Reading Cavafy

Reading Cavafy I feel
like walking
to Whole Foods
for a crumbling
brick
of feta cheese

taking my time
about it
hoping
something untoward
happens

so I can write
about it
framing
the anecdote
in the garb
of
Odysseus.

Riddle of the Sphinx

The Sphinx
had one eye
on the road
to Colossus
the one
in its forehead.

And Theseus said, "Hey,
are you a Kyklopoi
or a Sphinx?" except
he actually said,
"Cyclops."

To which the Sphinx
replied,
"Fuck you, raggedy
man, the riddle is,
Which do you pick,
fornicate
with your mother
or eat
your children?"

To which Theseus
replied
with his sword
of Damocles slicing
the Gordian Knot
of veins at the throat
of the minotaur-
looking
beast.

The Fucking Golden Age

Reading old chapbooks at the Multnomah County Library of PDX street and beat poets circa 1970s, surreal firecracker images popping like bubble gum, Marty Christensen and Doug Spangle and Bad George and Walt Curtis, I have to say this stuff holds up.  It's not boring.  As opposed to say the Best American Poetry series, flyshit encrusted in amber the moment it hits the page, the neutral neutered tone of part-timers pleading quietly for tenure.

Eaten by Aliens

The first message received on the billion dollar deep space sub-ether comm relay telescope read: WE LOVE YOUR HORROR MOVIES!!!  WE ARE COMING TO EAT YOU!!!  As the blips approach, inside Jupiter's orbit now, we sincerely hope they are making a joke.

Get Dad What He Really Wants? Really?

So sick of the lies of advertising.  Get Dad what he really wants?  Dad wants beer and some strange, okay, Barnes and Noble?  Okay, Target?  he doesn't want your fucking Vince Flynn novel, or your fucking slippers.

So Everybody's a Writer

I used to be the only writer I knew.  It was difficult being a writer.  You had to know how to spell.  You had to bash hardcopy out on a real typewriter.  Now everybody's a writer.  There are a couple homeless-looking motherfuckers sitting next to me down at the library talking about their Kindle ebook strategy and, the most homeless looking of the two, his blog on being homeless in PDX and writing a blog about it.  Maybe that one is me, actually.  fml.

Feminism in the 21st Century

Has feminism really come to cheering for Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina? Would we cheer for the first female guard at a concentration camp because she cracked some perverted glass ceiling?  Feminism used to be revolutionary.  Now it's ten million women telling each other they look tired and all of them feeling virtuous about it.