do you wanna find hell with me?

when i was in the ninth grade, my dad, like a plague of locusts, cleansed me of my sins.

i.e. he threw away a thousand dollars worth of cassette tapes.
danzig
the dead kennedys
the yeastie girls
faith no more
the misfits (i had a thing for short meatheads)
shit... i think he even threw away edie brickell.

he was feeling fatherly (unlike the other three weeks a month he spent with his secret family on another continent) and believed it was his duty to expunge the evil from my music collection. never mind that i had owned most of these tapes for years, and that he had seen them all before.

the parenting was on, much like the time my smith's meat is murder t-shirt mysteriously disappeared during a family vacation that had me trapped in a travel trailer with my parents for 3 weeks. it was one of those shirts that was soft from years of washing and definitive in its proclamation of fuck you, you meat-eating, carnivore suburbanites. i loved that damn thing and wore it 3 days a week.

it's been 16 years, and i still miss that t-shirt.
i kind of miss that danzig tape, too.

but, i guess that is the nature of nurture.
you get rid of what might hurt your children.
protecting them is paramount.
sometimes to the point of delusion.

like the time that some friends and i decided to see what's inside of a fire extinguisher. granted, it went off in the backseat of my car, and i was driving at the time of detonation. so i, technically, may have needed some protection.

by the way, white powder is what's inside.
lots of white powder that crawls into cracks and crevices.
crevices you never knew you had in the interior of a car.
q-tips can't clean it up either.

and to my father, all white powder is cocaine.
(seriously. stop and consider this conclusion drawn)
(no really, try to wrap your mind around it)
(i still can't)

obviously, an argument ensued, and i wondered aloud why i was driving a $1500 car if i had access to enough cocaine to spill it all over the interior. i may have chortled the possibility that if i had that much coke, i'd sell snorts from behind the sun visor and buy my own damn place to live where i could listen to all of the punk rock i wanted.
delusional grounded me.
for the 7 millionth time in my life.

apparently, delusional is just part of the deal.
and laughing at your father when he is concerned that you are using drugs isn't the key to family bliss at age 16.

neither is saying that the rest of your life wasn't what you had in mind at age 31 when he warns you that you won't find your next husband in a bar on saturday night. and i hear him, cause i seriously want to get married again. like right now. it's the only thing i think about when i watch the hills on mtv.

if you believe that, you might need to go live in the land of milk and jimmy.
a place where fatherhood is defined by delusion.

tonight, i'm going to see jello biafra at the belcourt.
wanna come jimmy?

the poet and the witch

i made you read my poetry, which isn't really a nice thing to do to the people whom you love. especially a sestina.

so in honor of a day of love which brought me a cookie that i didn't get, a proposition that i didn't take, and a the promise of a phone call that i want, here are the two love poems that keep me from buying 6 cats, a keg of chardonnay, and the english patient.


Rent

If you want my apartment, sleep in it
but let's have a clear understanding:
the books are still free agents.

If the rocking chair's arms surround you
they can also let you go,
they can shape the air like a body.

I don't want your rent, I want
a radiance of attention
like the candle's flame when we eat.

I mean a kind of awe
attending the spaces between us-
not a roof but a field of stars.

-Jane Cooper


Sixtieth Birthday Dinner

If in the men's room of our favorite restaurant
while blissfully pissing roserva spumante
I punch the wall because I am old,
I promise not to punch too carelessly.

Our friend Franco cooks all night and day
to transform blood and bones to osso buco.
He shouldn't have to clean them off his wall
or worry that a customer gone cuckoo

has mashed his knuckles like a slugger
whose steroid dosage needs a little tweaking.
My life with you has been beyond beyond
and there's nothing beyond it I'm seeking.

I just don't want to leave it, and I am
with every silken bite of tiramisu.
I wouldn't mind being dead
if I could still be with you.


-Michael Ryan

saint valentine

did you know that he was Italian?
yeah... neither did i. until trivia at Sam's tonite.
by the way.
i love that i was at trivia on valentines.
sad you think?

nope.
not at all.
i love that i now know where St. Valentine is from.
i even gave someone a Valentine.
and i ate 17 valentine cookies today for lunch.
if you don't believe me, read my halloween post.

sestina, baby

Levy

The hurricane swamped in the heat of late August.
And rain dissolved the last binding papers.
It ran things wet into gutters while we arranged
Our steps to avoid parking lot puddles in an order,
Heels up, around exacting white lines. I counted
the seconds we stood under a red umbrella. A number,

Thirty-six, led me to eight, twenty-eight, numbers
Like nine that repeated after the flood of August.
Later, I sat on carpet in front of the TV and counted
The total times a reporter lost papers
In Louisiana wind. I wanted to give her some order,
An anchor in the surge that she could arrange

Herself around, tie herself to. Instead I arranged
Paper clips in the neutral fibers of our carpet, numbering
Them in parallel placements of two, planning to order
The boxes I packed after the final days in August.
And now in the sweat of an attic, I look through papers
Bound together with metal clips and try not to count

How many times the word plaintiff discounts,
in absolute dissolution, the single arrangement
I couldn't make. As if by forgetting the papers
And focusing on the one after one of numbers,
In neat stacks of attic things I no longer hold august,
I might somehow escape this disorder.

My hand in trash plastic, attempts to make order
Out of photographs and letters too many to count.
Until in a bead of sweat, I realize that it is August
And too hot to calculate in an attic. I arrange
my descent on the wood ladder, and my toes number
ten. Two less than the month, I notarized papers.

When I reach the ground, I study the newspaper
Column by column, printed words with no order.
Its alphabet squalls in circular motion; no number
I know remembers me, who once on him counted
To empty the trash in my hands. An arrangement
Unspoken, made two Septembers before August

When a number of ours witnessed us recount
some solemn story. An arrangement by order
Sealed only on paper. Today, I hold nothing in august.