WHO YOU WERE


My mother has been 
gone two years now.
I've spent that time
cleaning out the house
she lived in for 50 years. 
By doing so, 
I found out who she was.

Buried in her basement,
I found sketchbooks
filled with living figures
rendered in chalk and charcoal.
I found canvases covered
in flowers and landscapes,
painted in breathing colors. 

Sharing shelves with 
dust and cobwebs, 
I found boxes of 
knitting needles and 
balls of acrylic yarn. 
Near these sat a box 
filled with single socks, 
several almost-scarves 
and two half-quilts,
sewn with care 
in vibrant tones. 

My mother was an artist. 
She never told any of us---
in any way, not once. 
I'm left here to wonder why.

Was it the day in which she lived?
Was she given just so much time
for "self-indulgent" pursuits,
before being forced to get on
with the business of living?
Were a job, a husband and 
two kids the only art projects 
she was permitted?
How did she just. . .stop?
It must've hurt like hell. 

Did she feel the slightest 
twinge of jealousy or regret 
as she encouraged me 
along my bohemian path?
If so, it never showed. 

What now can be said?
What today can be done?

Mother, two years too late, 
I can only apologize 
for keeping you from 
being who you were.

Spending Time

	As I wade through the damp pasture the scent of petrichor places me back in time. Out of nowhere the smell of freshly fired cap guns transports me through the rows of terraced houses, with washing strewn across grainy back streets from one yard to the next. Back when the main street was just a lane, before the suburban waist band expanded to the fringe of a town. When ducks swam in the pond on the village green, where the entire community gathered for the summer fair. Where did that smell drift from? I haven’t fired a cap gun since I was a child. But the smell manifested itself as if conjured by my mind to invoke a memory. Where do these memories lie?

I live on the street below where I used to live when I was young, and yet I only walk there occasionally, like a memory which is almost permanently forgotten until you rediscover it every now and then. It’s not my usual route these days, so when I walk it, it takes me back, like I’m presently in the past. The clack of leathered cork off willow still resonates the same familiarity as that lull of late afternoons where you hear the dogs bark over the garden gate, the pigeons stating their reluctance to go from the telephone pole. A dule of doves cooing united upon the fence. Starlings throwing projectiles from the guttering. Half sneezing sparrows chewing the suet. A grist of bees buzzing from flower to flower. Skylarks crooning from the long grass in the field behind the house. I remember my old back garden ran into a corn field, which was the equivalent of a widescreen tv view of the birds flying in from the trees. When haystacks resembled a Monet or Van Gogh. 

The screech of the swifts as they arrive back from Africa causes my mind to  migrate to the clink of milk bottles in the morning. Timeless sounds taking you back and forth as if the past and present are running alongside each other. Like parallel universes intermingling. Is that what memories are? Instead of echoes of the mind, it’s different dimensions of the multiverse. The past and present in tandem. 

As I’m getting older my remembrance of things past is more genuine than romanticised. I’m starting to inherit a nostalgia for those days of lens flares and needle drops. Back when the sunshine shone so much brighter on much longer afternoons. When shops were shut on Sundays, and pubs closed between three and six. The streets resembled ghost towns on what used to be a day of rest, except for those going to church. I remember when going to the seaside was reinvigorating. The smell of sticks of rock stacked neatly in pigeonholes. Enjoying mint choc chip ice cream while  squatting on the beach, digging down the sand until I reached water. Constructing castles that would be ruins before I’d even moved on. All this taking place in front of an array of colourful chalets contrasting with the sunshades and folding wooden deck chairs. I remember the showground was round the back of the Spanish City’s chalky dome. Once a bright colourful Disneyland of eternal youth, now showing its true colours- a washed-out carnival of souls where the aged look out into the distance as if they’ve already died and gone to heaven. Living a kind of limbo between life and death. Isn’t that nostalgia? Is nostalgia a loss of life or a regaining of it? Am I heading in the wrong direction? Chasing after the youth I wasted when I was young. Looking through rose-tinted glasses at the best days of my life even though I didn’t realise I was enjoying them quite so much at the time. After all, life is all disappointment until you see your way past it. Trying to get to the place you’re already at.

	I long to remain in the American graffiti era. Cruising around seeing all the events taking place over a course of one last night. Every time I watch it it’s if I were involved in that night. Not what was going on, but watching what was happening, as if I were there. Striving to get out of a town I couldn’t leave behind. Roaming the corridors in reminiscence, like Curt, trying to open a locker that is no longer mine. Sentimentally fatigued, chasing the mirage of a girl in the night, my naivety balanced by my wisdom. American Graffiti encapsulates the innocence of youth. The so-called realistic depictions, with their profanity and decadence, do not do it justice. They pretend to be real, but when you’re young you don’t know what you’re doing. It’s still innocent. American Graffiti has no pretensions about this. It makes you re-experience the way you felt. When change was both terrifying and exhilarating. Not knowing what was going to happen after always looking for something to happen. When cars were an extension of character that got you to where you wanted to go, and became what you wanted to be, and music provided a soundtrack to your life. Back when music could change your life. When buying a new record would keep track of our memories, and not be forgotten once bought. Where discovering music was once a life experience, now it can’t even change your mood.

	I remember lifting songs from the weekly chart countdown, missing out the radio presenters who deliberately sabotaged the songs to dissuade you from taping them. Compiling them on those transparent florescent 90-minute cassette tapes (somehow the 60-minute ones were never any good), designed to embody the luminescent music of the time, when midi systems were all flashing coloured lights that made them look ultra-modern. I still wish I had that patience. To while away a couple of hours making compilations of my favourite tracks. I miss having the time to do nothing. To just observe. How I wish I could be bored. To be able to slow down time. Now there’s no time to stand and stare. To not care about things that don’t really matter. Doing nothing takes more time. When you’re time’s occupied it flies over. Now there’s no time to while away, there’s too many distractions. When I was younger I had as much time as I had energy. I had time on my hands. As I get older time slips through my fingers. Time goes so much faster. The hand gallops around the clock face as I count the seconds draining away like sand, my life running from me as I chase after it, until I finally have to let it go. 

