Poetry from Jason Irwin

FIRST DATE

We were having appetizers
at the museum of urology.
Me, sipping a cup of lemonade
and you, munching a kidney
shaped cookie.
If not for the waitress
dressed like a giant ovary,
whom I couldn't help but undress
in my mind, and all those jars
of pickled prostates,
I might have noticed
that sparkle in your eyes,
the way you licked your lips
after speaking my name.

When Jason sent me this poem, I thought the whole thing was from his imagination. Well. Click here for more information on the museum of urology. Jason tells me that Dr. Engels was his doctor at Johns Hopkins.

Jason Irwin: Watering the Dead

Jason Irwin's first book of poetry, Watering the Dead is available for purchase for now.

Go to the Pavement Saw Press website to buy it.

There are no aliens or robots in it. You'll have to wait for mine or Kraig's book of poetry for that.

So Long Losers, Whom I've Always Hated

No just kidding, that's a reference to Futurama. One of those things I think about and I can't help inwardly if not outwardly chuckle about. (Just like John Oliver's Fox News gatecrashing.) I thought it was a funny line, and I've been saying to people around here, but it's not true. I haven't always hated you. I've never hated you.

I thought it would fun to do that in intermediate to advanced language class and explore the nuances of these phrases:

I love you.
I always love you.
I am always loving you.
I have loved you.
I have always loved you.
I loved you.
I could have loved you.
I would have loved you.
I might have loved you.
I should have loved you.
I wouldn't have loved you...etc....

Obviously, you could do it with other verbs, but using love (or hate) would make it more interesting for the class.

Anyhow, when we're on the subject of Robots, there's buzz on the net: an interesting question posed by an interesting blog [or blogs I don't understand the web anymore (I found it via popurl.com)]: if you were a robot, and I knew, but you didn't, would you want me to tell you you were a robot?

Interesting. But it would sure depend on the robot. If it's the air-hockey robot, it might just reply that it doesn't care, as long as it beats you in air-hockey. These kinds of questions are why most of San Francisco, I mean Science Fiction sucks.

I'll be in San Francisco on Tuesday!

Maybe the question should be: if you were a robot, and I knew, but you didn't, would I want me to kiss you? Interesting twist, eh?

Now I'm going to use a robot translator for my love poem:

Here's English to Danish to English:
I love you. I forever love you. I am forever affectionate you. I've love you. I've forever love you. I love you. I could receive love you. I ville receive love you. I be at liberty to receive love you. I ought receive love you. I ville that no receive love you. and the like

Here's English to German to German to Polish to Polish to English:
me tendering this status pleasantry until yield owa on collateral until lichen programming language classify as well ausbaldowieren this nuances over this phrases : me love she. me in each love she. me bin in each fond she. me assets loves she. me assets in each loves she. me loves she. me may rashness well-beloved she. me status possess loves she. me mógł rashness well-beloved she. me ought rashness well-beloved she. me status rashness well-beloved she. etc.

Here's English to Brazilian Portueguese to BP to Bulgarian to Bulgarian to English:
АЗ чудо he shoulder be play action a част what em middle определителен член front език ear & investigate определителен член shade на these phrase : АЗ love you. АЗ always love you. АЗ be always lover you. АЗ obtain love you. АЗ obtain always love you. АЗ love you. АЗ p.t. from can tem love you. I'd have love you. АЗ p.t. from may obtain love you. I'd have love you. АЗ as if have love you. etc.

here's my favorite so far, English-Italian-Dutch-Spanish-English
MY thought spent would creature pleasure run on leave expensive whom UNITED NATIONS hub run on leave UNITED NATIONS staid tongue scope or substantiation does the point until multicolored nought this saying : MY sweetmeat you. MY forever sweetmeat you. They swimm forever loving you. I've sweetmeat you. I've forever sweetmeat you. MY sweetmeat you. MY might one's sweetmeat you. MY would creature one's sweetmeat you. MY May MY one's sweetmeat you. MY will one's sweetmeat you. MY would creature one's sweetmeat you. etc

Here's more translator experimentation.

(Go ahead and kick your robot friend in the back of the knee. Actually, the name of that jpeg is "the robot that would not fall down!" And would a robot that can't fall down need friends???)
The real question is, if you know your friend is a robot, and they don't know you're a robot, I mean, they don't know that they're really the robot, how do you know you're not really a robot too??????? Ooooooooooh.

John Cole uses my favorite word; The Politics of Insanity; Medical Metaphors; Self-described Not-a-hipster

In a useful way to summarize NYT op-eds.

Very nice.

I'm STILL waiting for my Visa. The gods have spirited an ethereal nimbus of gloomy limbo upon my being. I wait. I wait. I wait.

Someday, again, I will teach.

In the meantime, I can catch up with how horrible everything is.


The Clash sell-out, but only in earbuds. You can sell-out too. For whatever reason(s), these two articles really disturb me. I can't put my finger on it. Somehow I feel I'm being implicated. So what, I like The Clash, and it's played in Star Bucks. Can I live with that? Yes. The real strange music will never make it.

