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Bite off the hand and eat gold
From the dead arm of the Antietam soldier
Leave him on the lawn
In between the poles of ash
In the litter and Moses Wagon
They’ve drawn
Shear off your whiskers, anchorite, with metal noises
With the badge of confederate stripes
Your woman with high cheekbones
And pinched, Guatemalan eyes,
They split her open like a melon, and her eyes rolled back in her head—
They all used her good
Now paint a smile on her
And put her in the ground
Tucked as a pea,
A bump uncomfortable
for posterity
to sleep on
And after trading the bad specie
For new,
Shed the woman (still a note not made)
the gray coat and the bivouac,
Pulling up the rails behind you
Move to California (for
You were always Western in heart.)
You have hard tack in bags and
The Yankee’s gold chips
Raze the old mill house
And birth a livery
Tend horses for the unioners
Riding in with bloody uniforms,
Toothless mouths,
Spotsylvania-
Spittle covered hard stories
Clean the boxes with her portraits
And bury them all with the dead green rinds
Bury another dead wife and another
plucking from each sad one,
blueberry of a southern son
and they will call the business theirs in time
And history will then always know you,
Distinguished gentleman with a beard
(Originally posted July 29, 2007)
Posted in Poetry | 1 Comment »
Top Ten Rules For Being An Entertainment Journalist
- Don’t ever ask Lou Reed simple yes and no questions. He will only answer yes or no, and then after five minutes he’ll start calling you an asshole, and then he’ll call your editors and tell them that you’re an asshole.
- Don’t ask Lindsay Lohan about her drunk driving arrest right off the bat. Before that, ask what it’s like to work with Meryl Streep while you’re on crank.
- Take off your shirt when interviewing Paris Hilton. She thinks it’s really hot.
- Don’t be tempted by Courtney Love’s efforts to establish intimacy with you by sharing her drugs or inviting you into her bathtub. She’s just making you her bitch.
- Your interview with Lily Allen isn’t over until the cheeky Brit-pop star has punched you in the face.
- It’s OK, don’t freak out! But the liquid in that white cup rocker Pete Doherty gave you might blind you for three hours.
- Try not to let Angelina Jolie hijack the interview by talking on and on about the genocide in Darfur, because subjects like that are not the reason you got into journalism.
- Be prepared to answer to the names Cameron Diaz calls you: “Sub,” “Maggot,” and “Little toe fucker.”
- Always try to get your interview subjects to comment on the hot topics of the day: Anna Nicole’s death, Paris Hilton’s jail term, and mathematician Grisha Perelman’s proof of the Poincare conjecture relating to the topology of three-dimensional manifolds.
- Remember, the ultimate goal is to have the celebrity lash out at you like an animal in a cage, meaning any creative solution to this goal, from pinching them to throwing acid at their faces, is all totally cricket.
(Originally posted July 24, 2007)
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Roman candles fizz after twilight,
And bottle rockets skid burping
into New Year’s champagne
Halting, my hand under a mouth
Parabolic potential
And zeroes;
When the fireworks’ rage
Waits to spend itself
In rain; in blue Technicolor tears
But duds, the long silk legs not achieved
Manhattan labored
through green prisms of stammering fog
And under the Brooklyn freeze: Base relief
When you, bold,
Hold to the water chains
You, with your nubile
lazy eye, to kiss there.
Kleig lights ignite the fog.
An explosion in the mouth:
Near the water;
The red hooks … apple down
32 feet per second per second
I didn’t think you’d do it
Too much riding on …
Too much pride for surrender
Too much joy in privation
A drunk swig, and a
suicide jumper in mid-air, you.
Afraid at the event horizon
Bombs are opened
in the infinity of post offices
Imagined,
Only abstracted through hair;
Only one light, one
Existence.
Closed between you, my h___,
My H____
My h____
(Originally posted July 19, 2007)
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What’s On TV Tonight, July 17, 2007
2 TNT
We Are Now Officially the "Law and Order" Network
4 NBC
Oral Vs. Anal Retentive Fear Factor Theme
Nights Continue
7 Fox
Make a Tasty Ceviche, Or Be My Bitch (Reality)
10 Prayer Network
Jesus! You cock-blocked me!
20 VH 1
The Best Week Ever on Oxycontin
25 Food Network
Bobby Flay Serves You A Can of Spine
45 Fox News
Bill O'Reilly Beats Up A Shmoo
72 Ovation
The Artist As Woman-Hater
81 Sundance
Film: "Kiss Me Down There" (from Canada)
85 Style
The Blingiest Celebrity
Alcohol Monitoring Bracelets
200 HBO
A Masturbatory New David Milch Show
In Blank Verse
204 Cinemax
Pneumatic Suckings
208 Showtime
The Hip New Show Doth Protest Too Much
210 National Geographic Channel
This Hindu Temple is Covered In Cat Shit
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1 CBS
CSI Nights: The Dawgs of Blood Spatter
2 NBC
America's Got Talent, But Needs Ritalin
5 ABC
Lice Swap
7 Fox
So You Think You Can Perform an Episiotomy?
20 VH 1
The Top 10 Leakiest Celebrity Gastric Bypasses
21 E! Entertainment
If We Could Find a Way To Shoot Anna Nicole
Into Your Bloodstream, Or Better Yet, Give Her
To You Through an Enema, We Would Surely Do It
31 Cinemax
Conspicuously Doughnut-Shaped Throbbings
32 HSN
Subprime Achievers!
35 Public Access
My Video Log of Croatians Showing
Vaguely Fascist Sympathies
33 Spike TV
Opie & Anthony's Predatory Lending Pranks
79 A&E
Flip This Superfund Site
29 HBO
War of the Worlds
30 Lifetime
Movie: "This Businesswoman
Needs To Be Taken Down A Notch"
40 Bravo
Let's Throw Lit Matches at Paula Abdul (Reality)
42 Fox News
Roundtable Discussion: Let's Give Iraq
Its Privacy, OK?
