M.I.A & Jack Kerouac

It has been a crazy last few weeks so I apologize that I havent updated. My new seattlepi.com gig has kept me busy which has been a great blessing. So while I finally post a new piece I wanted to share some wisdom from the late great...



Jack Kerouac

Belief and Technique for Modern Prose, a list of thirty "essentials."


1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for your own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside your own house
4. Be in love with your life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
29. You're a Genius all the time
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

Charles Bukowski Mondays

the Interview

By Charles Bukowski

I read it all.
the poet went on and on
talking about the value of
workshops.
this poet taught at a
university.
believed in teaching poets in
prison,
and teaching poets in the schools,
high schools,
reading his poems there,
bringing the word.
this poet had studied under
C. and R. and O.
yes, this poet always carried
a notebook
to capture impressions
at odd moments
else they would be forgotten.
yes, this poet revised his stuff
many times.
as much as six revisions per
poem.
this poet had been awarded
grants and
prizes.
during dry periods this poet hiked
or rode his bicycle.
the masses, said this poet,
were hungry for poetry.
the reason the books didn't
sell was not that poetry itself
was insufficient but that the
masses were sadly unaware of
it.
it was our duty to awaken the
people he said, it was our responsi
bility, etc.

I dropped the magazine to the
floor, got up, walked to the
bathroom
and had one of my best
bowel movements in
several years.

Weekend Literary Inspirations:

Regarding the Writer's Life
By-Line: E. Hemingway, p. 185

"You must be prepared to work always without applause. When you are excited about something is when your first draft is done. But no one can see it until you have gone over it again and again until you have communicated the emotion, the sights and the sounds to the reader, and by the time you have completed this the words, sometimes, will not make sense to you as you read them, so many times you re-read them. By the time the book comes out you will have started something and it is all behind you and you do not want to hear about it. But you do, you read it in covers and you see all the places that now you can do nothing about. All the critics who could not make their reputations by discovering you are hoping to make them by predicting hopefully your approaching impotence, failure and general dying of natural juices. Not a one will wish you luck or hope that you will keep on writing unless you have political affiliations in which case these will rally around and speak of you to Homer, Balzac, Zola and Link Steffens. You are just as well off without these reviews. Finally, in some other place, some other time, when you can't work an feel like hell you will pick up the book and look in it and start to read and go on and in a little while say to your wife, "Why this stuff is bloody marvelous."
And she will say, "Darling, I always told you it was." Or maybe she doesn't hear you and says, 'What did you say?" and you do not repreat the remark.
But if the book is good, is about something that you know, and is truly written and reading it over you see that this is so you can let the boys yip and the noise will have that pleasant sound coyotes make on a very cold night when they are out in the snow and you are in your own cabin that you have built or paid for with your work."

Poetry and Prose...

"The next day"

Sincere exhaled laughter screaming from tree branches
lived in by sparrows
not anymore by crows

the sky is lighter, the unwoven streets less rough
with edges softened of padded concrete

tolerable days arrive once again
anger has subsided making way
for joy
I may spring for the expensive booze
this time

an asphyxiated feeling

even if short-lived.

I hope not
I have to hope not

A Great Opportunity Has Come My Way...

As an aspiring writer whose words mostly cling to the back of napkins and beer-stained notebooks, yet wish to write for a magazine or newspaper, it is always something to shout about when your pain-staking sentences see the light of day, up from the pitch-darkened "Office Space" basements while still holding on to your stapler. I have just gotten that opportunity, another baby-step closer towards a desk with walls. I will be a reader blogger for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer online at seattlepi.com. I will be writing about my neighborhood and the many musical and literary happenings that go on around there. I am very excited.

Do not fret as I will still have my "15 Minutes." I will post a link on here to my P.I. blog when I am off and running so feel free to check it out.

Poetry and Prose...

"Future"

Laying down my head
on a slab of concrete pillows
still and
motionless

with fear and anger
blistering in the sun of
a thousand fireflies surrounding
the clouded air.

All alone.

dreaded anger lingers the mind
where do I turn, who do I
turn to?

The beer bottle is my genie bottle.
suffocated breaths as I take gulp by gulp
I stare drunk eyed at the emptied demon rum

"Where are my three wishes"?

