3/31/2006
Incident at Bayou Teche
A water-turkey
plops in:
thirteen mud turtles
bobble.
I Rule
A water-turkey
plops in:
thirteen mud turtles
bobble.
3/28/2006
You might have heard this, but: The Hummingbird's Daughter has won the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Award. Es mucho dinero, it's true, but more important, it means that the panel found my book to be the best book of fiction in the entire Pacific Rim. As they like to say, "from Guam to Mexico." This is, at once, humbling and insanely head-swelling. I am forcing the kids to march around the house chanting: "Dad Rocks! Dad Rocks! Dad Rocks!"
In a further pleasant development, Little,Brown has just ordered a further 5,000 copies of the book to be printed. So, like, dude--that means we're in a second printing before the book is officially released (April 3). Yowza.
Finally, the movie contracts are being engineered in Hollywood, and I'll give you Teresita fans the full lowdown in a couple of days. I swear.
By the way, my beloved wild turkeys are still in da hood, lurking around and peering in sliding glass doors to see what the neighbors are watching. On some days, I think the turkeys are cooler than the writing career stuff. I can't tell which is more proof to my heathen heart that God is stirring.
Dad Rocks--
L
Get Me To the World On Time
In a further pleasant development, Little,Brown has just ordered a further 5,000 copies of the book to be printed. So, like, dude--that means we're in a second printing before the book is officially released (April 3). Yowza.
Finally, the movie contracts are being engineered in Hollywood, and I'll give you Teresita fans the full lowdown in a couple of days. I swear.
By the way, my beloved wild turkeys are still in da hood, lurking around and peering in sliding glass doors to see what the neighbors are watching. On some days, I think the turkeys are cooler than the writing career stuff. I can't tell which is more proof to my heathen heart that God is stirring.
Dad Rocks--
L
3/24/2006
Friday morning. Up early to do a magazine interview. Trying to sound aware when I'm still asleep.
By the way--belay that post below about Sue Myal's Teresita ornaments. They all went in one day! Sorry if you missed them, but maybe if enough people ask her at her website, she might make some more. Otherwise, those of you who got them either by mail order or in the raffles we did at bookstores on the last tour--you have a real collector's item. I know Tony and Pam at Bella Luna Books scored about 25 of them. So if you get the urge, call them at 800-497-4717.
My new friends, the wild turkeys, are still cruising the neighborhood. They are oddly formal in their bearing. Slow and pensive--quite philosophical. And huge. I see them out of the corner of my eye and think: three dobermans! But no, it's my pals.
Hunters I know are salivating, wanting to slaughter them. But they are the saints of the subdivision, and no harm may befall them.
Day before yesterday, they were standing on the corner of Chicago Street, the main drag near my house, looking at the traffic. They looked like the only thing they needed was cups of coffee and some cigars. They'd watch a car go by, then turn to each other and say, "By Gum, wasn't that the new Mustang?"
Leaving for Detroit in a few minutes. My element: driving the monster van full of family with the music blasting. Eric's winter drumline is going to slaughter more rivals in competition.
The official Book Tour Season is about to begin--Anderson's Books in Naperville. April 5. If you're in the area, come see me. The full tour schedule will be going up in increments on the calendar section of the opening page. I hope to see you in Vermont, Massachusetts, DC, Virginia, NY, North Carolina, Georgia, Illinois, Texas, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, Oregon in the coming months.
Talk to you when we get back from Motown.
Gobble, gobble,
DJ Turkeyshizzle Luizzle
Something Cool for Teresita Fans
By the way--belay that post below about Sue Myal's Teresita ornaments. They all went in one day! Sorry if you missed them, but maybe if enough people ask her at her website, she might make some more. Otherwise, those of you who got them either by mail order or in the raffles we did at bookstores on the last tour--you have a real collector's item. I know Tony and Pam at Bella Luna Books scored about 25 of them. So if you get the urge, call them at 800-497-4717.
My new friends, the wild turkeys, are still cruising the neighborhood. They are oddly formal in their bearing. Slow and pensive--quite philosophical. And huge. I see them out of the corner of my eye and think: three dobermans! But no, it's my pals.
Hunters I know are salivating, wanting to slaughter them. But they are the saints of the subdivision, and no harm may befall them.
