"Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien" or "The Glamorous Life of a Scumbag"

on someone else's nomadic carpet
sipping Dewars spoilt in Royal Crown
Edith Piaf is spinning and cracking in the next room with the whips and crickets

fat on Jewel-Albertson's brand cheese pizza,
I'm sitting on the floor

So,
who wants to be my friend

a line from the 20 minute cabaret song i sang while walking to the diner in the rain thursday

she had the vodka
i downed a martini
we crushed up some pills into the linguini
and ate until our eyes closed and the table hit our face

the rest, if memory serves me involved murder, asian fetishes, and the sounds of a conversation worth having, as yet unimagined

stealing library books for the fire: a discussion of the urban environs marked lack of kindling

so by whatever means I've come to work as a math tutor
at last I work with someone who can appreciate the brilliance of Sir Mix a Lot's "Jump On It"

of course now I'm gonna have that Apache riff stuck in my head all day

I will not use the name Norm Porter or "Every Newspaper in the Country Is Trying To Convince Me There's An Innate Link Between Poetry & Homicide"

J.J. Jameson was one of the best writers this city had goin for it, and the closest we were ever gonna get to our own Bukowski. The last time I saw him was a couple months ago at the Tuesday night reading at the Cafe. He was ornery, cranky, irritable, loud, slurring, and occasionally full of laughter. He read a piece about being old, and laughed dry, hard, old man's laughter. A gob of spit flew from his mouth as he slowly enunciated 'and I...DON'T...NEED NO...GODDAMN VIAGRA...YET.' He was there with a much younger woman with red hair.

The first time I saw him was six years ago at the library in Oak Park. I borrowed my parent's car and went out there for the youth slam that Nell, who would become my roommate a few years later, hosted once a month.

He was old then, and one of those people you'd imagined had been old his whole life. It just suited him. He was being a cranky, irritable complete sonuvabitch and there were nods across the room from boys who thought in unison, "God, that's what I want to be when I'm old."

Nell was interviewing him for the feature. He was giving his life story and, we would only find out yesterday that it was nearly all lies. He didn't grow up exactly where he said he did, he never had one...or two adult daughters.

None of this matters to me. I don't care about the past of Norm A.Porter, Jr., I've never met the man. What's important to me, is John/Jacob Jameson's.

As an entity, J.J. Jameson, a name randomly cribbed from a phone book in 1985, is 20 years old tody, the same age the Norm Porter was when he killed a store clerk during a robbery in 1960. J. Jameson's work for the antiwar movement, towards prison reform, at his Unitarian Church, for the betterment of Chicago's conscious as a whole, none of it will matter, nor should it. Just as the rest of us, he is subject to the laws of the land, even as an old man. It can be argued that the 20 year old criminal is long-reformed, it doesn't matter. His reformation was supposed to happen in the confines of a prison, where he will probably go back to.

What matters to me is how the local papers treat the story and he himself. The Sun Times and it's idiot, kid sister Red Streak barely mention the name he's given himself. They disregard the entire life he'd made for himself here. Every caption of him is Norman Porter, if even that.

In the Sun Times, it's

"Killer Poet's Lie on the Lam"

In the Red Streak, it's

"Killer Poet Captured"

in the Sun Times again (and a number of other clever papers across the country):

"Poetic Justice...."

On a personal level I take issue with it. J.J. was a good person, even if he made himself that way, and even if Norm Porter wasn't. He's heard me, and scores of other Chicago writers, and we've heard him. That's my own beef.

On a critical level, however, it's just one (or three) headlines in a string of a long history of bullshit. Regularly, the Sun Times comes out with these cutesy irreverent or alarming sensational, editorialized, tabloid headlines that mock the content of the stories. In Red Streak it's nearly forgivable; it was born with a considerable pretense of safe, built-in snark. Besides, the only thing that makes that paper salvageable are Zippy the Pinhead comics and the fact that it's better than Tribune Co.'s RedEye.

The Sun Times is a grown up newspaper though and they've been getting worse and worse over the last few years. Or maybe it's only been more noticeable with the war on terror, where it's seen fit to head up the day's war roundup with something making fun of a war victim.

In all that he worked for since boarding that Greyhound to Chicago J. Jameson deserves more than that, and the rest of the city does as well.


Of course the Sun Times wasn't the only guilty party- both the killer poet and poetic justice lines were aped around the globe- they were just the one who should've been trying harder. The one that would've gotten to his friends.

As people turn to blogs for their news the old newspaper dynasties are stumbling all over themselves trying to sound casual and ironic and making fools of themselves. This has been happening more and more. These kind of dynosaur trends usually happen en masse, but for the Sun Times it is old hat.

The result is that a lot of people, innocent people, guilty people, more often than not accused or dead people have their dignity robbed of them. I'm not gonna be the one to say whether he was a despicable person that did good things or a good person who did one the worst possible things a man can do.

