to the health of COD: the future of American journalism

rod stewart croons twice at the drop of a dollar
you gotta love a cop bar sporting mob movie posters
lower order yuppies smoking inside (last of its kind)
snow drifts on the industrial corridor, a pitted carpet

she shouts up to the fashionable lofts
WE ARE TRYING
TO HAVE
A CIVILIZATION HERE
--you are not helping
holds up deuces for the honking driver
ice cools the place where the tears have dried

how do the spaniards even poop?

their entire diet is salted meat and bread and cheese and olives

fields of heather and a museum that induces vertigo

but oranges with hard, impressive navels

everybody gets to slow dance with the girl
wrist resting on chests, a light hand hold
once before she goes
the eastern seaboard? the east coast? you wouldn't turn 52 grand down either
gets to have dinner with her
she preaches the same sermon to all of us

the city should have been big enough for all of us
it should have been enough


the third coast becomes a lakeside villa, a neverland
i'm carding her hair, i'm touching her back
i'm proud, you're beautiful, you'll be great, buy yourself so many leather goods with all that money they're throwing at you, come see me, come see me. i know you have to go, yeah you're gonna do real good.

How'd you like Django Unchained?

right, right sure

but the thing, the bit under the bridge right--

with the baseball bat and pretending to knock one out of the park

while he knocks a head in

THAT

that's violence in toto

disguised, okay

the lower order yuppies are wrapped in a tight circle

by quarter to midnight

it's frank sinatra at this point

two old polish dudes staring intently at that patterned skirt

nearer the door, nearer the bell

we're doing the same, but

you know you can cry, right?

and it all bubbles up, right out of the chest

and when e and i walk out of the bar

i'm holding her like we're walking away from a graveyard

there's a flung cigarette butt on clybourn avenue and the ground fairly sparkles at adams and monroe and if you stand on the corner of lincoln and george on a windy night the air howls through the tunnel in the telephone pole and it's the sound you might hear when the city empties out forever, along with taxi cabs still playing WBEZ and i'll expect the trucks again next week in front of my apartment to carry the crew of Chicago Fire and i'll still get on the bus in the wrong direction at Jefferson park

i rewrote the sermon

we loved it each other and it wasn't enough

"something somewhere!" he cried out in his sleep

oh gee it's rainy in oakland

wet feet wet hems of pant legs dirty underwear gold candles

going through a matchbook to try and light a cigarette,

walking through a puddle to remember that my rainboots have opened their soles to rain

looking for a warm hole (bucket? pot of soup?) to dive into and curl up till

the rain stops,

thought i'd evaded winter but oh hello.

but when i think of it that way it's not so bad,

this time, this quiet, once i'm curled up to read-zine-reflect-ponder-talk to friends old and new-play bananagrams by candlelight

not what oakland's been so far

(does a home, a nest in some woods or a tree, ever promise to be warm and dry and stable all the time? are all and any things cold and wet "miserable?")

the cold air through the last few boarded-up windows and the dripping in the front hall

are boring

though

and other souls wandering through attracted like moths to our candles and

recent-found patched-up walls and stability,

quiet dreams of the wood-burning stove (not just a game we're playing, though that too)

bernard maybe leaving with their pile of zines and shame about their teeth and beautiful face in the morning, katrina maybe too to go be present in the northeast with some mending hearts and sighs of dying,

and more kids coming in

a reminder for me about how things change, slow and fast and always,

to see this house grow up in weeks like the bao did over years

like trees over decades

like rye grass roots in minutes (3 miles of root hairs a day! i read).

i am trying to keep myself happy for me and also for others

i find recently that being around loud people makes me quiet, stressful people very chill, perhaps being around sad people makes me rejoice in the small pleasures of oatmeal all the more:

raisins vila almonds cinnamon nutmeg real maple syrup flaxseed out the wazoo

i will sigh and return to pat califia, who has at this moment to say:

"at times like these, i remember the spanner case because it renews my faith in being out of the closet and fighting back. the american gay press ignored spanner, scared off by the thunderclap of spanking and the rattling of chains. but it should serve as a powerful inspiration and model for any group of people who would like to live in a sexually sane society.

it all started in 1987..."

(didn't we all)

& just gets better and better

wonderbread and wonderboy go for a walk in the woods...

do you know the story of the lupin lady?

also, dwelling in history: http://alitheavenger.blogspot.com/2008/08/recount-decount.html
practicing radical inclusion of past selves....hmhhmmhm oh berlin, oh my heart. one of many.

wanting a cigarette and questioning that desire--replacing it with stretching, yogastic satisfaction

thinking of-
healing?
how have i changed in the past year?
did college make me articulate?
how do i act on my radical politics?
does something matter if i can't articulate it (that is, spread a revolutionary consciousness)?

also geez-o, it's raining like a mofo on this thin-tin roof
& i'm thinking of population decline
(http://www.windward.org/private/articles/population01.htm)
hm bleak--whaddya think?

preparing to leave safan tomorrow morning,
leaving a red-purple-gold palatial shit chamber in my wake
gold seat fit for pillow princes and size queens alike
like the swimming idea of green tomato pies
like boletes, browncapped children of the forest fairies who live in the galls,
like two goats dead in four days and we wonder and we wonder,
like business plans are deep conversations, like
if you weren't raised eating expensive air then you'll never understand the difference
like whatever---

i am not a fountain! i am a jungle-jumble-menagerie-wet-furry-paperback-wonder!

last night i dreamt that my father was elected president (everyone said, "even if he doesn't do anything, it's a great sign. he's the best president we've ever had, and he doesn't have to lift a finger.") and that i was wandering from house to house looking for someone to give me shooting lessons.

also last night, after a day of wine tasting and cheese tasting in sutter creek,
maggie and i constructed a ritual for ourselves--of celebration, gratitude, making-space, becoming-present. drew from the rituals i had done with you folks, under the full moon on the beach before the jammin, at the sky factory under a sacrificed pinata, the queer interfaith ritual at the point this spring quarter, also the masquerade and wedding parties, also more small things of ritual and symbolism...
it was really good. we ate olive-garlic-rosemary-sourdough warm bread and kombocha squash and beans and rice and mustard greens and red wine, danced in the mud under a cloudy sky and screamed and howled and sat and were quiet. i imagined my chest to be like an advent calendar, full of tiny little doors, each door opening onto a field of stars and dark matter and space. i imagined opening each of the doors. we folded pieces of paper in half and wrote-drew "things we are stuck on/that control us" and "things that bring us strength, make us present" and shared some things (our papers looked totally different)--we planned to burn the former one, but decided to hold onto it to keep it conscious, think healing instead of throwing out. ("radical inclusion of past selves" has been a theme in my thoughts since az mentioned it in willits...it's a process.) i made some small commitments to myself, small daily rituals. it left me exhausted and good-feeling last night and quiet today.

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