Three Things Before 9:00 AM. (Already It Feels; Invisible Dog; Imperious Attitude)

I

Already it feels like it isn't working.
Already it feels like a big wide, white, empty abyss.
Already it's a mountain laughing at my broken legs.
Already it's everyone from junior high school taunting me, terrorizing me.
Already it's a wave that knocks me over and somersaults me under water over and over and there is no shore.
Already it's a barker on the street corner, convincing me it's a sure thing.
Already they're coming and telling me it was all a big joke.
Already the dogs are calling the police.
Already I'm running away from myself, because my self has a huge knife and a maniacal laugh and is coming for me, and I know that I can run, but I can't hide, because wherever I go, there I am.
Already it's hopeless, and already in this moment of utter darkness, a sliver of light appears, and already I believe in it because I'm such a hopeless sucker.


II

My dog is invisible, but he follows me around wherever I go. He takes invisible pisses on the lawn next door and my neighbor never knows. He takes a shit in the middle of the sidewalk and nobody sees and nobody cares and nobody notices when they step in it. He barks and only I can hear it. He does incredible tricks that only I can enjoy. He eats invisible food that I buy at the invisible supermarket with my invisible money that I make at my invisible job, where I sit at an invisible desk doing nothing all day. When I come home, my dog wags his invisible tail and showers me with invisible kisses, and I love the odorless smell of his invisible dog breath. My invisible dog is very, very, old, but when he dies, it will be basically the same as it is now, as if he were still here with me.



III


If I were suddenly to adopt an imperious attitude, I would expect that many things would change. Some people are born to follow, and perhaps I would find that many people who used to think of me as something of a joke would suddenly bow their heads and await my instructions. Others might take on the role of toady, and treat my every word as if it were infinitely wise and true. I could decide that the chair I am sitting in is a throne, and I could clap my hands three times and call for my Foole, and he would be dressed in motley and have one of those staffs that jingles, and I would laugh at his jests and perhaps chastise him for his impudence if he steps over a line. He would know that I could have him killed, but he would bravely make fun of my bald spot and my pot belly and my family history. He would tell the story of how my mother worked as a secretary for the CIA and cheated on her husband by fucking her boss, and that that's how I was born. Careful, Foole, I would say. And he would laugh and dance and sing a silly song of Martians made of marshmallows and I would forgive and forget. Then the entire court would sing a song to me, their king, and then we would all have a grand feast where I would eat no meat and drink no wine, and then I would sleep a deep, deep sleep and dream of being the real me once more and then I don't know. I might wake up feeling even more imperious than the day before, or I might find that I have grown weary of imperiousness, and decide instead to adopt an attitude of sniveling, craven, servility. I could wear a hair shirt and walk the streets with a beggars bowl, and when I spied the Foole on his way to the castle, he might remember yesterday's mercy and put a scrap of bread in my bowl, and I would thank him sincerely and then sit down and eat like a king.

August 30, 2016

A Paler Shade

A Paler Shade

As I stand here
Resenting the raucous music
Of the Q train performers
For making it impossible
For me to read
The essay about James Brown
In The New York Review of Books
I realize
I have taken whiteness
To a whole new level.

July 30, 2016

On Being in the New Yorker

On Being in The New Yorker

1.
I'm in The New Yorker this week
(A little profile about my history
With my band, King Missile)
And, although I am a grown man
(Fifty-five years old, as, sadly, the profile
Points out)
I find myself on the subway
Looking around
To see if anybody's reading it
To see if anybody is noticing me,
and thinking,
Hey, there's that guy who's
In the Goings On About Town section
A grown man, I guess, but still a child.

2.
Somehow,
I managed not to tell the woman
Carrying the Strand Book Store bag
With the New Yorker magazine cover on it,
"Hey, I'm in The New Yorker this week."

3.
When the woman came into my office
Saying, "Did you see this?
You're in The New Yorker!"
I said, "I saw it, thanks."
She said, "I got you a copy."
I said, "I'm a subscriber, but thank you."
And she left.
And I felt like a dick.
But I had seen it,
And I am a subscriber.
Still, I felt like a dick.

4.
The woman sitting across from me
On the train is reading New York Magazine.
If she were reading the New Yorker,
Maybe she'd be impressed
That she's sitting across from me.
Not that I want to impress her.
She is, after all, choosing to read New York Magazine Instead of the New Yorker.

5.
My dear friend Julian
Suggested that by virtue of knowing me
(A guy who is in The New Yorker this week)
He can claim secondary bragging rights
And dine out it for years to come.
I'd just like to point out
That so far no one has taken me to dinner.
Just saying.

6.
I realize
That if I were to submit this to The New Yorker,
And they were to publish it,
I would again be in The New Yorker.
But I'm not going to submit this to The New Yorker.
It's highly unlikely that they would publish it,
And I don't deal with rejection all that well.

7.
Next week, I will no longer be in the New Yorker.
I will look back fondly on this week,
When I was in the New Yorker.
I will move forward and try not to live in the past,
When I was in the New Yorker.
And if I ever have grandchildren,
I will try not to bore them with stories of
When I was in the New Yorker.

June 30, 2016

Monday Morning, On the Way to Work

Monday Morning, On the Way to Work

I
The loose fitting pants
Hanging off the homeless guys ass
Were not a sartorial affectation
The ‎motherfucker clearly didn't give a fuck
And I can't say I would either
If I had nothing.

If I had nothing
I wouldn't give a shit
That I didn't have a belt
Or that the crack of my ass was exposed
To some asshole
On his way to work at 

Some fucking law firm.

