Occasional Verse 3: Reading Nietzsche Before Watching It’s a Wonderful Life

These spirits do not mix.

All it took was a 30 minute dose of Nietzsche

on the herd mentality, mobbing, 

and the perversion of the ubermench’s spirit, 

to make George Bailey’s wonderful life a Greek tragedy.

Prior to this encounter, I had seen the movie

over 15 times, usually during holidays,

and it always touched me.

But this was the first time I saw 

George’s family, friends, and townspeople

ply that combination

of guilt, shame, and sex 

(not to mention some angel dust pyrotechnics)

to level George Bailey, man of talent.

And on this viewing, surprise of surprises,

Mr. Potter turns out to be the only man

trying to save poor George,

even if it is

only out of self interest.

And all those gut-wrenching moments 

coming so close to escaping:

the board meeting,

the bank run,

the train station with Harry,

the call from Sam Wainwright,

(if that idiot can make it anyone can).

If only Ernie the cabbie

would just chloroform Georgie-boy.

Just so he could get out of his own way 

for a half an hour. 

The real dagger in the soul is the end

when he’s wet, disheveled 

with tinsel matted on his head, 

looking out as an imbecile on all proceedings,

as he is made

to feel grateful for it all.

Check out all the work in the Collection: Occasional Verse

Racists of America Club Note #13

I lost a coat as a kid when we were staying in a hotel in the southwest. I’d been playing with another kid staying there on the hotel’s sportcourt. The boy was Mexican. When the coat went missing my dad asked me where I thought it was. I told him the Mexican boy probably stole it. My dad called me on that assumption immediately and that same day he found my coat in the hotel’s lost and found. My dad bringing it to me mentioned it was probably the boy that turned it in.

Check out other work in the Racists of America series here.

Racists of America Club Note #12

(an attempt at dialogue, I’m viewing this as the founder being interviewed by a reporter)
-How do you try to “escape” racism?
-Mostly by talking. We each share a little something. It could be something going on at the moment. It could be something from the past that a person is working through. The important part is that it’s not judged. Each person says what’s in their heart. They learn to trust the group. One guy has a black guy at work he’s having problems with. One girl has a story from when she was ten years old that she is still ashamed of.  

Check out other work in the Racists of America series here.

Occasional Verse 2: Driving the Wrong Way Down a One Way Street

You entered the do not enter

and there is no way out but through.

You will learn that the usually effective

embarrassed/apologetic wave has its limits.

Even the church-going mother

in the hatchback

taking her children to school 

can be seen muttering

a few non-biblical epithets

under her breath.

Her stare is enough to wish for the end times.

You have screwed this up for everyone

and will have to keep screwing

because backing up is worse than continuing.

You can only manage your level of wrong here.

Driving the wrong way down a one way street is like

putting a roasted potato in your mouth

at a dinner party that is way too hot

but you can’t spit it out.

So take the honking,

take the shrugs,

take the fingers.

This is an exercise in humility.

It is spiritually cleansing.

Remember Elliot’s words

Nothing dies harder than

the desire to think well of self

and know that today,

if just for a little while,

you killed it.

Check out all the work in the Collection: Occasional Verse

Racists of America Club Note #11 (a cry for help)

I have a question about the Racists of America Club. I’ve been working on it like I said. I seem to have gotten into it by opening it as an interview. Right now it doesn’t have the bite of a real story though. It is more akin to one of the Socratic dialogues in Plato in which the star is the idea less than the characters discussing the idea. I think one of the problems of the story for me is that I actually believe in the idea too much. It is not like a real interrogation. I’m too one-sided about it. Have you ever had this problem writing a story? Maybe I should be writing an essay instead? Help! -BW

Check out other work in the Racists of America series here.

Occasional Verse 1: Arguing About Whether You are Arguing

You are discussing a movie with your wife.

Talk has circled around various interpretations,

and now you find yourself debating, rather vigorously, 

whether you agree with each other. 

