POETRY: Gods

Here are some poems I've written recently...I hope you enjoy them:


The Skin On My Side

The skin on my side
Is soft like newborn flesh,
And quiet as the new snow,
Lost in the woods.

It feels the air move across it
Playfully, each atom touching down
For an instant, and then
Laughing away.

It feels the sun lay
Mothering hands upon it,
And wonders at her warm touch
As she smiles gently on.



The Gathering Storm

This music sounds like love;
Like the soft tide rising green to our necks,
And the yearning, which you expect will soon diminish;
It sounds like the unfurling of serenity,
And the black discord.

I hear our dread of what comes next,
As we turn our windblown faces to the future,
Your eyes lit despite the gathering storm. 



Carnival

Here I am, light and fun;
Does my hair look okay?
I don't trust your judgment --
I heard someone shout my name.
Did you make a decision yet?
I think I could get a thought,
Or a spot in a stranger's fantasy;
What am I offering?
A night like cotton candy.

THEATRE: August Wilson Interview

"I try to explore, in terms of the life I know best, those things which are common to all cultures." - August Wilson

When I was in college, we watched this interview with the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson, after reading his play Gem of the Ocean. For those who don't know, Wilson wrote a cycle of ten plays set in the 20th Century, each one depicting the experience of African-Americans in a given decade. The most famous of these plays is Fences, which takes place in the 1950s.

Even if you're not familiar with August Wilson's work, this interview is still worth watching. Bill Moyers and he discuss a lot of interesting topics, particularly with regard to race in America.

Click here to watch the interview, which runs about half an hour. And if, when you finish, you find yourself wanting some more Moyers, I would also recommend his series of interviews with Joseph Campbell, the first of which is available here.

POETRY: "Candlebird" by Don Paterson

I do not read a great deal of contemporary poetry. This is not to say that it's not worth reading; in fact the more I read the more I find to like about it. But when you only have so much time to yourself, you tend to want to read the classics.

But I am glad that I was assigned Don Paterson's book of poetry The White Lie in college, because it is very good, and I really love this poem. The note on the title is the poet's own, the other note is mine. And all I know about Abbas Ibn Al-Ahnaf is that he was a poet, and that Mr. Patterson must have read some of his work.



Candlebird*
after Abbas Ibn Al-Ahnaf, c. 750

If, tonight, she scorns me for my song,
You may be sure of this: within the year
Another man will say this verse to her
And she will yield to him for its sad sweetness.

'"Then I am like the candlebird,"' he'll continue,
After explaining what a candlebird is,
'"Whose lifeless eyes see nothing and see all,
Lighting their small room with my burning tongue;

His shadow rears above hers on the wall
As hour by hour, I pass into the air."
Take my hand. Now tell me: flesh or tallow?*
Which I am tonight, I leave to you.'

So take my hand and tell me, flesh or tallow.
Which man I am tonight I leave to you.


*Generic name for several species of seabird, the flesh of which is so saturated in oil the whole bird can be threaded with a wick and burnt entire.

*tallow: the white nearly tasteless solid rendered fat of cattle and sheep used chiefly in soap, candles, and lubricants




I like how this poem speaks to the fickle nature of love and lust. It touches on a truth about love that we all learn as adults: that sometimes who you are or what you do is not as important as when you meet a given person. This can be discouraging and also frustrating, particularly to young men, who are more likely to be caught up in one-sided infatuation. And maybe it's just me, but I like how the "verse" in question (what we might call a pick-up line more colloquially), is just a tad sleazy. Again, it speaks to how if you catch a woman on the right night, you might just be able to get her into bed with a really sleazy line.

The speaker's imagined rival comes across as less genuine than he somehow, which I think is how all young men imagine their rivals. While the rival would use the same line on the same woman and it would work, it is the speaker who really means it and believes it. Of course, maybe he doesn't. After all, this whole imagined scenario ultimately adds up to a longer and more complex pick-up attempt in the last two lines. The only question is, is it done cynically or is the speaker so lovesick that he actually believes what he is saying? I tend to think it's the latter, because that is the best way to account for the melodrama of the poem.