50 Democracy Now
Are Your Feelings For Your Baby Bourgeois?
52 Sundance Channel
Don't Hold Your Breath Waiting For Something
To Happen In This Film From Iran
53 History Channel
Let's Just Get to the Impalings, Shall We?
82 Discovery Channel
An Ancient Canopic Jar Spills Its Guts
83 BBC America
Detective Ipswitch Provokes an Obstreperous
Contumely
84 IFC
Henry Rollins Not Quite Reaching
The Level of Satire He Hopes To
100 CNN
Come back, Anderson! Come back!
102 PBS
The News Hour With Jim Leher: Pretty Much
All the Same Horrible Shit You Can't Be
Bothered With
104 Court TV
Mother of Christ, it's just days and days of "Cops"!
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… a new song. Just what is going on here?
The Dionysian Rationale
(at http://www.myspace.com/ersalodeguierre )
Behold his body and the fountain from his head
runs to boundless seas
He’s seen visions
Heard an oracle in oak trees
Drank honey from his dreams
He was born free in the wild
He is nature’s child
Coming out in sugar streams
From his mouth fly a million butterflies
Pearls are in his eyes
Close your eyes and you will see
Look where the river runs
Underneath your footsteps
Cool coca leaves
You could drown libidinous
Hungry and carnivorous
Warlike and extreme
And an orgy of life bubbles from you
Frothing up to transform you
From a life-giving eternal spring
In the arms of Morpheus go slack
And then you come back
Drinking honey from your dreams
Where every rock has its own healthy mind
Where every clearing is a killing floor
Where every living tree is thought divine
Where every mushroom is like heaven’s door
Like leaves that redden, die and mellow
So will you my son
When you look upon the violence of this
warring bloody world
Do not wonder why
Just fall upon all fours and scream
Like a baying animal
With white and wild eyes
And a river of life passes through you
It has come to reclaim you
And take you to eternal sky
You are the only one who knows now
So take off your clothes now
And dance with all your fevered mind
Don’t you know your mind is healthy
And every clearing is a killing floor
Just shut your mind off put it in the trash
Boom boom
Take every mushroom right to heaven’s door
Like leaves that redden, die and mellow
So you will my son
Behold the body there’s a fountain in his rib
Washing down through caves
He’s seen visions
Myths issue from his body
Like wine gushing through the staves
He was born free in the wild
He is nature’s child
Washed up from the foamy waves
From his mouth fly a million butterflies
Pearls are in his eyes
Call his name and you will see
(Originally posted July 14, 2007)
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… with a little tiny wing-wang broke into my MySpace page the other night and started sending everybody Instant Message invites with my name on them. I’m frightfully sorry about this, and I apologize, first, to anyone who got this fake message, and trebly to anybody who actually might have clicked through to download the pernicious spyware on the other end masquerading as beta chat software. If it makes you feel better, we were victims, too.
I was in flight the whole time, coming home from a five-day visit to Oklahoma, and didn’t have access to my computer to even know I’d been hacked. This is the first time it has happened to me on MySpace, and I hope the last. I’ve changed my password, which seems to be the only initiative anyone can take in these circumstances.
Sorry again.
(Originally posted July 14, 2007)
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Above It All
Music and lyrics by Eric Rasmussen. All instruments played by Eric Rasmussen, including the guiro. Song unfortunately also sung by Eric Rasmussen.
Yellow ice is forming
On the windows of New York tonight
Summer’s really gone
You sleep with your gun without closing your eyes
You fall asleep in your taxi
A song disappearing under a train
Take a smoke from a needle
Can’t even see your face for your own brain
You stirred it up in a bathtub
Blue dry and a bucket of ice
And you filled every wound
Not a thought sliding from your side
But then one day I know
You could find the joy of a woman
And the one that you want
Is an angel with her hair cut off
She’s so shy you can’t touch her and she
Makes you question your convictions
What’s the matter driver
Is there something sliding from your view?
Did the woman you love
turn around and run away from you?
Are you sick with experience
And your eyes turning blood into wine
Will the world go to hell
And will you fall in behind?
Find yourself aiming a pistol
At the sun at the end of the day
There is no east or west in this
Nothing to guide your way?
Only one day I know
You could know the joy of a life
You don’t have much to hang it on
Nothing you can call your own
But you won’t ever die
Or even see the end of day
What’s the matter driver
Did you never hear your body fall?
Because the moment they got you
You were already above it all
(Originally posted June 27, 2007)
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From his Errata,
In a room of shelved books
Dressed in winter argyle
A scholar descends through
Winds of high blue December ice, vain ice
And clear lake leaves on a sweater
Head full of drink and argybargy
*
Pig iron sleds stand around the black stanchions of
Ice; clouds around hoof and nostril
Plunging churches
*
Underneath, blood, red around these points–Cymryn versus
Vainglorious Anglo, Roman versus Breton,
Jute versus Viking–runs faster than milk,
While bodies of slit-throated, sacrificed peasants
Persevere in peat marshes,
Silver as death, bogged down to study
The chalk fire of white
Where looming orange cottages
Gutted
By daisy-cutters of war
Are a necropolis empty of sentinels.
*
The sun is summoned,
The re-apotheosis of Apollo
Who last went grazing among the drink of stars
Like learned men drinking at the trough of irrational books
*
His mouth,
Such a small wound from which to reemerge
In his chariot
Pulling winter behind him
His season of greatness once more finding its career
Born from a wastrel’s body
Like all elemental myth
*
(First posted May 24, 2007)
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