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Frustration with LJ
Jan. 19th, 2009 | 08:16 pm
mood: 
aggravated
music: SPK
Frick and frack.
I'd really love to post work here, but my pieces are finalized in Word with lots of varying line indentations and other conventions which get lost when I try to cut and paste them into LJ's editor.
Either it's all lost or the formatting is there, except everything becomes double-spaced and resists my every attempt to single space it.
This pisses me off mightily, because I CAN easily do this on my MySpace blog.
I've tried also cutting and pasting FROM my MS blog where the text has already been HTML-ized and again no luck.
So I downloaded an off-line LJ editor and pasted into there (where the text looks fine until it's uploaded).
Phooo-eyyy.
Life's too short to totally re-edit poems that don't get seen much here anyway.
However, if someone's solved this problem, or knows how to, it'd be much appreciated.
Otherwise I'm happily posting mucho work over at:
www.myspace.com/jimkell
Hope to see you there!
I'd really love to post work here, but my pieces are finalized in Word with lots of varying line indentations and other conventions which get lost when I try to cut and paste them into LJ's editor.
Either it's all lost or the formatting is there, except everything becomes double-spaced and resists my every attempt to single space it.
This pisses me off mightily, because I CAN easily do this on my MySpace blog.
I've tried also cutting and pasting FROM my MS blog where the text has already been HTML-ized and again no luck.
So I downloaded an off-line LJ editor and pasted into there (where the text looks fine until it's uploaded).
Phooo-eyyy.
Life's too short to totally re-edit poems that don't get seen much here anyway.
However, if someone's solved this problem, or knows how to, it'd be much appreciated.
Otherwise I'm happily posting mucho work over at:
www.myspace.com/jimkell
Hope to see you there!
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The mills of the gods grind slowly....
Jan. 13th, 2009 | 09:43 pm
mood: 
calm
music: 99.9 Farhenheit Degrees - Suzanne Vega
exceedingly fine
living most days in bus stop range
of what I consider ethical
is all that wiped out expunged kaput
if family finds me as they might
so many life goals unaccomplished
slumped stone dead on the toilet
stroke books scattered on the floor
and later come across my stash
and other possible …embarrassments
while clearing out the now to be discarded contents
of my closets
another gruntled old man on a suicide mission
for which he never volunteered
but was absolutely made for
d-date unknown but closing in…
so my chance of odds still beaten
shrinking by the day…
I ponder the notion of “dying well”
did you die well
if your public works and fine pronouncements
were held in high regard but you knew it all a sham
for secret shames not outed?
did you die well from your early heart attack
but wouldn’t have sent back a single quarter pounder?
did you die well if your billions came from
stepping on livelihoods and lives
or raping Gaia
then made huge donations
to found foundations, build museums
fund the arts or cure disease?
did you die well on a smaller scale
if you cheated or abused the ones you loved
neglecting your direct descendants
until conscience somehow rediscovered
you tried for years to make amends?
is there anything to a “rosebud” moment? or only
the moments seized and used before our denouments?
did you die well suddenly selling mochi
on the streets or chatting in your paper home
in Nagasaki August 1945?
did you die well as loyal racketeer
cut down in a hail of
another family’s lead?
did you die well if you created
something beautiful or bright or moving
never told another and destroyed every trace
before pennies were placed
over wrist-slit empty eyelids?
did you die well blown up young in battle
in fealty to politicians’ follies
whether or not you felt the risk an honor?
did you die well (and did you live)
having never seen a sight or thought a thought
D&C’d from someone’s womb
for any of a range of reasons
as wide as human motivations?
did you die well
raising children you lived for
doing work you loved
until that drunk driver didn’t see you
or that virus grokked your style?
do… …dogs… die well
who may not know what “dying” means
or know it far more elementally
than human brains
corrupted by the gift of reason?
