Saturday, December 13, 2014

On the Sullen American Teen


The sullen disposition of the American teen is not a mystery:  He/She senses, looking around at the adults, that what lies ahead is a rigged game where something called "happiness" is chased, but never realized. He/She observes that well-being cannot be realized within a pressure-fueled complex consumer-driven society.  The American teen knows all of this intuitively and resents the adults above who seem to have accepted this state of affairs. Most adults that the teen sees appear as sad figures resigned to a grim fate, as cowardly & broken souls.  And this is why the teens are depressed. This is why they are rageful.  In fact, the teens' depression and anger are a sign of health. They indicate that the youth yet retain the original life spark -- that it has not yet been extinguished. Their withdrawn and often gloomy temperament should actually give us hope:  it is a form of resistance, a posture of rejection of The Lie. 

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Two Movie Scenes

1. The scene in "The Departed" when Jack Nicholson as the gangster Costello sits down beside Leonardo DiCaprio as the deep undercover agent William Costagin for the first time. It is at a lunch counter in a corner store in South Boston. One of the most melancholy yet joyful songs ever written, "Let It Loose," by the Rolling Stones plays -- the ragged sounding electric guitar wavers through an effects pedal like a prizefighter bloodied but not beaten. The piano engages the guitar almost as a dance partner – a step forward, one backward, locking arms, an embrace, a release. We feel, at this moment, all the longing of these two men crystallized to a point. Each has pursued his own truth by means of a lie.

2. The scene in "Heat," directed by Michael Mann, when the criminal Robert De Niro sits down to speak with the detective Al Pacino for the first and only time. They share a cup of coffee at a large roadside diner outside of Los Angeles. We sense that there is, somehow, love and respect between these two men. It is tragic they will never be able to become friends; their destiny is to live as enemies and, we sense, to pursue the logical end of this enmity: the death of the other. Their contrasting destinies are shown in their exchange --

Pacino: Don't you want to live a normal type life?

DeNiro: What do you mean by a normal type life? Ballgames and barbecues?

Pacino: Yeah. Ballgames and barbecues.

DeNiro: No. No.

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

A Turning (for Kirk Hauptman)

"If it makes money, it’s good." 
As children we knew this was absurd.
We knew this afloat on our backs
Free and drifting 
For the first time alone
In cold Lake Michigan in sunlight.
They said --
The standing lamp broadcasting
Ghoul-golden light as it was pronounced -- 
To go against this  
Would cause us to be penniless
And to starve.
We accepted this 
And gradually went mad.

Years pass
As a pale car fade
Into the eastern haze and
We sense now A Turning.
We sense that we may now recall 
What we knew as children.

Sometimes I hear within the chambers of my skull
Metal girders creaking and bending,
Wailing under the weight of something impossible.
Sometimes I can see in my mind’s eye 
The beginning of the fall of a building,
And then the mid-air pause that it holds 
Before it collapses inward upon itself
In a whoosh that is both rapid 
And traceable in real time.





Sunday, October 5, 2014

Kingdom of Soot

In the Kingdom of Soot
Where the beggars lie
You can fly like a lemon
Through a hole in the sky

Wander like an onion
Past the broken moon
Sleep in the shadow
Of a wooden spoon

In the Kingdom of Soot
With your ragged wand
You can draw a circle
On the black silt pond

Eat your jambalaya
From a cracked, tin bowl
Holler at the window
Like a blind black mole

Well I saw Emma
She was wringing out the wash
Hunched like a rabbit
In an old tan cloth

Pouring out the water
Tortoise shells
Knocking on the doors
She was ringing all the bells

Sunday, May 18, 2014

Portrait of Cheney, Vice President

Eyes devoid of pity. The glance always sidelong, never granting direct engagement with the interlocutor. 

Though he likes the phrase, "corridors of power," he knows he operates in a realm subterranean to them. The hidden bunkers where all is preserved in a state of cleanliness and order and where the peeping eyes that pry and may discern some segment of the labyrinth cannot see. 


He knows the bombers that hum gray in the night. 


His is the joy of Iago. No folksy, cornpone drawl is needed. Leave that to the stammering, pitiful Texan. That lanky draft-dodger is the perfect side show. Such serendipity to be paired with him. 

The Vice President. And he remembers watching the MGM films 
on the Roman empire in his youth. His friends longed to be the boldly heroic gladiators and respected the swift, stunning power of the Emperor. He trained his eyes on the cloaked men, those whose faces transmitted neither fear nor pity. They would lean over and gently whisper into the Emperor's ear. Events would transpire and still no change in the gaze of the advisers. 












Saturday, April 26, 2014

Song of the Beasts

If I were a lobster
On the Nantucket shore
With my shell growing thinner
On the cold ocean floor
And if I were a monarch
On my route flying south
With the milkweed beloved
A dead seed in my mouth
And if I were a coyote
Down on Michigan Ave
And the skyline arising
Was all that I had
Chorus: I’d say… (vocalizing, calling)....
And if I were a blue whale
Of the rolling dark see
And the sonar explosions
Blowing up in my ears
And if I were flying fox
On the outback so free
With the temperature rising
So my heart stopped its beat
And if I were a scallop
Sitting lonely in brine
On the pacific coastline
In the acidic tide
Chorus
And if I were a panda bear
In the forest so green
With the bamboo receding
Before my little cubs and me
And if I were a bumble bee
On the meadow so wide
With the neoinsecticoids
Getting into my eyes
And if I were an axolotl
Ina Mexican canal
Disappearing with the sunset
In a wondering spell
Chorus
And if I were an elephant
On the African plain
With a poacher approaching
Trying to desecrate my name
And if I were a mighty pine
On the Oregon hills
With the chainsaw blades rumbling
Breaking up the calm still
And if I were a hummingbird
With my beak in a rose
With the nectar turned poisonous
And my wings starting to close
Chorus
And if I were a dodo bird
Landing onto a stream
With the water a-sparkling
On the bright budding leaves
And if I were a dodo bird
In the dark windy night
Between living and dying
And waiting to take flight
And if I were a dodo bird
Flying inside the dream
Of a broken-down sailor
Trying to set me free