Karma's A Funny Thing

The thing about karma
is that you have no idea
how it happens.

It's one of life's great
mysteries,
something you can
accept on faith.

But for the believers,
it's got to be nice
to know that the jerk
who just offended you
is going to get it back
at some point,
even if they don't
realize it,
understand it,
or remember
what they did
to deserve it.

I guess karma
is the great leveler,
because no amount
of apparent success
will keep it
from finding you,
because it's just
one of those great
facts of nature.

Birds Are Quixotic, Too!

Birds.

Yeah, so I'm not
one of those people
who looks at nature
to learn esoteric
facts (fascinating
though they can
sometimes be),
but rather...
to look at nature.

I look at a bird
not to wish I
could fly quite
so independently
and free, but
to see the wonder
of it, the...
otherness of it,
to appreciate
that a bird is.

Sometimes, it seems
they're looking
at me, too.

Too Many Cooks

I don't understand how something
that's been done literally
for a thousand years
functions far worse
than moviemaking or any number
of sports.

I'm talking about the writing
profession.

Now, I would assume if
people were at all interested
in discovering new
and unexpected talent,
there would be the equivalent
of the team scout,
maybe exploring high schools,
colleges,
or god forbid some kind
of official writing guild,
where new writers, honest
writers, the ones who have
talent and are not just
enamored of something
they can't actually do
might be noticed.

But instead, it seems
as if everyone
wants to fall back
on the excuse
that publishing just
ain't as popular
as it used to be,

Bullcocks.

There are hundreds of thousands
of books published every year,
and I'm including poetry
in this, but somehow,
not even a comprehensive,
definitive, popular
public publication can
track all of it.

Word of mouth
is kind of beside
the point in this
kind of circumstance.

This is why most people
gravitate to popular fiction,
because it's the only thing
guaranteed to sell,
to look familiar
and not threatening,
because for most people,
it's just too hard to
find interesting things.

Why the hell
do we make it
so hard?

Books are old,
really, really old,
and we really
have to still
keep approaching them
this way?

That's kind of what's wrong
with our current culture
as a whole.

We literally don't understand
what we've got,
and yet the things
we complain about
are all ridiculously
more ephemeral,
mere phantoms
and bogeymen.

Dudes, we could
make things a lot easier,
and put more solid footing
beneath us
if we'd simply stop thinking
of everything as just
a way to make some profit,
and instead think of how,
and not as some charitable
notion, it affects
the greater good.

It's time to think
of community first,
the common good,
common sense.

Stop being so stupid!!!

Everyone's Got Something to Bitch (Except Me and My Monkey)

I actually lied
about me.

I bitch about
a lot of things.

It's the monkey
I'm not sure
about.

But according to
some studies I
just read about,
it's apparently worse
to vent anger than
(I guess) to suppress it.

I guess I'm sorry,
but I think it's probably
better to try and figure
out why people get angry
than to say it's not good
to be angry.

If the cause is something
people can actually
work on, isn't that better
than saying you shouldn't
be angry in the first place,
that it's mentally unhealthy
to express this feeling?

Give peace a chance
but rely on common sense.

We live with a lot of
fucked up people.

It's not always
going to be pretty.

1007 Florence

I do still wish the shoes were there
but the bear will have to do

Coyote, Trickster XII

I think I'm at my best
when I'm my most quixotic,
which might explain
a few things.

Coyote, Trickster XI

When I got into poetry,
back in college,
I wasn't much of a reader.

I wrote because I had
always been interesting
in writing poetry.

But then I got into reading it,
and then I seemed to stumble
into a whole community,
and for a while,
I completely understood
what most people mean these days
when they think of poetry.

But then a lot of that
went away.

When I graduated,
I tried to cling
to that community,
but it resisted
my best efforts.

I kept writing
but I struggled
to keep reading.

Recently,
I got back into
reading.

But I'm still waiting
for the community feel
to come back.

Coyote, Trickster X

I got to read comic books
exactly the way I wanted to
for about five years,
and during that time,
there were three comics shops
that I got to visit
on a regular basis.

By the end of that period,
roughly 1995-1999, each of them
had either closed or moved
to more inconvenient locations.

When I got back into reading them,
I made sure to never let that happen
again; ah, so I cheated,
started shopping
online.

What else do you expect
from a trickster?

Coyote, Trickster IX

After spending my entire
childhood preparing for it,
I finally did a public
comic strip, for the school
paper, and nobody cared.

