Artists' Multiple Choice

If you are depressed and having suicidal fantasies, what should you do?

a. go to your studio, quick before you lose the inspiration

b. self medicate with drugs and alcohol

c. resist treatment because treatment of depression might extinguish creativity

d. get a lobotomy

e. kill Tom Cruise

f. seek professional help with an open mind about a mix of traditional talk therapy and medication

g. diet, exercise and take vitamins

h. all of the above

[answer in Saturday's Style]

-- Rex Weil

Dare to be brave

D'Steel(e) Society of Advanced Poetics
-Dare to be brave.-
Come out and see us
Free @ 7 p.m.
Wednesday Nov. 29th
Transformer Gallery
1404 P. Street, NW

Cycle

I am disgruntled
The meal in my mind is larger
And fuller of meat
so much so that my conscience desires spit
to lubricate my deviants
It is easier to enter and harder to leave
but once you leave you can't return
and I desire holier rolier things
to speak tongues
lashing hands
defined divinity
cursed
and rebuked

B.Long at D.Steel(e)

I'm pleased as punch that D.Steel(e) has invited me down from Long Island to emcee their reading next Wednesday, November 29th, 7pm at Transformer Gallery (1408 P St NW).

Quite a program it promises to be. Seating is extremely limited. Featured readers include Doug Lang, TM Corcoran, BOD, Jenn with two Ns, and others. Please come.

My Keychains

Key to my apartment
Key to my building
Key to my mailbox
CVS card
Dutch dishwasher soap keychain
Random brown cube keychain
Medallion from high school graduation
Key to something I don't remember
Key to the house I grew up in, even though my family doesn't live there anymore
Key to my U Lock
Key to building at 17th and R St across from Food Bar
Safety Pin

where'd the heat go?
right out the crax, right out the window
up on the roof a lurker leaks
how come the house wants to come down?
ribs and shoulders jut into its rooms
ceilings and walls connive, dropping plaster
on sleepers' heads and deserted beds
roommates come and go
personalities loud and small
basement warms
furnace is lit
trash goes out late
trash gets ignored
driveway blocked by a barcrawler
we don't come to your 'hood to block yer driveway
so fuck off
roomies here look like pirates
ready to walk the plank?
we'll slap yer cutlass supreme with a saber
i know you luv to hate my '98
c'mon, demon house beats terrordrome every time
yeah.
yeah baby.
right sweetie?
right pumpkin?
demon house lives. lives of the demon. it's in the eyes of the demon.
high five.

when we get home (unfinished/in progress)

watch four runners, up and down the hills
there goes fast Eddie
the only English speaking person of the world
with a baby and a bag of laundry.
the afternoon rains and dreadlocks make this room smell like-
snow white and the orchids dance around.

the maggots are still burrowing
and eating away at that rotting piece of tree in his front room;
so many dead bugs drop from the sky that
we remember New England
as dirty, weird, north.

the movies and the party never stops
the bus rides are longer.
The clutches bust and we decide to float down river
In the ocean swells
And lay on the sand under the tree until we are no longer high.

everything vibrates, everything vibrates
everything vibrates, everything vibrates
everything vibrates,
especially snow white, fast eddie
the bus and the four runners.

avacodo man with a crooked back, no shoes, and white shorts
do you believe me?
are you a cop?
if this is a stick up, i'll stick my passport up my crotch
and sweat till the poison is all gone

#1 rule for hiking, don’t step on anyone else’s superhighway
#2 don’t fall in anyone else’s volcano.
lay like an alligator, half in half out, lazy and cold blooded
snap like an iguana tail to the pinky
and JESUS CHRIST, walk on water, eat the eggs, lay them, or get out of the way
we are all coming through
all of us- on the jeep boat jeep

please come home and love me

Lindsey Lohan you are my dream

of perfection
of profitability
of mediocrity

please

post something.
stop the ringing.
in my ear.
i hear them yelling.
loud and clear.
fuck you!
from the street.
do i know them?
do they live here?
is this the place.
is their writing here
here here here
here here here
here here here
here here here
here here here
here here here
here here here
here here here
here here here
here here here

Paris Hilton does not exist

There are people on television who wish to do great harm to you
A fluttering glare penetrates through the mask of pixels
Don't believe their words, because their words are not theirs
Personas constructed
Reality obstructed
Paris Hilton does not exist.

Cars that aren't really there, collide
People who have never lived, die
Those who triumph truth, lie

return to the shop:

Ides of November

fat foreign men walking
slowly kicking over
a beggars cup
women & men dressed
for success w/ nothing
to say
workers paving, mixing
cement, yelling, smoking
stopping traffic
girls are walking with
their skirts
it's halfway through
november
legs are embers
left from fall
it's the 15th day
and all is well
. . .

