WHILE WE WAIT FOR THE PAIN TO BE RELEASED

"Baseball is like church. Many attend, few understand."
Leo "The Lip" Durocher

“Baseball is like church. Many attend but few understand.”

~Wes Westrum

SO WHO SAID IT FIRST? DOES IT MATTER? Or...why are you a whiny jackoff?

SPORTING PAIN
I used to have a fastball. Clocked at 87 miles-per-hour once or twice, it was no ticket to fame, but not bad for a lanky teenager. It used to dive under the mitts of catchers and rise enough to cause Major League scouts to cause notice when they spied my High School stats. I threw crooked and left-handed and struck out a lot of country boys in the sunlight and under bad lighting on dirt fields. Meanwhile, I learned to drink rank lager out of cans along gravel roads and sometimes on the next day, I’d pitch again, sore arm or not.

I threw a no-hitter the day after prom night my junior year. I remember the second baseman pounding OJ and groaning in the seat across from me in the bus that Saturday morning, bitching about his weariness, his hangover, the sun and the noisy-ass bus. I could be wrong, but I think he went three-for-four that day and we won in five innings.

He wasn’t bitching and moaning on the ride home. I remember that for sure.

We rode home giddy and cocky and goofy as fuck.

When I was in Little League, we only played a dozen or so games a summer. I had nothing to do but keep score during the KMOX broadcasts of Cardinals games when they were agonizingly close to first-place, but never there in the end. I’d spazz out in my bedroom amidst posters of Kenny Reitz, Ted Simmons, Bob Gibson and other out-of-town legends such as Johnny Bench and Willie Mays, bouncing balls off the walls and diving around to test my agility and ability while Lou Brock stole base after base, free agency took effect in the Major Leagues and I busied myself in between pitches. Occasionally, the games would show on television and I’d watch with my Dad, who turned me onto the history of the game by showing me around a board and dice game called Strat-O-Matic. I could manage the ’74 Cardinals and test my luck against the ’54 Giants or the ’27 Yankees, managed by my father. We played catch and he threw me batting practice and took me to games at Busch Stadium. We would be there in time to enter as soon as the gates opened and stay for the last pitch, often waiting outside the clubhouse doors to gather autographs. Every loss was agonizing to me. I was only a frustrated fanatic.

I rode along on bus trips with the high school team when I was a little dude and Dad was the coach. I liked the sound of spikes on concrete and the rattling of the wood bats in the canvas bag…the pop of the mitt, the crack of the bat, the smell of Atomic Balm, the sign language between coaches and players and grass-stained baseballs. I liked the different consistencies of dirt and the relief of water when my mouth was dry and my face was covered in dust after a long ride on gravel roads with the windows down.

Baseball is a sensory experience. It stings, it burns, it aches, it itches and it sings with adrenalin in your veins when your motions fit with the poetry of the game. When you kick it, drop it, throw it away or in the dirt, swing and miss it or pop it up, it hits you in the gut worse than Montezuma’s revenge. The agony of defeat is real. I prefer getting nutted by a bad hop to the feeling following a loss that I could’ve prevented. But I prefer both of those feelings to getting upset while watching from the sidelines. Especially when it is the fate of a bunch of millionaires hanging in the balance.

If you give a shit, the game will take all you got and throw it right back in your face, sometimes in the form of dirt, crow, humiliation and disgust. Other times, though, you get something back that was worth the blisters, wind sprints, shin splints and strawberries. My desire to master the game was enough to get me out of the cornfields and into a university. When it all ended at the end of my junior year in college, my pitching elbow fucked with tendonitis, I was a lost soul for years, but I still knew that life was worth a lot of physical pain when you get to the other side of achievement. Over twenty years later, I struggle to understand what life is like for those who don’t bother to bust out of inertia. I love the comfort of a good rut. Don’t get me wrong. Coasting, gliding, piggybacking, oh yeah---that’s good stuff, too. I’ll even admit to some corner-cutting and half-assing from time-to-time. I learned a lot about those methods while enduring certain days of practice when I wasn’t feeling well, or was nursing a sprain or a strain. I also learned that if you play through a little bit of pain, your mind will adjust and you can get the job done. Then you’ll be in a better place while your muscles burn and your back aches. The skunkiest, pisswater beer tastes all right in a place like that, but if you don’t want one of those hangovers, drink the good stuff. Pain does not always lead to gain. Sometimes it leads to suicide and bad poetry.