But hey, it wasn't as if
I was actually doing it
for anyone else.

And I doubt anyone realized
when I satirized the local
weatherman, but that
was the strip's
crowning achievement.

But I only really missed it
myself when I changed its name
after I had stopped making it.

Coyote, Trickster VIII

I was so confusing
in middle school
that even the uncool kids
were telling me
I had to be more cool.

Turns out in high school,
it really didn't matter;
I became more quixotic...

Coyote, Trickster VII

I played violin,
like my grandfather
(sometimes it seemed
because of my
grandfather), but I
was a trickster about that,
too, and maybe that was
by necessity.

I didn't grow up
in a violin town.

Every stroke of the bow
was a rebellion
of some kind.

The strings
were on the prowl.

Coyote, Trickster VI

I became obsessed
at an early age
with John Henry.

I still don't think
I know why.

But I suppose,
it's because he
was a trickster,
someone who defied
all reason,
defied expectations,
and ultimately sacrificed
himself to prove his point.

If that's not a trickster,
I don't know what is.

Coyote, Trickster V

I drew deeper and deeper
into fictional worlds,
which only true tricksters
can comprehend.

I'm not talking about
being lost in fantasy,
but becoming immersed
in my own imagination,
something I grew more
and more reluctant
to leave.

Coyote, Trickster IV

Growing up with four siblings
meant a lot of overlapping
...for a few years, and then
a lot of diverging.

It seems as if I continued
doing a lot of the things
we'd been doing, but in
new and different ways,
like a trickster playing
the same game with
different rules, just
to confuse everyone.

Coyote, Trickster III

In terms of keeping up
with four siblings, hey,
why don't you give it a try?

But I did it mostly
by keeping to myself.

That's the same way
I survived grade school;
I actually started out
as somewhat wildly popular,
but it became a chore
to keep up with everyone else
because I was busy running
my own circles, the mad man
of the playground,
a regular trickster
who could eek out sympathy
even though I gave back
almost nothing in return.

I still don't know how I did it.

Coyote, Trickster II

In my earliest days, family
apparently meant everything,
but I was too young
to appreciate it.

That's when we made the majority
of our most interesting trips
to relatives around Rhode Island
and Massachusetts, some of which
were repeated enough in later years
that I would still recognize
quite well today,
but others, now reduced
to phantoms.

I guess even some of my past
is a trickster.

Coyote, Trickster

I was born to a vocation:
to bear witness.

***

On the night I was born,
strange tricksters were about,
from many cultures, mingling,
maybe placing dibs.

They were trying to decide
what form my mischief
would take.

I'm not sure
I've helped them much
over the past
three decades,
but I've certainly
given it my best shot.

But to be fair,
I haven't made it easy
for just about anyone
much less myself

(which may be
a trickster's greatest secret).

Pretend Zen, Counterfit Zen

What I really love
is someone telling me
that I can just make myself
feel happy.

First of all, I wouldn't want that;
I mean, who the fuck
actually would, ignorantly
assuming that it's
possible,
preferential,
or even perfect
to be happy?

I don't know that
we're here to be happy
so much as to live
and figure out
what we can get
out of that.

It isn't about
happiness, however
you define it.

I like Zen as much
as the next guy, but
I'm not about to
rectify everything
to reach that state.

It's a fun one to visit,
but an awfully dull one
to live in.

I mean seriously,
who would really want
to believe that they
can be at peace with the world,
when the world is never going
to be at peace with itself.

Are you really going to say
that it's okay to be okay
about everything?

That's some pretty shitty philosophy.

We are, and so we react,
that's my law of physics.

We're all a part of the animal kingdom.

The Poem as a Ritual

there is comfort and knowledge
in the familiar,
repeating and revisiting
what you already know,
faith in the past
and in the future,
an anchor for the present,
where all good poems flow.

Advanced Genius

Advanced Genius

As originally proposed
by Hartley and Bergman,
the Advanced Genius Theory
revolves mostly around figures
who have already been,
generally speaking,
recognized for their genius,
who then descend into
material that seems to
obscure their legacy,
but instead continue
working at the same
level that first brought
them to public attention,
at a rate the public can
no longer keep up with.

Basically, a genius is
someone who changes
everything, and continues
to change, past the ability
for the audience to accept it,
according to this theory.

