Wednesday, April 28, 2010

For My Father, On His 61st Birthday

Wayne
was given his breath down there, deep and snug in the heart of the thing
maybe someplace where it meets the stew
around the border of the gut
right along the dotted line
Wayne
loved that whole deal
despite the heavy temper he had to dodge.
Squeezed between all the women
all the girls, he stretched his sleeves
over his hands
and learned to take the quietest steps.
he crossed the creaking floorboards
and walked down the stairs.
He tiptoed through whatever it was
that bothered
whatever it was that crashed old cars
into trees
or other old cars.

Wayne
caught cowhide and pigskin
in dirt-smeared fingers that held it all tight
like detasseling corn
or like he never wanted anybody to ever leave.
Wayne
found his new religion and the strength in his legs
under the skin of a cold body of water
found how great his arms could hug
along the steel rails and ties
along the green rows and mosquitos
under the insistence of a hot star who puts its palms
on us all.

Wayne
saw more.
Africa and Central America
Wayne
watched the bad cells gallop with weapons
down the fragile corridors of whole families, painting
the walls ugly and punching holes
watched the helicopters disappear behind treetops, smoking
watched in confusion as lots of things just went plain wrong.
Wayne
made up his mind about war
and blood
and the things a person owes to the living
and the not-so.

Wayne
makes up his mind about these things and others
every day
year in and year out.

Dad
gave us these things.
The baseball and the football and the pond
and the railroad and the sun and the piano
and the clarinet.
Dad
sees his sons and smiles.
Dad
gives us these things every day
year in and year out.

Wayne laughs and holds us like he never wants anybody to ever leave.
We won't, Dad.
We won't ever leave.


...
i'm a day late getting this posted. 61 years ago, yesterday, my father - Wayne Arthur Sell - was born. Happy Birthday, Dad.
-andy

Thursday, April 22, 2010

A Good Cast Deserves Repeating

Last night, I dreamt that I was
a United Artist
and everyone in the breezy gazebo
and everyone on the liberal terrace
and everyone near the ice sculpture swan
including Fairbanks and Flynn
tipped hats and raised glasses to me
perhaps mistaking me for a Nihilist fresh out of UFA
or imported from Svensk
and Lon Chaney gave me a conical cap
and Valentino gave me a sabre in need of sharpening
and Harold Lloyd taught me how to take a fall
Gish, Bow and Pickford
all professed their undying love for me
but declared their leading men jealous rivals
with no patience for co-players, famous or otherwise
or Europeans.
So i flared my nostrils on fish-hooks,
leaped from a balcony to swing from a crystal chandelier
and crashed through the elaborately set dining room table
rotating just before impact
to displace the blow
but they were not impressed
and would not lean in for a kiss to melt an Audience
of a Nation.
D.W. proposed a toast to my Apathy
but i, ashamed, refused to drink to it.
Otto Preminger and G.W. Pabst offered me work
but i declined.
Frank Capra wrote some clever jokes with which to woo
on a cocktail napkin
but he tore them up when i confessed that i could not pay
or give him credit.
He over-tipped the waiter and we were friends.
Fatty Arbuckle loudly announced that he knew plenty
of nice girls who would accompany me to a hotel room
for a few hours
but grew disgusted and left when i used the word "love."
And when the roaring engine of William Wellman's wings
stole the crowd's attention away, i knew the end of a good evening
had arrived, and was bitter.
Surely enough, i was instructed not to talk or to sing
or to dance or to reference myself
(earlier in the evening, they'd lynched Vertov for that very offense).

I was only to watch.

And Murnau told me i'd never work in this town again
when i asked where Sergei was
and i went home, escorted by a Lumiere brother on each arm
to eat popcorn and play my organ
in a dark room
with lights on the floor

And Melies came over in search of a shoulder to cry on.

