Christ, the Superstar spread out on his Cross

        

         Afer the Holy Sonnets

 

A blond girl looks at me from her pew.

Her lips are pink and full. 

Her mother sits next to her:

a wizened, bronze creature.

Her daughter kicks her legs

in tempo to the sermon.  She snaps

her purse open and shut.  She taps

the floor with her heel.

Her mother places a steel

hand across her knees to halt

her kicks. The daughter looks up

at Christ spread out on his Cross

and crosses her flat chest

with one hand.  She bends

to kiss her crucifix. Her lips are juice. 

Christ hangs around her neck

in chains.  Her toes extrude

from splitting sandals.  She spits

into her hands and rubs

the salvia around her palms,

until they’re sticky and wet. 

She clutches her thighs beneath

her white frock and irons

her legs with a salty hand,

as if nursing a cramp.  “Settle down.”

Her mother snaps and looks at me.

Her eyes are battered in mascara.

The rouge has gouged the pink

from her tighter cheeks.  Her

pecan breasts indicate a milk-boiling

post pregnancy or a direct scalpel:

uplifting, enlightening, erecting.

Christ, the superstar pauses on his cross.

The mother leans over to whisper

to her daughter, exhibiting

a pigment spotted wrist

Her daughters’ wrists are boneless.  

After church

her daughter blows my daughter a kiss.

 

Christ, our white blue-eyed cross-burner

stares at us on Sunday

from his spread-eagled pose.

As skinny as father without his clothes.

As blind as mother with her new nose.

 

© 1998-1999

 

 

I wrote this poem at Florida State.  I wrote this poem in the middle of the night, and tinkered with it on off for about year. 

It’s told from two perspectives, the 1st voice is from the mind of a child molester, or would-be-child-molester who is watching a girl who sits across the pew from him at church on Sunday.  The 2nd voice is from the young girl the child molester is watching while they are attending a church service in Florida.

The last stanza is very Theodore Roethke-esque,  it is a lost ode to him–hidden in the verse.  I hope my Theodore reads this poem in the multi-string universe. 

 

 

After “Harriet and Lizzie”

After “Harriet and Lizzie”

for Robert Lowell

Admit that you looked into my heart before
You were born, Harriet, and I’ll admit
That Mother never wanted me out of her clasp.
The tears I never shed hounded
And drowned her like her liquor.
My old flame, who would guess
I could write a poem for a wife?
I yanked her verbs like hair
That summer I smashed her
Face in my toy car—but believe you this:
I never drowned those kittens
Like Jean said. Harriet, believe your Dad.
Just be glad that you’re a lady.
Don’t read too much, and Harriet, read to yourself.
I’m working this summer at Harvard,
You should see how the students hog
the halls yawning, you never heard
such name dropping, dirtying
the pages with their thumbs, forging
Milton and Donne. Admit it, Harriet,
admit it, admit it, admit it, alright,
I’ll admit it, I was glad to see their parted
patted numbskulls—but Harriet:
Aren’t you glad that you’re a Lady?
The scary bull backed dykes who carry
Their signs across from Harvard Park
Remind me of the linebackers I once dropped.
Lipless, unkissed, brontosaurs,
Tree-trunked, baldheaded, braless.
Lacking everything else
I lost in the last twenty or so years.
I swear my ear is losing it’s ear.
Chalk it up, to the excess lithium
Draining your father’s brain
of epinephrine and dopamine.
My maniacal right’s arm’s a wing.
Admit that you liked my monologues
Seven hours long, at least, admit
Admit that you listened,
to Hitler’s hammer, stutter, stammer,
Caliban’s yowl, Cato’s howl,
Don’t you know by now, Harriet,
How hard it was even to hold you?

© 2001

Temple of Poi 2007 Fire Performance in Union Square

mFireFly Conspiracy

This may amuse me more than others, but this is some footage from the performance on 4/29/2007, live at Union Square. 