And while I admire
Hartley and Bergman for
pursuing this theory,
I propose a new one,
that the public doesn’t
always recognize genius,
even at the start, or for
some reason finds
a way to ignore its value.

This would be an
Advanced Genius
that is so advanced
it is never properly
understood, even when
it seems to be.

***

There are many examples,
throughout history, but
I can only concentrate now
on those that have affected
me personally, that have
helped form the index
of my life as I have known it.

***

The young nation of the United States
was far more contentious than we
can sometimes appreciate, no matter
how much we read about it.

I think the first real victims of our history
were the John Adams, who were the second
and sixth presidents, who failed to capture
properly even in that age the glamour
some invariably seek in their leaders,
lost in the shuffle, the only of the first seven
to serve single terms, victims of politics.

It was certainly ironic for the father,
who had been bold enough to represent
British officers in the aftermath of
the so-called Boston Massacre,
and worse for Quincy, who might have
permanently avoided the course
to Civil War, given the chance, but
they doomed, like Henry Clay,
American Cassandras.

***

I still don’t understand how Kennedy
is not more appreciated today, how
anyone could think that his legacy
might somehow be forgotten;
only if we let it, I say.

All that the Clintonians played at,
he was, the consummate politician,
who was a modern Adams, unpopular
but bold, a visionary whose vision
became obscured by lesser men.

***

As far as presidents go, I could not
exclude W, another unpopular son
of an unpopular president, but who
defied history, tried to forge it,
despite every opposition,
who maybe, as we all are,
was more flawed than I
sometimes seem to admit,
but was still the last man in the room,
capable of suggesting what others
only cared to suppress, that there
are better ways to live, if only
we refuse to settle.

***

Anyway, for levity’s sake, most of
this genius stuff concerns entertainers,
so don’t worry too much.

***

Star Trek has been advanced genius
from the start, struggling to find its audience
even when everyone knew everything about it.

You’d be hard-pressed to find
more contentious fans than these,
who can’t even decide between
Trekkers and Trekkies,
who reject easily and sabotage themselves,
even while bemoaning the lack of amusement,
when the most they can do is entertain themselves
with all the things that they hate.

I don’t pretend
to understand it.

When you try to be expansive,
to tell the human adventure,
you would be hard-pressed
to find a lot of humans
who will really appreciate
what you’re trying to do.

***

Even Star Wars lost its original fans
when it tried to expand, right at the same time
the Wachowskis unfortunately confirmed
that there was more than just a big idea
and fancy fighting
behind their Matrix.

***

Jim Carrey couldn’t find his audience
despite becoming a star with the same routine
after about a decade of trying,
and even then, hardly anyone could keep up with him.

Hey, you try watching
Once Bitten
(early, still obscure),
Ace Ventura
(big break, talking ass),
The Cable Guy
(audience confusion),
The Truman Show
(artistic breakthrough),
Man on the Moon
(artistic channeling),
The Majestic
(dramatic effort, little respect),
Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas
(big hit, critical heat),
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
(critical love, cult audience)
and understanding his relationship
to the audience.

***

U2 is recognized as the biggest band in the world,
but really, you’d hardly know it.

They’ve been popular through four decades now,
but there is still a lack of critical respect,
as if their music hasn’t been iconic
several times over at this point, still
chasing the ghosts of the Beatles,
Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, untold others.

“Gloria”
“Sunday Bloody Sunday”
“New Year’s Day”
“Pride”
“Bad”
“Where the Streets Have No Name”
“I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”
“With or Without You”
“Desire”
“One”
“Mysterious Ways”
“Beautiful Day”
“Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of”
“Vertigo”
“Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own”
“Moment of Surrender”

And that’s only a sampling, probably their
most popular and iconic material.

I could list tons more.

Perhaps Hartley is on to something
when he excludes them from his own theory,
saying they’ve been too popular,
but the continuing reputations of
Rattle & Hum, Zooropa, Pop, that their
Passengers side-project is still obscure…

No one actually argues that all of U2’s material
is actually beloved, and that they still can’t
take their place beside the rock gods…

***

Coldplay and Oasis have the great fortune
of standing on the shoulders of these giants,
U2 I mean, producing great material
and being overlooked by most surveys.

***

I have come to appreciate the musical genius
of Thrice as well, but you’d hardly know
they possessed it by the utter lack of recognition,
even for their most ambitious projects,
even for The Alchemy Index.

Yeah, I just don’t understand it…

***

But I mourn most for Hootie & the Blowfish.