MUSIC: New Order & Pet Shop Boys - Songs with "Disco" in the title

I listen to these bands a lot, and I suddenly felt compelled to share these two songs:

"Mr. Disco" by New Order



"Heart (Disco Mix)" by Pet Shop Boys

MOVIE REVIEW: Hobo with a Shotgun

So yesterday, I watched Hobo with a Shotgun.

If you're not familiar with this movie, I don't know if I can impress upon you how absurd it is. But if you can imagine the hyper-violence and grindhouse nostalgia of Tarantino, combined with the disorientation and paranoia of Terry Gilliam, topped off with just a dash of the wanton silliness and cult appeal of Napoleon Dynamite, you are on your way to getting a sense of what Hobo with a Shotgun has in store.

The clearest comparison is to Machete, another "intentional b-movie" that evolved from Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's Grindhouse project. However, I found Hobo to be much more enjoyable than Machete.

But the point is that this is a particular type of movie, and it's going to get drastically different reactions from different people. This is the type of movie where people are murdered with ice skates, and a pedophile dressed as Santa Claus roams the streets looking for victims. The world of Hobo with a Shotgun is a twisted version of our own -- a dystopia where there are no concepts of decency or right and wrong. This world is ruled over by a gangster named The Drake. Now it's never explained who The Drake is, or exactly how he came to power. All we know is that he's a big bully who rules through fear, and that's all we need to know to make it clear that the city is in need of a hero to stand up to him and his two sons, Slick and Ivan.

All of the performances in the film are actually quite good, but I have to say that Gregory Smith and Nick Bateman are especially good in the roles of Slick and Ivan. When your role is essentially to play a sociopathic version of Biff from Back to the Future (complete with Harrington jacket), you basically just have to bring a lot of enthusiasm and have fun with the part, which both Smith and Bateman do. Without giving away any of their crazy antics, I will say that they are unbelievably sadistic and completely irredeemable, and I enjoyed every minute that they were on screen.

But the movie is built in large part around its tone, which means it's really a director's movie, with the actors merely pitching in a bit to support the vision. Jason Eisener is a first-time director, and he acquits himself admirably. While the movie drags at parts and is ultimately overlong, I found myself unexpectedly refreshed by the way in which it rarely, if ever, winks at the audience or otherwise breaks the fourth wall. While Hobo is intentionally "bad," it never lets on that it's in on the joke. It plays as a glimpse into a bizarre parallel universe, and whatever laughs it earns derive from absurd characters being themselves.

And that's really the main question you need to ask yourself if you are considering seeing this film: Does this sound like a world you want a peek into? If you think it might be, I would recommend Hobo with a Shotgun. It lives up to the absurdity of its title and then some. I give it a 7.5 (out of 10).

MUSIC: Ricky Nelson

The music our parents listen to can't help but have an impact on us. We are exposed to it when we are young and impressionable, and, just as certain childhood memories remain fresh in our minds for our entire lives, so too does the music that we heard when we were young.

I have many memories of spending time at my family's country house in the Thimble Islands during the summers of my youth. And while my father was working around the house, he would often play the music of The Beach Boys, Elvis Presley, and Ricky Nelson.

While everyone has heard the songs of The Beach Boys and Elvis Presley, I get the impression that the music of Ricky Nelson is a little less known to Gen Y. So if this is your first time hearing these three songs, I hope you enjoy them. I find that they have an uncanny ability to transport the listener back to the time when they were recorded (these songs are all from the late '50s and early '60s, although Ricky Nelson was active as a musician into the '70s and '80s), much like the music of Elvis. However, the boyish quality of Ricky's vocals lends the songs an innocence and an earnestness that I don't find in most of Elvis' music. Some might call it saccharine, and I might agree with them, if I didn't enjoy it so much.

Poor Little Fool (1958) - Maybe the best-known of the three I've picked out.



Hello Mary Lou (1961) - This song always makes me smile.



Travelin' Man (1961) - Ricky somehow manages to make sleeping with random women around the world seem totally innocent.

MUSIC: "Clown Jesus" by Gods

Clown Jesus has arrived...and only one day late.

Clown Jesus by Gods 5:30

MUSIC: "Peein' in the Toilet" by Gods

New track by Gods (that's me). Expect a post containing all of my recent songs soon.

Peein in the Toilet by Gods 5:30