....From The Tree Of......................The Ranting Critic
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_______________________________________________________ For those visiting from Anarchy, CLICK HERE. And Some Are Made Wizened Raisin Woman, striped veil framed a face like a winter's end potato from the dark part of the cellar; soul like pitch. Decrier of the only means of amelioration the poor have for their poverty, the ability to control the size of families, old witch- whose black eyes twinkled onyx mischief, all of India fooled by kissing lepers. Few knew privately, she took her own diseases to the Mayo milked the rich- posed winningly for UPI and when she died, new saint, not incorruptible, she darkened. Turned purple- black, the plum of the Church, which hastily got her into ground, so they could raise her up again, our newest travesty, our Press be praised. All now bend their knees and wait a second miracle; the first was medical science, but it played well. When Santa's Sober That they don't see a dichotomy's the thing that really bothers me- Christmas in this culture isn't life, it's death. Now wrap that up and stick it under the tree with a big, red bow, and I'll tell you why I'm cynical- to give what can be bought is not a gift but can be a bribe and peace on earth -that ride took off long time ago. Christmas 2002 In this land of bright consumables, where everything lights or whirs or runs on batteries, where we all relate to equipment, plastic housed and slimmed-down chic more smoothly than to people, sending emailed love to those who've made our lists and dream a Lexus in garages most of all- -in this land of walking dead where several thousand of us died inside two towers because portions of the family of man take serious issue with our hedonistic lifestyle, let us celebrate our glitter. Deck our houses and our malls, forgetting many more will doubtless give their lives in the coming year pursuing George's war- so oil will flow like milk and honey and two percent of us will get the Eden they desire with more mint Lexi in their six-capacity garages, children safely ensconced at Harvard or at Yale - on a military deferment. Let the Pollacks and Hispanics or those charming Southern boys -looking strack, crew-cutted- freshly trained at Camp Lejune do all the killing. Fight in deserts, hark the fucking herald angels sing. I've Given Up Looking For Yeats Thoughts of genitalia, thoughts of stitching things with needle and thread to genitals, slipping the needle through and pulling, tugging this event, that memory, this childhood tree outside a window or a run through park in fall, or a missed alarm the first morning of the school year to flutterings and lubricated flesh- the beat of a base connection is a repetitive, facile, ugly way to wend a poem- going to ground the way most of them do to the lowest rung; like parties winding down with only two left in the mess of dirty plates and stale, cigarette air so they hump each other- when possibilities of where the scene could go are endless in the human repertoire of clumsiness and yearning -to rise above the offal once, just once- yet come, again and again to stuttered, fumbling, easy erection- rape, the first hand job first oral, first time you saw a breast, to make the whole of our existence into a footnote- "I responded then from the waist down. I will mention this; perk up. These are the lines the ones you look for- I won't disappoint so pay attention..." Watch how poets can scarcely wait to throw a boner on the fire and frankly, when I see it, I don't care to read another line. It's true: there is only one long poem- and somewhere in the crying and discovery and heartache there'll be interspersed the same, trite tired old taw driness you never have to reach for; modern poetry is the graffiti of the subconscious. Blurts of anything, anytime- that all is sacred and because we believe this, nothing is. Recycled bits of this and that with plenty of sexual payload pound for Pound. Friday Night Irritation Barbara Walters, don't be sitting there in pink and privilege, skin as pulled as taffy, laugh lines somewhere behind your ears, post menopausal hair teased into see-through, waving Cartier fingers nails like lacquered cocaine spoons that never saw a dishrag- eyes lopsided from too many surgeon visits like a Modigliani in Armani, don't you sit there with that mannequin man-prop on your right, and clutch your hundred-dollar padded-brassiere breasts and squeeze a tear or two, well-practiced, brown eyes swimming with nary an overflow to do a decent 'Tammy Baker'. Faker. What do you know of welfare mothers? When's the last time your man called you a ho and made you go and earn a pipe, you stink of the ladder you climbed up on, lady- when's the lahst time you didn't use the gilded lahdder of fame to get you pahst the wough stuff? That Old Man, he come for you too; you will have to dance his tune called 'Bone Pay' -honey, we all do -and tell your boy John Stossel he's a fossil, no matter how many vats of hairdye he is dipped into he's gettin kinda creepy