Really Bad Movies

late summer notes

already middle of august! just a couple more weeks of 'unofficial' summer to go. of course, the hot weather will stick around until october but this summer has been one of the mildest in recent memories. we've had a few triple digit [fahreneit] days here & there. like last weekend. but overall, it's been fairly chilly that i almost need to wear a sweater!

anyhow, i don't keep a dream diary. dreams are mostly boring. especially when someone tells you about their dream. because those little movies made in our heads are made for each dreaming individual. so strange are dreams that we can't even call them surrealistic. rather, dreams make narrative sense only in the act of dreaming. but when we wake up these dreams collapse from their stories & often disappear from memory. be that as it may, i did have a dream about the poet james schuyler. a friend was giving a lecture about schuyler's poetry. i thought my friend's lecture was brilliant. but the students didn't. the students were rude, loud & ignored the lecture. i got up from my seat & angrily denounced the students's conduct. i said my own piece about the brilliance & cool cat vibes of schuyler. then i picked up my backpack, said 'fuck y'all', & walked out.

interesting dream? probably not. but i have been rereading schuyler, especially his wonderful diary published by black sparrow in 1996 & edited by nathan kernan. that diary helped me thru my own mental precarity when it was published. ever since then, schuyler has been a lodestar poet. perhaps that is why i remember this dream.

at any rate, summer is nearly over. so please consider participating in eileen tabios' summer postcard project. we have a couple/few weeks of summer still & this is a fun project of poetry & mail art. click the link below for project participants & details to participate.

POSTCARDS IN SEARCH OF

in other poetry news kiwi poet richard taylor, along with his son, victor taylor, have new books of poetry out. richard is a long-time friend & brilliant dude. you can find his ongoing poetry/art project blog in the links to the right. you can read reviews of the taylors' books & interviews of the poets by jack ross by clicking the link below.

The Imaginary Museum: 'Everyone should be noted': Richard & Victor Taylor

all of these poets & projects are life-giving things. which i need a lot more of in these very strange days. you might need them too.

to quote another poet who also lived during a turbulent time in america, & the world, & i quote this line because this is the only world we know & we are lucky to be born at all.

grace to be born & live as variously as possible

--frank o'hara

making it fucking count!

raise my glass to all of you, brothers & sisters & non-binaries, in these late summer days & nights

peace!

just let it all hang out

those sacramento drive-in nites!

mather auto movies closed in, i believe, 1976. located in the very, very close-by city of rancho cordova, i saw many, many movies there including my introduction to bruce lee films. the playground, swings, slide etc etc., was situated right below the screen. so, if you were bored of the movie onscreen you could ask mom & dad if you could play. mom & dad would usually say ok because they could keep an eye out for ya. it was at mather auto movies that i saw the perfect job for a poet. walking past the projection booth one very hot summer night the door was open. i peeked in. there was an older gent, the projectionist, reclined on a broken down laz z boy reading a thick book. that was the job for me!

this is the last, surviving drive-in theater of the sacramento region. it is still open. a sixth screen was added in 1976. i've seen hundreds upon hundreds of movies at this drive-in. several years ago, after the drive-in converted to digital projection the manager, earl, gave me & nick a tour of the projection booth. one of the original projectors was still mounted & the work bench where the projectionist could splice broken film together was still there. there was even a single toilet in the booth. just the toilet. no bathroom. why? because some of the older films they might show as a second feature was on nitrate stock. if there was a jam or if the film broke it could catch fire. the projectionist had to be in the booth the entire night. at least that is what earl told us. he also said that the film showings were on a strict time schedule & the projectionist would need to use his/her mad skills to keep the films running on time. & if you recall the days of film projection sometimes the film stock would break &/or burn up. this tour was a bucket list thing for me. after decades of seeing that projection booth from the outside i finally got to see what it looked like on the inside. thank you earl!

we live in a completely different world. we can stream nearly everything we want. we have such an abundance of movies, tv shows, books, music etc etc. it would take several lifetimes to even tap into their depth. drive-in theaters are nearly extinct. car culture too has changed. but even so, there might be a survivor or three. once a thing becomes part of our culture it never really disappears. the experience of going to a drive-in theater & seeing an exploitation b-movie is gone. but for those few theaters that remain, like the sac 6, they are still, in my humble estimation, the happiest places on earth.

let's all go to the lobby

let's all go to the lobby!

to get ourselves a treat!

on smoking

earlier today i was looking at pics of mid-20th C poets like auden with his beautiful craggy face & in nearly all the photos of him he held a cigarette between his fingers

same for anne sexton & nearly every poet of the past century

smoking was not just common but i think expected behavior for everyone

now i used to smoke camel cigarettes were my favorite kind of smoke

i enjoyed the ritual of unwrapping the cellophane from the pack of smokes the tapping out a single cigarette the whirl & snap of my zippo lighter brought to the tip end & that first drag of tobacco smoke

there was a mystery to it with smoking & its tools

smoking was so accepted we even made ashtrays out of clay for our parents in elementary school!

but do i miss those days? not at all

i stopped smoking at the age of 25 & don't miss it

seeing cigarettes, even in the hands of a cool poet like sexton & auden, looked awkward & harsh

i am not anti-smoking & smokers have at it if you like

perhaps it is just me, but smoking was once thought sexy & outlaw & mainstream, i know! go figure

smoking to me now is awkward & goofy & unnecessary

seeing old photos of poets of the last century nearly all to a person with a butt in their hands kinda taken me by surprised by how common it was

still, sometimes, i long for a few puffs, or at least a whiff of clove cigarettes, which are banned in this country! really!

because there are three scents that speak to me of my youth & punk rock: dippity-do hair gel, leather & clove cigarettes

& sometimes i'll see an old episode of miami vice & watch ol' crockett peel off the cellophane of a fresh pack of unfiltered lucky strikes & think, damn that looks good!

i'm doomed!