...
wrote that one about eight years ago, give or take. the TCM Classic Film Festival starts in Hollywood today, and i thought this a fitting invocation.
-andy

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Said I Should Swallow It All

the clown told me i should stop writing about death
he said love stories were the new thing, the way of the future
i laughed, said tomorrow ain't been penned yet
he laughed harder, all "exactly, because
you've been too worried about the suicides and murders
and accidents n shit."
i told him i didn't want to talk about it anymore
the clown said he couldn't hear me anyway
said my mouth was too full of bullets
said i was stuffing em in there faster'n i could
spit em out.

the clown told me i should just swallow it all
let my tummy hurt for a while
take a shit
move in with the future
eat it out
buy it a ring
said i should get on this with this motherfucker
already

i told the clown i didn't appreciate his familiarity
but that i'd think about his things anyway
said sometimes the death poems are really about love
more than the death shit
said i had some places to be.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

[a few from the old first notebook]

"Carlo"

A.
A man holds all his hope in a bottle
in his hand, standing in the middle
of a street, in the middle of a battle.
In the middle of his chest brews
an ending, beginning with the bottle.

Z.
A man lies in the street, all his hope unfolding
around his head in a crimson halo... dreams drunk
from a hole by asphalt... a pistol-round shell-casing
lies yards away, satisfied with its pop, it's punch
... spit and spent and aspirations still
spilling from the man's face. Face down or face up,
face it, this face-off fakes out fists unthrown.
This is not the final argument. Not all have flown
from this fight. Some still stay. Some still stand,
and all will still scream until this dream finds
something other to sip... something sweeter
than sanguine and Molotov cocktails... some water
perhaps... some blood that stays blue..
Carlo, our comrade... we have still not forgotten.

...

"The Eyes of Czolgosz"

And the cries come from the observation bleachers, "Kill this Anarchist!"
Leon, they may ask why you didn't save a bullet for yourself
but that question never reflected upon itself
in your eyes.
Leon, they may say you murdered an innocent, benevolent,
heaven-sent President
but that statement never had to pay rent while bent
on the knee of a tyrant.
Leon, now your hope's spent and the barrel's gone cold
your throat, dry.
Friends call you "traitor"
Comrades come to your cell to grin closed teeth
like prison bars
and blink tearless eyes like electric chair farewells.
Leon, I feel your gunshot filling my lungs
with every chamber-loading breath.
My heart revolves, my tongue clicks.
Leon, I never doubted you.
Emma and Max and I never doubted you.
Let McKinley be only the beginning
let our cries reload and fire again
and again and again and again and again
and again and again and again and again
and AGAIN!
Let them all fall as we exhale.
Leon, we knew your name was not Nieman.
Leon, your pulse brought us Sacco
and Vanzetti and Durruti and Spain and Paris
and Seattle and Carlo and petrol bombs
and bricks leaving hands
like invocations leaving mouths
bodies leaving feet
feet leaving ground
blood leaving holes punched by
bullets leaving pistols.
Leon, your time is our time
and our time is all time
and all time is now.
Right. Fucking. Now.
Revenge for Valliant, Leon!
Long Live Anarchy, Leon!
Attentat, Leon! Attentat!
Czolgosz! Open Your Eyes!

...

"I Am Talking About Fucking Up Our Sundays"

We turn drums & rotors
tear the fucking tag off this mattress
erase the FBI from this video.

We trouble this square.
Instead of asking,
"Why can't I see pictures in these clouds?"
Like smoke between teeth
fingers between ribs.

We rake the flats of our knife blades
across the bars, like smoke between teeth.
The escape
is in the cafeteria riot.
It is inevitable.
We trouble this square.
We turn drums & rotors.

Because
We drove like a barricade
to protect the schoolbus.
And then another one came.
And we had to get aggressive.

...

"I see you..."

I see you. You see me.
And someone else may see us.
Else may be a wall that
we may, or may not,
bounce a ball off.