II
On the subway platform
The schoolgirl
With the short pleated skirt
Looked like a deer caught in the headlights,
Made‎ me think how fucked up it is

That girls are made to wear that shit
Although maybe it wouldn't be a big deal
If men could behave themselves.

III
Mysterious
Crumpled
Paper
Bag:

 

Did you hold a breakfast or a lunch?
A cup of coffee?
Pixie dust?
A handful of magic beans?
The song of 100 angels?
A box of nails or screws?
A blueberry muffin?
A promise?
A lie?
Why were you left lying there?

Why? Why?

A thoughtless gesture.

Today, I appreciate the thoughtlessness.
 

June 6, 2016

Dissed

Dissed
For reasons that have become increasingly unclear to me, I have thought, for several months, that King Missile should play Bowery Electric, a club located relatively close to where CBGB’s was located back in the day. That proximity may have been a reason, or it may be that a number of my friends have played there and I liked the sound and the layout of the place, and a friend of mine tends (or tended) bar. I don’t know. But I knew that after two shows at Brooklyn’s Shea Stadium, it would be good to play Manhattan, and I thought Bowery Electric was a logical choice.

I went to their website, and found a contact email, and I made an inquiry. I didn’t hear back. I emailed again, and was told by Nick (not his real name) that he had forwarded my email to Debby (not her real name). She eventually got back to me and asked if we wanted to play a free show in the bar area upstairs. I said, “No, we’d like to play the downstairs room. I’m sure we could get a lot of people there. We have done well at Shea.” Or something like that. I didn’t hear back. I emailed again, and Nick got back to me, and then Debby again. Finally, we settled on a date: April 10, 2016. Debby told me I could put the evening together by adding bands to the bill but that I should get back to her in ten days.

I was excited. I asked Rachel Trachtenburg if her band wanted to play and she said yes. I had trouble thinking who the third band would be, and the ten day deadline was approaching, so I emailed Debby to tell her Rachel would open and I was just looking for the third band. Debby told me that she had filled the 9 and 10pm slots for that evening but that if King Missile wanted to play at 10, maybe she could switch the 10pm band or move everyone earlier. “And is Rachel 18  yet?” Debby wanted to know. Debby apparently doesn’t know about Wikipedia.

I got on the phone with Debby, and she started asking me questions about my band (“Are you local?” Are you the band’s manager or are you in the band?”), and I quickly realized that this was way more of an uphill battle than I had expected. I told her, “I think maybe I’ll find another Manhattan venue, one that is actually wants us to play.” Debby said, “How can I know if I want you to play when I don’t know anything about your band?,” to which I might have replied—“Wikipedia?” “You Tube?” but I was kind of resigned to the fact that this wasn’t going to happen. So I ended the call.

We went ahead and booked a show at Cakeshop for this Sunday (May 21, 2016) and yesterday I learned that we got a little write up in the New Yorker. In order to kind of rub her nose in it (but more because I still really wanted to play there), I sent Debby an email, reminding her about the show we had booked there that had fallen through (without blaming her) and letting her know that we got a little write up in the New Yorker, and that I hoped we could put a night together at Bowery Electric in the Fall. Her response was. “Congratulations. Cakeshop is a good size room for this.”

I pride myself these days on not writing angry obnoxious emails to people who are really pissing me off. So instead I wrote back and said “Thanks, but we’d really like to play Bowery Electric sometime.” Her response was “Maybe down the line. Thank you.”

If you know me at all, you can imagine the kind of things I wanted to say to her. I think I am glad that I didn’t say any of them. And I guess King Missile will never play Bowery Electric. And I guess that’s okay.

May 25, 2016

Hoverboards

Hoverboards

Fuck hoverboards

They fucking suck
I fucking hate hoverboards
Such fucking bullshit

 

They shouldn't even be called hoverboards
They dont even actually hover
They're just fucking skateboards with motors

 

Which makes them motor vehicles, right?
Which means they shouldn't be on the sidewalk, right?
Which means the motherfucker who bumped into me just now
Had no fucking business riding a hoverboard on the sidewalk in the first place, right?
So fuck hoverboards,  right?

 

I'm glad I got that off my chest
But the truth is, I didn't just get bumped into by a motherfucker on a hoverboard

I made that up

But it is true that I do hate hoverboards

They suck

Fuck hoverboards

 

May 19, 2016 

Three Short Poems: "Itch," "Creep," and "Bus."

Itch
I've got an itch
On one of my inner thighs
I suppose it might be sexy
If you were into older guys*
May 13, 2016


Creep
There was this a young boy
Coming down the subway stairs
Holding a plastic T-Rex
Asking his mom if all dinosaurs were carnivores
And his mom said no, some dinosaurs w‎ere herbivores;
They eat plants and vegetables.
"But T-Rex eats people?," He asked
And she said yes.

And because I'm such a busybody fucking smartass,
I wanted to point out that there were no people
When T-Rex was around,
Unless you happen to favor a very expansive definition of the word people,
Which, who knows, maybe she did,

But the forecast called for rain today,
So there I was,
An old man in a rain coat,
I wasn't about to butt in
And run the risk of coming off like a creep.

So that poor child
Will have to live in fear of people being eaten by dinosaurs
Because I didn't want to feel like a creep.
But of course, I feel like a creep anyway.
May 13, 2016


Bus
Being on a cross town bus
Is like being‎ stuck inside
An enormous, round, turd
Too heavy
To move
More than a few hundred feet
Every few minutes.

A fucking glacier
Made of shit
That never
Fucking
Moves.
May 8, 2016



*This could be a verse for a song if I wasn't such a lazy piece of shit.