Wednesday, April 27, 2005

edwards drive-in

On a site called cinema treasures it says -- S. Charles Lee designed a number of drive-ins during his career and some theatres for James Edwards II. Edwards Theatres opened this drive-in, designed by Lee, in 1948. Other Lee-designed theatres for Edwards were the Tumbleweed in El Monte, the original Temple in Temple City, and the Tujunga in Tujunga.
This 750-car site was taken over by Pacific Theatres in 1954 and until its closing and demolition in the late 1980s it was always called Edwards Drive-In.

This place described here sounds majestic somehow doesn't it? It wasn't. It always seemed run down and on the verge of closing. This was the place I fell in love with movies. Usually my mother would take us which still amazes me. My mother and four young kids at a drive-in. Maybe the reason she was able to handle it was that everyone except the two of us usually fell asleep. I was the second oldest, but I usually got to ride shot-gun because my older brother would usually rather sleep than have me hanging over the sit bugging him to switch places while he slept.

There was one night when even my mother fell asleep. The second feature was Tommy. I can still remember being completely freaked out by Ann Margret with blood all over her in a white padded room. At least that's how I remember it. It could be different but there's no way I'm ever watching Tommy again.

The double feature I remember best was a movie called The Reincarnation of Peter Proud with Easy Rider as the second feature. I'm pretty sure this was the last movie we all saw together at Edwards. Soon after we started getting dropped off at a place called Cinema-Land.

The Drive-in was across the street from Annuciation Church, where I went to grade-school and where I spent many weekends as a teenager painting the inside of the church for spending money.

Intimate Strangers is a french movie starring Sandrine Bonnaire and Fabrice Luchini. The plot is simple, a woman walks into the wrong office and assumes a tax accountant is a psychiatrist. The movie goes from there, I won't give away anything else. The reason I like this movie though is Luchini, he has this amazing stillness while onscreen that somehow allows you to know everything he's thinking. He says more sitting in a chair in this movie just listening than you'd think possible.

that was the year...

that was the year that I didn’t want to read because I didn’t want to know.

that was the year that my neck got warm and my stomach got fat.

the was the year of later on, of new addresses, backbeats, country guitars and embracing cliches.
yeah, the cliches wouldn’t let us go, they must have thought it was night.

that was the year I found a piece of your hair in the spiral of my spiral notebook so I went and found all your friends. we sang the same songs. we went to places like cleveland. they all had these great young american breasts. like me none of them belonged.

that was the year we all retired. our lives then had nothing to do with our lives.
“why do you always see old people at plays and museums and parks” she asked me in the park.

that was the year my sex was always in the air. we acted like old friends even though I was nervous. still I opened, I always do. like some girl you just met leaning into her boyfriend.

that was the year we enacted the master plan but it just made us guilty. we named all the girls “allie”. we couldn’t think of any names for the boys. but the pressure of the pen hitting the paper felt like streetlights coming on.

that was the year...

that was the year that everyone stared like lovers in cafes staring deep into each others eyes,
gilded,
golded,
scolded until I had to ask them what they saw in there
it was anywhere but home,
a place where we got older until our eyes took on that
faraway
look
as if it were once better
we were little shadow pictures full of want
a dog staring at a bone
little bits of us falling off into the streets
carried and conceded
crazed and charred
won’t you say something so I can stop feeling
like I have no friends
using the same words
that seems so precarious
to everyone
else

aren’t you here to help me pretend

looking over your shoulder I’m so thoughtful
when I’m really looking to see
who’s next
like presents at christmas
multiplication
bishop takes knight
queen takes bishop
it’s an avalanche of stares
unawares of us
and our snapshots

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

that was the year...

that was the year I traveled to the land of you have yours and I have mine, numbers. let’s do this years cover of a previously battered cover song that wasn’t any good in the first place.

that was the year I started to eat the morning paper for breakfast. at first my skin turned pink for some reason, like the beginning of a blush, but soon the words started bleeding through like barely visible interior tattoos. no one bothered to read them still for that was the year that some people died in africa and there was a war in some part of asia or the middle east and someone lied to everyone and I took to wearing turtlenecks because the horoscopes started showing up just below my hairline at the back of my head. that being the year that everyone walked in pairs, a sort of verticle parallel piggy-back, a trafficked lower deck and a trip to the barber every three weeks.

that was the year...

that was the year I bought a bank and taught the tellers to dance. most banks look the
same, injection needles, feeding tubes, blue sky, a clock or two and all that coin.
my bank stood out, the dancers, the way your hand looks sometimes right after
shaving drunk. my bank was a plan, cash to buy cash. we were marauders afar of
dry land. we pulled off the shoulder and when people asked us if we needed help
we said stand by, we’re waiting for further instructions. they came, by pony
express, the horse ridden by saint anthony of padua who had a three day beard and
only that one letter in his satchel. money is an invention was all it said.

that was the year we said fuck that and we spent motherfucker. we bought inventions.
we bought another bank so we could spend more. we wore too much lip gloss
and used the word thing to describe any object. we stepped on anyone. everyone. we realized that some music only works in some years. who knew we’d need so much. who knew killing could be done from such a distance. the whole world a market square, a television magazine as if that were a real thing. we grew fat, we went off our heads and everyone, milk-shake makers, born-again bakers, cold cops and pretty little priests, they all joined in like a sudden ending.
yeah bring it to me, bring your sweet love, bring it on home to me.