If modern music had a soul, it would belong
to these boys, who are very much men these days,
well into their family lives, past the college days
and wolf brothers, past their glory year
and slowly rapid decline in public fortunes.

They were brilliant enough to identify
the cracked rear view from the start,
to call out all the fairweather johnsons;
just as they were starting to make
the songs they really loved, radio
played musical chairs, and they
were left looking for lucky.

Hey, Darius (who was not Hootie)
became a black country star,
so it’s not like they were forgotten,
just become painfully unpopular,
“uncool.”

They were only “cool” in the first place
because everyone liked them, for a moment.

But they always had their tastes
scattered, smothered, and covered,
and it’s still all I believe.

***

Colin Farrell became in an instant
one of my favorite actors, but
Hollywood took one look and
saw only an object that needed
to be exploited, so that audiences
never had the same opportunity.

But you sit back now
and can begin to see
where all the talent was:

Tigerland
(brash new face),
Hart’s War
(upstaging Willis),
Minority Report
(fighting Cruise),
S.W.A.T.
(turning TV into his own),
Daredevil
(having fun),
Alexander
(commanding history),
The New World
(inhabiting it),
Miami Heat
(growling a repeat),
Cassandra’s Dream
(heart on his sleeve),
In Bruges
(heart in his throat),
Crazy Heart
(finding the notes of a weary place)

***

He fell into the same pit as Oliver Stone,
I guess, someone who lost favor the more
he tried to explore his potential.

Stone, not surprisingly,
has explored both Kennedy and W.

***

Did I mention Melville?

The dude was a genius then,
and still hasn’t been properly discovered,
a century before Welles, a giant obscured
for no good reason I can fathom
even now.

***

Brando, and Welles,
identified in Hartley’s theory,
along with Bob Dylan,
who has enjoyed a resurgence
a lot of critics love, but fans
want to see end already.

***

Johnny Cash, or so
Walk the Line goes,
was rejected until he found his voice,
and then did a fine job
of obscuring it again,
trying to live too hard,
became an outlaw who aged,
and his twilight and final years
still aren’t appreciated as they should be.

Who to compare his late period to?

***

They probably still think
Harry Potter will be easily forgotten,
but I think that’s nonsense.

Narnia has a better chance,
Tolkien’s Middle Ages fantasies.

Harry is one for the history books.

***

Peter Ackroyd; no, really,
please explain to me how
this writer is not more
acclaimed, not more
well-known, how he isn’t
as celebrated as those
he periodically writes about?

***

How anyone ever failed
to understand what Lost
was doing is beyond me,
far more convoluted than
its study of essential human nature
could ever have been.

***

He may not have conjured
Huck Finn in so many words,
but how is there any doubt
that Dave Barry is Mark Twain’s
successor? Is he somehow too
irreverent? Cherish him now,
because by all rights you
will still be reading him
tomorrow.

***

Comic books
comic books,
like professional wrestling
a primal exercise
of modern might and myth.

When the proper respect?

***

For that matter, when will
Grant Morrison be recognized
as a literary genius?

***

I can only thank god
I was there when
Green Lantern was finally elevated
thanks to Geoff Johns
to the level the concept
really deserved.

***

I think the battle over
accepting Stephen King
is being won, too.

Thankee.

***

I don’t know, this isn’t
an index
so much as it is
the beginning of
an argument,
perhaps the same one
in Hartley’s theory,
to stop this unnecessary
impulse to overlook
the treasures that are everywhere,
to quit making excuses
we constantly make to not like something,
when that accomplishes nothing.

Every day there will be things
no one ever finds out about,
great things that might have
changed the world,
so what’s the point of
ignoring the things
we already know,
that beat the odds
and entered the popular consciousness?

I suppose that’s what
the Metaphysics of Value
are about, but as advanced genius,
there’s another name to call,
a way to identify what people
apparently refuse to enjoy
for no conceivable,
or at least good,
reason.

Losers

I think the thing I enjoy the most
is the relativity of manners.

In a museum, everyone knows
exactly what's expected of them,
and so they behave accordingly.

...Unfortunately, most people
have no idea how to behave
just about anywhere else.

In a movie theater, for instance,
people know by now that they're
not supposed to be on their
cell phones, but what they do
find acceptable is leaving their garbage
literally wherever they want to.

They think ushers are there
to clean up after them, when
ushers are really there because
they have to be.