You maintain that with minor exceptions you do.

Your wife is quite certain that you don’t.

Don’t be surprised. 

For if there is an acorn through which 

to glimpse the forest of marriage, 

it must be the argument about whether you are arguing.

And so, here we have

in this discourse 

the inability of two to be one,

coupled with the relentless determination

that quite simply two equals one.

It’s a very real physical impossibility, 

a duality of states

as in superposition

not as one, not as two

but, for lack of a better term,

a one / not one.

Racists of America Club Note #10

Talking to a reporter:
So this is my point, there are a lot of people out there that are a little racist, but don’t think of themselves as racist. In fact, my guess is most of the racism in America is of this sort. There are very few people that even in private conceive of themselves as racists. I would also guess given that our difficult 400 years of race relations that nobody has been untouched by that history. Struggling with race is in our cultural DNA. Calling somebody a racist is basically calling them American.

Check out other work in the Racists of America series here.

The 17/18 Poems 30: Willow Said to Be Weeping

willow said to be weeping
joy said to be mocking
hope said to be thin
and the cargo was not slaves

this is the verbal energy
that surrounds the contemplation
of difficult (I mean ravenous) things

a bit daring I do say,
unlovely hand,
you are the subject given over
just like the dead
and in such quantities,
such well-meaning forevers

Check out other work in the 17/18 Poems series here.

Strange Faces Other Minds 7: Presque Isle

In every life, there’s a moment or two.
In every life, a room somewhere, by the sea or in the mountains.

On the table, a dish of apricots. Pits in a white ashtray.

Like all images, these were the conditions of a pact:
on your cheek, tremor of sunlight,
my finger pressing your lips.
The walls blue-white; paint from the low bureau flaking a little.

That room must still exist, on the fourth floor,
with a small balcony overlooking the ocean.
A square white room, the top sheet pulled back over the edge of the bed.
It hasn’t dissolved back into nothing, into reality.
Through the open window, sea air, smelling of iodine.

Early morning: a man calling a small boy back from the water.
That small boy–he would be twenty now.

Around your face, rushes of damp hair, streaked with auburn.
Muslin, flicker of silver. Heavy jar filled with white peonies.

Every time I read this it takes me to my room somewhere. I first experienced this poem on the page. I wish I could find a recording of Gluck reading it.

Check out other work in the Strange Faces Other Minds series here.

Strange Faces Other Minds 6: Somebody in a Bar

This is a great example of how lightning can strike anywhere. I photo copied this page from a book of poems in the library. I didn’t like any of the other poems. I don’t even like this poem, but the second stanza by itself is probably the best thing I’ve read all year. It kills me every time I read it. I tried to track down who wrote it, but wasn’t able to. If anyone reads and recognizes it, please let me know.

Somebody in a Bar

Racists of America Club Note #9

The reason I can’t write the story is that I believe in the idea too much. It would be the same as writing one dimensional characters that are surrogates for pure good or evil. I don’t have the ability to interrogate the idea.

Check out other work in the Racists of America series here.

Strange Faces Other Minds 5: Birdseed

Robert Saunders was a good friend. He passed away 10 years ago and I still miss him. It is hard to know if I’d like this poem as much if I didn’t know him personally. It definitely reminds me about what I loved so much being around him. I guess it doesn’t really matter though, if you love a poem, you love a poem.

Birdseed

I planted birdseed
But no birds grew;
I watered the plot
While over it flew
Other birds, who
Were unaware
Of what I thought
Was growing there.

The 17/18 Poems 29: Stubbornly Former

by this kind

he means cancer

the prospect he attaches to firmly

narrative abusing time…again

he is the tom of love now

all windows

in the mood to be forgotten

while others discuss

bribes and blandishments

instead of the love

they are too afraid to want

let the heaven we inherit approach

out of the deep business of some dream,

that heaven so stubbornly former


The Social Unit 11: The Problem of Justice

Justice is not an us versus them problem. It’s an us versus us problem. Any inversion of social/economic/political class just perpetuates injustice. I.e. the difference between labor/capital or high/low class is only an accident of history, not written in our biology. That is why “taking” power only results in “taking on” all the moral problems once despised in an oppressor. A deeper kind of a revolution is one that frees oppressors as well as the oppressed.