Conn Ave Coffee

Coffee shops on Conn Ave
the coffee costs too much
the workers are paid too little
I am never satisfied
with my drink
but I am more awake
and much more aware
of my poor purchase
in caffinated hindsight

risk

on the way home
I comtemplate
fighting a dude
standing outside the
liquor store
eating at McDonald's
not walking
across the gay
part of 17th
that most likely
that woman
had a penis
that I may be
getting home
too late to to
to to to to to
to mom,
I haven't been
able to call because
I have been walking
home late and I've
been drinking more
than I should
you know me mom
that skinny kid that
skinny kid that skinny
kid that skinny kid

love and the infinite

you were in my dream
last night

driving a silver
honda civic



you just gave him a seven dollar tip
now lets go get high

231st Marine Corps Birthday

It started after a quiet night
of darts & a couple beers
even a gallery opening
which I recall as another day
walking south on 18th through
the closing thursday night of bars
nearly trafficless

Across the street by the basketball court
a man is being beaten
me and my friend whose heart weighs 140lbs
of course we must help we must see
if this man is okay

The beaters beat it up the sidewalk
i grab the mans shoulder blood runs
from his head where he's been hit
but says he's okay
they come back down the sidewalk

One approaches me
two knock me out from behind
three kick me in the head
for I am unconscious around
five they tell me I may need surgery
at six they say I am okay
but I can't sleep with this neck brace

I owe a lot to the Polak
he went searching for the cops
his face was cracked and my head swollen
we were in DC and the authorities said
"You should pick your fights better"

That might not be right
but that's life I know
and today i'm one day older

More Driveway Poems:

two 's a crowd

When I drink Coffee
by myself
I am lonely
When I drink beer
alone
I am by myself
. . .

line

I am never by myself
he is always with me
My father, not jesus
not allah, my father
Thomas Patrick Corcoran
and his father
Thomas Vincent Corcoran
and our fathers before
Us from Mayo
and before them
from Man and the
Norse and the Gauls
and Celts and their
fathers are my
fathers from
the Blue
Med
and their
fathers
from the
Dark
Continent
they are
my fathers
and they
are always
with me.

Yet more shopkeeper poems:

On a Warm November Day

Standing in the doorway
On a warm November day
I watch the walking masses
who travel past my way
They walk with coats
and bags on arms
and hats & boots &
glasses
but mostly what
my vision finds
the backs of hot
girls asses
. . .

to: Chad

Where's your hot friend Donna?
You say she's in L.A.
I wonder why she's going there
She already has a sister there
did I tell you I grew up there
and so her want to be there
is unclear to me
But one thing is for certain
and also facts are facts
if a girl goes there
with a that like that
and a face like that
she's bound to get a job
like that
. . .

While I'm Cutting 13 Boxes

I have a badass pair of scissors
that I think I'll kill you with
I've been cutting up big boxes
out beside the alley Dumpsters
and admiring these scissors
as they crunch and crunch
and crunch through
But a thought came to my mind
when my hand was cramping last
I could use these badass scissors
to stab right through your ass
Now I'm not extremely violent
and I have a normal past
but I'd love to see your bloody face
when I stab right through your ass

Can You Keep Ideas In Your Feet?

If men are made from mainly meat and bones
Where will my ideas find a feeling quite like home
My thoughts begin in other places than my head
They often times will fill my empty stomach
And they've also started in my aching feet
(They find another spot when I'm asleep)
I've heard that all my thoughts are from an ancient Greek
However, Greek or feet,
The place I like to keep my thoughts the most
is on my tongue
and rhyming as I speak

15 Second Stream of Conscious- "Mars"

mars rover landed on a patch of gravel
shovels hovered and leveled levels
lasers lifted the lamented landscape
aliens confused, creatures baffled

Poems you can Go Forth to:

Washing & Waiting

Washing clothes that are still warm from wearing
I'm thinking where I will be going
And when the Time will write for me
the time it is when it will be
the rightest time is what I mean
I'm wondering when
I'm wondering what
the time will be when it becomes
the rightest time for me to go


. . .

Know a Place?

I have become too strong
The Demon House wishes to expell me
Like Lucifer was cast from Heaven
So too am I cast from the Demon

D'STEEL(E) MEETING

D'Steele Meeting

Cafe Mozart
1331 H st. NW

Tuesday November 7
7:00 pm

sidewalk poems:

Coffee in the Driveway

The drums are beating
Some friends I'm meeting
for coffee on the
sidewalk drive
The intersection 's bustling
And deliverymen are hustling
with carts of beer
for The New Hampshire Mart
A leaf becomes my coffee coaster
Maxwell House my local roaster
when I'm drinking coffee
on the sidewalk drive


. . .

Autumn

Sublime Nature
the beauty of your leaves
the beauty of your
fallen leaves
Living is a cycle
it turns from glowing
reds and greens
transforms
to stillborn
blues and greys
The joy of life
the sorrow of death
A cycle that raises
men from dirt
and sinks our hearts
deep into the earth
Epic Nature
the beauty of you leaves
the beauty of you
always leaves

All Mothers Are Growing Older

All mothers are growing older,
and more sad;
their children are all at the discoteque,
dancing and grinding late into the early morning.

The mothers are in the laundry room,
smelling the laundry for freshness
and wishing there was still something left over;
All the baby smells are gone and have been for a long time.

The babies are still at the disco,
drinking upstairs in the velvet room,
drinking themselves silly,
and crying periodically.

The mothers are now at the grocery store,
smelling lemons,
wishing they could go to the disco too,
instead they collect cookies and crackers,
in case the children come home.

But the children are never coming home,
the babies are eating big slice pizzas
and sweating on strangers they just met
and waking up too late for church.