Maybe it’s the pace of living that’s faster? Our current living is an anaesthesia towards time. We no longer feel time. Time’s so malleable and unyielding. When I was young a month felt like a year. Now I’m older, a year feels like a month. I remember days lasting longer than weeks. Years dragging on for decades. I had all the time in the world. Now I’m unable to remember when I last thought it was yesterday. Last week felt like yesterday. While yesterday feels like last week. At this rate a year will feel like yesterday. My life will flash before me just before I die.

It feels like I’ve lived through three thousand summers when I’ve only lived forty. But the thought of only having forty more is intimidating. Best make the most of it at least. We should appreciate every single moment and abide great comfort in every aspect that surrounds us. There’s a novel in every journey. A movie in every observation. Music in every sound. All you need is to be content with what you have. If you need to have things to feel content, then you’ll always be trying to acquire contentment. If you take an interest in life you will find it all the more interesting. The world around you is fascinating when you stop considering your place in it and immerse yourself in it. How much time do we waste in our finite hours when we should be feeling the breeze beneath the trees, experiencing, as opposed to observing, life? Instead of learning about nature we should be living amongst it. We should be involved rather than absolved from it. We should all be getting along and be content to live and enjoy the world around us. Life is to be lived. Enjoy the moment, like the honeybee on the flower. Instead of competing against others to be someone, discover nature and take an interest in the environment that surrounds you and you will find yourself being a part of something. Lose interest in yourself and become involved in the world around you and you’ll no longer be isolated. The more you observe, the more intimate you become with it. The more involved. Like our ancient ancestors who were fascinated and terrified of the world they observed in intricate detail.

	Things may seem better now, though they’re not. Our lives were far more simple and black and white. Now it’s all dazzling Technicolor where we’re spoilt for choice. No longer sure what to choose. We seemed so much happier then. To be excited and appreciative of hand me downs and be content with our lot- not discontented by what we haven’t got. When we would laugh at our own circumstances, not the circumstances of others, with that school yard attitude, picking on faults for the sake of searching. Never growing out of it. 

	Society’s like a spoilt child. Not appreciating anything. Not getting enthusiastic about anything. Wanting for nothing. Everything’s amalgamated into one big soup with hints of flavour. Chocolate bars and sweets were their own species. Now they’re hybridised, striving to take over the whole shelf space. Nothing is regarded as necessary, but rather fashionable. With the latest in thing being out of date once you’ve bought it. A few years ago, a new phone meant that it had an answering machine built in or that it was cordless. It was a purpose of convenience, not an accessory of fashion. And how we coped back then, without mobile phones and the internet, with red phone boxes and libraries. We were more talkative, before txt messaging became the shorthand for general conversation, supplementing our emotions with emojis. We’ve become so secluded that we can’t be by ourselves unless we’re beside ourselves. We’re more lonely because there’s too many people in our lives. Our private lives are for public perusal. Posting snaps and snippets of our lives edited like personal biopics. A movie running at twenty-four frames per second twenty-four hours a day. Creating ourselves in our own image. Made up of a collage of images where image is everything. Whether still images in magazines and posters or moving images of television and cinema. We carry mobile photographs and computer screens. Our attentions are defragmented, unable to concentrate for too long. Needing distractions and our minds to be occupied. 

Never in history has such an immense change occurred with such rapidity. The transmogrification between the all too real world of our grandparents and the virtual reality of our grandchildren. Where photography replaced the capturing of memories, bringing art to be conveyed in different ways beyond mere reproduction. Where painting is a depiction, an expression of the feeling, the photograph can reproduce the feeling. The photograph captures the moment. They say a picture speaks a thousand words, but the words before and after the photo are lost. Were the words as good as the photo that presided? Was the moment really as good as it looked? Does it speak the truth or has my memories morphed the moment. In the picture, I’m smiling, but what lies behind that smile? Was I just smiling for the camera. Was I wishing I was in another place and time like I’m wishing I was back there now? The photo album, with carefully displayed polaroid’s, that you would carefully turn the pages, now replaced by a memory stick. What will become of our memories when they are preserved and embalmed in data?

	Everything is exemplary beyond novelty. Nothing is precious. I remember when you’d make your house a home, not a habitat. When the proprietor of the local store used to know your name and not just your face. When the doctor told you what was wrong instead of asking you what’s wrong. When a street was full of family and friends who’d lived their whole lives there. Not strewn with strangers you never get to know. When the whole street would be out clearing the snow from the road, not just from their own front gates. Back in the days when a snow fall would rise and ice would burn, and storms would sterilise and assault the senses. When the camaraderie would pull us through together instead of confining us to our personal space.

	I tread on, passed the brutal buildings like concrete fortresses made when things were built to last. Those picture postcard houses look like they were built by Jack but have withstood the test of time. A vitreous enamel sign swings above the antique store. The past paraded in the window when I pace the public space at night, as if wandering alone in a museum. My stilted shadows chase each other up the pebbled pavement of what was once the high street. Now lowly and derelict. The window displays, all boarded up buildings. I see the faded outline of a name of the old video store, revealed beneath the signs that were laid over it, like when stripped wallpaper in a room reminds you of how it used to be. Bringing a kind of bulkiness to your thoughts.

	I remember often going to those video rental stores where you’d hire a tape for the night. Spending an hour searching for something you hadn’t seen, before picking up their empty cases, which were themselves mini works of art. Waiting for one of the new releases. Getting really excited about seeing a movie you’d been wanting to watch for six to eight months because you couldn’t go see it at the cinema. Only for it to be returned late by an inconsiderate person who hadn’t even rewound it. Then you’d have to wait for what felt like the duration of a movie for it to spool back to the beginning, screeching in the VCR as it reached the end. And near the end of the film, you’d get the fuzzy white line scrawling up the screen. Making sure you returned it before seven the next day fully rewound. 