just asking mind you
while ever unsurer of the question’s meaning
as all living merges to a single destination
for the skinned, the furred, feathered shelled and scaled
begonias and bulrushes tyrannosauruses and toads,
Neanderthals and neocons brothers sisters
becalmed in final equality
death’s unseen sensed approaching silent frozen footfalls
bring me face to face
with the notion of my own soon quiet resting place
on living and dying’s mandala
I feel fortunate
to have turned so many leaves of grass
and for any left to turn…
yet something new I can’t deny is growing too
some slight secret readiness for settlement, summation
when daring and dreaming is left to others
a new cathexis I might expect to find disturbing
but do not quite
and hoping death might find an odd free moment
of gregariousness before my days have passed
I keep a deck of cards
two fine cigars and Scotch (18 year)
always in my larder
in case of an evening knock
when she, he or it might pop by
for a hand, a smoke, a shot on the rocks (.!.)
and we can palaver for a spell about this matter
of dying well
--Jim Keller
January 1, 2007 This edit:14 Jan ‘09 v.3.73
Draft © J. Keller 2009 Rights reserved
“The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine”
– Cicero
living most days in bus stop range
of what I consider ethical
is all that wiped out expunged kaput
if family finds me as they might
so many life goals unaccomplished
slumped stone dead on the toilet
stroke books scattered on the floor
and later come across my stash
and other possible …embarrassments
while clearing out the now to be discarded contents
of my closets
another gruntled old man on a suicide mission
for which he never volunteered
but was absolutely made for
d-date unknown but closing in…
so my chance of odds still beaten
shrinking by the day…
I ponder the notion of “dying well”
did you die well
if your public works and fine pronouncements
were held in high regard but you knew it all a sham
for secret shames not outed?
did you die well from your early heart attack
but wouldn’t have sent back a single quarter pounder?
did you die well if your billions came from
stepping on livelihoods and lives
or raping Gaia
then made huge donations
to found foundations, build museums
fund the arts or cure disease?
did you die well on a smaller scale
if you cheated or abused the ones you loved
neglecting your direct descendants
until conscience somehow rediscovered
you tried for years to make amends?
is there anything to a “rosebud” moment? or only
the moments seized and used before our denouments?
did you die well suddenly selling mochi
on the streets or chatting in your paper home
in Nagasaki August 1945?
did you die well as loyal racketeer
cut down in a hail of
another family’s lead?
did you die well if you created
something beautiful or bright or moving
never told another and destroyed every trace
before pennies were placed
over wrist-slit empty eyelids?
did you die well blown up young in battle
in fealty to politicians’ follies
whether or not you felt the risk an honor?
did you die well (and did you live)
having never seen a sight or thought a thought
D&C’d from someone’s womb
for any of a range of reasons
as wide as human motivations?
did you die well
raising children you lived for
doing work you loved
until that drunk driver didn’t see you
or that virus grokked your style?
do… …dogs… die well
who may not know what “dying” means
or know it far more elementally
than human brains
corrupted by the gift of reason?
just asking mind you
while ever unsurer of the question’s meaning
as all living merges to a single destination
for the skinned, the furred, feathered shelled and scaled
begonias and bulrushes tyrannosauruses and toads,
Neanderthals and neocons brothers sisters
becalmed in final equality
death’s unseen sensed approaching silent frozen footfalls
bring me face to face
with the notion of my own soon quiet resting place
on living and dying’s mandala
I feel fortunate
to have turned so many leaves of grass
and for any left to turn…
yet something new I can’t deny is growing too
some slight secret readiness for settlement, summation
when daring and dreaming is left to others
a new cathexis I might expect to find disturbing
but do not quite
and hoping death might find an odd free moment
of gregariousness before my days have passed
I keep a deck of cards
two fine cigars and Scotch (18 year)
always in my larder
in case of an evening knock
when she, he or it might pop by
for a hand, a smoke, a shot on the rocks (.!.)