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

that was the year we all drank pomenade and played scrabble stoned. we woke up with
itches in places where we’d never felt them before and said thanks, I needed that.

that was the year of a century of endings, of towels slipping off the door, hair drying into
strange arrangements, cat claws on the kitchen floor.

that was the year we were assigned to write three poems before she got ready. this is my
third by the way, all paragraphs being individuals charged by god/there is no
god. who really wants to go see a bunch of rocks and a non-birthing birthplace,
a rental space for men putting upon women, steroids of war for the children,
murdered successes, the year of winning betrayals moved into the margins,
parenthetics, the brackets once sun scolded, song surrendered, substance
saddened. yes, we moved in, candy smokers, one room over and yes, yearly. my
response is not to respond. simply I give into my own tongue.

walker percy wrote things like this --

his hand was in the hollow of her back, pressing her against him. she came against him, willingly. it was a marvel to her this yielding and flowing against him, amazing that I was made so and is this it then (whatever it is) and what will happen to myself ( do I altogether like the yielding despite myself and the smiling at it like smiling when your knee jerks when dr. duk hits it with his rubber hammer ) and will I for the first time in my life get away from my everlasting self sick of itself to be with another self and is that what it is and if not then what? he kissed her on the lips. ah then it is that too after all, the dancing adream in the carolina moonlight except that it was sleeting and it was firelight not moonlight on the glass.

Friday, April 15, 2005

there’s a picture of a graveyard just inside my fourth rib
some of the rib missing creates a picture frame
bone wanders looking for a widow
a piece of land
a homestead

it should be harder not to run into some people
instead it takes airplanes
calls from the office
summer’s ending

none of my friends have rock star haircuts
none of them sit on the ground late at night outside
but we’re saying
we’re comments for comets
for looks between

give me some of that old fashioned
I’ll let my blood travel
it all empties into the same place in all of us anyway
then is spreads like water spilled on a table
trying to seep into parts of us where it doesn’t belong
shining headlights
all the cars in the drive-in leaning on their horns
so if you’re going to say something to me now might be the time

Thursday, April 14, 2005

into the lymph nodes

before you can understand the importantance of cancer spread to the lymph nodes, you need to first understand the fuction of the lymphatic system. as the arteries enter tissues, they subdivide into progressively smaller branches. in the smallest vessels, called capillaries, oxygen and food are released into the tissues and carbon dioxide and other wastes are removed. in order to facilitate the transfer of these and other blood components, the capillaries are leaky. a wide variety of proteins and fluid constantly exit the capillaries and enter the tissues. without such an escape path, this fluid would accumulate in the tissues, causing edema.
fortunately, the lymphatic vessels are open-ended tubes that can drain this fluid out of the tissues and channel it back toward the heart. all of the lymph nodes from the lower extremities and pelvis merge into one large pipe in the back of the abdomen. this large pipe passes up through the middle of the chest, gathering fluid from the lungs and exiting into the venous blood behind the clavicle on the left.
if this were the complete story, any parasite or bacteria that entered your tissues through a wound would rapidly gain access to your blood, which has potentially devasting consequences. to avoid such a scenario, the body has established a rather sophisticated defense system. first, various white blood cells involved in killing invaders also constantly exit the capillaries and enter the tissues of the body, thereby placing them in position to handle bacteria and parasites. these same white cells enter the lymph channels and could travel upward with any invading bacteria, virus or parasite. and the lymphatic channels pass through four or five lymph nodes on their way to the blood stream. each lymph node acts like a filtering device, capturing invading organisms. once trapped in the node, an elaborate process takes place that aims to kill the invading organism. I am sure you seen this in action. if you get an infection in your throat, the lymph nodes in your neck enlarge as they fight the infection. likewise, if you have a boil on your legs, the nodes in your groin enlarge and become tender.
once in the pelvic lymph nodes, the natural path of cancer spread is up the lymphatic chain into the abdomen, chest, and then on to the venous blood behind the left clavicle. there is a node right next to the point where the lymphatic channel empties into the veins behind the left clavicle. this lymph node is called virchow’s node, named after one of the major german pathologists of the 1800’s, rudolph virchow. once the cancer cells enter the arterial blood supply, they travel to all parts of the body.