	 I miss those old days of VHS. Taping movies off the tv with snippets of the end and beginnings of programmes. Picking up on the conspicuous cuts of violence when they still dubbed profanity. Pausing the tape to cut out the commercial breaks with those title cards for the movies before they introduced the two lines in the top corner. When broadcasting a movie was an event. Yet taping movies off the tv meant you wouldn’t have the proper box with the cover on. What a work of art they were. The artwork of the covers made you prize the movie. You would place it on the shelf and treasure it. Now my movie collection is a set of pristine discs, all iridescent and shiny. But the DVD covers lack the original artwork. They’re packaged without the love. I miss the old scruffy recordable tapes with the penned over labels. 
I think back to the time I first watched Rumble Fish. That small poetic film by one of cinemas novelists. The beautiful contrast of black and white elongated shadows and oblique angles. This remains my most personal film. I intend to watch it once a year for the rest of my life. How I identified with the Motorcycle boy more than any other character in the movies, despite never having rode a motorbike. That Stewart Copland score blending with the photography was as gorgeous as Diane Lane with the wind in her hair to a guy that age. I remember the end credits rolling, followed by Alex Cox announcing the next weeks movie before the Arena credits rolled on top. I had recorded it off BBC2 late Saturday night. When television was something to switch on when there was a programme to watch, not something to switch off when there isn’t. When it was something of communal interest, not something of individual boredom. 

I remember when queues queued all down the street for movies that were something to see and not be seen. When films were regarded with such enthusiasm and esteem. When things used to actually happen. Before the get up and go became the get it and go. No-one seems to have the energy we used to have. With technology, time’s now catered for. We no longer make our own meals, prepare the fire, toast our toast under the grill, roast our potatoes on the hearth, wait for the whistle of the kettle. Home-made meals have been replaced by fast food microwaves, tiding ourselves over with tv dinners, no longer sitting around the dinner table as a family, all sitting around our own individual screens watching our own thing with civil inattention. Only playing board games when we’re really bored. With all these conveniences we have less to do and less time to do it in. Racing around without watching where we’re going, unable to sit back and reflect on what we’re doing. And when we do have time on our hands, we have to be on our feet, not knowing what to do with ourselves without wondering what everyone else is doing. 

I remember when cartoons were shown on a Saturday afternoon between the sport and the pool score draws. I remember seeing hopscotch grids drawn upon the pavements. I remember when people got married, they’d throw loose change out onto the road, and we’d scramble to pick it up, avoiding any traffic. Not that there was much traffic amongst the estates those days. Nowadays you can barely play across the streets for the amount of parked cars along them. I remember the chimes of the ice cream van almost every afternoon, tinkling down the road minding the children running for orange and lemonade lollies. When you could get a ninety-nine well under that price, topped with monkey blood and ground nuts. Nowadays almost every afternoon goes by without the bells ringing. 

Now I’m home the smell of soot from the chimney keeps the home fires burning in my mind, even though it’s never been alight in years. I remember when all the houses used to smoke from mid-autumn onwards. The charcoal fragrance would evoke the advent of winter and the thrill of knowing Christmas was on its way, and we would be soon having snowball fights, building snowmen, skating on ice. Now I’m old the ice freezes my fingers. When I was young it didn’t seem to bother me. Is it because my circulation isn’t what it was? Because I’m not as active? Or is it because when you’re young you tend not to fear that they may fall off, thinking it something that happens to other people, not you. That’s how  you felt about the elderly when you were young. Now I tend to scrape my feet across the carpet, as if the sheer weight of things makes them harder to lift. The spring in the step turned to a sprung mattress. Tired of being tired. Nodding off and on in front of the tv. Seeing only fragments of movies I watch in parts over and over. Having anticipated seeing for some time, having never seen in full. I used to watch films fully immersed, not impartially in parts, as I slump into the clunk of a chair looking affectionately towards my youth while disapproving the youth of today.

	Is it me? Is it the times? Is it me and the times? Should I look where I’m going instead of looking back? Is reminiscing a waste of time or time well spent?


.

 

False equivalents or exact ones.

E. Swedenborg, Journal of Dreams,

Was in a garden which had many
divisions; pretty; of these I wished 
to possess one for myself; but looked
about to see if there was any way to get out.
There was a person who picked away a number
of invisible creeping things, and killed them:
he said they were bugs, which someone had
dropped there and thrown in and which infested
people there. I did not see them but saw little
creeping thing which I dropped into white
linen cloth beside a woman. It was the uncleanness 
which ought to be rooted out from me. 

R. Crumb’s Dream Diary

A companion and I were watching big ugly 
insects boldly throw themselves into a fire
in a fireplace. I was highly amused as one by
one these fantastic, repulsive creatures went
into the fire and then squirmed and struggled
and turned black in the flames and hot coals but
did not die or burn up right away. I watched,
making sarcastic, humorous comments, as three,
maybe four, of the large insects went into
the fire in succession. I was glad to see them burn up
finally, consumed by the flames.

531-

Helene Cixous dream book.
Dream a little dream of.
Mamas or papas. Berryman’s
Dream Songs. Henry or Old Mr.
Bones. “Dream I tell you.” “Dreams
without interpretation.” Me.


		532-

“The dreams fell in place like
the dead pushing them out of Hades.”
A forewarning.

		

532-

Mulch, topsoil and stone.
A law firm or farming supplies.
Curfew or curlew. Choose one.
A mockingbird (mockingjay
Question mark) in Cloud Cuckoo Land


		533-

Memoires. I remember Barbra Streisand.
Joe Brainard. Harry Mathews. George
Perec. Ted Berrigan. And Gilbert Adair.
All possibilities. All equally valid. “Memories.”
I remember. “Light the misty corners
of my mind.” As opposed to Malraux.
Who had anti-memories. That I remember.
And Voznesensty’s Antiworlds. Not Freud
Or is it fraud. Go Ask. Anna.

