Street Poem For Deadbeats And Capitalists

I’ve been having trouble selling my poems on the street lately…

The 0ther day I approached a gentlemen on Melrose and went in with my pitch. “I have a poem for sale, only $10! It’s a Christmas/Recession sale.”

“$10?” He howled. “What a ripoff!”

“Well, I also have one for $5.”

“What’s the difference,” he asked.

“The one for ten dollars has fifteen lines and the other one only has ten,” I told him.

“Fifteen lines for ten dollars, that’s outrageous,” he argued, as if there is some going rate on high quality poetry.

“Well, these are some finely articulated lines. They’re gorgeous and revelatory and will make you orgasm in your cargo pants. You know, they have a special pocket just for that.”

“Ha. What are you, a poet or a comedian?”

I inhaled deeply and answered… “Well, what’s the difference? Anytime I open my mouth people burst out laughing.”

He paused, looked around at the people passing on the street,  swinging shopping bags and indifferent to the postcard malaise. “Okay, fine,” he said somewhat irritatedly. “Give me the one for five dollars.”

I dug it out of my pocket and looked it over before handing it to the man, taking his bill in my hand like a baton — one man passing the disease over to another. “Okay,” I said. “Water it three times a week and take good care of it.”

He shook his head before walking off down Melrose into the winter setting sun. Somewhere nearby a car honked and a homeless person belched in the face of a delicately inebriated starlet.

It was almost seven pm so I rushed home for Jeopardy.

It’s getting harder to sell these poems on the streets these days. People just don’t have the time or money for high art in a recession.

So, now I’m giving them away on the Internet! Enjoy…

The cat
laughed
at the mouse
who asked him,
“aren’t you going to try
to eat me?”
But the cat just sat there,
on its butt,
laughing and
laughing…

Chinese on Christmas

Nothing is open on Christmas. Definitely most restaurants are shuttered and dark. There’s nothing available in the line of grub but Chinese food… and that place was packed! We waited an hour for a table and then waited a half hour for a plate of lukewarm orange chicken. But it’s not the place that is important but the people you’re with. Today is a day for being with your loved ones and that’s all that counts.

I hope everyone got to be with their loved ones today.

This life goes by too quickly to let it slip away nonchalantly, tied to apathy, ego, blah blah bullshit… to let the days fall off the calendar unremarked upon. I want to draw a masterpiece on each day, with a crayon or a marker or whatever gets the job done! There’s probably a phrase in Latin that will express what I’m feeling but all I know is English.

All I know is my tangential piss-poor poetry.

The cat stalks the mouse
while the buses kick exhaust across
this blistered city,
I sit in the shade of an old oak
wondering why I’m not an ox of a man
but this wandering lemming, wording
this dented lament so
the sharp edges are dulled to a
swallowable capsule.
I am a swallowable capsule…
take me hole, will ya?

Yeah, piss poor, I tell ya.

But on Christmas it’s quite alright to be a knockoff poet, a Polaroid paranoid, a half-hearted louse, as long as you’re with the ones you love. That’s the meaning of the day… the reasons we sing carols and toast egg nog… even if we don’t like egg nog… and I really hate egg nog.

So Merry Christmas, everyone!!!

Fleet Foxes Keep My Head From Falling In The Snow

Some songs you hear and immediately fall in love with. The Fleet Foxes’s White Winter Hymnal is one of them for me. Perhaps because it’s been raining for three days in L.A, but this just touched a spot in my being that compelled me to listen to it over and over, all night long, while I plugged away at work, inspiring me to dream thoughts of inspiration.

And the video is beautiful too, just a great modern masterpiece of melody and imagery. I love it!!!

So now I bring it to you, dear artofstarvers, with lyrics…

I WAS FOLLOWING THE PACK
ALL SWALLOWED IN THEIR COATS
WITH SCARVES OF RED TIED ROUND THEIR THROATS
TO KEEP THEIR LITTLE HEADS
FROM FALLING IN THE SNOW
AND I TURNED ROUND AND THERE YOU GO
AND, MICHAEL, YOU WOULD FALL
AND TURN THE WHITE SNOW RED AS STRAWBERRIES
IN THE SUMMERTIME

Kids Grow Up

Kids grow up and they lose feelings in parts of their soul that I don’t. Like smiling at someone pulling a quarter out of my ear; but it’s been years since I’ve seen magic. I work in television but haven’t watched it in months. I have no idea if Mystery has succeeded at turning a batch of geeks into “players” like him… my friend saw him walking the streets of  Hollywood the other day and I wish he’d have thrown a soda at him.

