Split coffee on my keyboard this morning. It’s still dark outside. Took my brother to the doctor yesterday to learn he won’t need surgery on his foot. Drove to Georgetown to read a few of my poems. Heard some exceptional poetry being read. It’s still dark outside.
Listened to Michelle read about how a eight year old girl lost her faith when she was told by the preacher that her dog and other pets don’t get to go to heaven, but her recently drowned child molesting big brother does because he took a bath in some special water.
It’s that special water that make the difference.
I read a NY Times article about a steel worker losing her job to a plant in Monterey, Mexico—the difference between $25 an hour and $6 an hour. Free market capitalism—the way it works. Though the free market evangelicals will tell you that it’s all part of God’s master plan, that the free market will sooner or later make everyone prosperous and free—after all it’s got free in it. It’s somewhere in the Bible, though it ain’t. Marilynne Robinson tells us that the Old Testament makes Marx seem tame, the forgiving of debts every seven years, etc. But who is reading Marilynne Robinson. I am, Mark mutters from his table.
We are supposed to help each other, the poet cries out. Love each other—but not in that way, Franco snarls as they drag Garcia Lorca out of the house and into the night.
The sun is starting to break the tree line. It’s Saturday. College football—but I will be heading back down to Georgetown for more poetry—a different kind of head trauma.
Yesterday, a woman reads a poem about a post middle aged man painting his house while wearing a speedo, his love handles hanging over the spandex. Did someone tell him he was beautiful, the poet asks. Does he think he’s beautiful in his speedos with his post middle aged love handles. I see myself as that man, having been taken in by the poem. I am the God damn man, taking three years to paint his house. I need to lose weight, lose years—that’s got to be possible, right—get some looser shorts. And put on a shirt for Christ’s sakes, someone says.
I’m in love with a woman who died in 1895, he tells the gathering. She s a painter, and artist—and she don’t look back. I’m in love with Morisot, he whispers. How could he not be.
Love,
Brady