and we can palaver for a spell about this matter
of dying well
--Jim Keller
January 1, 2007 This edit:14 Jan ‘09 v.3.73
Draft © J. Keller 2009 Rights reserved
“The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine”
– Cicero
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(no subject)
Jan. 9th, 2009 | 12:49 am
location: NY
music: Elwood, "The Parlance of our Time"
a bug's life
the funniest poems
aren't funny
they're the ones that let you laugh awhile
about the things you want to cry about
after hours
of consuming and expectorating
verse thick and viscous
cried out
howled spat and shouted out
I descend
the ramshackle outdoor staircase
of the garden apartments
where gracious poet hosts
have housed a salty slam team
the last flight's rusted anchor bolts
now unattached
a clanking gangplank
swaying in pentametric rhythm until I step
onto earth's firmer dock
back at my own cheesy cool hotel
to rest for evening's finals
finding in exhaustion
an errant caterpillar
crawling on the bedspread
14 floors up and windows sealed anyway
it seems my karma
to trek back the hall
down elevator
cross miles of lobby
thru atria and knots of bellboys
and liberate it
in the Hilton's garden
feeling grumpily virtuous as I return
I stop. damn.
was it a flower bug at all….
should I have placed it on a tree….
will it soon be bird or spider fodder…
…I can't say and only know
it's got better odds out here
than in that sterile bedroom
and now the big show's in an hour
so no rest for weary or wicked
and though I feel somehow refreshed
there's barely time to shave and shower
back at my country home
another day
I might've dismissed
some fuzzy misplaced larva
as I do the post-coital dying June bugs
crashing phototropically into my porch lights
then crawling
(and sounding if poked
like hissing aerosol deodorants)
into my country bungalow
to expire in hours on the kitchen floor
but in this moment
animated by something
I neither question nor exult in
same difference
I did more
knowing I can seldom distinguish
between saint and whore
or if there is a difference
and if either will take you
down to the water
--Jim Keller
August 8, 2007 at the Austin, TX Poetry Slam Nationals
This edit:
Draft © J. Keller 2009 Rights reserved
props: to Big Poppa E and Erin Livingston
from
for the '07 National Poetry Slam championships
in
which came/all the way from
& to my museful Linda E for motivating me to finish some goddamn new poems already…..!
& to my neighbor M Montoya for realizing what June Bug
hissing sounds like
attributions: "down to the water" and "gave us tea……" are paraphrased lyrics from Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne," (circa 1966-67) and if some researcher with a PHD in VMP (very minor poets) is studying this in some future, "A Bug's Life" was an animated film released in 1998
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hitting the (NY) ground running...
Jan. 8th, 2009 | 08:36 pm
location: here
mood: grateful
music: always
Life's kinda magical in a black and white way. Which is interesting in and of itself.
Ever hear anyone talk about "grey magic"? I haven't. And why is magick seen in monochrome, and in binary, two-tone monochrome at that?
What would red magic be? Yellow magic? Chartreuse? Taupe? Rainbow?
All our lives are magical. Existence is a miracle for existing. Being part of it, in it, of it, aware of it, touched by it, passing through and surviving it for a spell, whether in joy or pain, in comfort or privation, all inevitable improbabilities. Magic.
Blessings are something different from if always attached to magic. Magic suffuses everything, is everything. Blessings come from somewhere, have a source. I have no working theory, model or belief about the source of blessedness. I would have appended "sadly" or "unfortunately" to that last sentence, except that I am not sad about this nor view it as either fortunate or unfortunate.
Yet know I am amply blessed, whatever the source of the munificence. With the magic of the amazing, unique people I care for and about, with the magic of people caring about me, and who magically put up with my mishegoss, myriad imperfections and baggage. With decades of experiencing living and the chance to ponder it all. With opportunities to pursue more opportunities than I even have time to shake a stick at. And with so much more.
The playing out of blessings and magic all seems to be about timing, about the order of unfolding of life, where the meaning of "A" happening is very different depending on whether or not it happens before "B" or after "B" has landed in one's life. So are we caught in a web of coincidence, or does the web we weave in living snare the things that come our way, in a well, magical, logical way? Is there such a thing as true coincidence, or are all things related in a however-many-degrees-of-separation sense?
I love visiting these speculations as I attempt to imbue the jumble of my life's events with meaning, with even a self-manufactured sense that beneath the jumble of events, feelings, plans, hopes, wounds, regrets, "random" thoughts, delights and ambivalences lies some binding coherence, something that makes it a whole.