Which leads me to an important point: getting rid of the pain of fun gone stale. The hangover is an unfortunate side effect of laziness. Yes, you have to drink and maybe smoke and avoid drinking healthy amounts of water to achieve the existential dread of the hangover, but laziness only prolongs its power. Do you enjoy being the whiny bitch or groaning loner after every night at the pool hall, wedding reception, wine-soaked book club meeting? I’ll be honest, I do good work while hungover and enjoy long bouts of solitude, so I don’t avoid hangovers. From my observations, though, most of you are different, so here is some advice: get some exercise. A brisk walk will re-oxygenate you body and pump out the poison. Drink lots of water. It will never taste better. A run or bike ride evict the demons. Soon you will feel like as if you are truly living. That is only the effect of some tricky chemicals in your brain. You will still be the same cog in the belly of the beast, but it will feel much better once you’ve rejuvenated yourself and are able to face reality. In other words, fuck the game, don’t let the game fuck you! Get up and do something about it and be ready for next time. These sound like mad exhortations of a meth-addled wrestling coach, but their reasoning is sound and worth carrying out.

Of course, there is the realm of pleasure in the sack to relieve your aching brain. May favorite way to spend a day after a night of fun is to fill it with more fun. Get friendly with a leisurly hedonist who absolutely has to have two things in the morning: sex and food. Blow off class or work or and class and get to it as soon as you wake up. Nothing like it, Folks: the windows open and the sounds and breezes lowing in over your two-backed beast---its visit lasting until it is time to visit your favorite wok, bistro, pub, tavern or diner. A workout following chow! Good living, for sure, especially considering that a shower and more of the good stuff are excellent appetizers and deserts. Of course, that is the advantage of leisure and many of you bolt upright to the sound of his or her alarm clock, too late to enjoy such mornings, but you've got to do something to jettison the malaise and madness. Let them run off to work if they have to or get the hell away from them if they can't or won't perform in the morning (or afternoo

Here is a vision of your future should you skirt the world of physical exertion: you may well stop drinking.

I know, that sounds crazy, though many around you are crazy enough to practice abstinence and are being coaxed into such behavior by lots of advertising and a kazillion-dollar-a-year drug industry, not to mention an all encompassing police state. So barring something obscene and deadly such as going dry, you might become one of those folks who is enamored with computer games, statistics, and lo-cal deserts. You’ll suffer gastric difficulties due to stress from watching sports for its results without any regard for the beauty of the game itself. You’re anxiety will be heightened by your appetite for tri-caffeinated cans of death which you will sometimes cut with vodka so that you don’t strangle the idiot you’re dating. OR! Or, you could possibly become so devoured by the cult of fantasy leagues that well…let’s not go there.

Yes, many favor delusions and illusions to rational thought and following a path of reason. Some speak of unicorns and Santa Claus. They drink the “blood of Christ”and go home to bleed internally over a sports event without any regard for the beauty of the game itself. A morning will come when you realize you are one of the numbnuts you used to hate: that frustrated fanatic who screams at the TV.

Believe me. It’s true. C’mon, you can save those activities for when you’re doped up on state-ordered soma in some geriatric hovel.



Don’t say no! Enjoy the nightlife and physical activity while you can. The stress will kill you before a little sensory stimulation…and if you do find yourself in need of a good, drying out spell, you’re going to need to sweat that out with some good, outdoor huffing and puffing, if not a little heave-ho!