lookin... Jarring But Predictable Sex sells hell's bells to convents I'll just bet- it's so gooey; sticks to the bottoms of nuns' shoes, sticks to everything like last night reading NYQ, for every poem written about a memory of failure, or the way the light can turn to chanteuse smooth, there's 3 molests, 2 handjobs, and a gouting this or that- oh i'm not prudish but I have to tell ya, life's a little more than rubbing membranes- or at least when we write of sex- (that admittedly sells) let's not toss it in with grandma's deep blue eyes or how the Ellis Island sky in sepia photographs of grainy babuska'd hopefuls standing lost and lead beneath it scratched inside the heart like needles--- ................"then she ................blew me." -let's not do that. In Between I am a crack lady. Not the drug, I mean the place between the others. The dark drop into nothing where the bugs breed- I'm not bigger than life. I am not black. I am no Angelou- I have no beaten voice to rise above the furor like a full moon- I am without cachet. I am a white woman, middle-aged and slow to process; steeping, rather than hurling proclamations of my race or youth- sometimes the young ones use their nipples to write- I cannot do that. On a keyboard, I'm the cracks between the notes, I'm not high C I know beginnings, ends. I know where one thing starts, another bends, I have a heart that's used to narrow spaces and I know what falls from edges finds me nesting there. I am the thin, half-in half-out, who's been around. I am the shell sound in the ear that's brown with 'empty' yet full of other ones, remember I'm the one you'll come to when the world is cracking. Being pulled and living in the middle, cracks are what I understand; they don't scare me they are this face, this body, this personal history, but do not make the mistake of thinking in this carapace you'd never find the burning, like a can of Heet, under this ancient bridge of life where I can, troll-like, ask a toll- if only for old time's sake. his nature anders always wants an answer as to who he is, how is he writing -is it poetry? anders panders everything: his women, his opinions, his howling baby-with-the-empty-bottle greedy self then tries to say it's 'luv'- the 60's version drugs and thugs, with basho/buddha for his mascots -he's a net whore, nothing more a poet who does not edit- either his life, or what he flings down on the page; it's merely typing. lack of discipline creates a bored, bombarded audience, until the ones who are left are simply ..........m i r r o r s.......... ..........s r o r r i m .............................it's no wonder he seeks opinions. there is no healthy balance in a cult- he is the poet's .............................Reverend .............................Moon. Lords Of Acid Berryman walked with angry back, bones all tense with the job of keeping them knit together. Rumpled suit, glasses stuck there on his face like someone's Mr. Potatohead who scratched and scratched out brilliance. A doomed man. Lived with teeth clenched. Made himself unreachable, longing to be touched as only the truly angry do, and what he loved he was also pitted against: women, words would torture him until he hit the rocks. Another writer says he hates him. How can you hate a falling star? The other man wonders why John Berryman was Berryman, why not him? Biggest thing is, one was consumed with fire the other one plays with matches. Where one is howl, the other's mewl. There is no duel as far as I'm concerned. Where one man dapples, the other drowned- in a ring with twenty possible rounds, the flyweight up against a heavy, flyweight always loses. Acid tongues, but one is retin A, the other, hydrochloric -yet euphoric in despair so that despite the dark, we're exultant to be dancing, dying things. It makes it more important to be here, and then more serious to be gone- that's what an artist does - and what a hack can never hope to; Berryman was the lord of lost faith, his fiefdom was the world far from the backyard barbeque, where angst is like a shuttlecock, badmintoned back and forth and bandied neatly- why, it tore old John apart- his pieces, ours now- thank you, Mr. Bones. Gut Reaction Here I sit, my ass nailed to a chair, my feet spiked to the floor and past my eyes come poems poems words put down by people I've never seen and never will, but still I feel my rage respond or choler rise up mostly when the words are bullshit, riding shockwaves shown to work before by some other asshole; I can tell the difference between what is a piece of a life and what it cost to write it out and what is nothing more than random calculation experimentation, to get knee jerk comment, sympathy or "yes, i know's"- so if you're writing -even if not first person make it true or for God's sake take it to the fairies, dykes and druggies who'll take anything that's revelatory, even lies, no maybe lies are mostly what they feed on- good writers have no use for such bald artifice. On To Page 3 .............. Return To Contents This site sponsered by 
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