The L.A. Times said that the "Escaped Killer Hid as Poet in Chicago". They're wrong. The "escaped killer" WAS a poet in Chicago; he was one of the best, and I hope to get to see him read again.

p.s. for a very interesting discussion thread betwen J.J. Jameson's friends, the curious, the distraught and the rest of the world, go here. It touches on the good points and the bad, the killer and the victims, the man we all knew a little bit and his words.

god is a foot

trancendental titties flopped eye-dot-eye / starcrossed missiles of cosmic caravans led by hermaphrodites on angels wings

the hippie chick is reading poetry naked again
and avoiding eye contact

the black guy poet goes on stage to remind us that he is black, guy, and poet in that order
at least he'll spice it up with some watersports

the band goes on
and on
like fred's beard tethered to every board in the house

maybe he'll take the whole thing with like frank lloyd wright

i bombed a set at burkhart's the other night, which was good because I've been getting cocky lately
and self-centered
that was gonna be the whole point but
i sold myself out
shrugged myself to death

leonard cohen can't wait to die
and start rolling around in his grave

face up
he'll just get a mouth fulla piss though, like oz
of the sun
areola borealis

sometimes all the world needs is a big fat cock

blue screen

Current mood: something with a d or an h

it was a new neighborhood
newly so
you could still smell the smoke and wet cardboard from where
the snow had gotten in

chessboard dopemen
dealt in bird calls
to no avail

all possible clients were asleep stoned or still at the office

the birds themselves hadn'tr made it back from the Carolinas

it would be a whole generation
before the dumpsters were salvageable

there was ceramic, tin
bathroom fixtures
smashed
do not a party make

minnie minoso and tavia wassershtrum were still hung in the air
like their wive's hairspray

smart money says lit'ler and lit'ler
breeds of
designer dogs
would stray
overtaking calicos and rats
fine by me
I don't really have a best friend anymore

all these polymer memories,
broken elastic, leaving
scars on my left wrist

I'm lefthanded
&, judging from the pen
mephisto, tophel sheqer
has nothing for me to say

we used to trust drugs and people alike
now i put up walls
this city is prone to fires

just like parts of the southside
where you can still smell carl sandbergs
under hot stars

some neighborhoods
recently new
you can still smell mesquite,
corrugated
molding from where
there should've been rooves roofing
to keep out snowflakes

Snowflake is a nickname
someones else gave to Sarah
the sun sits unkind to Michegan Irish


my first girlfriend
gave herself a 'summer name'
just like me
Junyper
but it never stuck
couldn't stand the season

it wrenched out the cooking instincts in Rogers Park men
she'd had her stomach pumped
every few houses
would tease her
of her own death
unfinished

Today
Calendon and Bittersweet
reeked
there was a fire
hot enough to consume all the conviction
of a 14 year old

it was the mass death of first-girlfriends in the city by the lake

funnyfunny

Scene: the Elks Lounge living room, garlic broth is steaming over a pot overlooked by N and T, K is scribbling in his notebook, S is reading, E is hopped up on ibuprofen

K: Boognish
E: Where?
K: I wish Ween lived in our basement
N: But then we'd have to feed them
K: Maybe they'd feed us
E: Maybe they'd feed us pills
T: With a Boognish stamped on them!
K: Are you talkin about ecstacy?
E: I could do some E
N: I could do some Ketamine
T: I could do some K or some G
S: What's G?
E: GHB
S: I don't wanna do that
K: I don't wanna do that either
E: I'll do any letter you can throw at me
N: G's fun...it's like being drunk but more happy. It's like being drunk without ever getting sad
K: I don't get sad when I'm drunk
E: I do
S: Me too
K: Let's do something that makes us all SAD
E: Let's kill Rudigger

Rudigger is the cat.
[rimshot]

I reiterate

Current mood: you can't spell esoteric


KEKN KET KENTS ESKE N'KESKE

i love you mister eggman

no
music today
3rd grade flashbacks
i need to get out of libraries,
reptillian germs offer to do what so much unwieldy steel has failed to do
one ear
patchworked
brain ambercased
the whole cabal
infected

elks dropping like flies like
michigan winters

5 points
strapped
to camaro hood

i see nicer cars in the ghettos
where everybody needs their papers in order
i live with immigrants, pointy-toed and empleathered

kill the head and the...
we've gone over that

Conspiracy of Firmaments

We sat close in the shadow of the neighborhood's tallest building passing a bottle of rancid
canadian whiskey.

"How'd she get like this?" Ruddy asked.

"I knew her." Me.

"She's fetching. You can tell."


The steam rose from the heavy pot of mushrooms and pork, framing her face and lending the impression that she had a beard. The last of the kitchen bulbs burnt out and the dim closed around her eyes like clandestine elipses. I profaned god and followed them to her. We were over and I was glad she couldn't see me.She turned the burner up and choked the room in an condemnatory blue.

