a croc is not a shoe

Crocs are heinous in appearance. A Croc is not a shoe; it is a Tinkertoy on steroids. How did this peculiar shoe-manqué achieve ubiquity—and can it possibly stick around?

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second base

Sometimes when someone says something crazy
I tell them they’re out in left field.
The only people you can’t say this to are
actual left fielders. People like Barry Bonds.
If Barry Bonds says something that has
nothing to do with the subject at hand
and you tell him he’s out in left field,
he’s going to think he’s doing his job.
He’s going to think he gets paid
to make comments like that, but he’s wrong.
Similarly, yet also slightly differently,
when Barry Bonds fails to follow through,
doesn’t return a call, misses an appointment,
and you say, man, you really dropped the ball,
he’ll take it seriously—maybe for the wrong reason,
but at least he’ll try to do better next time.
One time I left a voicemail for Barry Bonds
and said it was urgent he call me right away,
and he didn’t return my call for two weeks,
and when he did, he said something
that had nothing to do with the voicemail I’d left.
I didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t confuse him.
To compound things, it was the third time
he had screwed up like this. He was out.
As he walked slowly back to the bench,
dramatically unbuckling his elbow armor,
I thought I heard him muttering something
and warned him that he’d better just sit down.
When Jeff Kent came to bat, I joked
that I’d gotten to second base with Barry Bonds.
He didn’t see anything unusual about that.

unashamed crapness factor

My best review thus far, in the form of a dialog on the Aussie Pythons & Snakes discussion group, praises one of my poems for its “unashamed crapness factor.”

Yay, we’re reaching Australia!

deer kill bikers

It’s a lose-lose situation that hits close to home.

Last night I was riding my motorcycle northbound on Illinois Highway 55. The car in front of me slowed considerably, which caused me to brake and begin to swerve left into the passing lane. Before i could, three beautiful deer bounded across the roadway, from right to left. I’m glad the car in front of me slowed, because I never would have seen those deer, and my fate might have become the latest report in Harry Levins’ beat for the Post-Dispatch:

::

Deer hits motorcycle, killing woman
By Harry Levins
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Wednesday, Jul. 11 2007

A deer jumped out of a cornfield and into the path of a motorcycle, killing a Florissant woman and seriously injuring her husband.

The incident happened about 12:30 p.m. Sunday on Illinois Route 96 in Calhoun County.

Sheriff Bill Heffington said today that Roy Smith, 57, was operating the motorcycle. He had as a passenger his wife, Mary Beth Smith, 56.

“The deer jumped out of the cornfield straight into the side of the motorcycle,” Heffington said. “Both people got knocked off and tumbled onto the pavement. It was hard tumble.”

Mary Smith died while being airlifted to a hospital. Roy Smith was reported in critical condition today in the intensive care unit of Blessing Hospital in Quincy, Ill.

And the deer? “The deer ended up running off, as far as I know,” Heffington said.

::

Motorcyclist is killed near Wentzville
By Harry Levins
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Friday, Jul. 13 2007

A highway accident killed a motorcyclist early today in St. Charles County.

The St. Charles County Sheriff’s Department identified the victim as Darryle Koch, 47, of Silex, Mo., in Lincoln County.

Shortly after 4 a.m., Koch was operating a 1997 Harley-Davidson eastbound on Highway W near Quiet Ridge Court north of Wentzville, said Lt. Craig McGuire of the St. Charles County Sheriff’s Department.

Koch’s motorcycle struck and killed a deer. The force of the impact threw Koch off the motorcycle and into the westbound side of the road, McGuire said.

There, Koch was struck and killed by a westbound 2006 Dodge pickup truck hauling a box trailer.

McGuire said deputies believed that Koch had been homebound from his job in Foristell.

::

first book manifesto

In my first book, The Bird Hoverer, I wanted to sound like a cross between Mina Loy and Ogden Nash. I had admired Mina Loy’s fragmented imagery and weird verbal angles, and Ogden Nash’s pompous disdain for women. I had thought that together these elements would form a sort of ‘magic bullet’ to cure the disease we refer to as ‘contemporary American poetry.’ But now that the book has been out for a couple of months I see that I have failed. The reason I have failed is that the poems, taken collectively, actually sound like a cross between William Blake, William Stafford, and Willie Nelson read aloud by William Shatner. I suppose this is because so many of them mention Ernest Borgnine. Mentioning Ernest Borgnine puts poems in a certain category automatically. So does mentioning Ben Affleck.