I was preparing to be a fine art photographer as soon as I was free of the yoke of my civil service tenure. Spent five years getting to where every now and then I ended up with a striking image, a few, I think and am led to believe, truly transcendent, even though I seldom understood why and scarcely always how I'd done so. And wasn't well-suited to some of the peripheral crafts of the art -- the matting, framing, slide-making and such, and schlepping the hundreds of pounds of it all that quickly accumulated.
I went to Utah to spend time with my aging mother, not to turn any corner on photography, and was pursuing the threads of my emerging body of work along with spending that time with family.
Two years before, in NY, I'd "accidentally" met a young woman from Belarus who was working in Cape Cod, met her over the phone via a friend with a shop there. I knew, or thought I did, that Russians and related folk liked poetry (no stereoptyping there!), so to bridge the culture and to some extent the language gap, began reading her some favorite old poems over the phone.
And then I wrote a few for her and got her to send me some of hers. I'd always written a poem or two every few years, often work that never got shown to another soul. But this was fun. Then one day I got the idea of writing a short poem as a TXT message, i.e., a 140 character piece, using all the contractions you need to put a lot of content within those constraints.
I ended up writing about 50 or 60 of these and printed a small chap book (though I'd never heard of a "chap book") called "Hi Tek Hyku: Shrt Poms 4 the 21st Century." And then, the next year was granted early retirement and within a year went to Utah to spend a few long-deferred months with Mom. I found a local funky bookstore that met some needs, and noticed a sign about monthly poetry readings. I went with my newly augmented brief of verse, had a good time, and learned about a Salt Lake coffee shop that had weekly "rowdy readings" -- which turned out to be a poetry slam venue.
The rest, to lean on an apt cliche, has been history. Picked up a pen and yellow pad, put down my cameras and gadget bags and became -- in time -- a successful old man in a young person's art form. Making a team that went to Poetry Slam Nationals, becoming as full-time a writer/performer as I can carve out time for, gaining wonderful, talented friends, a core group in Zion-in-the-Hills, and as time has passed, a national net of sometime homies as well. Fans even. Who woulda' thunk it.....
I decided to move back to my place of origin, which I never imagined I would do, and was planning on getting back to NY to start the process of moving three decades plus of my accumulated detritus out west, when my mom took a turn for the worse, and then within a year, passed from this plane. This in turn created matters of estate. And so forth, and now two years later I've returned to finally take on the task, only to find it "coincidentally" something very different from it had been envisioned to be.
Last night I won my first NY slam and qualified for the finals of the team selection finals for White Plains which could, ironically, put me on a path to bout against Salt City Slam in Florida next August. Kind of feels like being traded from the NBA Jazz to the Nets or something. And may be featuring soon in an inner city Newark club. And meeting and re-meeting some of the best itinerant word slingers in the country. And feeling like anything could happen.
Magic and blessings. I could be the father or grandfather of some of these, but instead they are my peers, colleagues, teachers, audiences.
There are other unexpected threads in play I won't go into here, like my improbable new career (remember those "matters of estate"?) as a property manager and developer of all things. But it's a whole entirely other landscape all in all than any I could have painted in my imagination five or six years ago.
And there is subtext here as well, as these events and others have created a new personal and and often, especially of late, tumultuous emotional life for me, with most of the key players, friends, influences and love objects traceable back to deciding to one night read an ESV Millay poem I loved back in high school over the phone to a woman I'd never met and whose English was only developing.
And I have no idea in hell where I'm going next. As artist, socioeconomic entity or person. Muses bless and then desert. "Wealth" comes slowly and ebbs quickly. Vibrant seeming relationships veer suddenly into inexplicable box canyons with no indication whether they're over or just starting. Stable seeming friendships bode to become other types of relationships if the timing, ahhh, the exquisite details of the timing and the overlaps of things which can't exist simultaneously without colliding like matter and anti-matter, will allow such within the unknown time allotted.
