This gets more idiotic everyday.
Geithner’s Plan, a Gigantic Confidence Game: “Somehow, Geithner (and Obama by implication) believes that igniting a bidding war between hedge funds and private equity over a bag of cow manure will inspire confidence that there’s gold in the bag. Such insanity cannot possibly work, which means it won’t.”
in the dining room
with the broken window
and a pink chair in the corner,
my father sits alone
at the head of the table,
his hands held together
in front of him,
and on each hand
he wears
two copper rings
that he made in the garage
with a fluorescent light
hanging over his head
and dead rats at his feet.
they are shaking,
his hands,
as he reaches for an orange
and i sit down to his left
as i do each night
that i am here.
i watch the way
he peels the fruit,
how he keeps it from falling
from his grasp,
like he is catching the final out of the world series
for his beloved yankees.
when he finishes,
he splits the naked orange
in two,
pushing one half
into his mouth
and chewing with stiff shoulders
between gasps for air.
i lift my spoon
and put it back down
and he asks me to get a candy bar
from the refrigerator
and i run over
and grab a hershey’s chocolate
and give it to him.
this needs peeling too.
i could have done that for him.
it wouldn’t have been a bother.
but i didn’t.
he breaks the chocolate into small fractions
and takes time with each piece.
he covers his eyes with his palms,
saying over and over,
“i thought i was going to die this time.”
he talks about work later
during dinner,
but i can’t listen when he is breaking–
the fragments of my father,
a meteor shower tearing
through our house.
i can’t listen.
the fragments of my father
are
in my mother’s eyes;
they glitter on the skin of her face,
drip from her lips when they move
without talking,
and
in her hair
as i look down on
top of her head,
standing under the pomegranate tree
in a red shirt with blue stripes,
my pants at my ankles,
as she sits by my feet
washing my soiled legs
with a wet towel.
and on me
nothing lands
and everything.
i go through the kitchen
of our empty house,
my own hands shaking in secret,
looking for things to put
into my mouth–
a piece of bread
left on top of the rice cooker–
and
this is how it begins
and
this is how it ends,
with a trembling in my bones,
my clueless hands
searching for more than words,
for more than her skin,
finding
an orange and a jar of peanut butter too
on a dirty counter.
drinking til 3 a.m.,
then the subway.
walking from the station uphill,
the sun beginning to rise.
the cold is sharper in the light.
there is nothing else to know.
one sleepless night moves into the next—
all the smoke
in all the bars
taste the same on my lips;
an alcohol horizon
where i lose the measure of balance.
this morning i opened
my eyes, stared at the ceiling,
fumbled in my shorts
for a release from wanting.
it is hunger and nothing more.
i stroke until i am empty
and empty myself again to feel the space
breaking below my ribs.
i have chased it to new york,
through broadway and christopher st.
st. marks and avenue b,
through the romance that betrays itself
each time my foot sticks
to spilt things
on the ground.
my hand shines with cum.
for a moment i think of licking it clean
to taste the possibility of life,
that which i fail each day
in holding.
my footsteps
falling through cracks
gaping on this porch made of bondo
and loose leaves with no symmetry,
chicken-scratches on god’s prison wall
counting off days of our thirty eighth year,
counting to alpha,
counting to jerusalem,
counting to my third finger dotted with blue ink.
they lie, they lie on the evidence
of my misguided journey—
a dead roach, mosquitoes just landed,
robert,
the three dogs,
wife,
our baby unborn,
dad [calling him dad here],
a snail,
that tiny woman [no longer petite,
with a knack for crochet whom i know as mother].
there are others too off on the side,
on the poison oak
and other shrubbery too particular to be identified,
lovers not so fresh dead
that i have started calling them carcasses.
i am from that country on the cold gray
step down into the kitchen where
mother stood with her back
curved out toward me. i leave
them there because i can only hate
the living and to touch them would
mean i would die. i leave them
there because my fingers can’t
hold more than sticky keyboards, stuck
between a and s, between y and u, between
x and childhood fantasies of rape, between
the comma and regretting, between one
letter and the next and all the ones that brick
nonsense and shame.
the open blinds.
a smile in frames.
damsel and plastic and blue blanket winters.
my bleeding stomach.
my father trapped in my spine.
acupuncture will save him.
or at least let him breathe inside my posture.
eden lies to me.
i will eat the apple this time.
her beauty.
the black arrow of new best
before the complete text of mourning.
electra electra and
wearing a striped tie across the brooklyn bridge.
we took pictures of the water
and our minutes of joy,
and there was no chance for tired feet
or turning back
because patsy grimaldi waited under
the bridge, on the other side,
on the other side, on the other side of failure.
i am back and not alone, this hand
on my right shoulder,
the upside down when i tilt my head back,
backlight making her shadow,
like that dream of hell when mother shook me
awake on gramercy drive,
the last time i heard my name.
the last i heard it.
god is taking away my hearing
as i shuffle these numbed feet
once more west on the sparkles
of a west hollywood boulevard
through a tuesday night silence
past two boys with clean hair,
past corpses of divinity,
and decent words uttered
past schubert and beatles in the back room
of my baby’s carcass
past yellow teeth shaman riptides of santa monica
and virgin mary past this ocean i once skipped
with one gleeful bounce
past my father’s house frozen in the hands
of my ghost past god’s words scribbled
by grandma while she lay on her left side
waiting to die past my skin past my name
past my sins past washington square
and the girl bleeding in the fountain
past nuyorican and the lies of the poets
past that fenced place in downtown
that is no longer a place past the past
past black fences past brown grass
past dug holes past this moment of panic
when i am terrified to know the next
and the last.
UPDATE (5/16/09): Dozens of teachers arrested for civil disobedience on Friday 5/15. And the Governor is planning to sell a few things…like the Coliseum, for example.
A teacher friend was wondering the other day if he was going to get a paycheck in February. At this point, really, who knows.
Our beautiful state of California, the State that’s had the worst piece of shit government ever since I learned what government is, is about to go up in smoke.
Pet your dog. Hug your children. Have a cold beer.
Peace out.
From The Game Is Up:
“Inquiring minds are noting similarities between the implosion in Ireland and the implosion in California. Let’s take a look starting with In Ireland, ‘the game is up’
DUBLIN — At 2 a.m., with time for compromise running out, the Irish prime minister finally presented his emergency plan for the floundering economy to the country’s trade union leaders.
He proposed an average 7 percent reduction in gross pay for bureaucrats, teachers, police, firefighters, road cleaners and everyone else on the public payroll, in the form of a levy to finance their pensions.
So here’s what’s going on in California:
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger can order thousands of state workers to take two unpaid days off a month to cut $1.4 billion from the budget, a judge ruled.
Superior Court Judge Patrick Marlette in Sacramento, California, today ruled in favor of Schwarzenegger in a lawsuit brought by employee unions seeking to block the furloughs. Schwarzenegger said yesterday that he would lay off workers to achieve the savings if he lost in court.
Everyone, please visit this site. Use your intelligence (or awesome guessing skills) to help feed the world a bit.
From Flickr user Ettubrute. Via Cory at BoingBoing