		534-

“I have already lived through this
frightful situation: the head of our 
state gone mad, turned criminal and 
we kill him or be killed.” Dream Poem 
or News article. Current event or
prophecy. “Part of the population 
aware a coup d etat may take place.”
Dream I tell you.  

a purple sadness
 
it's the last whispers
you make out before
the collapse
 
flashing lights and
the torture of the
unknown
 
a purple sadness
envelopes you and
you wish you would
have saved a line
or two for tomorrow
 
as if that is something
anyone adequately
plans for
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
on these rainy days
 
there's an ache
at the base of
my neck that
is agonizing
on these rainy
days
 
eventually
 
the pain will
either fade or
spread
 
i figure one
of these days
 
it won't ever
stop
 
then we'll
see how
easily
i find the
pleasure
in the pain
----------------------------------------------------------------------
i called his bluff
 
i had a doctor
tell me if i
didn't stop
drinking i
would be
dead soon
 
i called his
bluff
 
ten years later
i have a new
doctor that
sighs and
tells me
it's your
life
 
if you want
to drink
yourself
to death
 
just make sure
you use the
good shit
 
no reason to
go out drinking
piss
----------------------------------------------------------------------
relaxes with a cold drink
 
there's this loneliness
that dwells in me, is
comfortable,
 
kicks its feet up on
the couch, relaxes
with a cold drink
and a ball game on
the television
 
i've been trying to
kill that fucker for
years now
 
sadly, the asshole is
as elusive as he is
stubborn
 
on the nights when
i am drinking until
three or four in the
morning
 
we debate the horrors
of dating in this century
and how much does
arthritis dampen the
fun of masturbation
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
dead relatives
 
around three each morning
or night, depending on
whatever your sleep
schedule might be
 
my mother starts
talking in her sleep
 
loud enough to wake
me up in the next room
 
it is usually a dead
relative she is talking
to
 
i'm sure one day,
the dead relatives
will talk back
 
then it will become
a show
 
now, it is just the
frustration of an
old man that can't
fall asleep
 
the race to death is on
 
i don't think my mother
knows just how quickly
i'm gaining on her

J.J. Campbell (1976 – ?) is old enough to know better. He’s been widely published over the years, most recently at Otoliths, Cajun Mutt Press, Terror House Magazine, The Beatnik Cowboy and Mad Swirl. You can find him most days on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights (https://evildelights.blogspot.com)

From the Back Pages 

Gaurav Ojha 



Scholars are busy professing theories that can never be applied  

Most of human ideas are better in books, too dangerous to put into practice  

Useless intellectual stimulation from the outdated paragraphs keeps on reverberating   

What shall we do with the eyeglass after the professor dies?

How can we keep up with his perspectives, difficult even for him to understand? 

Hang his ideas on the library, like the art beautifully motionless and vibrantly dead 

Too much thinking for the brains, too little courage for hands

But don’t you see the armchair scholars, it a fool's paradise outside 

Let them do what they can, they have mud on their shoes

Those who get involved also know how to wash their hand 

Revolutionaries tell us what to do on the day history dies   

Romantics give us visions and dreams as an escape from this waste land 

Hippies sing the songs of freedom, dropouts create Business Empire 

Framers plow, poets imagine, preachers preach, writers publish 

There is nothing special or specific; we all do what we have to

Before being a friend, become your own enemy 

Listen more to the silence of your skull than the sounds of mouth

It's a mystery how fiction becomes our reality 

Why do unprovable things excite so many? 

Let us remember those saviors history is trying to forgot

Let go of dead batteries from your closet 

Any which way the destiny shuffles, life always ends 

We all survive wondering as if we are missing something 

Are we all searching for the same thing, believers and atheists?

A truth, love, reason, God, soul, beauty, equation and logic 

Something transcendental and stable for a sense of comfort and certainty 

Find some life in a corpse before its burial

Learn how to jump into a frozen lake from the lake of fire

Give more significance to your journey than to the destination 

Make your questions strong and answers weak 

Don’t forget to scribble puzzles of life in the back pages 

Your words will help you find a meaning 

 

“Priceless” Effectively Means Something Is of Great Value, But Only If Someone Is Willing to Pay the Exorbitant Price That You’re Oh So Reluctant to Put on Whatever You’re Selling

