1, 2, and 3/30...
1/30: Punch Drunk Love.
The first night we made love
was marinated in an ocean of cabarnet savignon.
The wine swam through me
and we abandoned the nervous and awkward
that usually comes with first time naked.
After that, our favorite sex toys were all liquid
and poured from bottle to throat.
Cheap beer led to giggles and nibbling.
Tequila nights were hair-pulling and hard ride.
The red wines always spilled onto our glasses
and made our communion much more slow thrust
and thigh kiss.
The times we sobered up were lessons relearned.
It was difficult to reinvent the suave
that fakes its way out of the bottle.
Trying not to bang our foreheads on clarity
and stumble. Trying to reread the manual on how
to fit together as easily as when lubricated
in warm rum breath and bravado.
I'm not saying that our puzzle was ever easy
to piece together. We live much more comfortably
in our heads than in these lumpy, spongy skeletons
and our fear of not being casanova porn stars
always led to inviting a third into our bed.
A firebrand liquid threesome that slid
over our lips and down our throats like lava.
A paid professional.
At our best, we were swagger in doorways,
hotel bed abandon.
At our worst, we were exhausted, combative,
dealing with demons that wouldn't stop
riding so we rode back harder, collapsing
into unfinished business, praying for an ocean
of sober to make the carousel stop.
I think of you now when I sneak a flask sip,
how we seventh-grade kissed on the subway platform;
I smell your skin as I take in the bouquet
of a fine burgundy.
We started our affair halfway into the bottle,
knowing eventually it would be hollow,
ready to be recycled.
This is not some Irish whiskey lament ballad.
You still can make me raise my glass
and we had some volume ten forty ounce smiles.
Yes, I remember everything.
I remember how for a few moments we
were the perfect cocktail...
and I will drink to that.
2/30: Joe Smash.
I watched the documentary "Confessions of a Superhero" and realized that I knew the guy who dressed up like The Hulk. This is about that.
When I first met the Hulk,
he was sweeping the cement footprints
outside of Mann’s Chinese Theatre, at 3 AM.
He was homeless and had a happy piano mouth.
Now I was a new initiate to the Land of Glittery Starwalks
and he was as much of a transplant as I.
I just landed better.
He hadn’t been hit by the gamma rays yet,
so he was a little skinny.
I was still naïve enough to think it fun
to romp Hollywood Boulevard at three in the morning.
Past the head shops and gaudy fashion boutiques
and Scientologists.
The town was a little more honest then.
Hulk didn’t know he was Hulk yet and so I knew him as Joe.
Joe lived on the streets, I found out. Got paid under the table
to make sure no trash would land in R2-D2’s treadmarks.
Probably also helped keep staggering barflies from pissing
on Sinatra’s handprints. I couldn’t believe
that he could be so crazy optimistic
and so goddamned healthy.
He was a bum, for Chrissakes.
A real life hobo whose train didn’t run far enough.
But after a few years of being scraped across the Boulevard
myself, I later came to realize that Joe was gonna be okay.
Joe knew what the hustle was and worked it
like a scientist. Like a general.
So it turns out that Joe met Superman somewhere around
Hollywood and Highland
and decided to throw himself in front of the gamma bomb.
Started Hulking up. Now Hulking is his job.
He rocks foam hands and a lumpy set of muscle tights
in 90 degree weather so tourists can get a little
bit of photo magic. He won’t tell you, but he works
on tips.
It’s an interesting path to stardom.
Not the most direct.
But Hulk-knows-hustle. Joe knows he can
fill those Hulk hands up with cash.
Pay his rent.
Make little kids happy.
Maybe be seen in a kung-fu movie.
Joe McQueen may always be standing
on other people's accomplishments,
but he can look into his own shitty mirror in the morning,
dust off those big spongy fists, and say to himself,
with pride,
You are The Hulk.
The puny humans call you
Incredible.
3/30: For Ghosts of Pasha.
They came to your show.
It was maybe the third time you'd ever played out.
They had bootleg shirts,
temporary tats,
they knew all the lyrics.
They were 35 strong in New York City.
On a Sunday. At 10 PM.
Cut to:
24 hours later.
Someone sends you a link:
They were imposters.
It was all a big joke.
Spin and Rolling Stone pointed at you.
Not because you were the next Pavement
or even the new Marcy Playground,
but because you were pranked like rockstars.
How did you feel after that?
Like a Kick Me sign?
Like a towel-whipped, depantsed 7th grader?
Did they knock the ambition out of you?
When you next played out
to six people in a bar that swallowed you,
did you believe their sincerity?
Can best intentions sulphur scorch your ego?
Does your Best Gig Ever sit in your brain
as a gift or as an inkspill?
Is there such a thing
as bad publicity?
http://videosift.com/video/Improv-Everywhere-Ghosts-of-Pasha