I would totally take back The Bird Hoverer if I could. For me its publication has marked the beginning of the making-public of a severe regret and shame that I have always nursed inwardly (and I had thought rather successfully). It has marked the beginning of a new era of personal humiliation. It has also intensified my existing problems of either not knowing or not being happy about who I am, of disliking the people around me (to a man), of feeling guilty during sex, of allowing the grassy area between my back fence and the alleyway become overgrown and littered with beer cans, of so incessantly bracketing all of my experiences in terms of irony that even the term “camp” has become camp to me—these problems have become all the more lethal. They threaten to ruin my marriage and drive away the few friends who still care for me.

I just want to recant everything I’ve written. I totally would take back The Bird Hoverer if BlazeVOX would let me.

life

The biggest question
is how long you’ll wait
for your ship to come in
before you realize
it already has.

men with their vehicles

Men, when photographed
with their vehicles, put one
foot on the vehicle,
cross their arms, and have
a stern, proud look as if
they’d hunted and killed it.

Other photographs of men
with the front end of their
vehicle stuffed and mounted
on the wall behind them
seem to indicate that the men
who have killed bigger vehicles
have better looking girlfriends.

One photograph shows a man
in waders and a brimmed hat
holding his vehicle in the air
by a thin line as if he’d caught
it when he was out fishing.
I have been puzzling over
this photograph for hours.
What the heck is going on here?

three short poems

Old Haunt
So far nothing has come back to haunt me
except a ghost I kicked out of my house
a few years ago, and that, he told me,
was just for old times’ sake.

Georgie
Nothing has really dogged me
except my dog, Georgie.
She dogs me to this very day.

Fairies
My daughter says, “Daddy,
is there such a thing
as answering machines?”
“Yes, darling,” I say.
“If I had one,” she says,
“I would ask it if there’s
such a thing as fairies.”

tennis

If I had all the money
in the world I would stop
writing poems and play
more tennis and take
a lot of naps and
at night I’d go dancing
with my friends, but
I don’t have that
kind of money, I
have to write poems
day and night just to
make the payments on
my condo and Maserati.

cities on other planets

NYC is the capital of the planet.
To find a more important city
you’d have to go to another planet.

St. Louis is not a very important city.
To find a more important city
you just have to go up to Chicago.

But no city is that important—
not even NYC. And there aren’t
really cities on other planets.

inside joke

Knock knock.

Who’s there.

Aaron.

Aaron who.

Aaron Belz.

charles guenther

A review I wrote more than two years ago finally came out in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The galley had been printed, but production delays kept the book from actually being published until this year. I just reread the review and totally don’t remember writing it. But it’s pretty good anyhoo!

the cannibals and the clown

Stop me if you think that you’ve heard this one before. . .

Two cannibals kill a clown and begin to eat him. One says to the other, “Does this taste funny to you?”

things that cost $14 per pound

Dear reader - I am looking for things that cost between $11 and $17 per pound. Anything. Lobster, licorice, UPS second-day shipping, you name it. Please respond with a comment that suggests something that falls into this range. Thanks.

(Actually, lobster is a good answer, at 12-15 per pound; so that one’s taken.)

chez glomski-rupert

Although all three of the readings I’ve given in Chicago this year have been very cool—Series A at the Hyde Park Art Center, Myopic Books’ “Night of Comedic Poetry,” and a salon reading hosted by Chris Glomski and Jennifer Rupert—by far the coolest reading I have ever given anywhere was the Glomski/Rupert affair on June 8th.

It was in their old world Chicago apartment which, although shotgun style, easily accommodated 35 or 40 people. The sideboard, prepared by Jennifer et ses amis, was rich with fruit, cheese, and baked things. Drink offerings were poured freely. The physical beauty of the apartment was not what i had expected, having met Chris a few times & noted his semi slacker dude gen x persona—hardwood floors, natural woodwork, antique furniture, tasteful lighting, etc. The apartment was more an expression of Chris’s carefully wrought poetry, and probably more than a bit of Jennifer’s sensibility, too. The other readers, Frank Sherlock, Joel Felix, and Nadya Pittendrigh, were different enough to create interest but similar enough to develop momentum. I derailed everything with my psuedo-comic closing remarks, but maybe that was like dessert at the end of a fine three-course meal.

This is how all readings should be held. This is what fosters true community & what, in the end, poetry is for—the salon.

  Intermission at Chez Glomski-Rupert, June 8, 2007