2.  Mask

Simian features and contours
Maintained under
High pressure gas contents,
Foam latex
Bony browridge shelf
Over eyes,
Spheroid-shaped jaws
Of the face-puppet mouth protrude;
Maxillary trajectory
Mimics chimpanzee prognathic morphology,
Canopies forward,
Projecting incisors set off by the
Large white canines as jaws open wide, baring
Weaponized teeth
Lining an orbit that’s empty and screaming
Its blindness in glistening pink
Outrage
To the skittish trills and demented coos
Of a sleazy 70s
No-budget
Z-movie
Waking nightmare of
Ticket punched, take the ride
Psychogenic fugue, electronic score
By a dark, withdrawn,
Gently humanist
Brian Wilson on Stylophone,
Or a pressure sensitive
Music Easel with stylus pen,
Harmonizing plaintive and mournful
Over the right triangle-shaped picket fence
Sawtooth wave
Low bandwidth sound pulse:  the force-sensing
Ribbon controller allows the musician to skipper the drone on tempestuous seas,
And to wield a tremendous nostalgic fascistic authority
Over designer tonality, and permits audible changes enacted in real time:
Artisan specialist timbre shepherded, combed with filters
On heaving swells, through a thousand chops, monophonic growl of the under-sound
Treated to heavy distortion.
Fight or flight
Response immanent,
Rhodes piano bass (played
Left-handed)
Imitates menace of
Animal heartbeat increasing.
Closing in,
Zombie meatmen appraise and spin
Brian Wilson’s enormous body, suspended from
Dull, stainless-steel S of butcher’s hook,
In the end, holding him steady to feed a youthful and earnest,
Ravenous
For his shot at the champ
Blue collar straight man, Sylvester Stallone
(Who was Frazier’s white stand-in)
Heavy bag
Body blow
Practice in meat-packing freezer; breath condensation,
As ragged and fraying-edged
Hoary puffs,
Dissipates quickly.
Frozen ribs
Streaked with fat
Crunch under wrapped knuckles.
The grim reality
Flower power conferred
In its teeny bop,
Bubble gum pop music wake 
Takes hold;
Psychedelic chickens—come home to roost,
Dayglow plumage in dark light—
Scratch and peck
LSD 
Streaked and flecked
Beaks,
Nails and spurs,
Carving inscrutable runes
In the dirt
Of the barnyard
Subconscious mind at night.
Speed- and lust-fueled teenage symphonies
Old enough
To know better men
Overproduced, an epiphany
Coming too late
To the victim:  a sharp
Intake
Of cold walk-in
Freezer air.
The two-cycle oil rich exhaust stings;
He tastes fulsome
Matte charcoal grey dank
Like damp gentle tongue probe
Of first kiss:  rainbow sheen
Jerked and bounced,
Pitched and heaved on the leaden lake
Water chop, where the jet skis carve moments, white
Furrowed arcs, open cuts
Quickly closed
Under overcast Labor Day
Low-ceiling sky he remembers from
Post-adolescence of childhood—but whose?
Burnished to silvery
Spatulate,
Narrow elongate paraboloid
Tongues, the guide bars of chainsaws
Lick at the air without interest
Like lizards distractedly
Tasting the freon
And anguish, despair of the man
There condemned.
The full chisel square corner
Left cutter, drive link, to right cutter,
Drive link array
Blurs to black fur around curved
Edges of sniffing prehensile probosces encircling
The trunk of magnanimous sixties
Free love and good will
To consider the prospect of binding,
The wood
Soft, but somehow…
Responsive, reactive to injury,
Casual slights and dismissive behavior
Transformed
Into
Bulletin board
Motivational fodder for anyone
Needing some.
Line cooks and prep cooks in garish red aprons,
Truck stop-style ball caps with backing of mesh and front panels of foam, and the visors
Pulled down to shield thought- and emotion-betrayal of eyes
And crows’ feet—
Feelings’
Tiny tells—
Stand around.
 
“Priceless” Effectively Means Something Is of Great Value, But Only If Someone Is Willing to Pay the Exorbitant Price That You’re Oh So Reluctant to Put on Whatever You’re Selling

3.  Salesmanship…The Guest…Re-writes
 
Skin taut and numb,
Tingly, plastic surgery rictal grin
Settles in on his public face
Riven with wrinkles devoid of emotion like mud
Dried and plotted with cracks.
Guest chair obliquely aligned with the host,
The guest is total professional, watches his latest performance
Through grey tint of lead glass:  in character,
Make-up, on his knees in despair, clutching and pounding his head
Exoskeleton,
Overinflated air-bladders
Limiting cervical flexion, rotation,
His face cast up at the sky and his frictionless palms
Clapped over audio speakers
Transmitting instructions for blocking and lines
The assistant director hypnotically—gently and rhythmically—burbles,
His lips a mere inch from the pop shield
In order to furnish an intimate, vocalist-trying to deep-throat-the-microphone sound
But self-consciously turning away
So to minimize thumping of aspirant plosives
That otherwise batter the cardioid microphone diaphragm,
Ruin the head-job illusion delivered through
Pop screen mesh, cuing the actor it’s time to emote:
Agony:  analog system of animatronics, controlled by a veteran
Children’s show puppeteer,
Animates infinitesimal muscles of mask
To provide a complete range
Of the most
Fluid emotion, expression.
The cheeks wrung
Between vacuum-formed hands,
Deep nasolabial creasing of furrows pronounced,
Facial features scrunch, 
Clustered together, the bogeyman
Viewed through a lens demonstrating severe
Spherical aberration;
A thick bundle of wires and cords, like braids
Laced with bright, colored yarn, trails out from under the headpiece
And runs down his back to the floor and unravels,
Like offshoots that branch at the mouth of a river, or lateral roots
That enlarge in diameter:  surface roots
To support the trunk and explore the soil; sinker roots
That drop straight as plumb
Finger and gouge the foundation below the sound stage
To stir it invisibly,
Under the cover of business as usual,
Roiling and heaving the floor with the first, imperceptible
Turns round the tap root,
Rotations escaping the notice of all but the most hyper-vigilant
Crew members,
Post-traumatic survivors
Of childhood- or family-type trauma or—
Even much later
(For women)—domestic or sexual violence,
Support crew
Getting to watch the display
Of their special effects technological might
(There’s no CGI on this
One)
(Every effect is mechanical)
(Made an exception for bluescreen—the ending isn’t grand guignol,
It’s an apocalypse)
Seeing the spectacle, the sole benefit
Work in the industry offers the folks at the bottom.
Through an open cupola,
Slumping over
The armored turret,
The stillborn screenwriter—
Birthed by midwives
Who went to New Critic schools—
Hard to penetrate
Sloping glacis
With pointed prow
Armor plate
Will diffuse the energy
RPGs
With shaped-charges make
(Thickness constant, the pitch increased
To approximate ideal form
Of the self-reflexive ironic pose
That is single sheet
Or hot rolled homogenous hull material
[Extra-solid construction helps to withstand explosive
Reactive tiles
Lining exterior; final effect
Of deflect, deform,
Ricochet);
Vented shrouds
Of machine gun barrels
From globes of gun ports like doll eyes
Blast
Ashen plumes, orange
Minarets, as the Other’s mysterious gaze,
Leading the object of wrathful, transcendent desire, destination—or target?—
However, unknown and unknowable,
Calculated along
The last
Known trajectory.
Muscular contours of body
Stocking elastic mesh,
Netting woven with styrene beads
To support and shape
The full-body alien suit or prosthesis
Absent the major convenience of ultra-absorbency liner
For urine recycling connected to flexible stem of accordion-crimped sippy straw,
Outline a gesture,
An image that looses itself from appearance,
Slithers free of its context, the plot, for the Nielsen ratings bonanza
Studio audience
Lucky few.
Malcontent millionaire actor
Turned-villainous cultural mastermind bent on destruction
Of globalized popular culture
Hegemony,
Same as he helped to create,
Doing
The talkshow
Pedigree pooch circuit
Says there’s no basis for culture of lasting importance
And somehow avoiding enormous presumptions continues, “Slung around,
Totally meaningless,” his exact
Phrase,
Said by way of indicting his own manifesto, or
Subtext his shoddy, unprincipled body of work has established in words
His detractors and critics have uttered aloud in their cups
Academically, cups unaffordable working as adjunct professors at state schools.
How much contempt can you stand? Mr. Congenial,
Insufferably
Polite (or “white”)
Late-night talk show host asks
Rhetorically, teasing the segment to follow,
Signaling cut to commercial so
Everyone watching at home can consider his comments,
Infer what’s implied for themselves,
That societal currents of trauma account for an uptick
In sexual violence in media.
How did you know I was going to say
What I was going to say?
Asked by proxy, a fetish carved
Out of teak, out-of-teak
Woodwork come, stain resistant
Above the fray
To observe and mock;
Masturbation image or father figure
No more, but rather
A soon-to-be
Never was, never had
Talent hack
Getting involved
In the issue dividing the minds of his day.
 