"It should be done soon." Isn't what she wanted to say. She was and wasn't talking about the soup.

I woke up with my sweater under her, stretched over a dead arm. I'd slept the sleep of the stricken, of the deceased, of the hopeless illiterate. The sun shone in and lit the whole room ugly. The sheet lifted from the mattress on the floor exposing dead salmon. Veins advanced along the ceiling where rainwater greased in, some of them bled. Something in the walls made the drops come out amber. It smelled like gas and fungus, unsafe and grey-green. Twelve days murky. We hadn't seen each other, we didn't speak but the house was filled with the voices of phantoms and insects, invisible all the same.

I left the house in flannel and suede. Squatting was the same thing as living with her, promising nothing but impending doom. There was no future: no leases, no rings. I was sick of being mean so I shaved my beard, packed my blades, foam and brush; I pushed my spectacles up on my nose to look at her and she was bent, just like now. She had less clothes, even in that draft, but she seemed less exposed.

She was dreaming, and I despised her for it. She had curled lips and a head full of pink ambition and all I had was the chorus to this ludicrous song my mother used to sing:

"You know these chickens can't fly
Like these fish can swim
The GOOD Lord's gonna
take me home to him"


I added my own verses as I walked away. A rebuttal.


She must be stupid as a cow
If she's lookin for me
Coz I only left
To set t' damned bitch free


I took the dove from 'er cage
an' I opened my hand
to see which one of us'd
reach the promised land


They got more absurd. Something about referring to riding the rails as bridling a chariot, damned if I remember.

She was beautiful in her way, and I didn't want her lingering in my smoke. She's beautiful now, cold and contorted in the shadow of the tallest building for blocks.


"How'd she get this way?" Ruddy asked.

My eyes closed as if they'd caught sand. I remember her when I left, twisted the way she slept; the way she is now. Dreaming through the sun and the stars while I slept the black sleep of of the stricken. I pried the bottle from my lips; a line of spittle grasped dear. I spilled a drop for every illusion she'd freed herself of, a pearl for every dream she wouldn't see unrealized.

"How'd she get this way?"

"It's hard to say, pal. Either she never knew how good she had it or she knew damn well. I guess."

We stood up and walked away, left her winking at spires. The heavens were laughing at us but you could swear it was rain. Damned fools got mud on their shoes and stumbled blind from the moon's ass. The city was full of rubber towers that wanted to dance, but we had holes in our shoes and weights in our eyes, it was time for the city to rest.

Yeled Hutz

I've been told I talk a lot about being Jewish
thing is
you don't realize
how sick I am
of hearing
how awful it was to grow up Catholic
from every third person in Chicago
whine hissing from pinched nostrils of a too smooth nose
perhaps if you told me in yiddish
my unpierced ears would perk
at
the sound of that
lolling, phlegmatic, romance language

Yes,
I have tattoos
I have never once turned down a slab of bacon
and I am cut

cut
like fine
pastrami on rye
like an onion bagel
like my ties with Odessa
and the Cossacks that met my namesake

No,

I don't wear one of those funny hats
I don't fuck
through a hole
in a sheet

I don't feel guilty about killing your christ
and if I have to spend another Christmas eating Chinese with living dead relatives in Miami beach, I will pick up a holy hammer, build a time machine, and spread his palms myself

I'm here
to Jew
you out of a few ticking moments of your life
because air is free
and time is money
I will fill them both with my voice

I was different
I had to go to a school on saturday
not sunday, but Saturday
when cartoons were on

now this is only a minor gripe but at 8 it's a huge cultural stumbling block that worked to seperate me from the rest of the chipped teeth and baseball mitts monday morning the second I displayed no aptitude for being able to differentiate between the owl that wanted me to pick up trash, the dinosaur who wanted me to floss, and the million other anthropomorphs that wanted me to "Just say No" on those god awful PSAs

because I was learning to read
right to left
a language that
sounds
a little like I'm coughing

and my mother never learned to set the vcr

I'm proud now
you can read it off my skin
right to left

but at 8 I wasn't
because it wasn't just
cartoons
I was missing out on

I was robbed of
heaven

that wonderful place
everyone seemed to have
that justified being
good and meek and poor and downtrodden and...
homework

when all I had was guilt

they knew it
little kids have snots like bloodhounds

and
n the playground
every move is sacred
there are blood brothers and secret codes

everything is eternal
so why know me when we won't be able to be friends when we're dead

so I talk a lot about being Jewish
about Ellis Island and the land of milk and honey
about the prophet enoch and the prophet einstein
excuse me while race cards spill from my sleeves and I exploit my legacy

telling nazi jokes while my Uncle Mordecai in Golan scratches the 5 digits on his forearm

smoking cigars on shabbot

wearing blended fabrics at Jewish cemetaries

I am a modern
Jew
all talk
no history