Check out all the work in the collection: The Social Unit

Practicing My Writerly Gaze 1, Manscaping

It is kind of hard shaving your asshole.
It’s a bit of a blind spot really. I have many.
Blind spots, not assholes. 
Why do I do it? I do it like I do many things.
Like writing poems.
I am wondering if poems are like assholes–
hard to find, delicate, 
somewhere you shouldn’t go near with a razor.
Yet we feel compelled. I even listen with razors.

Burroughs wrote a lot about assholes. 
One of his characters taught his asshole to talk. 
It didn’t end well. I can’t help thinking,
if mine could talk, what would it say? 
It always looks angry. At least in the mirror.
Mirrors are funny though. 

In a car once with my brother, I heard
an interview in which DFW said
he believed something down to his asshole.
What he believed, I can’t remember 
even at the time it didn’t seem
as interesting as where
he felt that belief.
I’ve never felt anything that deep. 
Maybe my sphincter lacks conviction?
I’ll deal with that later. For tonight
my little rosebud will have to be content
with being groomed: bald and beautiful.

Now I realize a poet asks a lot 
when he asks the reader to contemplate his asshole.
If you are still reading, thank you for indulging me.
I want you to know 
I didn’t try to write this poem.
It doesn’t make any sense
but I feel like it picked me.
Where poems come from and why 
is a knotted mystery to me.
Tipping my seat to DFW I never fail to feel
that kind of uncertainty where the poems don’t shine.  

The 17/18 Poems 24: Dude Raw

a break like a bend

more or less alive

many rains,

desires, and ideas

dude raw too afraid

the whole jealousy

a suitcase of a man

or a tarball ruining

someone’s beach

the freckled little milk

the mall of dead commerce

the sad clock of particular energy

it’s mixed character

tick, tock, tick

Racists of America Club Note #8

There was a woman at the meeting. She was older with a huge Elvis caricature on her t-shirt. I wouldn’t have noticed it, but the pompadour fell right across her large breasts. Every time she moved or spoke Elvis’ coif bobbed up and down.

Check out other work in the Racists of America series here.

The Story of Discourse 13: Danto’s Gallery of Indiscernibles

In Dantos Gallery there are many red squares. Some are framed hanging proudly on the wall. Some are being prepped for artists, Giorgione for example, to further adorn. Another is by the stairs simply waiting to have ‘exit’ stenciled on it. Being spun through room after room thick with the presence of red squares of every sort… oh look, there’s one on the shoulder of a security guard…the question one is intended to ask is this: is art camouflaged in the banal or is the banal camouflaged in art? How does one find art when it is so cleverly hidden? Or stranger, how does one find art when it is so clearly abundant?

The 17/18 Poems 18: Knowing Better than Love

he’s a person that knows better than love

but can’t stop himself all the same.

she was a church in the sky

dropping birdshit on people below.

in Britain, things were done differently:

more slowly and with less passion.

okay, something hit me somewhere.

is it that

I can see myself a portion of malice

or at least the meander of their doing?

our hero arrives in take charge mode,

but who can ultimately confirm or deny the world.

we are left with its giant question.

hero cowers. It’s okay big guy.


Racists of America Club Note #5

I was thinking about plot points for the story.
-origin story
-the club’s first black member
-a visitor misunderstands the club to be a solidarity club not a recovery program
-media attention
-a pc crusader visits the meeting
-a meeting is protested
-founders brainstorm how to adapt the 12 steps
-a nationwide tragedy happens like a Charlottesville, police killing, or a black church shooting

Check out other work in the Racists of America series here.