I.

Last night I headed to Shippensburg to visit Ray (somebody I’ve known since college, fall 2004) to play music and head out to the bar. Ray and I were in a band in college with a few other guys and we played some folky kind of tunes and Ray ended up writing all the lyrics and even a few music. He’s still going at music, and I have been working slowly on building a large set list so I can play out more (I’ve played one show already and only 7 people came out. I was disappointed).

Anyway so I brought down a small bottle of hacky Jack Daniels and we started drinking. I was slamming it down in half shots between each song one of us played, Ray was taking swigs out of the bottle every now and then too. The thing was about half gone before we even left for the bar.

Anyway we show up at the bar and I have some guinness and we meet up with Ray’s friend and start talking and drinking. I’m pounding some jagerbums after the guinness pints and we’re all just having a good time shoot pool and the like.

Next to the pool table was one of those arcade basketball games and I got really interested. At this point I was drunk to the point of elation and began playing the game. The hi-score was 63 and I had shot up to 56 in one round. So I’m adamant at this point (most likely the whiskey haha). And I want to beat the hi-score. So I’m slamming quarters in the machine and shooting and drinking and just having a good time.

Well, in the middle of the game this guy comes up and starts grabbing a ball shooting them when I’m playing. And he’s drunk too. A jocky-type jacked guy from Long Island. I didn’t see him because I was focusing but I knew he was there so I started talking shit.

He ended up walking away because I was yelling at him and then he walked over and sat at the bar. I asked Ray’s friend where the guy went and he pointed over to the bar. So I walked up to him and start yelling at him for screwing up that game. He probably did it because he figured that I was skinny and wasn’t going to start shit. Well he was wrong.
I asked him “Yo why were you fucking up my hoops?” and he was just being dumb like the idiot he was and not saying much. Anyway he’s like “you want to fight about it”. And I’m really drunk at this point and he’s jacked like a mother fucker and I don’t care, I’m like “yeah. i don’t give a fuck how big you are”. Basically Ray pulled me away because he ended up coming to the bar to pay his tab.

He got me back over with the people we were with and I ended up lifting one of his friend’s friend up in a snowplow ( a la British Bulldog) to show them that I wasn’t drunk enough to punch that turd at the bar.

Anyway we leave the bar because it was last call, and we head to this small cafe. I’m falling all over the sidewalk in to bushes and banisters on the way there. There was an upstairs in the place, so we headed up there. I ordered some coffee and the guys got food.

Well turns out this dumb jock was hungry too, so he came up and made a scene when he saw me. So I rolled over to him and sat down with him, his buddy, and two girls (that were probably equally dumb). And I started saying shit again. Anyway I’m talking to him and getting to know him, and I get him to lift up his shirt and show me the stab wounds he was talking about. It was pretty ridiculous. Then somebody wants us to arm wrestle and we do. Well he doesn’t move his arm and I start pushing his down and all the sudden he moves and slams my arm back on the table. As soon as I felt the force of his hand I let my arm go limp so he wouldn’t snap my forearm in half because the tables were raised from one another and off balance.

Before I left the table I shook his hand and then I said “You know I would’ve faught you back at the bar. I don’t care how ripped you are. I would’ve come at you bloody as hell”.
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II.

Jack Spicer’s collected Poems : “My Vocabulary Did This To Me” is simply amazing. I recently got to sit down with it this weekend after getting it in the mail. I haven’t read too much of it, but what really impressed me was the sequences I came across. He writes sequences in a style like Berrigan’s “Sonnets” although Spicer was writing these sequences a good 5 or 10 years before Berrigan was even on the scene. What makes these sequences so cool is that Spicer is writing the “I” as a hybrid between himself and the content of the poem (he wrote one on King Arthur, another on Merlin) and consistently blends the two together. If you could imagine the self-referencing of lines that Berrigan does in “Sonnets” condensed in a smaller 6 or 7 poem sequence, it’s really cool. At one point Spicer uses the same word in the same verse but interjects in two different manners so you don’t even see the repeat coming.

What I really like about the sequences Spicer wrote is their ability to make the project of something like Pound or H.D. or other Modernists [combining biography and western history/myth] as accessible as a Frank O’hara poem. Also Spicer’s voice makes the historical seem less showy, a fault that contemporary poets have (but that’s what happens when poetry is basically controlled by the academic system even when those that write have long graduated and sometimes have not returned to teach)

Anyway I’ll read some more of the Spicer since I’m not too far in to it yet. But I definitely recommend the book because it really seems to be a promising read. Plus the title is awesome and it would look great on your bookshelf. Your friends would be impressed, trust me.

Stay Alive,

peace

Ca

-6:00pm, 12/6/2008