Kids grow up and they start to slow down but I’m still running around like the proverbial decapitated chicken, from one taco shop to the next bar to the dry cleaners to work to the computer to here, to there…. My heart pulses a million beats per second when a beautiful girl smiles at me. I can’t walk down a flight of steps but I leap three of them at a time and come crashing down to the bottom with a heavy thud. I must be always doing something: talking, writing, taking pictures, dusting furniture — or it feels like I’m going to cease to exist.

Kids grow up and they lose motivation to run off the bank and jump into the river but I haven’t, there’s just no rivers in L.A besides the mighty Porcuincula and there’s no bank, just a fifty-foot cement wall and if you jump off of it you’re not coming back. I sit at my window and imagine the great flood of 33 that wiped out bits of Studio City and changed its mouth from Marina Del Rey to San Pedro. That’s why the mighty Porcuincula is now an asphalt sewer basically.

Kids grow up and they don’t fall in love so easily but I still do. With the cottony clouds that trace shapes across the blue December sky. With the song playing on the radio right now with lyrics specifically written for me by a singer who intimately knew the designs of my heart. With my new apartment and it’s wood floors and windows that make a loud, jarring sound when I shut them. With the birds that landed on the wire and got spooked when a squirrel also climbed aboard.

Kids grow up and they no longer get scared by the monsters under the bed but I’m still terrified of them. They just have more human shapes and faces now and speak to me not in growls but slow, undulating syllables about the hopelessness of being hopeful. They describe in horrifying details the hollowness of the human heart. “It’s like a big, fancy house with many rooms and carpets and knick knacks and decorations on the wall and a glowing fireplace but with nobody home.”

Kids grow up and want to forget about being kids but I still remember. I still have a box of baseball cards in the closet and an old blanket that was wrapped around me when I was a baby. Sometimes when the world gets too big and imposing and stares me down like a gangster in a dark alley I pull the blanket out of its storage (it’s baby blue and got Hawaiian words written on it) and snuggle underneath it, although I’m much too massive now for it to provide warmth, somehow it’s still comforting.

Kids grow up… but I don’t.

Holiday Parties And Why I Love My Job

Last night was my company Christmas party. It was held at the event deck at the brand-spanking new L.A Live. The event deck is basically a room in a tarp on top of the parking garage. Still, it was big and the music was loud and the spirits were grand.  I got festive for the occasion with a new belt and new slacks I bought earlier in the day. 

Considering it was for E Entertainment this wasn’t your typical egg nog-schmooze with the boss-photocopy your butt affair. There was  a huge dance floor, video games set up, the ladies were dressed to the nines, and the booze was freely flowing. My friend was gracious enough to drive,  so I could get appropriately sloshed, and afterwards we nightcapped at Pink’s – just down the street from my new place. It was a good night. A much needed bit of levity.

L.A Live is across from the Staples Center and the smoker’s patio looks across at the house where the Lakers have been smacking teams around this season. Strobelights flared around the sky, flashing off the tall glass buildings surrounding us and I have to admit that I dug the downtown vibe.

I know thanksgiving was last week but the party reminded me that I love working in this business. I’ve been to other Holiday parties which are stuffy, corporate affairs. One such borefest in previous years took place at the Ronald Reagan library. Gawd that was sleep-inducing. This party was like a giant club; but filled with everyone you know, and some you don’t but wouldn’t mind getting to know.

And the other day at work there was a debate about the exact cadence the Kool Aid Man delivers his “oh yeah”. We youtubed it to solve the argument.

Half the time I don’t even consider what I do work, it’s more like: trying to come up with jokes, watching a lot of sports, and ragging on each other in between. Reminds me a lot of being 22 and hanging out with my friends. But now I get paid to do it.

Life is good…

Now let me get back to it.

Saturday Afternoon Sandwich Club

Last Thursday was Thanksgiving and instead of feasting on turkey and cranberry sauce and passing out to football on the couch I joined up with Gobble  Gobble  Give and helped distribute meals to the homeless. It was inspiring to see how many people showed up to join in the cause, but even more so, it was internally rewarding to scour the city and bring food to people who were in such straights of despair they couldn’t even show up at the soup kitchens, who probably had no idea it was even thanksgiving.

This is us getting the food from the good folks preparing it inside the Echo. The place where normally you drink it up and listen to music, where I saw Dan Deacon do his thing about a year before.

Everyone brought food to donate and then volunteers assembled it inside the Echo and tossed it into waiting cars where we took it and hit the streets in search of hungry souls. I brought two salads and two pies from Whole Foods. Organic apple and pumpkin. Homeless deserve to eat healthy too.