Day before yesterday, they were standing on the corner of Chicago Street, the main drag near my house, looking at the traffic. They looked like the only thing they needed was cups of coffee and some cigars. They'd watch a car go by, then turn to each other and say, "By Gum, wasn't that the new Mustang?"
Leaving for Detroit in a few minutes. My element: driving the monster van full of family with the music blasting. Eric's winter drumline is going to slaughter more rivals in competition.
The official Book Tour Season is about to begin--Anderson's Books in Naperville. April 5. If you're in the area, come see me. The full tour schedule will be going up in increments on the calendar section of the opening page. I hope to see you in Vermont, Massachusetts, DC, Virginia, NY, North Carolina, Georgia, Illinois, Texas, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, Oregon in the coming months.
Talk to you when we get back from Motown.
Gobble, gobble,
DJ Turkeyshizzle Luizzle
3/23/2006
My friend Sue Myal's company in Tucson made amazing Teresita Christmas ornaments last year to go with the release of the hardcover. If you haven't seen them, you're missing something special. I just heard that she has 45 of them left. She's willing to move them out of the warehouse at cost--which is a great cheapo deal for bargain hunters like me. I don't get any kickback from this, but I do like to pass on the chance to get a collector's item for a deeply cut rate. (I feel like I'm shilling stuff on QVC!) Anyway, if you want to check them out, you can contact her at ornaments@dcn2.net. The first crate of the massive, fattened paperback of Hummingbird just came by the way--very nice. I think you'll like it.
Naperville Nature Alert
3/19/2006
March Madness on the giant screen was interrupted today by a family of wild turkeys inspecting my garden. I went outside and said, "Hey, what's going on?" The lead turkey, a big fat bastard, lifted his wings and commented, "Weegle weep." And they walked next door, not quite in a huff. Before I could feel diappointment, however, Chayo discovered that mourning doves had filled our bushes with little perfect eggs in little perfect nests. I told my pal Michael Poage that it felt like God was smiling. Since he's a pastor, he forgives me these occasional fits of epiphany. In front, daring the sky to snow--yellow crocus.
The Wastelander's Notebook, Vol. 3
I told the writing workshop: "I'm not a professor. I didn't come here to be a teacher. I'm a writer. Look--I live in a world above the ground. It's a forest canopy full of orchids. Sparkling things. Spirits. Medicine-women and poems. And every day, I have to drop a rope down to you, climb down here and try to pull you up high enough so you can smell my world. Writing. That's the best I can hope for--that you catch the scent of the orchids."
#
Airport, on the way to the Border Book Festival.
Time. Time. Wasted time. 4 hours waiting after 10 hours driving. Somewhere out there, my woman's arms are waiting. A woman across from me is biting the inside of her cheek. She twists her lips to get at that pesky flap of cheek tissue in there. She starts to look like a tapir as she forms her lips into long corkscrews, then bends them off to the side. Unsatisfied, she puts her index finger to the corner of her mouth and pushes the whole bit, hard, toward her left ear. I wonder whose arms are waiting for her. How long has she waited? Did she catch that last scrap? Is she getting a lot out of life?
#
Graceland. Devil's Gulch. The Flatirons. Taos. Bear Lake. I-70. I-25. Green River. Bryce Canyon. Zion. Saguaro. Frog Mountain. Las Cruces. Mazatlan. Patzcuaro. Uruapan. Xochimilco. Tepoztlan. The Everglades. Disneyland. The Golden Gate. Route 1. Columbia River Gorge. Portland's rose gardens. Yellowstone. Winter Wheat. Times Square. Paris.
I like this world.
#
sidelong sunset through her dress--
bright fire lights among her thighs
#
every minute is
NOW
for the hummingbird
#
the addict sweats out
the white horse
shivers through
alleyway midnight
no one is praying
for him but
the crickets
#
writing students
whining
because it hurts
to write
#
my garden's
most beautiful blossom's
a weed
#
to the ant that turd
is a mountain
#
muse
in
spire
me, in
spi
ration's
gone
out
the wind
ow.