...
okay. so, i was looking through my very first notebook for something to use for my next editing experiment post. i figured it would offer the greatest challenge, as it is quite painful for me to look at the stuff i wrote during that period. really. most of it ranges from cringe-inducing to atrociously inexcusable. it is bad writing.

it is crawling at its lowest and most awkward.

however, while trudging around in that poorly-lit sewer, i found a few gems that i'm actually a little proud of, or at least find kinda interesting. "Carlo" is a piece i wrote about Carlo Giuliani, an Italian anarchist who was killed by riot police during the G8 protest on January 19, 2001. it is one of VERY few political poems in that notebook that doesn't obnoxiously or desperately rhyme, and of those, i think it's one of the two most sincere. tied for that honor is "The Eyes of Czolgosz," about McKinley assassin Leon Czolgosz. i had just read Emma Goldman's autobiography, and was very moved by her brief, haunted relationship with that dude. as you can probably tell, i considered myself an anarchist at that time and was very into the militant aspect of the movement and its colorful, often violent history. i think i was maybe more just fascinated with the imagery, dynamism and drama of it all, and i had a strong affinity for tragic figures. i'm still very much a socially liberal dude who thinks the vague tenets of anarchism are a pretty awesome notion, but i understand the limitations and have long since denounced the idea of holding onto isms and specific scopes of belief. and i shouldn't have to offer this disclaimer, but i will, for the cheap seats: NO, i do not believe that political assassination is a viable or practical means of protest in this age of complexity.

Fun Fact: for anyone who may be familiar with the poet Jose Araguz, "The Eyes of Czolgosz" was his favorite of my work while we were in college, even after i started writing better.

those last two are just little things i found in my digging that i think are WAY better than about 99.9% of the actual completed "poems" that beat up, purple Mead composition book holds. a prize to anyone who can tell me where i got the title for that first one. the second is about a weird, term-free relationship i found myself in, long before i realized that "term-free" isn't so much a reality as an excuse.
-andy

Thursday, April 8, 2010

He Straightens His Tie

And he straightens his tie
and adjusts his collar like
he's got X-Ray Vision but wishes
he didn't
like he's made of steel but would
rather know what it feels like
to get cut
just to at least know he's got
some blood swishing around
inside him.
The X-Ray Vision doesn't work
on mirrors
and you can tell he doesn't
listen to Hip Hop
and he probably calls it
"Rap Music" like he doesn't
even know nor care what "rap" means
like he's never actually thought about it
and he doesn't actually consider it to be "music."
He probably calls it "Rap Music" like
he might as well be putting scary pictures
on magazine covers and
knocking over tenements
maybe with people still inside them.

And he thinks this whole
thing he's got going on is
a burden because maybe
he doesn't believe in blessings
at all - mixed, sacred or
otherwise.

And he'll never be the Man of Tomorrow.
No matter how much we need him to be.


...
another sorta recent one.
-andy

Friday, April 2, 2010

All Just the Same to the Chessboard

If it's all just the same to the Chessboard
then it doesn't really matter how many moves it takes
for all the everything you have in your hands
to get took away or tipped over and
sobbed about.
And the kids who say they're pawning you off
at the bar ain't never had to hawk a saxophone
for the five or fifteen minutes it took
to get fixed and then fucked
on the Far Side of a Bum Horse anyway.
All maybe just squawking junkies
without the genius.
So what does it matter
if the Board don't care?
Those Birds ain't never tasted True Blue
so fuck 'em.
Like it's all just the same to Paris
to Kasparov
to the Deepest Color of the Ocean or any simple sea
named after Whoever
where there's all that swimming and
all that sinking.
Where there's all those moves without
any fucker or computer keeping count
no clock to slap
aside from the sandy bottom you hit
or the crisp surface you break
or the reef that scrapes blood from your belly
to stink up the whole place and get it crazy
like it's all the just the same to space


...
decided to combat all that old with a little new. this is my most recent piece. i wrote it in a mad dash the other night at a bar (4100 in Silver Lake, to be precise) after a day of junk food and beer and whiskey with my brother and some friends. Not sure if any of that's relevant, but full disclosure seems to fit the theme of the poem, i suppose. so, in that spirit: we also went to Cha Cha Lounge and had Hungry Howie's pizza for lunch. and played Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 on the xbox. i mostly alternated between Thor and Luke Cage.

-andy