It was a pretty cool shot for beginners like us to open the show.  The TRUE HIGHLIGHTS of the show were the experienced pros like Glittergirl, Mike ICON, Shredder, and a Different Kind of Spin. 

A few words on Glitterigirl, aka Isa, SHE IS AWESOME.  She is one of the most interesting people that I have met in years. 

1984

Peter Sellers and Poi and the feudalism of theatre despots

The more Poi I spin the more I think about Peter Sellers.

I have one month to finish my re-write of him, and it’s driving me a little batty.  People at work talk to me, and I can’t concentrate on what they are saying because I am focusing on Peter Sellers.  24 hours of Peter Sellers.

So I spin Poi, I think Poi, I dream Poi.

Funny, people say that theatre in the Bay Area is so much better than theatre in LA and I found out that to be a lie like all the other lies that people tell you. 

I saw an actor friend of mine in the City and we talked about the Bay Area vs. LA and we both agreed.  The Bay Area does not have a thriving theatre scene of artists: it has a clique, composed of tinier cliques, cliques within cliques, demigods, tyrants, desposts, lords of the manor, snitches, asskissers, swindlers, thieves, and liars. 

They’re not trying to “make it” here.  Or make Art.  Theatre is just “something for them to do” for five years before they get married, get a boring ass secretary job, and move on with their lives. 

LA artists are desperate. They moved to LA to make it happen, they risked everything to go there. And that desperation drives their work.

Not like these lazy, egotisical, despots that rule the cliques that break up this area. They are not artists, creating a “scene”. They are stagnant culture-fuckers, pissing in my cup. 

 It’s a sewing circle. A tupperware party.  A soccer-mom convention.

The 11th dimension

In Poi, there is a trick called the “hyperlink”.  This is when you swing your poi together so that knot briefly in mid-air, before you rip them apart eloquently.  It’s quite fancy and right now almost impossible to master. 

This made me think of Laura visiting Peter Sellers, who is stuck on The Goon Show with Spike Milligan for the rest of time infinite.  She visits in the middle of a hyperlink, in one of the infinite parallel universes. I like the word infinite.

Which got me thinking, about poi again, and the split second knot hyperlink move.

Or am I the Goon Show? Am I Laura? And if so, how long have I been Laura? Does Laura always know that she is Laura, or does she think that she is someone else? Is that why she is visiting Peter Sellers? 

Is Peter Sellers possessed by a demon, or is a superfreak, a man without a true “personality”? 

Does Spike Milligan want to kill him because he is possessed by a demon, or does Spike think that it’s all a big joke? 

Do they know they are in a parallel universe?  Does Laura?

Does Laura want to fuck Peter Sellers?  Does Laura want to become Peter Sellers? Does she want to become assimilated?

I am now as 200 plus pages and I still have no conclusions, only questions.

Edit this, bitch.

Lost Goon Show, Part 7

I woke up on the Goon Show.  Spike Milligan was playing his trumpet.  Peter Sellers walked in the room and demanded that I go on a diet.  Bananas nothing but bananas for three weeks.  Spike and Peter can never leave the Goon Show.  They rarely have female guests.  They like to do the female voices.  It’s an easy laugh.  Spike says that he wants to kill Peter Sellers.  He’s quite odd.  I’m not sure that he means it.  Spike is having trouble sleeping.  He is having difficulty writing the next Goon Show.  I told them that the Goon Show has been off the air for over 50 years, but he doesn’t believe me.  He doesn’t ask me any personal questions.  Comics are a self-absorbed lot, I suppose.

Welcome to The Goon Show. We are Infinite.

I woke up on The Goon Show. 

Spike walked in the room with my luggage. He was dressed up like a humpback.  He had an eye-patch and a pillow stuffed under his shirt.  He thinks he’s being funny. I told him that he is dead, or was dead, or would be dead shortly, he got a good laugh out of that. 

“I wish.” he said.