The Fat Poet Writes about his Hot Coffee and The Washing of his Socks

The more the leaves fall the more sunshine I crave. I sit next to the window as the sun rises and the radiant heat caresses my left arm and my left shoulder and at my age this is better than sex (for as long at least as the sun shines and the hours of darkness are getting longer).  The news this morning – a diet of processed food increases the risk of depression, but not as long as the sun shines. If the sun gets too bright I won’t be able to see this computer screen. David Hockney at seventy-two started doing paintings on his iPhone – said he has always carried notebooks and habitually worked small – now he paints with his thumb and not his pointer finger (“The thing is if you are using your pointer fingers or other fingers, you are actually working form your elbow.”). I searched for a program for Tablet PC that could do the same as Brushes for iPnone and everything demands that the stylus be deployed – it’s just not the same – it’s easier to do my collages on paper. It’s not a mater of doing something different it’s a matter of doing it better (meaning more satisfying – not more efficiently or more quickly or more commodifiable). It is the same with sex and with the sun. Freshly oiled naked bodies in hot beach sand is best – capture that Hockney with your thumb. Send iPhone brush images out into the ether. The Internet is a suspended in ether. I went to see the "Baader Meinhof Complex" - there were naked bodies in the hot sand and they told their Palestinian guerilla trainers we aran’t going to fight in the sand and fucking and shooting are one and the same. We are urban terrorists.

They [terrorists] are, as it were, ‘un-insurance companies’, which nevertheless have one thing in common with their adversaries the insurance companies – they profit from the spread of the awareness of danger in spite of relatively few catastrophes. They know the ‘insecurity-business.’ – Ulrich Beck – World at Risk, 2008 p78

6.1% of retired NFL players over fifty (in a randomly selected survey of those who had retired after playing at least three seasons) reported having received a diagnosis of ‘dementia’ – five time higher than the National Average. For players between 30 and 49 such diagnoses was 19 times the national average.

Our mania for awards, stems from a desire to sift through a chaotic world and impose linearity and a singular winner – Jonathan Chait – New Republic (Nov 4, 2009) p4

A sad country waltz
On this cold cheerless morn
Get on your phone and talk
Human to human if not
           Eyeball to eyeball
Disassembled and senseless
It could be a Turing machine
But it is not for a sad song
           To say

I’d kill for a Nobel Peace Price – Steven Wright

My laundry is done - fresh lemon scented sheets and towels. I can make by bed. Why pick up what you can step over. I may fall and break my neck. I pick up my stuff. I seem to have a lot of stuff. I have more stuff than I need. The bedroom has been cleaned up and the trash emptied. I still need to get toilet bowls deodorizers. Some incense would be nice. I’ve got the time, but not the inclination todo - vacuum & dust. I could clean the bathrooms and the kitchen – but I won’t, not today.. It’s 10:45 and I’m at the Coffee shop drinking the last of their Ceylon Breakfast tea. I will be making the rounds of the library, bank and getting a mobile telephone today. I called in sick again today.

Those smug saints, whether of church or Stalin, / Can get off the back of my people, and stay off. / Somebody is supposed to be fighting for somebody… / And Lenin is terribly silent, terribly silent and dead – Kenneth Patchen – Collected Poems, 1967 p65

Anything that happens once
        Can happen twice
And if if that why not
         Repeatedly
Over and over forever
Thus are born natural laws
Limited only by our short
          Attention span
This attention deficit
          Species man

Contact with power often ends in death, what was once alive becomes inanimate matter – Yi-Fu Tuan – Dominance & Affection: the making of pets, 1984 p12

To my left there is this woman designing a piece of luggage - perhaps a purse. Or that’s what her drawings seem to depict. It might be laptop case as well. To my right is a man in a baby blue polo shirt writing in his journal. He writes in a very neat script. He does not use block letters as I do. On his table above and to the left of his journal is a day scheduler - one of those zip up organizers you get from attending a Steven Covey workshop on Seven Effective Habits. On top of the organizer is a flip top mobile phone. Both the designing woman and the highly effective man are right handed. Each have their legs crossed in a direction away from me (I had read in a book on body language that that means they are not open to you – legs crossed toward, welcome – legs spread apart, come hither). The man has a hot beverage, which is probably coffee as I haven’t seen a used teabag anywhere around. Teabags left around are removed as if used condoms or hazardous medical waste. There is steam coming off of his beverage cup. The woman has not purchased anything. She is just appropriating that table for her sketching. You can do that once or twice but don’t make a habit of it. That is not one of Stephen Covey's "Seven Effective Habits"

It is in overcoming difficult matters that we make apparent our power – Louis XIV

The regulars gather
Gather the regulars together
To gather is regular
Gathering together regularly
Regularly gather the regulars
      Together

The more people who are poisoned, the less poisoning takes place, at least on the social… legal-construction – Ulrich Beck – World at Risk, 2008 p39

Home buyers my ass
They don’t sell homes
They don’t buy homes
Their trade is merely
         Buildings
The building trade
On paper land trades
         Hands
Bricks and sticks
Can break my bones
Reach out a helping hand
For what’s in a name
When God blesses
        This happy home

I got the Fat Poet into the corner and told him he was writing S__t and couldn’t get away with it – Kenneth Patachen – Collected Poems, 1967 p103