Horse on Fire

Charles Bukowski has themed a significant portion of the last five months for myself. If you haven’t already read something by him, I would recommend you do so post haste. You might not always agree, but it’ll all come together in the end. I’ve never encountered a person who has so carefully mashed sixteen pounds of humanity and misanthropy into his gut.

This is the Foreword he wrote for his poem-book Roominghouse Madrigals:

A question posed quite often to me is, “why do your out of print books cost so much?” Well, they cost so much because that’s what booksellers can get for them from collectors.

“I want to read your early poems, but…”I don’t even have some of my early books. Most of them were stolen by people I drank with. When I’d go to the bathroom, they did their shit. It only reinforced my general opinion of humanity, and caused me to drink with fewer people. At first, I made efforts to replace these books, and did, but when they were stolen all over again I stopped the replacement process and more and more drank alone. Anyhow, what follows are what we consider to be the best of the early poems. Some are taken from the first few books; others were not in books but have been taken from obscure magazines long ago. The early poems are more lyrical then where I am at now. I like these poems but I disagree with some who claim, “Bukowski’s early work was much better.” Some have made these claims in critical reviews, others in parlors of gossip. In my present poetry, I go at matters more directly, land on them and then get out. I don’t believe that my early methods and my late methods are either inferior or superior to one another. They are just different, that’s all. Yet, re-reading these there remains a certain fondness for that time. Coming in from the factory or warehouse, tired enough, there seemed little use for the night except to eat, sleep, and then return to the menial job. But there was a typewriter waiting for me in those many old rooms with torn shades and worn rugs, the tub and toilet down the hall, and the feeling in the air of all the losers who had preceded me. Sometimes the typewriter was there when the job wasn’t and the food wasn’t and the rent wasn’t. Sometimes the typewriter was in hock. Sometimes there was only the park bench. But at the best of times there was the small room and the machine and the bottle. The sound of keys, on and on.

I was not Hamsun eating his own flesh in order to continue writing, but I had a fair amount of travail. The poems were sent out as written on the first impulse, no line or word changes. I never revisited or retyped. To eliminate an error, I would simply go over it thus: #######, and go on with the line. One magazine editor printed a group of my poems with all the #######s intact.

At any rate, here are many of the poems from that wondrous and crazy time, from those distant hours. The room steamed with smoke, dizzied with fumes, we gambled. I hope they work for you. And if they don’t, well, #### ## ###.

 -mark

On Wanting to Have At Least Three Walls Up Before She Gets Home

Dave Eggers, in ‘How We Are Hungry’:

He is building a small house in the backyard for when their baby is old enough to use it as a fort or clubhouse getaway, and he wants to have three walls up before his wife gets home. She is at her mother’s house because her mother has slipped on the ice- a skating party, Christmas-themed – and needs help with preparations for her holiday party, planned before the accident. It’s snowing lightly and the air is cold enough to see. He is working on the small house with a new drill he’s bought that day. It’s a portable drill and he marvels at its efficiency. He wants to prove something to his wife, because he doesn’t build things like this often, and she has implied that she likes it when he does build things, and when he goes biking or plays rugby in the men’s legue. She was impressed when he assembled a telescope, a birthday gift, in two hours when the manual had said it would take four. So when she’s gone during this day, and the air is gray and dense and the snow falls like ash, he works quickly, trying to get the foundation done. Once he’s finished with the foundation, he decides that to impress her – and he wants to impress her in some way every day and wants always to want to impress her – he will need at least three walls up on the house by the time she gets home.

-susie

Boy Arrested For ‘Opening Before Xmas’

You can tell the Christmas season has finally arrived from a number of traditions. Christmas decorations flooding the streets, malls are open late… snow is falling, and young single mothers are having their kids arrested and charged for committing the crime of curiosity. I suppose this is why I was such a mastermind when it came to attempting the feat of discovering the identity of my presents before that insomnia-inducing morning. I mean, this kid got what he deserved. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to learn after just a few years that night-vision, infrared imagery, grappling hooks and x-ray are the only sure-fire way to soothe that pre-December-25th excitement.