#
blue jay lights
on the sugar pine
exactly like
a blue jay landing
on a pine
launches then
into skyblue sky
just like itself
flying
too much poem
in this day
for poetry
#
time dug
a well
in me,
night drops
dream coins
in and
poem's
the ripple
#
awoke from a dream
and thought myself young
#
On the plane, a college girl is speaking: "No, I didn't say they, like, drug the bulls. They, like, raise the bulls, like, wild. Like, the bulls, you know? When the bulls move, like, you know? They want to follow anything that moves. Charge? Like rrrrr. So they never see a man on foot, till, like, they're in the ring."
#
listen
listen w/ sympathy
listen w/ the purity of death
the pliance of swamp water
soft w/ heat and alligator patience
listen like a mountain
listen like saguaros listen
to cactus wrens, coyotes, night
bats, little owls
listen like the owl
listen like the owl's prey
put rabbit ears to it and
listen
listen like rattlesnakes
w/ your tongue
listen like the rocks
listening to snow
listening to wind's gossip
hear it: hear it, man,
all of it, the earth's moan, the
soft ringing of freight train rails,
the cymbal sizzle of the
trackside weeds, the hoot
of the wind cutting round yr building,
the tolling of the bells in the pigeons,
the rummy cough of the dntn winos, hear it,
the hymn of it, the muttering
insistent whispering of it, the truth of it,
hear the voices singing it all day,
hear your lover's blood sing it
into the night,
the story, the song,
you've got to hear it,
it's prayers,
listen.
My Wandering Ways III
#
Airport, on the way to the Border Book Festival.
Time. Time. Wasted time. 4 hours waiting after 10 hours driving. Somewhere out there, my woman's arms are waiting. A woman across from me is biting the inside of her cheek. She twists her lips to get at that pesky flap of cheek tissue in there. She starts to look like a tapir as she forms her lips into long corkscrews, then bends them off to the side. Unsatisfied, she puts her index finger to the corner of her mouth and pushes the whole bit, hard, toward her left ear. I wonder whose arms are waiting for her. How long has she waited? Did she catch that last scrap? Is she getting a lot out of life?
#
Graceland. Devil's Gulch. The Flatirons. Taos. Bear Lake. I-70. I-25. Green River. Bryce Canyon. Zion. Saguaro. Frog Mountain. Las Cruces. Mazatlan. Patzcuaro. Uruapan. Xochimilco. Tepoztlan. The Everglades. Disneyland. The Golden Gate. Route 1. Columbia River Gorge. Portland's rose gardens. Yellowstone. Winter Wheat. Times Square. Paris.
I like this world.
#
sidelong sunset through her dress--
bright fire lights among her thighs
#
every minute is
NOW
for the hummingbird
#
the addict sweats out
the white horse
shivers through
alleyway midnight
no one is praying
for him but
the crickets
#
writing students
whining
because it hurts
to write
#
my garden's
most beautiful blossom's
a weed
#
to the ant that turd
is a mountain
#
muse
in
spire
me, in
spi
ration's
gone
out
the wind
ow.
#
blue jay lights
on the sugar pine
exactly like
a blue jay landing
on a pine
launches then
into skyblue sky
just like itself
flying
too much poem
in this day
for poetry
#
time dug
a well
in me,
night drops
dream coins
in and
poem's
the ripple
#
awoke from a dream
and thought myself young
#
On the plane, a college girl is speaking: "No, I didn't say they, like, drug the bulls. They, like, raise the bulls, like, wild. Like, the bulls, you know? When the bulls move, like, you know? They want to follow anything that moves. Charge? Like rrrrr. So they never see a man on foot, till, like, they're in the ring."
#
listen
listen w/ sympathy
listen w/ the purity of death
the pliance of swamp water
soft w/ heat and alligator patience
listen like a mountain
listen like saguaros listen
to cactus wrens, coyotes, night
bats, little owls
listen like the owl
listen like the owl's prey
put rabbit ears to it and
listen
listen like rattlesnakes
w/ your tongue
listen like the rocks
listening to snow
listening to wind's gossip
hear it: hear it, man,
all of it, the earth's moan, the
soft ringing of freight train rails,
the cymbal sizzle of the
trackside weeds, the hoot
of the wind cutting round yr building,
the tolling of the bells in the pigeons,
the rummy cough of the dntn winos, hear it,
the hymn of it, the muttering
insistent whispering of it, the truth of it,
hear the voices singing it all day,
hear your lover's blood sing it
into the night,
the story, the song,
you've got to hear it,
it's prayers,
listen.