Some Ur-Shower


Certain times and places I’m able to urinate
only if my hand is pressed palm-flat against a solid surface,
like a wall or door, or the partition of a stall,
or holding on to something, like a towel rod, even hanging off the edge
of a sill or jamb or counter, each digit curved
and arched and filled with tension, like spines of housecats that feel threatened,
or the weathered tongs of a grappling hook,
so the weight of my arm
pulls and drives my fingers fast into the surface,
irrespective of the texture, thus making me feel grounded on some instinctive
primal level.
My bladder isn’t shy, it’s suffering
from the twenty-first century disease of feeling disembodied,
immaterial, like every other organ in my body.

Certain thoughts I’m able to think only if the room is pitch-black,
devoid of even the least bit of ambient light,
and my head is in contact with a rough, abrasive surface
I can visualize in granular detail by pressing my head against it
and rolling back and forth like the freshly-inked bulb of a suspect’s finger
on a fingerprint card, careful not to apply
too much or too little pressure
as I wheel my head from one side to the other,
and thus develop a clear, precise mental image of the texture of the wall
the details of the surface I created in my mind
conforming to the details of the wall as I objectively know them to be.

If, for instance,
the patch of unfinished plaster, or spackling,
over my dresser, off to one side and level with my head—a crease, a nick
in the shape of an isosceles triangle—if those
physical details correspond
to the image my brain composes based
on information sent by the nerve endings on my scalp,
then potentially
I

can have a certain thought.
If, however,
the defining features of the rough patch
can’t be discerned using the data from my nerve endings
where my head touches the rough patch—
even, for instance,
if the cause of the discrepancy
between
what I know to be true,
and what my nerve endings are telling me,
has nothing to do with
either my nerve endings, or the patch
of unfinished plaster:
such
would be the case
if the absence of verifiable conformation
results
from a change in temperature
or humidity, like the changes preceding a summer shower—
then,
in order to think a certain thought,
I must either:  find a spot on another part of my head—perhaps
there was too much hair
on the back of my head, while my chin, just
recently shaved,
today,
as a matter of fact,
the nerve endings on my chin
will be up
to the task of relaying tactile
sense
data sufficient to the job
of my brain reproducing from the data sent
a model of the rough patch
in
as many physical details
as my naked eye can discern, an exact copy… or
I must find another place,
or something else against which I can place my head
and proceed with the business of thinking a certain thought, a thought
perhaps unknown to me at the time I first consider
the possibility
of seeking out conditions
conducive
to thinking a certain thought,
namely,
the appropriate
surface
and the appropriate lighting:
seeking the thought with the relish unique to
someone stumbling over furniture
in the darkness of a stranger’s bedroom as I feel along the walls.
 

Mark Parsons' poems have been recently published or are forthcoming in A Thin Slice of Anxiety, The Lake, Peach, and Misery Tourism. He lives in Tokyo, Japan.  You ​can follow him on twitter at https://twitter.com/parsons_mfa

Book Review:  Street Journalist
Understand & Report the News in Your Community
By Lisa Loving, 191 pages, $14.95.
Microcosm Publishing, reviewed by A. Iwasa

In a brief Introduction, Loving clearly states her "goal in this book is to offer everyday people the tools to go into your communities and then educate the world about what's going on in your zone."

I first became familiar with Loving's work when an old comrade of mine was putting together a proposal for a panel on factchecking in the time of fake news for the Association of Writers & Writing Programs 2023 Conference.  I eagerly looked up her work so I wasn't surprised when she critiqued some of the problems with contemporary media environment in both the Intro and even briefer first chapter.

But rather than simply complain about the potentially destructive nature of bad journalism, Loving uses the first chapter mostly to suggest some ground rules like, "If you're not fact-checking, it's not journalism." and "Never make shit up."  In fact, out of ten ground rules, Loving mentions both of those twice to drive home the point!

In chapter two, Loving starts to get into the nuts and bolts of "Is This a Story?"  If you're like me, you grew up with a cartoonish image of a trench coated journalist, with a press pass sticking in their fancy hat asking, "Who, what, where, when, why?"  So I like how Loving zooms in with specific outlines for the dynamics of a story:  1. People, 2. Doing something, 3. For a reason, before fleshing out these and then some with legal explanations and self care tips.

Do you remember when Jello Biafra used to say, "Don't hate the media, become the media."?  Loving is carrying on that tradition, and offering you the torch with this book.

