not a poem: On Ali

other night happened to listen to Another Side of Bob Dylan for first time in years and I Shall Be Free No. 10 came on, where Bobby comically threatens to make Cassius Clay's face look just like his own, and I thought - what a thought that both these guys are still alive.
didn't post that though, felt morbid, seeing as how i'm seeing Dylan in a couple weeks but much more so knowing how long Ali's been in terrible health thinking right then his time cannot be long, Next day there's bad news, next day he's dead.
i dunno.
when i was a kid, he was still going, he looked like a hero. he just looked like he was the good guy. he sure talked like the greatest winner there could ever be. then in junior high school, i learned about his stance against the war and that made him more of a hero than any stance in a ring.
thing is, there are no heroes, it's not a real thing, a hero. but there is the heroic, and that was heroic, that was righteous.

blonde on sound

i was just now thinking about something i didn't post yesterday, something ididnt 'write, whic i din't post due to timing but ifelt the wrong timing would have been right and just now i relazied the wrong timing would have been perfect. Relazied, in deed, (not just in a word).

The Assistance Agenda

Walking DTLA thinking a moment that living in valley makes me feel like dying; suddenly hapless homeless one who can't get a dime nor anyone's time, mebbe that's it,  says of self "maybe I should just put a bullet in my head" so I say "I was just thinking the same" & homeless person pauses, thankfully doesn't mistake my reply in its loose grammar as a putdown endorsing his own action as he may have, instead gets I'm on about THe SELf too, & so pause over suggests team effort, "together" is the word - which is really only invitation I've received to join anyone in this town for anything, so that's nice and all - and I say "NO. No one'll like that, that's weird, double suicide?/murder suicide?/pact? No no no, no one's going for that, and just all no, don't. And No." & walk on, hoping his lot lifts, but not lifting a finger to help, though I lifted my voice purely within the assistance agenda, even though it's measurable just how much, in sympathy, I instinctively exaggerated for effect (THE reason to exaggerate, ain't it always ?) For see, foresee, he led the witness of my own thought, me / I misled the expression of my own head to respond to his proclamation; wasn't thinking valley makes me *feel like dying,* it's that it makes me feel *like I am dying.* Solution, to move, was maybe to here, downtown, like I've thought more than a decade. It's not working out for that guy, but it just might yet.

I first encountered the realm of Prince

I first encountered the realm of Prince on the shelves of the record department at our local Venture, Venture having been somewhere on the department store spectrum between Woolworth's and Kmart. They suddenly had a Prince section, and his first three LPs. The cover of "For You" struck me as pretty cheesy and basically generic, the cover of "Prince" looked super cheesy but also sorta uncommonly fearless, and the cover of "Dirty Mind" looked dark and serious and obviously revealing & made me think - wow, this guy does whatever he wants.
A week or so later, right after my twelfth birthday (I know this now because it was released on my twelfth birthday, and as much as I loved going to Venture I would almost certainly have not gone on my birthday) they also had his fourth LP. That was it; the cover of "Controversy" made me certain: this guy has got to be great. I still wasn't ready to drop my scant allowance on someone who I had only heard of by way of seeing his album art for first time in past few days (I recall I bought nothing on either of those, nor on most, of my very frequent trips to that record department) but soon I heard "Controversy" and knew the record cover gave me the right impression, the music was amazing.
I'll admit a year later I was annoyed when kids at my junior high who I didn't particularly think were cool or had good taste were into Little Red Corvette, but what the hell. There was that preteen year there where I had learned of this mysterious, funky, vastly talented recording artist. My musical taste and recognition of artistry were just forming, and I think highly informed by just how incredible the title track to that album was. Thanks, dead fellow I never met. I mean it.

There Are Some Bridges

There be bridges I'd best burn, lest I mistake them for traversable.

Wayne v Kent: an unlikely & reserved defense of the latest meta spectacle

Sorry, kids - another "not a poem" entry from your poet-in-exile:

I find critical consensus on pop culture as suspicious as, or maybe even more suspicious than, commercial consensus – so I watched Batman v Superman. Some common critiques are spot-on; many of same are exaggerated relative to general treatment of the genre; and some are peculiarly lazy. It's not nearly as bad as Man of Steel nor is it as utterly negligible (nor as dismissive of real source material) as Age of Ultron.

In context of action adventures featuring the supernaturally powerful, I’m leaning toward the film’s few successes outweighing its many failures. It’s shocking that I'm even remotely defending Synder. Revealingly, the most damning criticism accuses him not of being a hack filmmaker or lacking own vision (however hyper masculine, objectionably Objectivist, juvenile, or primarily visual it maybe be) but of taking too much of a dark &/or personal risk with supposedly surefire corporate intellectual property. His latest movie's most interminable sequence is apparently obligatory in this sort of endeavor; the frequent daftness is in no way unique; the collisions of big spectacle and mawkish sentimentality may feel intuitively irreconcilable but are actually such standard issue as to perhaps be unavoidable (maybe even emotionally honest) at this scale; and the Luthor character needed some (why so?) serious reconsideration. But for biting off so much, the director chews a fair amount of it down to fairly digestible, and he benefits from having Affleck as the most buyable Bruce Wayne the big screen has had. (Opening credits validation for creators & comic fans: Bill Finger finally gets his name onscreen - even if it really oughta go before Bob Kane’s.)

To Snyder’s surprising credit he does make a movie that, more so than the titular costumed conflict (and yes, their fight scene does deliver) is Wayne v Kent. As much as he’s been knocked for not getting the big blue Boy Scout, Snyder grasps these characters enough to focus on the core conflict. The issue isn’t how a bitter billionaire with just wits and fists can power up enough to take on a nearly omnipotent alien. The real battle pits a traumatized rich orphan from the shitty part of town, grown so damaged that his grand deduction skills are manipulated by the most vain and transparent of villains, against the working class farm boy made good in the shiniest side of the city, whose idealism has been nearly terminally taxed. It’s no great accomplishment, and it’s all handled at a surface level, as the director is known for. So, fine, they both love their mothers. I’ve seen shallower messages delivered in far less maligned pictures with nary a cape nor glowing pair of eyes in sight.

Cruel fate and the ice cream lady

Cruel fate and the ice cream lady 
Both cold as can be
But only one serves it
Soft and sweet