3/13/2006
I sometimes have to tell starting writers what it costs to write. I have to rejoice in the rwards, of course--who could fail to love postings on the blog or emails from readers? I've been hearing from our soldiers sailors in the Iraq war. I can't believe my books are showing up there. And, of course, we have all the toys you start to be able to afford...like a house for starters. If you knew me back then you knew there was no way I'd ever buy a big house. No way. All thanks to my tireless two-finger typing.
But it costs something, too. I am the least disciplined of people, but it takes discipline. One of the zen masters once said: if you wish for mastery, first you must sweat white beads.
Lately, more and more people have been contacting me about the old stuff, like Across the Wire: Life and Hard Times on the Mexican Border. It's amazing to me--I don't even think of the books that came before the 21st Century. That one took me ten years of fruitless struggle to publish. Rejection after rejection after rejection. One brilliant NYC editor told me, and I quote: "Nobody cares about starving Mexicans."
It finally managed to be published in 1993, and it has gone on to many editions. You can sell a first edition if it's in good shape for $175.00 US cash money. In the days when I was living the across the wire experience, I would have cried if you'd given me $175! One Christmas, my mom and I had nothing for our holiday dinner, and one of the church boys drove me to 7-11 and I bought her a small canned ham. Sad awful days.
That is part of what it costs--the soul tax. But some of the other things are harder to tabulate, and tougher to explain. More of the wandering ways I have been so famous for in my own bedroom and living room. Like this:
When we were working in Tijuana, feeding the poor, we were given any number of opportunities for astonishment. Floods, prairie fires, death, blood. We drove into the Tijuana garbage dump every two weeks on our Thursday Short Run. It was, in those days, on a hill to the south of downtown TJ, across the highway from the big Mexican army battalion headquarters when you're going to the Ensenada toll road. Every once in a while, the city would close the dump and barr outsiders from entering it. Including us.
One way to do this was to station those bored soldiers from the big base at the entrance. With guns.
So, one day, we were driving in, and there was a machine gun on the bluff to the starboard side of the vans. Five or six soldiers slumbering in the dirt. We blithely drove through the ambush and parked. Pastor Von, my own personal Moses, called me over and said, "Luis! Why don't you take those guys some donuts!" DONUTS? I gasped. Von had deep faith in the power of chocolate frosting to tame savage beasts and soldiers. He gave me a plastic bag of donuts and gave me orders to go on a suicide mission to get the soldiers to allow us to enter--after we had already defied them and enterred.
So I walked up the hill. The soldiers rose. I tried to look really friendly. They did not. I held up the bag of donuts. And here's the part I will never forget: one of the soldiers took his machine gun and placed the end of the barrel on my crotch. Right at my testicles. I said, "Hey guys! How about some donuts!"
I have not forgotten how power and intimidation work. I put it in Hummingbird in many scenes. Oh yeah, and I never forgot that chocolate can work, too. I put that in the book, too.
The soldiers glowered at me for a moment, then asked for chocolate milk. When I said I'd be HAPPY to get them some chocolate milk, the machine gun left the vicinity of my reproductive engines and we all sat in the dirt inspecting the weapons and wiping melted chocolate off our faces.
I don't know how to put that in a writing workshop, or a reading. It sounds so macho. And it sounds so removed from sitting and typing. But it's part of that soul tax I paid so I could write what I write.
I hope you have lots of chocolate and lots of wandering and no guns.
Ciao, mi amici--L
The Wastelander's Notebook, Vol. 2
But it costs something, too. I am the least disciplined of people, but it takes discipline. One of the zen masters once said: if you wish for mastery, first you must sweat white beads.
Lately, more and more people have been contacting me about the old stuff, like Across the Wire: Life and Hard Times on the Mexican Border. It's amazing to me--I don't even think of the books that came before the 21st Century. That one took me ten years of fruitless struggle to publish. Rejection after rejection after rejection. One brilliant NYC editor told me, and I quote: "Nobody cares about starving Mexicans."
