Lisa Grigouli - Stuff by Lisa

Today we have a picture from one of lo-fidelity's oldest friends Lisa Grigouli! My favorite is number 18.

Brant Goble - Black Friday on Long Island: A Comedy

This story doesn't need an introduction: just know that Brant Goble writes an excellent poem about how things are.

Black Friday on Long Island: A Comedy
by Brant Goble

Scene 1:
This is the music—
the green hum
(Cue lights, flickering on)
chorus of mumblings and broken speech
(Awaken the zombies with the hollow eyes)
rattling locks—shake and bang
(Roust a couple watchmen, armed with clipboards and halitosis—
God knows we can't afford any better)

(Throw back the bolts)

Let a few in first
(the lithe ones, with slit-snake eyes
who can slide past the titans with their slack jaws)
but not fast enough

Scene 2:
Show the frenzy and the flying fists
(Call all the extras—envision raging breadlines or Eisenstein's battles)

Rumble floor, rumble
as the crowd breathes in—
(a giant thing, heavy and weighted with cold and sleep)

—and out

All bodies, now pressing, pressing
(bones and clothes and marrow turned liquid)

Man falls, tumbles, thrashed, and trampled
(commanding a scream to curdle milk or pierce a heart through
were any available)

Warp the metal, break the frames, tear the hinges off
(The doors become accordion)

All leap for the heavens as they burst through
towards a sea of shiny things and happy, happy noise machines
ecstatic, orgiastic, at the thought of ephemeral pleasures
and even more shit to become obsolescent
unmindful
of the carpet of meat that once had dreams (and hope)
and the babe-not-yet-in-arms
(as blind and blank as its vessel)
beneath their feet

Scene 3:
Send in stooges with polished badges—
rendered impotent and red-faced
(even they've been discounted here)—
unable to disburse the savage masses
but promising to watch the replay

“There will be justice for this—we'll have every foot that tread through here”
(but be damned if we look any higher)

(Lower curtain)

Today men will die over childish things
(men who live amongst angels and sunshine)

And boys will smile (with glassy eyes) while they empty
clips (for a few hours longer) into flesh
in the name of their God
in a city that can't keep the Bombers at bay

This comedy's too dark for my tastes
with the players all method, all feeling too much
to be self-conscious or ironic
and the aisles aren't laughing

Who authored this farce
with its tired puns and low blows
this opera for beggars and billionaires
with greed and air and vitriol
between their ears?

What is this thing?

This is the season of the Son of Man
and all the world's adorned with plastic crucifixes

Jennifer Ethington - Ode to a Young Man in a Button-Down Shirt

Today we have a poem by Jennifer Ethington. It's a very cool reversal of traditional gender roles. Speaking of which, if anyone is going to the bakery could they pick me up some real gender rolls? The ones with cinnamon sugar please.

Ode to a Young Man in a Button-down Shirt

You make me want to do things that are stupid

Irresponsible

Driven by primal things

Subconscious things

That dirty bastard thing called “urge.”

I want to grind on you in uncatholic ways

Make you realize just how expert you are not

I want to hurt you

And not care if you enjoy it

I want to hear a knock on my door

And know

Just know

It’s you on the other side.

But you’d be stupid

And naïve

To think you’d walk away easily

You are blissfully unaware of the knot

You are hurtling toward

Thinking you can save me

From what? Myself?

Other men?

You mistake love and lust

One for another.

You’ll get caught up, little boy

You think you can just amble in,

Amble out,

No problem.

But one foot at a time

You’ll get stuck

Until you’re ensnared and can’t move.

Or maybe you’re stupid enough to think

I am the one who couldn’t walk away.

Perish it.

You fail to notice that I’ve been in control

All along.

I’ve played in ball games bigger and harder than this one

And I’ve conquered the field, Babe Ruth-style.

See, I play to win,

But,

Unlike you,

I don’t need the game.

Ray Succre - One Five A.M. More

Happy Brithday America! Being a social studies teacher in my spare time, I really love all the history that goes down on the 4th. Even though I know a lot of things are historically inaccurate, it's nice to think about how far we've come as a country. So, to honor this wonderful event, here is a beautiful poem from Ray Succre is a beautiful. Why is it that really good and descriptive poems make me want to smack my lips together in joy?

One Five A.M. More

Above the gray-moor pave and par-decent folk,

across finicky airs, both the natural and the man-made,

and in hardnesses beneath crisp motions,

near dead pansies from a truck-bed drop,

persistent blood and ostensible living.

Most eat tension, pissing better, paychecking as by zip-line,

to fidget up routine's hem before elasticity sets on,

and have the days rude hard, a happening of sensual activity,

and ruddy deep.

If the waist opens to expel its foal, this life is by its own banks

accusatory, obsessive, expulsions and inhalations

in the core like a love.

I know this nature has a fuck to it, a sensibility you can taste,

and I, too, breathe on the grey-moor pave,

as the grit crawls up my thighs and the whumps land down,

warmly taking me for senseless

Dzanc Books Writing Seminars

So, Dzanc Books is putting together an online seminar to help writers write their books and get good feedback for their works. It's incredibly flexible and inexpensive and a good way to get your work looked at, even if you're at school to learn to write anyway. Published authors and editors will read your work and e-mail you an evaluation. Additionally the money they make goes to helping little kids learn how to write.