There's no reason anyone should
expect someone else to do that,
and I think that's our biggest
failing in society today.

If it was assumed that there
were no ushers, that we really
did have to throw our own trash
away, would someone really
flip their crap onto the floor?

I don't know, maybe it's just
my absurd belief that people
really ought to have some sense
of responsibility, even at this
most basic of levels.

Well, then again, if theaters
really want to stay relevant,
they might want to think
of a better profit margin than
selling popcorn. Why does
anyone need to eat during
a movie, much less on a long
care trip? It's just something
we've all assumed is necessary,
and I have no idea why.

Maybe as things change,
problems like this will go away;
as it is, we're already well on our way
to eliminating much of public
interaction; maybe the less of it
there is, the better people
will behave.

Or you know, it could get worse.

But I try and not be a pessimist...

Unhappiness

I was reading in a book
that cats prefer warm places,

except, apparently, when it
is warm all the time, or so
I've recently noticed with Boo.

She has taken to collecting herself
beneath ceiling fans, so she can
enjoy the reverse of what she normally seeks.

It occurs to me that she bears
her discomforts better than
a person would, who instead
of readusting, would probably
find someone to complain to.

That, I think, would be the main difference
between animals and people, that animals
can compensate, whereas people do everything
possible to avoid such a peril, and finally
innovate only as a last resort.

If we are unhappy, it's because we've
made it all but impossible to be anything but;
we've literally given happiness over to others,
and that's the real prize, not in any monetary
sense, but as a social contract, which
we allow to bind ourselves in every-increasing
knots.

Sometimes it's easier to figure out
what a cat would do instead.

War on Unchecked Privilege

In many ways, we live
in far more insidious times
than the Decade of Greed.

We live in times where we know
lots of people took a great deal
of advantage of others, and
our response is to continue
the erosion of the middle class,
so that privilege may continue
to indulge itself, privilege
not only in wealth but in
the idea of leadership,
the driving engine of the beast.

The symptoms of this disease,
this unparalleled calamity,
are an increasing presumption,
an assumption of rights
that in our modern times
believes it's just as right now
as when there were labeled classes
to believe other people can and should
bear the brunt of the work that's
necessary (or necessitated) by
this privilege.

I call it a society of butlers
because of course such people
cannot be expected to look after
the effects of their lifestyle
and manners, and these butlers
are expected to bear it with
good humor.

Good humor! Because that's
what we're supposed to do.

There comes a time when
this privilege defies the boundaries
of reciprocity, the ideal by which
all free societies should guide
themselves, the first rule
of democracy.

Book Terrors...! VIII: DFW

I feel like I owe the dude
some kind of apology,
because I really don't mean
to suggest that I think
DFW was some kind of
worthless bum, or that
I was jealous of
the circumstances that
basically drove him to
his grave (though, seriously,
I would probably kill
for those circumstances,
maybe even a literaray genius
like DFW, and for that
I won't apologize).

The more I read his thoughts
in Lipsky's book, the more and
more I see him as a kindred
spirit, aside from any differences,
and I want to have been there,
to have talked with him
myself, to see if I could
have made things easier
(and not just to score some
connections), because he
really did make it tough
for himself.

I would liken DFW to
some wild turkeys me and
my sister saw the other day,
running (but also taking
their time) across the street.

I've previously written about
some other wild turkeys, which
I read about loitering in the Bronx,
which seemed pretty weird, and
eventually called it a Pelham day,
in remembrance of an old fort
near the sight of an archeological
dig of colonial days, when people
weren't just fighting, but fighting
to make it work.

I'd say he was like a wild turkey
completely unaware (or so we
think) that most people, when
they see one, can only think
of Thanksgiving, that it probably
would be better for that wild turkey
to be like Bigfoot, and make itself
scarce, because sooner or later,
someone's going to have to idea
to track it down again, just
in time for the feast.

Gobble, gobble.

He was a guy who was put
in the unfortunate position
of earning some hype,
but could only run around
wildly, because he couldn't
deal with it; he was the wild turkey
who put itself in the line of vision,
just waiting to be carved up.

I don't know, maybe I'll
actually have to read him
to really understand him.

Rhetoric

I can think of nothing worse
than saying things only because
you're expected to say them.

Can you?

Don't bother responding -
it was a rhetorical question...

My Back Pages

I think life in the 21st century
is going to be defined as an
attempt to be yourself
while at the same time
advertising the hell out
of who you'd like to be.