Story style like "enterprise reporting," "solutions journalism" and consumer reporting are all described to help envision larger arcs for your writing.  Loving really hits a stride here, outlining story structure, research, ethics, and self care.  Loving also introduces exercises and suggested readings into this chapter!

With chapter three, Loving discuses media literacy in a way that will hopefully date it to 2019 when this was published and not too much more into the future by having to call it "Fake News, Brain Farts, and Crap Detectors".  She jokes about Stephen Colbert's concept of "truthiness," but it was a pretty scary moment in 2017 when life started to imitate art and "alternative facts" actually became part of the media landscape.

It's an interesting chapter, with Loving taking into consideration things like the human mind's "trapdoors that lead us to make stupid decisions" and how social media can bring out the worst in us.

Though I do have to disagree with Loving's characterization of propaganda as "completely or partially made up".  According to my handy Random House Dictionary, propaganda is "information or ideas methodically spread to promote or injure a cause, group, nation, etc."  Or, "the deliberate spreading of such information or ideas."

It's not pretty, and perhaps it's not the right thing to do, but in the past I have considered partisan propaganda to essentially be solutions journalism.  As long as we're being honest, of course.  I never had patience for chronic bull shitters who proclaimed to be adherents to Left-wing politics, any more than the Rightists.

Loving would perhaps label this "Biased news, which is often factual information, but packaged with a slant".  This sort of critiques is exactly why I picked up her book, to be challenged.  Also, I'm at least dimly aware my old propaganda writing has probably contributed at least a little to the toxic media environment.  I don't exactly regret this because I remain confident I was on the right side of the barricades, but I also think the way forward may lie elsewhere.

Plus I was appalled to read "The English Oxford Dictionary has started including the term 'post-truth,' which means a situation in which facts matter less than an appeal to emotion."

Microcosm seems to have a knack for printing books I wish I could have read 20 years ago to guide me through a lot of lessons I've learned the hard way over the last couple of decades.  Though I felt a bit like when an English professor I had back in community college scolded me by saying, "This is a composition class, not a propaganda class." while reading this, I also couldn't help but think of Archer saying, "Potato, pa-treason."  I also remember being strongly encouraged to focus on my writing by other professors then since publishers were probably going to have their own, strict in house guidelines.  I think Loving addresses aspects of journalism that could and should transcend publishers' style guides and get to the heart of what is journalism, and if a publisher can't mesh with it, do you really want to work with them?!

Fittingly enough, the next chapter begins with the five Ws of journalism previously mentioned, along with "How" drawn into an ice cream cone.  Writing about style guides, Microcosm's is pretty much quintessential cupcake punk!  Take it or leave it, but I'll tell you when their office was in Liberty Hall in North Portland at one point one of their authors was systematically preparing and serving all of the recipes in a vegan desert cook book of theirs, and rest assured I was a regular visitor to their office then.

But this chapter also focuses on things such as keeping your information organized.  It's about gathering info, including developing relationships with your sources.

The following chapter is on Interviewing Tips.  I think I'm going to have to re-read it after listening to some of Loving's material from KBOO, the community radio station she's involved with in Portland.

The chapter didn't really mesh well with my experiences conducting interviews, nor understanding from studying journalism which I've only somewhat haphazardly practiced.  But it didn't exactly contradict them either.  It gave me a lot to think about and I look forward to revisiting it soon because I think it has a lot to offer someone looking to gain or improve their interviewing skills.

In the next chapter, What Is Investigative Reporting?, Loving really hits a stride with clear reasons why and ways to stay objective as possible.  Through out the book she has interspersed her own stories to use as examples, along with other journalists'.  Maybe this is just where our work has been most closely in line, but lessons offered seemed particularly noteworthy to me.

In fact, if one wanted to be diplomatic about my past, admittedly partisan propaganda, you might call it "experiential" investigative reporting as in this chapter.  Loving writes, "Probably the most basic, bread and butter investigative story that you could do right now is setting yourself in some remarkable experience and then writing a feature story about what happened."

I agree 110%.  To be blunt, a large part of why I took up journalism was for better and for worse, you'll never run out of things to write about.  I couldn't make up many of the people I've met, and experiences I've had, and trust me!  I wish plenty of them were just figments of my imagination.  It's also part of why I can't understand why so much bull shitting takes place in the media, both mainstream and underground.  It's not only unethical, it's completely unnecessary.

Under the subheading, "Helping Someone Who Needs an Advocate," Loving writes, "It is my personal experience that the most important and impactful stories come from your readers who call you looking for an advocate in the face of some bureaucratic or legal trap.  The documents they bring with them in stuffed manila envelopes and big boxes and rolling suitcases are often the kind of paperwork FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] doesn't cover.  This is why you should have a front door to your operations somehow-a way for people to come in and ask for help."

Another total home run.  When I hitchhiked, hopped freight and walked my happy ass from the White Castle Timber Sale Blockade back to the San Francisco Bay Area in the fall of 2013 to start doing shit work for the Berkeley wingnut newspaper, Slingshot, the fact that it had an office in an Infoshop was large part of my thought process.  A public facing store front being what many media projects I had participated in had lacked.

More recently, when I made a media request for a review copy of this book (all this and more can be yours!), it was also in part because I was excited about a website some people I knew from the Infoshop Movement or a Punk House were involved in, and thinking having at least quasi-public infrastructure like Punk Houses is all critical to process.  I wanted to try laying out some ground work that I think would not only make or break my potential participation, but also be better for everybody whether I go on to be involved or just retire and get a job at a sauerkraut factory in a different bioregion.

"Health Department Records" and "Looking up Campaign Contributions" are subheadings for sections filled with good ideas about projects for mining the public record.  These are the kinds of assignments you might get in a News Reporting class, and are good skills to have for activism anyways.

"Wherever you go in the world of journalism, the documents tell the story." is a point I believe Loving makes repeatedly in the text.  Loving closes the chapter by emphasizing keeping your materials organized, from the get go.

