet to pay (it's been over a year, but we're awaiting our tax returns), whose registration (not in my name) is 5-months expired (and whose certificate met a Desmond-oriented demise at some point early last year), and whose inspection lapsed last spring. (At least I have insurance.) So, I thought that I would justly be taken away and flogged or what have you. But this occasion was altogether different.

COP: Benjamin... Gallagher?

ME: Gallaher, yes. That's me.

COP: This is 17 Everett Street?

ME: Yes it is.

COP: And Molly FitzGerald—where is she?

ME: Oh, she's with our baby at the moment; can I help you?

COP (produces crumpled-up household bills): Well, Rite Aid wants you to have these back. Have you been dumping your trash into Rite Aid's dumpster?

ME: Only sometimes. I like to spice it up a bit. Being right downtown, I figured that it was all okay. Nowhere is it posted that that dumpster is Rite-Aid property!

COP: Sir, that's considered to be Theft of Services, and it's a crime.

ME: Really? Even trash that we create when we're walking around? Or diaper trash?

COP: Uh, you'd better use your own trash can. Just don't do this anymore.

I deserved this. Well, I actually deserved far worse. Anyhow, my family has not permitted me to forget this unglamorous incident (although, to be fair, it is pretty recent). In quieter moments (which are few), I have sometimes mused about which is more disturbing—the fact that they searched through small bags of post-toddler waste to find "the culprit," or the fact that I was sufficiently thoughtless to discard my bills thus.

None of this changes that it's haunted me since. I am asked to declare the presence of trash (to Molly) before walking anywhere. And Desmond, who's variously astounding, created a painting, which is not news. The painting, though, is a rendering of the dumpster behind Rite Aid:

Note the yellow toward the bottom of the painting. Evidently, it is text. That text serves to notify passersby: 

"Pops is not allowed to put diapers and trash into the Rite Aid trashcans."