From the Archives

I was looking through all my old notebooks tonight... I was writing a lot more back in my early to mid 20's. Most of it crap, but there are a few things that were alright. This is one of my faves. Jen X used it in her "Open Me" anthology back in the day (when's that second one coming out, jen x?). I wrote it when I was 26 and battling some little baby demons-in-training. cute demons. Also, you should know that I was obsessed with the myth of Tantalus at the time, but always insisted on the "Greek spelling" - Tantalos. Oh, to be 26 again and arrogantly insisting on Greek spellings. sigh.

Tantalos' Dream (1991)

Weep me a nation
Lower East Side Sunday morning
Silt whirling through the multitudes of loss
Caught in his slumber of youth, the flying boy
Will cry like a hungry babe when he awakens
Will the dawn ever come?
Weep no more for me
Jailed beneath the darkest dungeon of myself
Shitting scared on the granite floor
My house, my body, arena of destruction
These eleven years or more.

Weep no more for me
Homeboy shiny boots of black
Pancake thin at heel from eleven years or more
Of angry stomping on the golden dance floor...
DANCE, MOTHERFUCKER, DANCE!
Lose yourself among the pretty willows
Of your own weeping riverbed
Do you believe I have never trod
A broken mile or two with my own three feet
Stuffed in those boots of black engineer leather
Six sizes too small for me today, Daddy-O
Yet on and on I trudge, a flaccid mule
Tho the mud has long since crystalized
Hard up to my waist and six sizes too small
Blister pus on my aching heels to match
The scabs on my cock-scarlet mosaic
Product of ten thousand lonely nights

Weep no more for me
Acid tears wept dry reveal the youth:
Thin as a hungry dog, ponytail hair,
T-shirt billboard exclaims: "NEVER GIVE IN!"
Never give in! my comrades in arms,
Do you know what your words will wear
When you too, yes, you, are older than me
And the prison guard has gone home with the key
Give in and weep no more
Give in to give out
And give out to get the fuck out

I see you still every night
Tears looming in your bleary eyes
WE, who wouldn't give up the poetry,
Weep no more! Dry the tears of gin
Look and listen
Poetry waits silent still
The world is sad still
And sleeps inside you.

Cheesy Birthday Poims

So, three of my friends actually sat down to write me "cheesy birthday poems" as requested in the invite. I wanna post them, but won't say who they're from, just in case any of them have a problem with me posting the poems on my blog. I didn't ask them, b/c they might've said no. It's always easier to get forgiveness than permission.

They're so great. Here they are:

1.

You're a pretty tough nut to crack
Not really, I've got you pretty well figured out.
But that doesn't mean you're not complicated.

Wow, I meant for this poem to be way crappier
And I fucked up already.
There's still time to recover.

You're old, man.
Not really, you're timeless, or whatever, and it's all relative.
Shit, I totally meant for this poem to be more about the poem
And less about you
Not that it shouldn't be about you, Tom T-----
Because it's your birthday and a milestone or whatever one at that,
But posing like this poem is more about itself than you
Is a poetic tactic of subtlety, not hitting you over the head with what a poem
is about
Which would be appropriate for a crappy poem to do, thinking it is what a
regular poem would do.

Back to you.

You're from New England and like to have makeup put on you. You can be
flamboyant for a mostly straight guy.

A crappy poem, apparently, makes flat quasi-factual statements about the
person it is about, in a random order as they present themselves.

You were in the circus.

I could tell you a lot more about yourself, to remind you who you are on this
birthday, and as a crappy poem I probably should, but you don't really need
to hear it anyway because you know it.

So remember who you are, Tom T-----. I am going to end this poim before
I give in to the urge to go way profound.


2.

Over the hill
With looks that kill
Approaching that age
When you turn a new page.
But who's counting the years passed
When you've got experience vast
And a lust for life
Creating union, not strife
They say it isn't in how it all ends
But how loved you are by your friends
And in the case this is true,
There's no one luckier than you


3.

Tom, Tom, oh Birthday Tom
Would you like some cardemom?
If you do, I can get you some
If you tell me where to get it,
Cuz I don't live around here.

Happy day for snappy Tom
I hope you didn't have a crappy Mom
One that made you wear socks with pom-POMs
Because that would suck, cuz kids would
Make fun of you, not only at lunch.
Not like that would be any different from now.
People make fun of you, I mean.

No! I'm kidding! don't cry, Tom
You're neater than I can say on a CD-ROM
Please don't be mad, I think you're the bomb.
No, really, Tom, no one makes fun of you.
Don't be dohm.

Happy Birthday!

post-apocolypse

body and brain still crawling back up the side of the well...

i'm forty.

and i have the greatest friends in the world.

friday o2 offered to take me back full time, and my sister offered me the powerbook of my choice for my birthday.

apocalypse on saturday was as off-the-hook as i'd intended. Old artstars meeting new artstars, old friends making new ones. i got cards and cookies and kisses. beautiful women wrote me poems. tom nevin bought me a cigar. Alannah came up from arkansas just for the occasion. it was nice to see and hang out with Bex again, who kept freaking me out by looking like an ex-girlfriend out of the corner of my eye.

here are the few pics i managed to take. some were taken by jim melleon, too. i only posted a few since most of the pics from the party were taken in such an inebriated state, that the sober mind probably wouldn't make much of them. Rev Jen showed me some she took and they, too, are incomprehensible.

sunday was triple-date day: dodge, shapiro, tanya, noel, alannah and i went to the Basquiat show after hanging at Vaclav Hovel (my apartment) and "preparing" ourselves. later we ate mexican food in the slope while having fun with a young child who obviously preferred us to his boring parents who were paying no attention to him.

some great sets at the antislam weds: lopi, Valmonte Sprout, Vinny Fallon, and Jen X spring to mind, but everyone was really great. the theme seemed to be substance abuse, specifically alcoholism. i drank little bottles of sutter home cabernet instead of budweiser and had a good set - half reading, half remembering. didn't go to bowery afterwards - way too beat.

tonight Rev gave me a spongebob plush doorbell. i wonder where i should put it.