Last week I organized my links, and, as you can see, on the right (isn't it weird that I don't have to tell you if it's your right, or my right, okay, it's not) I have added friends. If you want to be a slop friend, just make a comment or email me. I have to say I have been reading Liz Von Uhl's blog, and her last post has sort been sticking in my brain. I went to grad(?!) school with her, and we reconnected through facebook. She's a talented poet, and I think she writes fiction too. Anyhow, it's this post about the absurd. I really like the way she explores ideas, and find her way with language intoxicating. But I often get into terrible arguments with poets. I can see what she means about metaphor being inextricable with absurdity, and especially in the context of teaching students about them. Lis in my experience is a no-nonsense person, and so I would say she might have a better perspective on all this. Metaphors, absurd? Okay, I go along with that. They are exaggerated comparisons, I suppose. I have to say I have a sinking feeling that this is a reduction--and the great satan knows I think reductions are necessary for teaching! The concept of the absurd is the notion of ridiculousnessness of everything--and isn't it all absurd? I think metaphors are absurd, but not making metaphors is more absurd! Our language is threaded inextricably with metaphors; it seems to be a process that our brains take to more naturally than something, like, say, multiplication. Again, that's my abstracted, space-case view of the world. Anyhow, Lis, I consider you a fellow, raging soldier against The Abyss, so I hope no offense is taken. If you read this.

Okay, I feel a little happier. Oh happiness, sanitize my melancholy blood.

Here's one.

Here's one.

Here's another.

My Band.

My Band

by Dan Jackson

put-out ads for music collabs
to what end
non-noodly, psychedelic visual rock
that's spiritual, space-prioritized
World-open
Irony/ironed buzzy post-apocalyptic
folk-garage

Jaco Pastorious meets Dishwasher hum

Jimi Hendrix with
no limbs except his
left-arm to strum
3 worn strings and his tongue
to press on the keys

Larry David with the soul
of Chuck Berry

Roy Orbison heard from
a mile away and
minimal amplification +
a continuous splash
of freshly oozed-out
Jello products.

Gelatinized Mudhoney
produced by Tricky

Lou Reed on life support

Sonny Sharrock plus Zelda

Arvo Part wins Eurovision
Produces new Justin Timberlake
album.

The accrued tinnitus of a
billion iPod users, mid-
passed filtered to a
soothing, modulating,
variable rate wave.
Plus crispy hi-hats and
Smokey Robinson with a
very bad sinus infection

Russian Polka Techno
minus the Roland
beats and the
accordion. Bag Pipes
are fine.

Steve Albino/Bernie Worrell
vanity project

North Korea Stadium Tango

Sound good?

Post #666: Some Prose-Poems From Jason Irwin

OMAR'S DESIRE

Not satisfied gawking at department store display windows
or admiring from afar as women walked past him in the park
where he sat every day for lunch, Omar's desire for women's
shoes soon turned to obsession. He began following these
women home and then robbing them. When the police
knocked on his door, Omar sat encircled by his stolen menagerie
of footware, breathing deep the scent of a pair of Carmen Ho
Penny sandals, as if trying to breathe meaning into his life. "I
couldn't help myself! I was intoxicated! I was in denial!" he
cried from the witness box, the women he robbed staring back
at him in the sun-filled courtroom.

RECESS
In the school yard a group of children are eating insects.
One girl exclaims 'they taste like grandma!" "No! they
taste like bananas!" a boy with dimples counters. Against
the wall the janitor shares a cigarette with a nun. 'Soon it
will be night", he smiles, twirling his mustache, "and then
we can dance."

REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST

I was sitting at the bar at the Lennox Lounge, drinking a Budweiser,
watching a skinny lady with buckteeth talk to a guy with a dice earing
and a red fedora. That's when a drunk stumbled over and asked me
if I was a Zapata revolutionary. Said he'd shoot me dead. I explained
I was there to see the jazz combo, that despite appearances, I was
not Mexican. After buying him a beer we talked for hours like two
long lost friends. he told me how he hated Oprah. I smiled and
thought how much Proust missed out on, sitting in his room.

From Madrid to Kiev

(That's a rockfish. I ate one Saturday night.)

There's a guy who's working on a movie about his 5000 km walk from Madrid to Kiev, as suggested offhandedly by Herzog in the book Herzog on Herzog. Called "more shoes."

Interested to see it. The dude got's devotion. Motivation. Play it on the guitar every Saturday night.

It's raining in Seoul. For some reason I wanted to eat ice cream and drink a beer. I hurt my jaw joint eating the ice cream bar I bought. Serves me right.

Anyhow, Herzog said that a 5,000 km walk on foot from, say, Madrid to Kiev would be worth more than five years of film classes. I imagine it would be cheaper too. So more power to this dude.

I invite the bloggers to more shoes too. I mean, the confederate bloggers. And if you haven't been invited to blog on Angry and Sloppy, please email me at solardriftwood at geemail to rectify the sloppiness. And poets, add your angry and sloppy poetry. Because there's nothing sloppier than poetry; and the best poetry is angry.

And those who have become confederates, please feel free to be sloppier. And damnier, angrit. That's what this is for.