Forty-Eighth Entry

Well, it's a been a little while. I thought I was starting to dry up.

I hit 'the wall' at work today and found that I wasn't able to do my job for one more second without losing my mind. But I stayed on for several more hours and did not lose my mind. Then I had a very awkward encounter with someone on the street.

Here's the info about my reading this Friday. It should be a good one.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24 at 8:00 PM
An all-Texans reading featuring
Shanna Compton, Shafer Hall, Susanne Reece & Steve Roberts
Earshot SeriesHosted by Nicole Steinberg
The Lucky Cat*245 Grand Street(btw Driggs and Roebling)
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
$5 includes one free drink(beer, wine or well drinks only)!
L to Bedford, G to Lorimer, or J/M/Z to Marcy
directions

* Please note the change of venue for the Earshot series!


Here's my poem:

BRUCE BAILIE POEM

There’s a man in a suit lying on the sidewalk
and there is a puddle forming. The man
is be-suited and we’re standing here
watching the puddle grow. And the man is dead.
It is night time, but when I ride my motorcycle
it is daytime, a few seconds later. And there’s
a man on the sidewalk face down, in a suit.
Is he dead? I keep thinking about Levittown.
When I ride my motorcycle I keep looking forward
while thinking about what’s behind me, the tunnel,
the people who stood in a rough circle around
the man who was lying there.

I stand at a great distance from Levittown,
just built, and I’m frightened by how repetitive
and vast and never-ending it is. And I can’t stop
thinking about the man, and what I might say to him,
and at what rhythm our conversation would tremble,
and if he stood up from that sidewalk,
would he have eyes and would they open? And would
they turn in my direction? And would I have to answer
for something? And I think about who is behind
my motorcycle, and who is watching my motorcycle
and what that means to them.

I’ll tell you what it means to me.
It means I can defy myself, for the briefest
of moments, I can fly right past a problem
as if it were a parked car, shiny black chrome
panicking against the horizon, and it means
every second I twist the throttle
that I am not that man lying on the sidewalk.
I never want to be on a sidewalk again.
I never want to lie down again.
I never want to be a man again.

Forty-Seventh Entry

SO, The Dick Pigs have updated since their killer launch party. They will also be squealing at the Frequency Series on March 4th, I'll repost that when it gets a lil closer.

It is well known that I hate all forms of life, hu-mans in particular. But I will be braving you horrible scum to do next week's EARSHOT reading. I'll give you more info about that later as well.

I'm in a foul and curmudgeonly mood. It seems as if I am a grump.

Here's my poem:

1998, YEAR ONE:

"Call me Joseph, dad," was my favorite
nonsense phrase that year, I would slide those fingers
through my longish hair and look down with forgiveness
on my chemistry book, or sit alone, fiddling
amicably with my empty teacup. Wind would fly
through my face when I walked outside, faces
looking at me in the abstract, clinging to myself in wrapped flannel.

From all this I was able to create an interesting lie:
February was the month I said my parents died, among the yellow
flowers, I would look at the stranger across the table humorlessly,
falsely accusing him with my eyes. When I wasn't lying,
Fridays I would walk or run White Rock Lake, 12 miles
flinging my hands loosely in the air, like a dead man
follows the light, out of obligation, out of a practiced fear.

Fast and amorous and deceitful was how I felt.
For no reason I would kiss a girl, and for no reason I would fight,
fists pumping the air, yanking drastically at my friend,
fraying his collar because he wouldn't talk to me that fall.
Forgetting why I started this experiment, in my hand I found
fractured pieces of my teacup, and looked around for my father,
frantically trying to think of things that I have now forgotten.