And you know what, that suits me just fine for now. To be alive, thriving, struggling, falling into amazing situations, and still as curious about it all as when I was eight years old. Knowing the miles ahead are shorter than the miles behind and always precarious, but grateful for them all.
Magic I don't have to wish you. It's unavoidable and governs the universe as fully as steam heat used to run the navy's fleet. But blessings I will.
Namaste!
Ever hear anyone talk about "grey magic"? I haven't. And why is magick seen in monochrome, and in binary, two-tone monochrome at that?
What would red magic be? Yellow magic? Chartreuse? Taupe? Rainbow?
All our lives are magical. Existence is a miracle for existing. Being part of it, in it, of it, aware of it, touched by it, passing through and surviving it for a spell, whether in joy or pain, in comfort or privation, all inevitable improbabilities. Magic.
Blessings are something different from if always attached to magic. Magic suffuses everything, is everything. Blessings come from somewhere, have a source. I have no working theory, model or belief about the source of blessedness. I would have appended "sadly" or "unfortunately" to that last sentence, except that I am not sad about this nor view it as either fortunate or unfortunate.
Yet know I am amply blessed, whatever the source of the munificence. With the magic of the amazing, unique people I care for and about, with the magic of people caring about me, and who magically put up with my mishegoss, myriad imperfections and baggage. With decades of experiencing living and the chance to ponder it all. With opportunities to pursue more opportunities than I even have time to shake a stick at. And with so much more.
The playing out of blessings and magic all seems to be about timing, about the order of unfolding of life, where the meaning of "A" happening is very different depending on whether or not it happens before "B" or after "B" has landed in one's life. So are we caught in a web of coincidence, or does the web we weave in living snare the things that come our way, in a well, magical, logical way? Is there such a thing as true coincidence, or are all things related in a however-many-degrees-of-separation sense?
I love visiting these speculations as I attempt to imbue the jumble of my life's events with meaning, with even a self-manufactured sense that beneath the jumble of events, feelings, plans, hopes, wounds, regrets, "random" thoughts, delights and ambivalences lies some binding coherence, something that makes it a whole.
I was preparing to be a fine art photographer as soon as I was free of the yoke of my civil service tenure. Spent five years getting to where every now and then I ended up with a striking image, a few, I think and am led to believe, truly transcendent, even though I seldom understood why and scarcely always how I'd done so. And wasn't well-suited to some of the peripheral crafts of the art -- the matting, framing, slide-making and such, and schlepping the hundreds of pounds of it all that quickly accumulated.
I went to Utah to spend time with my aging mother, not to turn any corner on photography, and was pursuing the threads of my emerging body of work along with spending that time with family.
Two years before, in NY, I'd "accidentally" met a young woman from Belarus who was working in Cape Cod, met her over the phone via a friend with a shop there. I knew, or thought I did, that Russians and related folk liked poetry (no stereoptyping there!), so to bridge the culture and to some extent the language gap, began reading her some favorite old poems over the phone.
And then I wrote a few for her and got her to send me some of hers. I'd always written a poem or two every few years, often work that never got shown to another soul. But this was fun. Then one day I got the idea of writing a short poem as a TXT message, i.e., a 140 character piece, using all the contractions you need to put a lot of content within those constraints.
I ended up writing about 50 or 60 of these and printed a small chap book (though I'd never heard of a "chap book") called "Hi Tek Hyku: Shrt Poms 4 the 21st Century." And then, the next year was granted early retirement and within a year went to Utah to spend a few long-deferred months with Mom. I found a local funky bookstore that met some needs, and noticed a sign about monthly poetry readings. I went with my newly augmented brief of verse, had a good time, and learned about a Salt Lake coffee shop that had weekly "rowdy readings" -- which turned out to be a poetry slam venue.
The rest, to lean on an apt cliche, has been history. Picked up a pen and yellow pad, put down my cameras and gadget bags and became -- in time -- a successful old man in a young person's art form. Making a team that went to Poetry Slam Nationals, becoming as full-time a writer/performer as I can carve out time for, gaining wonderful, talented friends, a core group in Zion-in-the-Hills, and as time has passed, a national net of sometime homies as well. Fans even. Who woulda' thunk it.....