If you can stand to get out of bed, that is.



Previously published in 52nd City’s SPORTY issue, July, 2007

ROTATE YOUR TIRES

I have been thinking a lot about the need for satire and whimsy. Wanna guess at where my mind took me?
Watch these videos and see my unfinished piece at the end, here:


BUKOWSKI


ROTATE YOUR TIRES
Negative Nellies and Sweet Polly Purebreads,
He-Men, bullhorns, underdogs, clicking mice and fraidy cats,
Cronkites, security cams and helmets, safety goggles and empathy
true love and gravel fucks
don’t stop the wars hawks drop and
the rain of bloody injustice in the dustbeltistan
as you flip through the channels and pages
looking for the rest
of the wrestling of your mind
in the high definition specs that
fail to capture the cosmic slop.

A wedding ring and the keys to the minivan
when daddy’s taken for a goose ride
and we’re all conked out like Mr. Van Winkle
makes no nevermind to the vortex or the fish tails because
The Viet Cong didn’t watch the Waltons
and Good Times so you could buy
cheap tee shirts and the scrap metal Coca-Cola cans
from a ground zero china shop away from the bull
of Wall Street.

So flit around in the mind of Billy Pilgrim
or pretend we fed turkeys to helpless savages
and that the radios help us
consider all things in mid-commute from
cubicle to air-conditioned podcast twitter feed
facsimile of life.

Change your tires
Change your oil
Change of scenery
Change your mind
Change for a dollar
Loose change?
Sex change?

Feel better?
Well, if you weren’t full of shit,
you’d be changing your pants.

So there’s something.


If you think too much about the difference
between the damage you have done and the
frugality that you promise yourself,
remember that shrink-wrapped vegetables
and leaf-blowers ARE FUCKING RIDICULOUS!
…and so are you.

Ha!

Manageable decisions and necessary delusions
at all other times.
Or…
Is it reality for you?

History confirms our banality
stupidity
and destructive proclivities.
…and all the time pimpin’ is in effect.
You know what I’m sayin’
Bitch better have my money!

Take a dose of satire when needed.
Baffle the dumb-ass.
Kiss a smart-ass of your liking.

…and prepare to be chastised.

Take care of yourself.
The only real control we ever
have
and need
is with self…

and the self is a fallacy.

…BUT! when you can manage,
remember
the only commandment,
according to the bag lady in the cathedral:
DON’T BE AN ASSHOLE!

Oops!
Too late?
Well, here’s this:
Focusing on what you don’t want
brings it to you.
So watch out!
You’re gonna die.

AARON BELZ POEM IS THE BASIS FOR A SHORT FILM

AARON BELZ sent me an email yesterday. He included a short film: "...a Hollywood director’s cinematic interpretation of the process behind my poem “To Dream Only of Bunnies."

”TO DREAM ONLY OF BUNNIES

To dream only of bunnies
is a kind of poverty.
To dream of red flashing lights,
and that only, is also sad.

To dream of flashing red
bunnies, however; to sleep,
and by a sleep to say
we dream of red and green

rabbits flashing, among cars,
and a friend we haven't seen
in quite awhile standing
naked in their midst;

to sleep: perchance to die
in this our lonely shadow,
is basically to wake up
in a most alert way,

suddenly, and on a Sunday
afternoon, at the futon's
edge, one hand on the floor,
and to know, at last,

that one's existence
has meaning; has, not only
meaning, but importance;
has, in short, a dream

toward which to point its
prow as toward the rising sun
that, white on the horizon,
fills the water with its flashes.

Here is what Christopher J. Boghosian says about his project 7 Films, 7 Weeks:
"Eager to cultivate my craft and voice as a filmmaker, I am currently making one film per week for seven consecutive weeks. For inspiration and focus, I begin by randomly drawing a Greek personification spirit on Thursdays, then screen the film below on following Wednesdays.

