March 29, 2009-Mark Eleveld
Good evening,
I am writing this at 10:17pm, central time, outside of Chicago (I will reveal place at a later date). I had planned on putting together a big 'how-do-you-do', but I have become somewhat ill, Midwestern flu style. I wanted to do a 'Who are you', Ah! That's the question. The answer is: I don't know,' existential faux pas via Mickey Rourke via via Charles Bukowski via x 3 Barfly style, but the short is, I suppose, that my name is Mark Eleveld and I am a high school English teacher. I have edited two fairly well selling anthologies of contemporary poetics, the non-traditional slam world as well as the academic world, called 'The Spoken Word Revolution' and 'The Spoken Word Revolution Redux' (Redux stolen from Updike's Rabbit series ... 'tis the title of one of the Rabbit books which is also made fun of by one of Updike's characters in a later book as being a silly title for a book [by the way, by and far the scariest books I have ever read on contemporary life, Mr. Updike's Rabbits, holy cow]). I have also written my fair share of book reviews for the wonderful American Library Association Booklist Magazine (who doesn't love libraries and those who run them?) and a couple of other newspapers/magazines, and currently produce a poetry radio show called 'Slam the Radio' on Sirius/XM Radio Book Channel 117/163. (Lot of bio above for a humble high school English teacher; I'll try to be less self-involved as the week goes on.) Oh, I am friendly with the greatest, best looking small publishers in the poetry business, EM Press (www.em-press.com). So, recent sickness has lead me into the solitude of my garage, my man room ... my little get away from the way. I have been engrossed in too many good Vanity Fair (I know), New Yorker, Rolling Stone issues to have a healthy endorsement as a Chi kid, but as a counter I have been reading the hell out of Roberto Bolano (http://www.amazon.com/2666-Novel-Roberto-Bolano/dp/0374100144/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238384258&sr=1-3). And I have some really fun tunes and films that I've been wetting the palate with. Ok. I'm sick. Please believe me. Here is some poetry to read and listen to(since this is a poetry blog and all) ... a quick thanks to David and Stacey for allowing me to do this. I look forward to a fun week of self-reflection, deprecation, healthy nonsense, and uppity aesthetic battles. Let's talk about poetry baby. I'll be more with it tomorrow, I promise. But I'm leaving you with the goods this evening.
By Michael Kadela shameful tragic bullshit withers nether furtive formulae the perfect bitch was fixed and forecast waiting for her stern reply alas, the pitch was waifed and wanting! the weather vanes were pointing up the devil’s tail – it danced, and dancing leveled lives of happy trust oh well, so let us write the sorry tale of it for so much time was wagered in the baking of their stupid corpses it all began as very many stupid things (which multiplying lustfully resulted in an even greater number of very many stupid things) where once upon a time was sitting on the toilet with a grimace and some ointment for all the pushing that he’d done and one hundred million idiots were staging strange two-way parades the floats were made of barnacles and all the clowns were skinned&screaming treatises in dolphin tones and where was the prince for all of this? he was drunk and jacking off to back issues of Ranger Rick and the phone book there was little hope that he would know or even note that there just may have been a better way (but rabies is an evil fraction of a wholly total madness like mosquitoes in your sinuses it paints a pretty picture with your welts and capillaries) anyone else that may have helped was dead their likenesses were stowed away in trunks beneath old piles of rags so we may too ignore them the prince, who lacking pants, addressed the angry mob they were looking forward to his leadership his presentation of solutions he stumbled to his pedestal, confused and proud a hushed, expectant, reverent crowd all watched him shrug his royal shoulders saying: do not cry over spilt blood there’s more if you need it at your neighbors home today is yesterday’s tomorrow and tomorrow sucked yesterday in 2 days, tomorrow will be yesterday and then too, it will probably also suck I guess that’s just the way the cake collapses I guess that’s just the way the screaming clown will split his chest I guess that’s just the way the tumor celebrates I guess that’s just the way the body dies the angry mob – their anger dissipated in an underwhelmed indifference they walked among the strange parades on their ways back to their beds the prince, he napped and dreamt of sand and tallow sandwiches so endings came in ways beginnings went
LXXXIV
Careful What You Ask For
by Jack McCarthy
I was just old enough
to be out on the sidewalk by myself,
and every day I would come home crying,
beaten up by the same little girl.
I was Jackie, the firstborn,
the apple of every eye,
gratuitous meanness bewildered me,
and as soon as she'd hit me,
I'd bawl like a baby.
I knew that boys were not supposed to cry,
but they weren't supposed to hit girls either,
and I was shocked when my father said,
"Hit her back."
I thought it sounded like a great idea,
but the only thing I remember
about that girl today
is the look that came over her face
after I did hit her back.
She didn't cry; instead
her eyes got narrow and I thought,
"Jackie, you just made a terrible mistake,"
and she really beat the crap out of me.
It was years before I trusted my father's advice again.
I eventually learned to fight--
enough to protect myself--
from girls--
but the real issue was the crying,
and that hasn't gone away.
Oh, I don't cry any more, I don't sob, I don't make
noise, I just have hairtrigger tearducts, and always
at all the wrong things: Tom Bodett saying, "We'll leave
the light on for ya;" I cry at the last scene of
Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.
In movies I despise the easy manipulation
that never even bothers to engage my feelings,
it just comes straight for my eyes,
but there's not a damn thing I can do about it,
and I hate myself for it.
The surreptitious noseblow a discreet
four minutes after the operative scene;
my daughters are on to me, my wife;
they all know exactly when to give me that quick,
sidelong glance. What must they think of me?
In real life I don't cry any more
when things hurt. Never a tear at seventeen
when my mother died, my father.
I never cried for my first marriage.
But today I often cry when things turn out well:
an unexpected act of simple human decency;
new evidence, against all odds,
of how much someone loves me.
I think all this is why I never wanted a son.
I always supposed my son would be like me,
and that when he'd cry it would bring back
every indelible humiliation of my own life,
and in some word or gesture
I'd betray what I was feeling,
and he'd mistake, and think I was ashamed of him.
He'd carry that the rest of his life.
Daughters are easy: you pick them up,
you hug them, you say, "There there.
Everything is going to be all right."
And for that moment you really believe
that you can make enough of it right
enough. The unskilled labor of love.
And if you cry a little with them for all
the inevitable gratuitous meannesses of life,
that crying is not to be ashamed of.
But for years my great fear was the moment
I might have to deal with a crying son.
But I don't have one.
We came close once, between Megan and Kathleen;
the doctors warned us there was something wrong,
and when Joan went into labor they said
the baby would be born dead.
But he wasn't: very briefly,
before he died, I heard him cry.
http://www.standupoet.net/audio.htm