I decided to move back to my place of origin, which I never imagined I would do, and was planning on getting back to NY to start the process of moving three decades plus of my accumulated detritus out west, when my mom took a turn for the worse, and then within a year, passed from this plane. This in turn created matters of estate. And so forth, and now two years later I've returned to finally take on the task, only to find it "coincidentally" something very different from it had been envisioned to be.
Last night I won my first NY slam and qualified for the finals of the team selection finals for White Plains which could, ironically, put me on a path to bout against Salt City Slam in Florida next August. Kind of feels like being traded from the NBA Jazz to the Nets or something. And may be featuring soon in an inner city Newark club. And meeting and re-meeting some of the best itinerant word slingers in the country. And feeling like anything could happen.
Magic and blessings. I could be the father or grandfather of some of these, but instead they are my peers, colleagues, teachers, audiences.
There are other unexpected threads in play I won't go into here, like my improbable new career (remember those "matters of estate"?) as a property manager and developer of all things. But it's a whole entirely other landscape all in all than any I could have painted in my imagination five or six years ago.
And there is subtext here as well, as these events and others have created a new personal and and often, especially of late, tumultuous emotional life for me, with most of the key players, friends, influences and love objects traceable back to deciding to one night read an ESV Millay poem I loved back in high school over the phone to a woman I'd never met and whose English was only developing.
And I have no idea in hell where I'm going next. As artist, socioeconomic entity or person. Muses bless and then desert. "Wealth" comes slowly and ebbs quickly. Vibrant seeming relationships veer suddenly into inexplicable box canyons with no indication whether they're over or just starting. Stable seeming friendships bode to become other types of relationships if the timing, ahhh, the exquisite details of the timing and the overlaps of things which can't exist simultaneously without colliding like matter and anti-matter, will allow such within the unknown time allotted.
And you know what, that suits me just fine for now. To be alive, thriving, struggling, falling into amazing situations, and still as curious about it all as when I was eight years old. Knowing the miles ahead are shorter than the miles behind and always precarious, but grateful for them all.
Magic I don't have to wish you. It's unavoidable and governs the universe as fully as steam heat used to run the navy's fleet. But blessings I will.
Namaste!
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You're so hot...!!
Dec. 21st, 2008 | 02:33 pm
firecracker j
you're so hot...
you make the blood of every sex boil over
you're so hot...
foliage wilts where you sashay
while fire hydrants pop their caps
and spill their liquid loads
you're so hot...
mosquitoes turn to dust on contact
smoke alarms beep at your charms
your cigarettes light wrong end out
and your bush is always burning
you're so hot...
you're banned from Baskin Robbins
you're so hot...
tornadoes follow where you dance
you're so hot...
minds melt
when you perform a piece
or simply talk
you're so hot...
to deny it would be
premature prevarication
so hot...
because you know it
yet put on neither airs nor bra
you're so hot...
you could sell SPF 2000
you're so hot...
because yoked to brain and molten will
there's a heart
inside your twin tipped mammalian chest
open to and loving
even closed uptight humanity
so hot...
you're a certified source of global warming
redeemed only owing to your pheromones
turning ozone to ecstatic orgone
so hot...
Chernobyl can't hold a candle
you baked Alaska
planets orbit round you
so hot...
such a live wire on fire
to keep any secrets men where you hang
have to switch to briefs from boxers
you're so hot....
fruit trees blossom early in
and birds wait late to migrate from
your hood
so hot...
your feet get stuck in asphalt drives
your thong's made of asbestos
and you give poor penguins hives
you're so hot...
you don't need a nuke or oven
to bake your blazing hot cross buns
but will sadly never feel a snowflake
you're so hot...
your shazizzle will never fizzle
so fucking hot...
the roue trapped in this wizening shell
one more time regrets he's not
and you're so hot...