As you can imagine, this project triggers my deepest fears: Am I wasting my time? Can I live up to the challenge? Will the films be any good? I’m not sure, but that’s okay, because my primary goal is to mature as a director and have some fun. The key lies in my stripped-down production approach (e.g., 1 location, 1-2 actors), which enables me to make one film per week while focusing on directorial execution and personal expression."

Week 1, July 7 – 13: Deimos

Deimos: Film 1 of 7 from Follow My Film on Vimeo.

Danny McClain

Horrible news: Danny McClain passed away this morning. He was one of the most dynamic drummers of the scene for some time, having played with Darin Gray in
GRAND ULENA, JOHNNY ANGEL (as I had previously forgotten...thank you Dave and all commenters)and in various other projects with the likes of Chris Smentkowski (BRAIN TRANSPLANT) and Dave Stone. GRAND ULENA'S label, FAMILY-VINEYARD, responds here
(Updated 10/19/2011) Toxicology reports show that he died of unfortunate, but natural causes: http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/rftmusic/2011/10/danny_mcclain_toxicology_repor.php
Celebrate the magic of these performances...
AND take care of yourselves!


.....and JOHNNY ANGEL

...just saw this online, too:
"The wake is from 4-9 thursday, baumann colonial chapel, 2504 woodson rd, overland mo. 63114, the funeral starts fri at 11 am. at baumann, the "internment" is at fee fee cemetery"

I didn't know Danny very well. I was the old guy going to Grand Ulena shows and bugging him at bars on South Grand about what was happening next. Bought him some beers at my place of work.
Check out the comments to see how much he is missed.
...and here is some video from the memorial held at Floating Laboratories on April 2nd:

Brain Transplant live in Saint Louis, April 2nd, 2011. Performing at the memorial concert for Danny McClain from joseph raglani on Vimeo.

Dave Stone, Kevin Harris & Alberto Patino performing at the Benefit concert for Danny McClain from joseph raglani on Vimeo.

Black Sabbath and Sherwood Schwartz

I've had some odd epiphanies when drinking. Go figure. Ha!
One time when I was at the Empty Bottle in Chicago listening to Rhys Chatham and a bunch of cats on stage doing a multiple guitar riff during his piece GUITAR TRIO, I heard part of a HOUSE OF LARGE SIZES tune. Don't ask me which HOLS piece I thought it was, but it was obvious to me as I stood swaying in the crowd that night.
Last night, while unknowingly celebrating the birthday of Chris Martinez as we drank at the Royale, Marla's iPod played Black Sabbath's "Solitude" from the album MASTER OF REALITY.


I immediately identified its similarity to "The Ballad of Gilligan's Isle" which was, of course, composed by producer Sherwood Schwartz, who did similar work for his other big hit for television
THE BRADY BUNCH. Anyway, I don't read or write or play music, so chime in if you can point out the musical similarities:

APPEARANCES AND MOONLIGHT DANCES

Two of my poems will appear in issue 5 of Bad Shoe Press
http://saintlouisprojects.org/
St. Louis on Tuesday, March 15th:
Here are the deets:
On March 15th (the Ides of March), St. Louis lit mag Bad Shoe will release its 5th issue, hosted by the Archive bookstore at 3215 Cherokee Street.
...
This is a special issue of the lit mag, which is the only periodical publication for emerging and eminent lady writers and artists in St. Louis. For the first time, the editors are publishing male perspectives on femininity.

Authors/artists in Issue #5:
Jacob Cohen
Tony Renner
Mary Phillips
Kelli Allen
Matthew Freeman
Phil Gounis
Erin Nihiser
Byron Lee
Brett Underwood
Bob Reuter
Aaron P. Ruiz
Christopher Alex Chable
Christine Callahan
Carrie Keasler
Nicky Rainey
Joe Sulier
Erin Wiles

Many of the authors published will be reading excerpts of their work at the release I AM DEFINITELY READING, with Matthew Freeman and the Skekses providing musical entertainment. Doors are at 7, reading starts at 8. The Cherokee Peach will sell snacks, wine, beer, and handmade sodas, and the Archive will also be open for book sales. Bad Shoe Issue 5 will be available at the special release price of $8.