i-pod wars

scared straight by the long winters

It’s unappealing in someone so youngPlaintive, you’re feeling so washed upAnd you mean it when you say you’re doneFive lanes of freewayBut it’s all gone darkYou called to say you’re gonna runWell, Can you wait?Can you stand it?Are you brave or are you scared straight?She didn’t want you to:Speak right, be strong, act nice, take so longCall time, seem tired, leave mad, get so wiredMaybe you belong to someoneMaybe you have finally met themMaybe smoke belongs in the skyMaybe I hate it when you cryYou were hurt so you got hardYou were cursed and scolded and scaredYou were searched for, then ignoredYou want to burn the liars?You’ll set us both on fireYou’re faking, so I’m pretend sleepingWaiting for this to be funIt’s true little miss mean mini-bar guardWe’re gonna have to try something newLet me breath fire down on you

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

wireless

I am a fisherman, a fissure of bones
and sometimes you do what you’re told
I am a writer, a writer of fictions
I’ve written pages upon pages…


in 1939 I went to texas, corpus christi, with a small tacklebox that I left one day on the edge of the waves. it was all white then. boondocks. longer rods, longer poles, longer steps, longer lures on longer lines.

we were waiting for two of our group to show. you could walk all the way out the end of pier and still see the floor below the water. sometimes we’d walk out in the gulf there when the sound died down until finally stepping one step over the edge of the sandbar would get you wet. one of those times I was thinking that you’d been away long enough to be thinking which usually spelled trouble.

the missing two never did show. there were rumors for years. something about him becoming a tugboat captain and her a dancer. or that maybe he killed her. or she killed him. and just out past the break the water turned on itself and turned again.

oil rigs had come, lined up one after another along the beach
spewing tourists
water fountain pigeons
all of us living on the leftovers of who knew what
the pigeons staring with those orange eyes
black unfeeling dots in the center
flying fucking rats
people who looked like people you knew
I turned my back on it for days at a time
a locomotive rattle lulls a continous sleep
and I am a writer, a writer of fictions
I’ve written pages upon pages…

like someone sipping on a hot coffee
but my back was turned
which makes it hard to say who it was at that distance
wearing a shirt that matched the ocean in you

a bird shit on my shoulder
it sounded like a squirt
the rattle of a chain being pulled
sounds mechanical
a shadow fell over my walking and I held on, grabbed at the air
slipping back to 1933, my sister slipping into the water
all of us going in after her like some silent movie comedy
the water not so cold really
her not swimming or losing the tinted glasses on her head
still buoyed now by mam’s head shake
mam’s black hair and black eyes
metal on the end of a chain calling me back

certain parts of the pier were still mexico in 1939
groups of them singing as much as the irish
in clothes more suited for the weather
their children talking faster than them or us
always then it becomes
them
or us

one night the pier was closing down but I kept going out to the end as if an end were needed. I had the feeling that things had fallen out of my pockets. that it had been a long couple of years all at once. I looked back when I reached the end and imagined the sound of sandals scraping as they walked. the different color fishing lines on each pole. that sleepy afternoon smell that the sun and the water brings on. and I’ve written pages upon pages trying to rid you from my bones. is that you, or me, just now, that opens me up so far open like that. a longing to demolish or diminish a few hours. as if you could ride my back or ride my eyes dry or ride up my shirt sleeve like a song. people ask you later where you were on certain days or certain months in less than certain years. often you can’t remember. in 1939, in april, I was often on a pier, by the gulf of mexico, texas walking with me, both of us waiting on your face in most of those hours that would not disappear.

buildings and landscapes have familiar shapes
flags even
people
yours was known a longer body
a straggler left behind
or a war two years off in places we would have never visited otherwise

I was not young then
a gathering of weight that years give you
people I had known had died on me
people I knew had children you could have conversations with

they built a golf course next to the beach. alligators would greet you at the tee boxes. I had a dog name scraps who followed me home from the beach one day. I kept him because he wasn’t stupid and he wasn’t any trouble. he was a mangy old black mutt. he liked to golf, or rather he liked to chase golfers. he liked it most when I talked about you. I’ve never seen the point of marrying anyone but scraps liked the idea. he’d run twenty yards ahead of me and I’d say what do you think of it scraps. he’d come running back barking at me or he’d stand straight still with his head up waiting on the decisions in life.

sometimes then a walk, even in places you can’t forget, is just a walk
is just a finish
is just a stretching out
over land and berm and beyond a pale conceived in a city over oceans
oceans over end
end over steps
steps taken

yes, I was taken

where were you

i-pod wars

I can see forever all these things
They are obvious to me

We are flawless proof
We are breaking loose
I am ready to expire in all directions

All this breaking news
Just keeps breaking you
We will keep it there for your protection

These happenings keep happening
And now movements aer making moves
There are fingerprints, subtle hints
There are things you cannot choose

I can see forever all these things
They are obvious to me