Charles Bukowski Mondays

found poems

By Charles Bukowski

I know I shouldn't write so many poems
but
it's a form of self-entertainment which
AMAZINGLY
I am paid for.
I live alone in this large house with 2
cats (there were 3, one died)
and at a my age it's realistic to assume that
I might also die
one of these a.m. nights
after writing 10 or 12 poems
and that's where the laugh
comes in:
before I bed down I place the new
poems
neatly in the center of my desk so that
when the stink gets bad
and the neighbors complain or
when my girlfriend phones and the phone goes
unanswered

the poems will be found.
not that my death will be tragic or
important

(I will be out of
here)

but the poems themselves will
let them know

(those carping little
critics)

that I was good until the end
or maybe even
better.

The Elephants Hate Democracy

I will return to Nostalgia Friday next week-or possibly later- but I wanted to take this time to discuss politics, particularly Alaskan politicking. I know, I know, the word "Politics" is in the same breath as four-letter bad words, underneath the same mushroom cloud as watching an explicit sex-scene at a movie theater with your parents or grandparents... its uncomfortable. Yet, I feel it necessary to bite the bullet, power through and well, just get it over with and out there in the open.

I am an Alaskan. I may not live there anymore but I was born and raised so I believe I still have some say and sway in being a true Alaskan-ite and listening to what goes on up there within the forty-ninth state. I have to confess that since the unveiling of Sarah Palin during the 2008 presidential election, I cringe every time I tell others where I am originally from. In the eloquent words of Seth Rogan discussing Paris Hilton from his 2008 film 'Zack and Miri,'"...And I'm pretty sure she's legally retarded." I think that also can be said about the Alaskan Governor.
That being said, I am fed up with what I've heard lately from Sarah Palin and the holier than thou Republicans wanting Democrat Mark Begich to resign after learning that Ted Stevens, a long-time and disgraced Republican, was set free by the Obama Justice Department. As DailyKos.com, a left-wing blog, asked in the link below,"Why do we hold elections anymore?":

"The Alaska Republican Party is calling on Democratic Sen. Mark Begich to resign his first-term post as senator, one day after Attorney General Eric Holder cleared former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens of felony charges Wednesday...
The Alaska Republican Party...believes that current Senator Mark Begich should resign his position to allow for a new, special election, so Alaskans may have the chance to vote for a senator without the improper influence of the corrupt Department of Justice," the Alaska Republican Party's Web site states.

Yet, the felony charges were billed on the Republicans watch:

"The entire investigation into Ted Stevens' lawbreaking was conducted by a Republican Justice Department. And naturally enough, the Bush DOJ managed to screw up the investigation. Given that virtually everything the Bushies touched turned to suck, this is no surprise to anyone.

Now, I may be wrong on this and I have yet to see or hear any progress or change from Mark Begich, but isn't he or was a "Conservadem"? A Democrat who is actually siding with the Republicans at times? One of the few Democrats' who have been leaning to the Right on certain policies? But he is a Democrat who was elected legitimately. Why then, are the Alaskan Elephants getting their panties in a bunch? I wonder..
Sarah Palin and the Elephants are not the brightest bulbs in the light store. As the Daily Kos article reads, It was Palin who called for Ted Stevens' head when the allegations and indictments were brought, and now she has flip-flopped once again calling for a special election.

Apparently, the Elephants hate Democracy. From Alaska, to Minnesota-Where Norm Coleman has lost to another celebrity turned politician- and on their way into Washington D.C. The elections and the Democratic wins were legitimate. Get over it.

No wonder John McCain does not plan on supporting Palin in 2012 or 2016.
__________
*Update*
As this story picks up pace and confuses the media; Countdown with Keith Olbermann's guest host David Shuster tonight interviewed Margaret Carlson from Bloomberg News regarding the situation and Rachel Maddow even mentioned it. It seems as though the GOP (Grand Obstructionist Party) has been at it again. While it is absolutely clear that corruption did occur by Ted Stevens, the Obama DOJ did what had to be done because of the Bushian screw-ups. Yet, the Alaskan Elephants believe that Stevens should be part of a new election for some odd reason.

What did we talk about before Alaskan politics were revealed?


http://thinkprogress.org/2009/04/02/palin-begich-stevens/

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/4/3/716141/-Republicans-Hate-Democracy,-Episode-532

Poetry and Prose...

"Normal"

Normality opens the mind
severs the body
soils the soul

Blurred vision viewing cannons
spewing dust in spurts
Normalcy is a disease

Hording the inner workings of
the machine
a disease conscious

contagious

live crazy.

Poetry and Prose...

"Improvisation"

Coming out swinging like antlers
on parade
Muscling its way through
the crowd

Booze Hounds, Run Downs
Whores
All were surrounded by light
Nothing comes, nothing goes

The Whore
She sure came deep throating
The Run Down
Hounds with booze in their
Hands