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Bird's Blog

Poetry, musings, observations, commentary, rants, confessions...and who knows what else!

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Location: San Francisco Bay Area

Teacher, writer, poet, grandmother, lover, wine-drinker, chocolate eater, beach comber, hiker, traveler, Giants fan, San Franciscan. All work on this blog is copyrighted material.

Saturday, April 05, 2008

What Happens When Your Head is in Poetry

I spent the evening reading poetry:
Charles Bukowski, Jack McCarthy, Jr., Bob Holman.
Not your typical elitist crowd.

Spent the evening reading poetry
as I rode Muni to and from the pizza parlor
where I drank beer
and listened to old timers
pluck words from their mouths
and spit them in the air.

Where I drank beer
and listened to their words
plunge, tumble,
execute loopy-de-loops
and linguistically musical
feats of aerial prowess.

Where I drank beer
and watched
one old timer, a thin man
with a cane and glasses
a black hat dusted with city soot and soil
from the streets
on his head.

An old timer
with black leathery skin
and long, slender fingers
tracing the staccato pattern of his words
in the air.

I want to kiss those hands
suck those fingers
for they are as mercurial
as compelling
as his words.

I would like to take that old timer
into my bed
feel the heat from his old street poet’s shanks and marred back
feel the calluses of his hands
penetrate my white skin
seep through my pores
and bones and blood
and sinew and turn my words
into rich, dark-red glutinous plasma
like his.

Instead

I come home and write:

I want to be a
hard-drinking
steady-fucking woman
who doesn’t care
if anyone calls her
whore
slut
cunt.
I’d smile and say
yes, that’s what makes my words
taste of my own juice
still succulent
still savory
after all these years.

Truth is
alcohol sucks a woman dry
so I won’t drink so much.
but I’ll still fuck.

14 Comments:

Blogger Jack K. said...

WOW!!! bird

As a friend of mine once said, "Beautiful. Fucking beautiful."

Yeah. Watch how much you drink. Fucking while drunk isn't as much fun as some would lead you to believe.

Thanks for sharing.

April 06, 2008 10:13 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

haha jack - but remember - poetry, even when based on real-life experience - is fiction. i write based on observation and exaggerated personal experience and then fictionalize it - I ain't running around fucking drunk on a continual basis (yet), though i have been fucking drunk and i have fucked while drunk - hahahaha!

gotta love that f-word. one form - multiple functions.

bird's in a crude mood - SQUAWK!

flap/flap/flap

April 06, 2008 10:21 AM  
Blogger Jack K. said...

This dude
Even in a crude mood
Refuses to be rude.

The poem is still fuckin' beautiful.

Poetry gives substance to ethereal what-ifs. Or some such shit.

Keep on truckin' bird. Or at least the flap, flap, shwoosh version.

snerx.

As for my own experience with drinking and fucking, my fingers are sealed. I shall not type one word about that it this time or place. tee hee snerx.

Love ya, kid.

April 07, 2008 3:39 AM  
Blogger CJ said...

What? No blow job??

April 07, 2008 7:49 AM  
Blogger boneman said...

dang....
If I was on that coast instead of in the middle of nowhere, I'da come over with a very little of some Crown Royal and give you a massage, carress your troubles away with warm kisses and nibbles.

Well, at least that's what I always think...
Probably drop the bottle on the way over, and despite that I haven't had a drink of liquor since 1990, some cop would see me, down on the ground cleaning up the mess (hey, I'm like that. Make a mess, clean it up) but te cop would, of course, assume I'm drunk, taser my butt and toss me into jail.
You'de get pist about it and call off the wedding....

(WEDDING?!?)

We'de tell the kids when I got out of jail....

(KIDS!?!?!)

geez. all ya wanted was a lil fun.... Got condoms in the drawer.

April 07, 2008 10:42 PM  
Blogger Polly said...

OHHH wow!

April 07, 2008 11:22 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

ok darlins, get past the physical sex thing here and read a bit deeper - hahaha!

what does the poem have to say about the relationship between sexuality and poetry? between desire and words?
about where creative power comes from?

is it possible that the sex stuff acts as a metaphor?

uh-oh - now i am tearing the poem apart and acting like an english teacher. somebody give this bird a drink - hahaha!

and boneman my dear - i WOULD bail you out of jail.

April 08, 2008 7:38 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

you're my kinda woman, G.
Good lord, you are : )
-Fredd

April 08, 2008 7:28 PM  
Blogger ThursdayNext said...

Ok that last stanza is brilliant...I love this. Fucking love it.

April 09, 2008 6:23 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

greetings to all:
cj - what the heck are you up to? polly - wowsers back at you.
jack - as always - snerx!
boneman - i've yet to get batteries for my camera.
bogs - nice of you to visit - anything new up at your place? fredd, what can i say?
td, that is incredibly high praise - thank you! (that last stanza is perfect - i'm revising the rest.)

flap/flap/flap

April 10, 2008 7:49 AM  
Blogger boneman said...

OK, no overnighter in the locals bars, eh? Actually, I had heard that there is a really progressive prisoner program there, based in the city somewhere. Where crooks can make a clean start for themselves.

I heard that's how Arnold got in.
Actors, politicians, mox nix.
crooks all.

ah, whatcha gonna do?
Go feed the seals down at the docks, I reckon.

April 10, 2008 9:53 PM  
Blogger boneman said...

....got cute videos?

OK, one's right at the top of grabbing the Bull and, after you see my great niece, there's a link at the top of the side bar, "when the tv's broken" and there's a great one there that'll give you the giggles.

April 12, 2008 9:04 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

ha ha ha!

good one, bird!

¤ ¤ ¤

/t.

April 13, 2008 8:39 AM  
Blogger boneman said...

the intent was more important than the structure...

rhyme in poetry is sometimes expected, but those haikus over at Sparrow's on Wednesdays, three lines, five syllables, seven syllables, five syllables....has a minimalizing effect on my art.

trimming down the excess for the intent.

Like your poem.
I may be missing it, that's a given, but everytime I come back to read it, I come to
"I want to be...."
and it whispers
"but I haven't...."

and then from what little I know, and here in Indiana teachers don't have an easay go at it, y'gotta be dedicated to what you do and your craft is honed as such.
So? Do I take that into account? I want to be
is a goal you answered,
you teach.
No small accomplishment.
(tell me if I'm reading too much into this, but then, you threw out the "dig deeper gauntlet" eh?)
If you wanted to be "a hard-drinking steady fucking woman who doesn't care...." then you'de be a hard-drinking steady-fucking woman who doesn't care.
Maybe.
Then again, 'hard-drinking, steady-fucking women who don't care' generally don't live as long and healthy as school marms.

(That's three times. And I don't remember usin "it" three times since I started blogging.
Dang!
Folk'll think I'm crude. Rude. brain screwed. lewd. ....but then, the closest I like goin is to stop the folks on a word such as fukt.

Now, tha's not a word.
Though I've been erased for using it.
well, the irony is that that's fukt.
oh well.

Getting back on course, however, is that the openning doesn't give way to say WHO wrote the piece.


"I spent the evening reading poetry:
Charles Bukowski, Jack McCarthy, Jr., Bob Holman.
Not your typical elitist crowd.

Spent the evening reading poetry"
so, when the allusion to anything woman, or sucking some guy's fingers...well.
there's conflict without resolve.
Metaphore or no, it paints pictures..like a stream of thoughts turned into color echoes.
But the image of the woman is stronger than the image of the three guys(?)
and, drunk or not, a prettier picture.

So, forgive my unsophistication, and I'll be along, now.
This is already too long for a casual visit.

April 14, 2008 9:54 PM  

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