So check it out at http://www.dzancbooks.org/creative.html, and while you're there look at some of the great books that they put out!

Becky Hunt - You Eat a Live Pig and other love songs

Today we have a pretty funny collection of lyrics to popular songs by Becky Hunt. I think my favorite is the Proud Mary one because it reminds me of high school.

You live like a pig, and other love songs.

• Coolio: Gangsta’s paradise.

And maybe we are living in a gangsta’s paradise, that’s if gangsta’s love to live in filth, with dirty socks and underwear strewn across the floor, mixed up with the weekend papers, beer cans and ashtrays. Let’s be honest, this is a gangsta’s embarrassment – it’s disgusting. No, I don’t think I’m overreacting. Well, you better watch how you talking, and where you where you walking, or you and your homies might be lined in chalk!

All I’m saying is tidy up. Another thing I’m saying is that gangsta’s know how to sort out recycling, so don’t throw those beer cans in with the normal rubbish.

• Millie Smalls: My Boy Lollipop

My boy Lollipop, you make my heart go giddy up. And when I say heart I mean mouth. And when I say giddy up I mean the fridge is empty. So why don’t you lollipop your shoes on and go to supermarket and buy some food. I honestly don’t see why food shopping is my sole responsibility. We both have jobs and earn salaries, so we should both buy food. It’s perfectly reasonable to expect we share the financial burden of being sugar dandies.

• The Teddy Bears: To know him is to love him.

To know know know him is to find him grossly negligent of basic hygiene. It’s also to be sick sick sick of him. I’m talking directly to you through the bathroom wall. You’ve probably already guessed that I’ve just found out you forgot to flush the toilet, and it revolts me. What’s wrong with you? I’ve seen TV shows where cats can flush the toilet, and you’re a grown man with hands. Look, I’m not interested in talking about it; I just want you to deal with it. And I do, and I do, and I do.

• Ike and Tina Turner: Proud Mary

Big wheel keep on turning, violent anger keep on burning. Why am I so angry? Because I’ve discovered that you spilt red wine over my laptop and now the laptop is dead. Didn’t you think I’d notice? That I was going to sit there with red wine pouring out through the keyboard and not notice? How am I going to work for the man every night and day now? Yes, I am serious - until you replace this laptop it’s going to be you who’ll be worrying ‘bout the way things might have been. What? You can’t afford to replace my laptop? Then it looks like, as usual, we’re not going to do things nice and easy, because when it comes to respecting other people’s possessions we never do things nice and easy.

• Frank Sinatra: My Way

I did it my way, as in the normal way, as in I washed the dishes. Your way, leaving the dishes to crust together in a heaped pile in the sink, is a shit way. It makes me want to roll myself up in a big ball and die. No, I don’t care if that lyric is from That’s Life, it’s all Frank Sinatra. You’re missing the point completely. Listen, if you don’t stop I’ll show you exactly where my vagabond shoe is longing to stray.

• Womack and Womack: Teardrops

Okay, we need to talk. Whispers in the powder room have informed me of the state of the kitchen. The stench of something rotting reminds me baby of you. Overflowing bins, next time we’ll be through. We’ll be through, we’ll be through, (take the bins out), we’ll be through, yeah.

OMG!

Oh wow! McSweeny's is offering three columnist jobs! Your writing could appear on the famous front page! Check out the rules! Who knows, you could be the next writer of a column about growing a mustache!

The Singing Butler - Chris Hubbard

Today we have a nice refreshing piece of prose from Christopher Hubbard, a very dear friend of lo-fi's. Enjoy reading this lovely work titled the Singing Butler and let the descriptions wash over you like the rain that's falling outside (at least in NJ)

THE SINGING BUTLER

A waltz under dark skies, on slick, shiny tan earth. Lovers roam the grounds whilst servant borne umbrellas stave off rain drops from the black, rolling, sheets above. Shadows paint short lines in the ground, proof of a sun, piercing through the afternoon gloom. All stand in black or white but one; a rose in a bland garden of activity, she swirls in bloom around her partner, completely relaxed and free. In contrast to the standard bearers around her, in a silent tango, in the vast, damp wasteland

Don't Smile

So normally we don't put up videos, but check out this experimental film Lo-Fidelity's friend Ricky Lorenzo and a group of unspecified ruffians. Post what you think it means below!


It's also at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYDnrmDUP50 if you can't work hyperlinks.

Bike ride inspiration, also links!

So after a relatively eventful bike ride to the library to drop off a book I read on Zen through the eyes of a hardcore musician I decided I would post a news post. The book, by the way, is very concise and well explained introduction to Zen Buddhism. It's official title is Sit Down and Shut Up but both of the books by Brad Warner are about Zen Buddhism and hardcore (punk rawk). Check it out.

First of all Glen is going to Minnesota, wish him luck and bug him about not writing anything lately. Also, there are a bunch of new stories up at 50 to 1, a collection of 50 word stories and 1st lines of stories. Broadset has posted an interview of Maryann McFadden (an author of two books). Keep updated on that blog too, I hear that they're going to interview Ben Greenman soon. And if you don't know who Ben Greenman is, click his name and look at his stuff and laugh your ass off. In a good way.

There I think I gave you enough to keep you occupied at work for a minute or two.

Quick poll (answer in the comments) Would you subscribe to a lo-fidelity twitter account?