It finally managed to be published in 1993, and it has gone on to many editions. You can sell a first edition if it's in good shape for $175.00 US cash money. In the days when I was living the across the wire experience, I would have cried if you'd given me $175! One Christmas, my mom and I had nothing for our holiday dinner, and one of the church boys drove me to 7-11 and I bought her a small canned ham. Sad awful days.
That is part of what it costs--the soul tax. But some of the other things are harder to tabulate, and tougher to explain. More of the wandering ways I have been so famous for in my own bedroom and living room. Like this:
When we were working in Tijuana, feeding the poor, we were given any number of opportunities for astonishment. Floods, prairie fires, death, blood. We drove into the Tijuana garbage dump every two weeks on our Thursday Short Run. It was, in those days, on a hill to the south of downtown TJ, across the highway from the big Mexican army battalion headquarters when you're going to the Ensenada toll road. Every once in a while, the city would close the dump and barr outsiders from entering it. Including us.
One way to do this was to station those bored soldiers from the big base at the entrance. With guns.
So, one day, we were driving in, and there was a machine gun on the bluff to the starboard side of the vans. Five or six soldiers slumbering in the dirt. We blithely drove through the ambush and parked. Pastor Von, my own personal Moses, called me over and said, "Luis! Why don't you take those guys some donuts!" DONUTS? I gasped. Von had deep faith in the power of chocolate frosting to tame savage beasts and soldiers. He gave me a plastic bag of donuts and gave me orders to go on a suicide mission to get the soldiers to allow us to enter--after we had already defied them and enterred.
So I walked up the hill. The soldiers rose. I tried to look really friendly. They did not. I held up the bag of donuts. And here's the part I will never forget: one of the soldiers took his machine gun and placed the end of the barrel on my crotch. Right at my testicles. I said, "Hey guys! How about some donuts!"
I have not forgotten how power and intimidation work. I put it in Hummingbird in many scenes. Oh yeah, and I never forgot that chocolate can work, too. I put that in the book, too.
The soldiers glowered at me for a moment, then asked for chocolate milk. When I said I'd be HAPPY to get them some chocolate milk, the machine gun left the vicinity of my reproductive engines and we all sat in the dirt inspecting the weapons and wiping melted chocolate off our faces.
I don't know how to put that in a writing workshop, or a reading. It sounds so macho. And it sounds so removed from sitting and typing. But it's part of that soul tax I paid so I could write what I write.
I hope you have lots of chocolate and lots of wandering and no guns.
Ciao, mi amici--L
3/11/2006
All summer
she brought me gardens
in her dress.
#
armadillo roadkill:
ants spill out their hole,
flat out scurry, fill maws
as they dismantle: snip armor--
skilled chefs scramble
in a dilly.
#
A small bird lands on the phone lines. And another. Another. They come:
bird
bird
bird
bird bird bird bird
bird bird bird bird bird bird bird bird bird bird bird bird bird bird bird
and in the yard, twelve feet below, all alone, and twitching:
cat.
#
a million stars
blotted out by my breath
#
Lorca with a thorn in his tongue
spits out shadows of bees
#
a single raindrop
somersaults
a butterfly
#
the children are snoring
as I write poems
on my bride's bare back
#
tinsel
trails
from the ass
of
the
cat
#
coffee in a Kansas gas station--
looking everywhere for home
#
glove in roadsie tree
waving at travelers
who never return
#
Christmas Eve--
one snowflake melts
in a stoplight
#
cat twitches:
grasshopper
#
zydeco!
even the dead are dancing
#
deer stop
car radio
on the highway
#
America's a page of Kerouac,
a Johnny Cash song in the fog:
disjointed dharma poems, cowboy khatru
in the mind unspooling like a paper roll
click-clacking under keys of Underwoods:
blind whitewalls run the passing lanes
and radio unravels its AM hymn:
haiku of toilet paper, cigarettes,
acu-weather and female deodorants:
America, America, you go on, go on
forever.
#
Sign in diner window, Quanah, Texas:
THE TRAIN'S RUNNING
THE FOOD'S GREAT
SO COME ON IN
IF YOU AIN'T ATE.
