November 24-30, 2014: Daniel Chacón and John Grey

Amsterdam

“I’m bored.
I’m chairman of the board.”
…………….Iggy Pop

May seem like ennui, but after four
Heine pints and all the Febo
I can eat I’m bored. I’m slimy bored,
sick of my kicks. I’m a stoned mystic
in Rembrandtplein looking at seven trees
and the painter’s bronze body.
And when the city wants to lead me
into red streets that bend and grind
into positions I’m no longer
bent on entering now that I’m sick
of my kicks I just go on ignoring the dead
 
and the living who don’t want to die.
I’m chairman of the bored.
What mason’s wall? What cat in the window?
Yaba Yam is open again. Once
 
on a walk through Madrid at three am
Neruda and Lorca lured me into Argüelles.
Head this way, mi’jo. Because dead poets
think I’m the tabula rasa of la raza.
always trying to show me something.
But who follows me here?
 
Vincent and van Rijn? Why
do the greats always want you,
arrogant artist? What about Rudy?
Who does his ghost follow?
Remember his Madonna air-bush
in her Like a Virgin days? So sexy, such raw
talent. Now he’s head cook at Denny’s
downtown Fresno. Amsterdam. Buenos Aires
I’m bored.  I’m chairman of the bored.
 
I ate a box of Wok to Walk three times
in a week. Like Pablo I wanted to box a nun’s
Ears. If Centruum had a Taco Bell I’d eat there
until I’d te kosten bean soup all over the aprons
of workers who take trains in and out of the city
barf up all that mystic shit onto Jimmy Choo
shoes and ankle butterflies, because I’m bored.
 
I think I’m in love with being
 
bored. I’m chairman of the bored.

Sale of Contents

The auctioneer’s voice
stabs my brow
but won’t burst out the other side.
How much am I bid
for these thoughts, these sorrows, these memories.
Let strangers hold up our best china to the light.
I’m feeling a price to my cerebellum,
my ventricles, my pons.
How much for my language, my calculation,
my sensory input, my control of movement.
He’s at the microphone,
speaking in tongues,
a Mick Jagger for the Sotheby’s set,
a preacher with mammon in mind.
What about this dining room furniture,
this water color, this kitchen table?
Still, no one can take away the fact
that hands touched, eyes saw,
bodies slept and sat.
Take the tintypes, steal the trumpet,
stow the images in your trunks.
But the years are not on offer,
the love is not for sale.
Going once, going twice, going, going,
he shouts about all the things that stay.

Melody

October is not a month.
It is a reminder.
Despite these charming colors,
the enemy is in the leaves.
She paints over the cracks in her face,
dons a dress to match the foliage,
steps out into the ghostly pallor of a sun,
the wind that won’t let go her hair,
prevents it from dropping to her shoulders.

October won’t keep to its place in the calendar.
It pickles the flesh.
It reddens the eyes.
With needling chill, it previews the grave
for the slumping blood.
Even the heart is more leapt upon than leaping.

It is a month of change
though never for the better.
It’s when everybody says, “How lovely.”
But then the voices fall out, one by one,
until it’s only winter saying it.