Batman: Word Freak

Batman: "Cattail Lane and Nine Lives Alley. The Grimalkin Novelty Company is on that corner."
Robin: "Grimalkin? What kind of a name is that?"
Batman: "An obscure but nevertheless acceptable synonym for cat, Robin."

Batman Got On My Nerves

"Batman beat the hell out of me and knocked me to the floor / I got back up and knocked him to the floor / He was being such a jackoff" - Wesley Willis

Hard World For The Little Things

"Get up, birdie. Get up and try again." - Bat Man

1987 Honda Spree

Snarky Batman III

Snarky Batman II

Snarky Batman

After A Rain

Simple's dead after a long while of being gnawed on by time and the gravity of the situation. He's pawing at Eternity, worn out, beating the mouse of foreverhood.

In 4 weeks, a family trip to the barrier islands of Carolina. Gullah place. Ancient land mass torn from Africa. Slave salaats performed on slow hills of sand. Wild horses and boars. Time is a goofball. No, time itself is G-d (Heschel).

My fingers are torn open. I am a horrible player. This pain - physical and emotional - is the craft entering me. "To learn a song takes years, not months." - quoth my inner Son House. I break with Yusef Lateef on the hi-fi.

Holiday crawls the country mile. Eleanor loves learning about the cycle of life. Ginsberg's chanting his "Kaddish" and I always break up ten minutes into it. I know where you've gone. It's good.

Impermanence means the zany horror that things disappear.

(!)

King Corn

Journal entry: Just a few moments ago my young neighbor Ms. Sparrow told me a cool anecdote about her mom's boyfriend Keith who worked at the feedlot and would always stomp his boots on the front porch after a long day's work before coming inside. "His boot treads always had corn stuck in 'em, and in summer a hundred volunteer corn stalks would rise from between the floor boards of the porch, just reachin' for that sun." Would you let 'em grow? I asked her. She said "I would but sooner or later my mama would yank them up."

tExT SaLaD II

II. Beware, sweet dark radio. I have a stack of papers to grade and no car to get around in. Besides, I particularly dig the sexual tension between the older daughter and the proletariat lumpen on the work crew. But then again I am bipedal and easily distracted...I will be there with an empty stomach and apologies all over myself. Everyone guess who's ready for this giant to end. The windmills of oblivion.


[The text block above is comprised entirely of bits of dialogue randomly selected from text messages sent and received from my phone over the past 2 months.)

TeXt sALaD

I. Work is a harsh mistress. Harsher than hashish! And Nessie has a whole list of unmet needs, right down to her precambrian bones. Like a viking who has nothing to battle, my mind is with the heathen islanders (It feels like 1,ooo yrs since we last flensed our arrows under the cherry moon.) Tell me of the two-headed snakes, papa - I feel all Wasteland inside.

[The text block above is comprised entirely of bits of dialogue randomly selected from text messages sent and received from my phone over the past 2 months.)

Curt'

Right now I am listening to Curtis Mayfield skronk "Ghetto Child" on the hi-fi while Janelle ices her shoulder on the living room floor (yoga-mama injury) and both daughters sleep, tucked down upon palettes, and the cool-ass avenue outside heats up with a little bit of that Tuesday night action, baby.

R.M.

I made this collage a long time ago for my buddy, Ryan. It is Ridiculous Medicine. In other news, today I am grading my students' final portfolios and trying to see the bright side of human nature in a world that seems to demand so much mediocrity...

Hideout

I was out walking the grounds of Hickory Hill last week when I happened upon this hobo wigwam. Elanor was asleep in the stroller, gripping her stash of She-Hulk comics. Holiday was purring.

Duck Bonded To A Beagle - Director's Cut

Poetry will immediately bond with the animal nearest it when it hatches. That bonding can remain for a lifetime. I've seen a villanelle bonded with a paragraph once. They were inseparable. The prose was there right after it hatched...I have also seen question marks play elaborate tricks on each other...not to mention em dashes, who show all kinds of emotion. I look forward to sharing observations of poems using tools and, in one case, a sonnet making tools.

Hulk

Eleanor recently discovered The Incredible Hulk. Then, with my guidance, she started to get into She-Hulk comics. She doesn't (of course) dig the complications of the plot threads - and she doesn't need to. She gets kicks basically just turning pages waiting for people to flip out and go green. What blows her mind is the idea of an essentially good - but flawed - person who from time to time loses his cool & goes into a full-on rage that manifests intense smash-power. It is...I would say, relevant for her these days.

Winter Detritus