#
Boca Negra Canyon, West Mesa, Albuquerque, NM:
I hiked up to the petroglyphs with that damned David Thomson. He stared at the ancient rock art in the brutal heat, then announced: "When I get home at the end of a hard day, and I feel the disturbing urge to carve wiggly lines in rocks, I realize I'm feeling petroglycemic."
#
What the magnets on my refrigerator said:
spider with a mountain skin
#
fog lifts--
pine tree
steps forth--
and another!
#
we stop to watch
Cajun children
playing soccer:
rain
on umbrellas
sounds like clapping.
#
"So, the world happens twice--
once what we see it as;
second it legends itself
deep, the way it is."
William Stafford
See you next time, sports fans--same time, same channel.
If you dream a little dream of me, I promise to dream about you.
L
The Wastelander's Notebook, Vol. 1
she brought me gardens
in her dress.
#
armadillo roadkill:
ants spill out their hole,
flat out scurry, fill maws
as they dismantle: snip armor--
skilled chefs scramble
in a dilly.
#
A small bird lands on the phone lines. And another. Another. They come:
bird
bird
bird
bird bird bird bird
bird bird bird bird bird bird bird bird bird bird bird bird bird bird bird
and in the yard, twelve feet below, all alone, and twitching:
cat.
#
a million stars
blotted out by my breath
#
Lorca with a thorn in his tongue
spits out shadows of bees
#
a single raindrop
somersaults
a butterfly
#
the children are snoring
as I write poems
on my bride's bare back
#
tinsel
trails
from the ass
of
the
cat
#
coffee in a Kansas gas station--
looking everywhere for home
#
glove in roadsie tree
waving at travelers
who never return
#
Christmas Eve--
one snowflake melts
in a stoplight
#
cat twitches:
grasshopper
#
zydeco!
even the dead are dancing
#
deer stop
car radio
on the highway
#
America's a page of Kerouac,
a Johnny Cash song in the fog:
disjointed dharma poems, cowboy khatru
in the mind unspooling like a paper roll
click-clacking under keys of Underwoods:
blind whitewalls run the passing lanes
and radio unravels its AM hymn:
haiku of toilet paper, cigarettes,
acu-weather and female deodorants:
America, America, you go on, go on
forever.
#
Sign in diner window, Quanah, Texas:
THE TRAIN'S RUNNING
THE FOOD'S GREAT
SO COME ON IN
IF YOU AIN'T ATE.
#
Boca Negra Canyon, West Mesa, Albuquerque, NM:
I hiked up to the petroglyphs with that damned David Thomson. He stared at the ancient rock art in the brutal heat, then announced: "When I get home at the end of a hard day, and I feel the disturbing urge to carve wiggly lines in rocks, I realize I'm feeling petroglycemic."
#
What the magnets on my refrigerator said:
spider with a mountain skin
#
fog lifts--
pine tree
steps forth--
and another!
#
we stop to watch
Cajun children
playing soccer:
rain
on umbrellas
sounds like clapping.
#
"So, the world happens twice--
once what we see it as;
second it legends itself
deep, the way it is."
William Stafford
See you next time, sports fans--same time, same channel.
If you dream a little dream of me, I promise to dream about you.
L
3/08/2006
Homer Hogan's out of date and out of print Dictionary of Modern American Synonyms ($1.75! Published in 1959!) lists the word "wastelander" as a synonym for "writer." Don't you love it? I love it. (By the way, don't you love Michelle's design updates on the website? We are MUTATING and will soon look like the five-legged steers in Oakley, Kansas! See below for a brief tour of the Prairie Dog Town complex a post or two back.)
Contracts are being haggled over; legal matters are buzzing; the movie director is meeting with the Oscar-friendly script writer. In other words, The Hummingbird is close to being a film deal. As promised, I will tell you as soon as the ink is on the paper.
I've been looking through my notebooks lately. Thought you'd enjoy a peek. Me, wastelander; you, bibliophage. Eat this blog.
*****
The Wastelander's Notebook, Vol. 1
Eyes play tricks in Arizona sun.
Sign saying
FREE LUBE
and
OIL CHANGE
becomes
FREE GIANT
GILA
MONSTER.
#
Work, my business is play. Don't interrupt.
#
learned today
Marilyn Manson
doesn't inspire
haiku
#
brown face always smiling:
look
how I fail to understand
the cricket.