I ran into a good friend and got in their car for our mission. We had no trouble finding needy folks. This guy was asleep in front of a Constitutional Rights Building. Somewhat apropos.

I was surprised at how many homeless people we found. There was one woman who was yelling at something that wasn’t there but the minute I handed her the box she immediately snapped back into reality and showered me with a thousand ‘gracias’. I gave her a ‘de nada’.

I think we normally block them out of our vision, drive by without seeing them, just go on with our day blind to the despair of others.

On a lighter note, we passed some kids under a tarp next to the palladium and when my friend took them a box they laughingly informed him they were just waiting out for Jonas Brothers tickets. We got a good laugh at that.

Anyway…

MY EYES HAVE BEEN OPENED.

You see, I haven’t been myself lately…

For the last month I’ve been someone else. A shell of a person.

I probably haven’t been myself for the last 13 years or so, actually… but that’s a blog for another day.

I feel like I’m waking up after a long, deep sleep but I’m back.

I’m on a new kick. It’s called helping people.

I realize I have it pretty easy in this world. Always have. Despite my latest torn-asunderness, I’ll probably have it pretty easy in the years to come. So I’m obsessed with doing good. I’m trying to nourish the white light inside my chest, the one that radiates positivity, that lifts my heart, I’m trying to make it shine brighter than the neon lights of Hollywood.

There’s only one way to do that: cultivate goodness. That’s what Thanksgiving was about for me. Doing something for someone else instead of just chasing down my own pleasure, instead of pursuing selfishness, or wallowing in my own loss of comfort, I thought I’d go out and do some goddamn good in this world.

Had I ever???

But it’s not like there’s only the hungry and downtrodden one day of the year. Ever since Thanksgiving I’ve been seeing tons of homeless people. Were they always there? Outside my work on Miracle Mile next to the Tar Pits? Near Canters on Fairfax? Under the 101 bridge on Coldwater Blvd., where there’s always a puddle even when it hasn’t rained in weeks?

In the spirit of zealous do-gooderism I’ve created the Saturday Afternoon Sandwich Club. Right now it consists of myself and my friend Gil. The idea is simple. We get together and make a bunch of sandwiches, every Saturday of course, thus the name. Peanut butter and jelly. Turkey and cheese. Tuna. Whatever. It doesn’t matter as long as it’s food and it’s healthy. Then we hit the streets and pass them out to the people that normally eat out of trashcans or from other people’s leftovers.

It doesn’t cost a lot of money at all. A loaf of bread. A package of deli meat. Fifteen bucks or so and you can feed ten eight to ten people. And the feeling you get is worth so much more. Believe me, I’ve spent thousands and thousands on trying to feel good and this beats it all.

If you’re interested in joining our club the membership is cheap. Like I said. A loaf of bread. A jar of peanut butter. A block of cheese. Whatever contribution you can make. And it only takes an hour or so. Like I said, you don’t have to travel far to come across these people.

If you’re interested in joining the cause, hit me up here or on Myspace or out in that weird, frightening place called the real world.

Remember: this is the season for giving.

For A Hibernating Heart

The wheel of life and death spins and spins and sometimes it runs over love and sometimes it stops and picks it up like a sympathetic bus driver for the crazy lady screaming at her schizophrenic shadows… hey, if it happened to Kayne West it could happen to me… and while I’m working till 3 in the morning and the bed is calling it actually isn’t because there’s not a voice there anymore…

Oh, well.

I met a guitarist outside the La Brea Tar Pits playing “blowing in the wind” and he told me it’s about newspapers and that Bob Dylan wrote it (which I think I already knew, one of those facts) and what the fuck are facts anyway?  It’s a fact that when things fall apart you have to put them back together again, but you may be missing some pieces so don’t get upset if it doesn’t look the same anymore.

Like a series of Russian dolls that start growing up once you remove them from inside their dollwomb, it’s impossible to get the damn things back inside their containers again, but it’s all part of growing up and evolving and transforming, without it where would we be?

That’s why even through the Hurt and shit and pain I Believe In The Good Of Life.

You can’t hold a good man down, but you can send his heart into hibernation, into the cold Siberian Winter… and all that malarkey… and god be damned that’s a good word, malarkey.

But a good man will rise again and strike back at the wicked, at the wayward passing of time. At the wounds that caress his battered flesh.

The hunter sometimes is the hunted.
The killer licks his knife clean.
The moon casts a sinister smile upon the Joshua Tree.

The good that will come from this is exactly what the Earth needs.

I didn’t come this far to turn back now.

This halo is on layaway. I bought it from a blind bluesman who hadn’t use for it anymore

I best get my boogie on. My boogie-woogie-woogie.