So way-to-go, mom! This will, after all, be your son’s most memorable Christmas (last Christmas with mom).

-John O.

Jesus Camp (Updated)

In its’ entirety, I present to you “Jesus Camp”. This is a feature-length documentary on extreme, radical right-wing Evangelicals. Narrowing down on one Christian extremist who devotes her life to crushing childrens’ futures, the filmmakers give a terrifying look into the lives of 50% of America’s population. More Americans believe in angels than evolution.

These are just facts, people. Now if you are using prayer-based virus protection, you may want to turn it off before watching.

UPDATE: I had originally planned on linking to the movie hosted on Google Video, but when I went to retrieve the code, it had been taken down. NOW, it appears that Daily Motion has also taken down the video. You will see this on DVD soon, so I suggest you check it out then. Reader “maryt” was kind enough to let us know of Daily Motions lame-ness, and also to give us a link to a clip from Jesus Camp. If I don’t agree with the morals of the little girl featured in the video, I do agree with her taste in heavy metal.

…Just not Jesus metal.

-John O.

Were you aware of it?

http://www3.telus.net/linguisticsissues/BritishCanadianAmerican.htm
http://www.cornerstoneword.com/misc/cdneng/cdneng.htm

- Anonymous

New York, New York

A second New York is being built
a little west of the old one.
Why another, no one asks,
just build it, and they do.

The city is still closed off
to all but the work crews
who claim it’s a perfect mirrror image.

Truthfully, each man works on the replica
of the apartment building he lives in,
adding new touches,
like cologne dispensers, rock gardens,
and doorknobs marked for the grand hotels.

Improvements here and there, done secretly
and off the books. None of the supervisors
notice or mind. Everyone’s in a wonderful mood,
joking, taking walks through the still streets
that the single reporter allowed inside has described as

“unleavened with reminders of the old city’s complicated past,
but giving off some blue perfume from the early years on earth.”

The men grow to love the peaceful town.
It becomes more difficult to return home at night,

which sets the wives to worrying.
The yellow soups are cold, the sunsets quick.

The men take long breaks on the fire escapes,
waving across the quiet spaces to other workers
meditating on their perches.

Until one day…
The sky fills with charred clouds.
Toolbelts rattle in the rising wind.

Something is wrong.

A fireman stands in the avenue
pointing binoculars at a massive gray mark
moving towards us in the eastern sky.

Several voices, What, What is it?

Pigeons, he yells through the wind.

-David Berman, via Jess

Bush’s Odd Behaviour on 9/11

“Not another one”. You’ve seen a lot of videos and read a lot of reports criticizing the Bush Administration, and blaming it for the attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11. I just stumbled across this video, however… which shed light on some more “interesting” details. Such as Bush saying that he had watched the first plane collide with a tower on TV outside of a classroom, before he was “whisked away” to duty. The first plane’s collision didn’t air on live TV. It was caught on a HandiCam and obtained by CNN the next day. And we all know Bush wasn’t “whisked away”. He sat through some kids reading about a goat.

I thought I would post this video as a companion piece to the deserved rant by Gavin which you might have read in the first issue of our paper zine. It’s an excerpt from Canadian journalist Barry Zwicker’s “The Great Conspiracy”.

Enjoy!

-John O.

Love and Courage

Love and Courage

the one I liked was where Cagney
fought in the ring
got punchy
so he could earn money
to give his brother
music lessons-
the brother wanted to be a
classical pianist
was said to have
great talent
but they both came from the Lower
East Side, and
so Cagney got into the ring
again and again
for money to help the talented brother
become a classical pianist.
Cagney even loses the girl-
to his brother
and it ends with his brother
making it
(at Carnegie Hall, if I remember)
and Cagney
punched-out and blind
at his newsstand
listening to the radio
to his brother in the concert
hall,
and, of course, the girl is at the
hall
adoring, wild-eyed
as Cagney warms his hands over a
small fire
alone in the cold
he listens to the radio
as his brother plays
the piano,
Cagney
not knowing shit about music
and
hearing the final applause
believes that
all the beatings he has taken
were worthwhile.