Ch. 7 is "Pulling It All Together And Telling The Story".  She paraphrases writing coaches from a webinar advocating a martini glass like story structure:

"a wide open top bringing in the story topic,
"narrowing down to an important sharp point on what's important about it,
"and ending with the strong base that explores the future of that topic."

I really enjoyed this because I had a similar model taught to me in community college, but it was just the inverse pyramid part of the martini glass, with no base.  I like associative devices for remembering things, and I appreciate logical additions.

I actually laughed out loud when Loving wrote, "don't forget about snacks."  I think a crucial aspect about writing (and reading for that matter) that goes widely unacknowledged for some reason is the importance of the discipline of literally sitting down for the duration, and doing the work.  "If you take the time to ensure you can sit at a working station for hours at a time with comfort food by your side, I guarantee you will get more done."  This is a nice way to put it, perhaps it's the velvet underwear of iron pants?  I'm not sure, but we frequently joked (not joked) about how we worked for food when I did shit work for the Slingshot Collective, so I get it.

Apparently Loving takes tea over coffee (BOOOOO!), and doesn't shy away from sugar bombing (a tried and true tactic of many cults from what I understand from the research, not the prasadam, hack, hack, cough, cough) but hopefully you get the picture.  Please don't get all Hunter S. Thompson on this note, I've got coffee right here though (both in the first draft and typing phases) that's fueling me right now.  Chased by filtered water to keep me hydrated (again, both in draft and typing.  Relentless by Pentagram played on the youtube as I typed this portion, T. Rex as I proof read).

All joking/not joking aside, Loving continues to drive home the bigger concepts, like "What's Most Important?" while giving you specifics on how to go about "Organizing What You've Got".  "Sorting through the many parts of your media project and organizing them for easiest use is a lot like putting away your laundry."  True, provided you put away your laundry!

Similarly, "Start your path to news writing by reading." is the kind of golden advice I'm shocked isn't more prolific.  From what I understand, when Nelson Algren was a professor at the Iowa State Writers' Workshop he would just show up with a pile of books and tell his students to read.  Hopefully, obviously this isn't all one does, but the subheading, "Get Started with a Grounding in News" encapsulates the spirit well.  

While I was reading this book, I was also reading My Seditious Heart by Arundhati Roy and Accessary to War by Neil deGrasse Tyson for exactly this reason.  They are two of my favorite living writers and Roy has long been an inspiration to me.  I also re-read Neil Gaiman's "Make Good Art" speech while working on this review, and enjoyed being reminded about his experiences with journalism, and how he said, "I learned to write by writing."

Did you know "There are low cost, online platforms like Canva, Vizualize, and even Google Charts where you can upload an Excel spreadsheet and have it automatically rolled into a graphic."?  I didn't!  There's a great deal of this sort of nuts and bolts advice interspersed with the other info.

Writing about privacy, Loving coaches again, "Don't be the reporter who vomits information into the digisphere with a sense of revenge.  That's not journalism."  This time adding strong words of encouragement not to troll any kind of public figure either.  "That is also not journalism."

Ch. 8 is about Fact-Checking, and a large part of why I was interested in Loving's work.  An old comrade of mine who interned for In These Times basically only fact-checked for the internship, in a small office with a few other interns who were also just fact-checking.  I was shocked by the dedication and level of rigorousness, but that was before I became a Slingshot shit worker for three and a half years.  Now I think that sort of attention to detail is mandatory.  Loving writes, "this is a step you are not allowed to skip."

Later, Loving adds, "In fact, if you are working with a team of people, a laundry list of items to double-check would be an excellent communications tool you can share with your entire team."  I think this sort of advice is a slam dunk, and exactly the kind of thing I'd like to bring to the table if I'm going to start to do political journalism again.

As I continued to read this chapter, I remembered some advice I got for doing rumor control at street demonstrations, "Believe none of what you hear, and half of what you see."  Of course fact checking isn't that formulaic and rigid, I think it's just something to keep in mind as you're developing your system.

I also started to think about now what Loving calls a "street journalist," I might call a sea level journalist, a nod to the long form, alternative press writers who emerged after, but somewhere in between underground and mainstream journalists.

This isn't a negative criticism, in fact it's the opposite.  I think the hyper partisan, what I would consider street-level journalists, such as myself in the 30s, should probably taking ideas from this book and promptly putting them into practice.

As a case in point, in the EXERCISES at the end of the chapter, Loving writes, "For one week, keep track of all the corrections in the New York Times.  Are there any patterns?" and further along, under "STORY IDEA":  "Speaking of fact-checking, one kind of story that never goes out of date is checking the corrections sections of major media to look for really big whoppers, which generally become what are called 'follow-up' stories."

I think this is great advice, and I plan on following up on it.  It's just not what I would call "street" by any stretch of the imagination.  If someone upped the ante (and the anti!), would anyone read a Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla Journalist? 

I was a little apprehensive of Ch. 9:  CREATING YOUR VOICE AS A JOURNALIST.  I'm a strong believer in writing that might be called, "Just typing," but really I think you spit it out, clean it up, then submit the second or third draft for potential publication as is or for further editing.

For one thing, Loving also does radio and in turn is literally addressing voice.  But more broadly she also addresses personal style of communication in ways that I think are on point.

Ch. 10 is about PLATFORMS.  It sort of lost me for reasons I won't bore you with.  It's good info I'm sure for people who didn't spend their mid-20s to mid-30s in the blogosphere, somewhat blindly trying to seamlessly transition from print to digital, then trying to do both before deciding to go down with the ship of print come hell or high water.

 Ch. 11 is the conclusion and is a Grand Slam (in the ball park OR at Denny's, you decide what ever is better in your opinion), systematically laying the major points of the book out as Loving describes one of the most important stories she ever covered.  If you are a journalist, or are thinking about becoming one, I can't recommend this book to you enough.

Street Journalist by Lisa Loving is available here from Microcosm Publishing.