APRIL 15TH: Check out http://www.thebicyclereview.net/
The Bicycle Review will publish two of my pieces! My first out-of-town recognition outside of the world of zines.

Saturday, March 26th at 7 p.m....
Regional Arts Commission (6128 Delmar Blvd--across from the Pagaent)
FOUR POETS AND A BUSKER
Sherman S. Sherman opens the show with some of his songs from
Fred's Variety Group, Good Griefs and Peck of Dirt http://www.myspace.com/peckofdirt

Reading will be:
MATTHEW FREEMAN woke up to find himself a poet as he was a teenager ruined with love. he then took off for alaska, new york, texas, writing and singing all the way. after visiting various institutions he's now in a different one: he's about to graduate from st louis uni...versity with an english degree. his third book, darkness never far, was recently reissued in hardcover. he has also just begun his teaching career.

STEFENE RUSSELL is the former co-editor of Prinsesstarta and 52nd City literary magazines, and is currently the Culture Editor at St. Louis Magazine. She is also a member of Poetry Scores (http://poetryscores.blogspot.com/), an arts collective devoted to translating poetry into other media, and Otis Nebula Literary Syndicate (otisnebula.com), a publishing project operated by working writers dedicated to serving living word, sound, and image to which commercial concerns are always subordinate.

BRETT LARS UNDERWOOD is a bartender and a gadabout who writes, promotes and produces happenings and mishaps. He's quicker with the stink eye than verbal reprimands and favors the brushback pitch over preemptive warfare. Once upon a time, he co-published a ‘zine entitled LICK MY SQUAGGLE NOOSE, CLAM TICK. He penned Zen koans for THE RIVERFRONT TIMES and ST. LOUIS MAGAZINE as well as many journals of suburbia.
For several years he produced and hosted KDHX' The No Show and the annual event DAY OF THE DEAD BEATS.
His verse and riddles have been published by 52nd City, Bad Shoe Press (March 15th), The Bicycle Review http://www.thebicyclereview.net/ (April 15th) and included in FLOOD STAGE: An Anthology of Saint Louis Poets.

KEN BROWN wass born in Missouri- left town at nineteen...Returned twenty-one years later after Minnesota, Maine, and Mississippi in a tent, Montana, Morocco- where he lived with a prostitute afflicted with polio. Normandy, Madrid, Grecian Islands- despondent- to upstate New York across the country in a Honda- through Mexico- Vegas- Santa Monica for four years doing laundry for a living then dog-sitting at the Ding Dong... Wound up in
Australia-Perth- the out-bush for nine months- Hell’s Angels blew up land- went broke- made ten thousand dollars on Karma Kards- fell in love for the thirteenth time- engaged-Kicked out of Australia- published in 45 periodicals- wound up back where he started.

The reading at Duff's scheduled for Monday, March 28th got bumped, so boo-hoo.

...in other news, I will read as part of a performance with
Hearding Cats Collective, including poetry from Anna Lum, Stefene Russell,
Treasure Williams and myself...this will be morphed into a program called Kyma, manned by the one-and-only Rich O'Donnell and accompanied by Rich and Zimbabwe NKenya on various instruments...at Floating Laboratories on Saturday, April 16th.
http://heardingcatscollective.org/
http://www.floatinglaboratories.com/

Let Go; Let Ligeti

I was lucky enough to sit in a room alone as the sun set through the South-facing windows while listening to these gems. I want to go out for a bicycle ride in a bit and have some drinks...read some poetry at fireside...return to hear them again.





As a side note, I add that Ligeti's son, Lukas Ligeti, will be performing in St. Louis as part of a Hearding Cats Collective show on April 29th.
http://www.lukasligeti.com/
http://heardingcatscollective.org