- Charles Bukowski

Where’s My Remote Control? Oh. Got it.

I read an article recently involving the evolution of humans 1000, 10000, and 100000 years into the future. Apparently human form will adapt to reach its’ peak in the year 3000, in that medicine, technology and natural evolution will all factor favourably into the efficiency of our bodies and lives. This is, of course, assuming that nuclear holocaust does not intervene. The average man will be 6 foot 6, have a lifespan of 120 years, and according to to the press photo attached to the article, be Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson (interestingly enough, women will be Halle Berry). We’ll all be “brown” due to changes in diet, climate, and migration.

Now sure. Looking like freakishly perfect, over-sized “Bratz” dolls is all well and good, but it’s further into the future which troubles me. We will see ourselves grow less and less socially apt, as we grow more dependent on technology. Because of this dependence, our bodies will become frail and useless; that is, those of us who can afford this luxurious lifestyle. Have you ever read or seen H.G. Wells’ “The Time Machine”? Well, 100000 years from now, ’society’ will include two groups: wealthy, weak, useless skeletons with an inability to harness emotions of any kind; and hideously deformed, incompetant ape-men with an inability to do anything useful.

From here, I can go on to conspire that the wealthy stick-men will push science and technology into the far reaches of space, becoming ‘aliens’, and due to their disappearance from the planet, the ape-men will as one evolve back into the form we hold today (the theory sounds familiar, doesn’t it?).

But I won’t go there.
Why?

BECAUSE EVOLUTION ISN’T REAL, YOU BIBLE-HATING FREAKS.

… okay, okay. I don’t believe that to be true. I believe that evolution (or as I call it, “the obvious”) is in fact real, and that I am not a freak. But still, I won’t turn this into a conspiracy theory about where aliens “come from”, or how we’ve evolved. I’m much too concerned about the direction we seem to be heading in. As it stands today, I find we are much too bitchy and snobby in person. The creation of BlackBerry should be a defining point in this inevitable timeline of technology dependence. When you’d rather e-mail or instant message someone than speak to them in person or writing, you’re just giving your personality a big old kick in the cornea.

Obviously, this technology has it’s pluses (which unfortunately include this digital newsletter). It was and continues to be developed with practicality in mind. Ignorance, however is greatly… well… ‘ignored’, in the quest for peaceful living. Not only that, but maybe we’re headed in the wrong direction entirely. Maybe we should be regressing and working even harder to achieve peaceful living. Maybe we should demolish the tubes of the internet, and cars, and self-flushing urinals, and churn some fucking butter! This isn’t going to happen (*childhood dreams crushed*). I think we can, you know, take it fucking easy on the laziness devices though. I was actually going to pick up a copy of Popular Science today to see if I could find an interesting article to go along with mine, but I took one look at the cover and found exactly what I was looking for.

At first, you think “cool”. Then you better damn well be thinking “… sick”. I mean “sick” as in “sweet”. And “sweet” as in “brutal”. Follow? Well, this shit is going too far. A fridge that can cook?! Mmmmm, I can already taste the lack of senses in my motionless waif of a body.

Isn’t it bad enough that we’re already confined to these carbon suits? Imagine what it’s going to be like when we’re thinking “man, I wish I could piss on my own accord” instead of “man, I wish I could shoot fireballs from my mouth”. We should really be working together to increase our undeerstanding of how to go beyond the body. And the internet can be one of the most useful tools in our quest! Current technology has its’ pluses. We just don’t realize that it hasn’t taken control of itself, and that we can guide the revolution.

Or we can let the scientists keep us in check-mate, as political powers instruct them, and — oh Jesus… I didn’t know pawns could be in such a position. Which is exactly where we are.

And this is where ignorance comes back into play. We’re in fucking check-mate and don’t even realize its’ the most powerful position of all.

- John O.

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