#
like my hand, moving in dreams--
on her breast,
the cricket's shadow.
#
horrible fly eating shit:
10,000 snowy mountains reflected in its eye
#
Last night, I heard a cricket
say Neruda, Neruda, Neruda....
#
A sign in a store window in Oak Park, Illinois:
OK, OK, so we aren't
that friendly,
but at least
we bathe!
#
They think I take notes:
department meeting notebook.
#
my first love.
we once rode out a tornado together.
when the windows shattered, she washed blood from my feet.
today,
they scatter her ashes.
#
touched by your lover's hand
my God
it's full of bones
#
lying naked beside my wife
2:45 in the morning
cold Louisiana wind sizzles
in the live oaks
100 feet high: ten acorns
an hour tap dance on our roof,
cat purrs, dog snores,
the wind blows like a sea tide.
that's all.
I have nothing more I can tell you.
#
Things That Are Poems in Themselves: pumpjacks nodding in drought-killed fields/the wind in Bakersfield and the word "pumpjack"/the smell of 1965 tortillerias/old pencil in a stained coffee cup/the abandoned church in Raton Pass/one footprint/a telephone ringing unanswered at 3:00 a.m./taillights rounding a far bend/that love-smell on your skin/the word "Interstate"/old woman in a diner staring at her soup/aspen leaves almost sullied by mud/an old man in a park breaking off pieces of his sandwich to feed the birds.
#
every name in the world for cricket
sounds like a cricket naming the world:
cricket, grillo, grillot, gharhat,kiichul, panzi, criquer.
#
her nipple
hides
the volcano
#
"You may attribute miracles to Him, but not nonsense." CS Lewis
#
See you next time, dear reader...Luigi
Contracts are being haggled over; legal matters are buzzing; the movie director is meeting with the Oscar-friendly script writer. In other words, The Hummingbird is close to being a film deal. As promised, I will tell you as soon as the ink is on the paper.
I've been looking through my notebooks lately. Thought you'd enjoy a peek. Me, wastelander; you, bibliophage. Eat this blog.
*****
The Wastelander's Notebook, Vol. 1
Eyes play tricks in Arizona sun.
Sign saying
FREE LUBE
and
OIL CHANGE
becomes
FREE GIANT
GILA
MONSTER.
#
Work, my business is play. Don't interrupt.
#
learned today
Marilyn Manson
doesn't inspire
haiku
#
brown face always smiling:
look
how I fail to understand
the cricket.
#
like my hand, moving in dreams--
on her breast,
the cricket's shadow.
#
horrible fly eating shit:
10,000 snowy mountains reflected in its eye
#
Last night, I heard a cricket
say Neruda, Neruda, Neruda....
#
A sign in a store window in Oak Park, Illinois:
OK, OK, so we aren't
that friendly,
but at least
we bathe!
#
They think I take notes:
department meeting notebook.
#
my first love.
we once rode out a tornado together.
when the windows shattered, she washed blood from my feet.
today,
they scatter her ashes.
#
touched by your lover's hand
my God
it's full of bones
#
lying naked beside my wife
2:45 in the morning
cold Louisiana wind sizzles
in the live oaks
100 feet high: ten acorns
an hour tap dance on our roof,
cat purrs, dog snores,
the wind blows like a sea tide.
that's all.
I have nothing more I can tell you.
#
Things That Are Poems in Themselves: pumpjacks nodding in drought-killed fields/the wind in Bakersfield and the word "pumpjack"/the smell of 1965 tortillerias/old pencil in a stained coffee cup/the abandoned church in Raton Pass/one footprint/a telephone ringing unanswered at 3:00 a.m./taillights rounding a far bend/that love-smell on your skin/the word "Interstate"/old woman in a diner staring at her soup/aspen leaves almost sullied by mud/an old man in a park breaking off pieces of his sandwich to feed the birds.
#
every name in the world for cricket
sounds like a cricket naming the world:
cricket, grillo, grillot, gharhat,kiichul, panzi, criquer.
#
her nipple
hides
the volcano
#
"You may attribute miracles to Him, but not nonsense." CS Lewis
#
See you next time, dear reader...Luigi
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