Merry Xmas, poets! Here's a rimer for ya.

Tricky (Julia's Anniversary Poem)

you use fake plastic vomit as a valentine card
you greet stupid devils with a hand buzzer how-do
you once tricked night with a moon whoopee cushion
it vowed to get even
with rain and bums and insomniac crows
you apologized drooling from novelty teeth
you’re the banana peel my heart pratfalls on
giggling and squealing
you offer it gum
eeek don’t chew it it’s Red Pepper Hot
you offer it fly ice cubes and a rubber wishbone
not even worried
as night sprinkles comets like gold itching powder

That ancestral glance

Today I mused on my artist grandpa, Martin. He ignored his sweat-class job and painted sparkling landscapes till fate pulled her usual Hello Cancer tricks. But that’s neither here nor gone; what I most remember is a look. At age six I snuck in his bedroom, picked up his concertina and worked out some melodies. Something in my tyke tunes made him peek in, slit his eyes and smile lightly. With that one glance I was admitted into a cunning wolf pack dressed in vellum shirts and sharkskin night. Later I turned teen and got bongos, rubies, vodka lofts and gored euphoria-—what doubtless sparked me on was that appraising head tilt, that grin lit with cigar glow that gave me the blessing. Smile on, dead trickster, smile fucking on.

Jodi and Jenn are miffed

I’ve been much amused by a “controversy” on HuffPo’s Books tab (http://huff.to/aBXRkC). Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Weiner whine about getting rich from Chick-lit tripe—but they’re not respected! Wah! Maybe because they're both hacks who jackhammer books out of cliché-infested wood. Neither remotely rises to Allen Ginsberg’s Howl lines about his Beat brethren:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness,
starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection
to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,

Starry dynamo in the machinery of night! Writing and sex demand beaucoup passion—and when you fuck for cash it ain’t love.

Eeek--it is Gojira!

Here's a lit test me and some pals came up with over the weekend. You're reading a novel/story/poem, people kiss or start their car--when suddenly--Godzilla invades! Maybe he pops out of a soup can the heroine was opening. Maybe he sizzles a Gen X party to an ironic crisp. Does the story get massively better when this B-flick beast howls onstage? Then the text um, kinda sucked on its own.

Samurai Poet Rules (go forth, grasshopper)

1. Write like you’ll live forever — fear is a bad editor.
2. Write like you’ll croak today — death is the best editor.
3. Pick one — fame or delight.
4. The archer knows the target. The poet knows the wastebasket.
5. Cunning and excess are your friends.
6. TV and liquor are your enemies.
7. Everything eternal happens in a spare room at 3 a.m.
8. You’re done when the crows sing.

Nope to ebooks

I tried out the Sony ebook reader - one of the better readers out there - and returned it. The concept will eventually win - even now you can store 400 books on one reader - but the grey-on-grey e-ink screen ain't quite there yet. Once they go black on white I'll try again; for now, it's still Gutenberg paper for me.