it's cool to bask at even this remove
in your hearthside glow of smoldering coals
(you are so hot)
--Jim Keller
June 6, 2007 This edit: 7 Jun ‘07 v.2
Draft © J. Keller 2007 Rights reserved
for Janelle (who’s, you guessed it, uhh, well, hot)
note: “orgone” refers to a health-enhancing vital energy
held to pervade nature as posited in the theories of Wilhelm Reich
you're so hot...
you make the blood of every sex boil over
you're so hot...
foliage wilts where you sashay
while fire hydrants pop their caps
and spill their liquid loads
you're so hot...
mosquitoes turn to dust on contact
smoke alarms beep at your charms
your cigarettes light wrong end out
and your bush is always burning
you're so hot...
you're banned from Baskin Robbins
you're so hot...
tornadoes follow where you dance
you're so hot...
minds melt
when you perform a piece
or simply talk
you're so hot...
to deny it would be
premature prevarication
so hot...
because you know it
yet put on neither airs nor bra
you're so hot...
you could sell SPF 2000
you're so hot...
because yoked to brain and molten will
there's a heart
inside your twin tipped mammalian chest
open to and loving
even closed uptight humanity
so hot...
you're a certified source of global warming
redeemed only owing to your pheromones
turning ozone to ecstatic orgone
so hot...
Chernobyl can't hold a candle
you baked Alaska
planets orbit round you
so hot...
such a live wire on fire
to keep any secrets men where you hang
have to switch to briefs from boxers
you're so hot....
fruit trees blossom early in
and birds wait late to migrate from
your hood
so hot...
your feet get stuck in asphalt drives
your thong's made of asbestos
and you give poor penguins hives
you're so hot...
you don't need a nuke or oven
to bake your blazing hot cross buns
but will sadly never feel a snowflake
you're so hot...
your shazizzle will never fizzle
so fucking hot...
the roue trapped in this wizening shell
one more time regrets he's not
and you're so hot...
it's cool to bask at even this remove
in your hearthside glow of smoldering coals
(you are so hot)
--Jim Keller
June 6, 2007 This edit: 7 Jun ‘07 v.2
Draft © J. Keller 2007 Rights reserved
for Janelle (who’s, you guessed it, uhh, well, hot)
note: “orgone” refers to a health-enhancing vital energy
held to pervade nature as posited in the theories of Wilhelm Reich
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…i forget just why
Jan. 6th, 2007 | 03:43 am
location: in my head
mood: 
cold
music: Billie Holliday
we didn't meet
some bloody fool had fallen
fully winter clothed
into unmarked outdoor hot tub
in time to catch a nasty chill
by new year's eve
respiratory distress
justifying
enabling
my choice of warmth
of lonely hearth
despite your offers
of outside entertainments
fit at best this night
to distill
sweet bitter healing wines
from vines of loss and sadness
stardust to stardust
platinum tin golden
even so
our hurting hurts
not your doing that
thoughts wind round
in helixes
intertwine in interstices
jumble and crumble
re-form then taunt
sense is far from sensible
expertise no panacea
logic takes a walk
my heart an art museum
i wrap your affection
in saran wrap
curate it
in the fridge
between eggs and lidless
marmaladed tupperware of lust
covered carefully with foil
disregarding
the etheric evaporation
and fungibility of feelings
knowing fully
chilled rewrapped cheese uneaten
still gets old and funky
crusty moldy
and vote for candidates
who say they can relate
to folks like me
as if anyone can know
what creosote coats
our chimneys
fresh out of butter and whimsy
swaying aloft on flimsy scaffold
barely bearing the weight
of my pretensions
unsure
if more
seek to live
than simply
not to die
so knowing repeated
ruminative rendition
of human conditions
has been shown
is known
to desultorily result
in harmful emissions
of overblown emoting
i half laid out by virus
half from grieving
begged off
took two pills
and said
i'd call you
in the morning
–Jim Keller
January 1, 2007
This edit: 5 Jan '07 v.4 Draft © 2007 rights reserved
Title from a line by ES Vincent Millay
some bloody fool had fallen
fully winter clothed
into unmarked outdoor hot tub
in time to catch a nasty chill
by new year's eve
respiratory distress
justifying
enabling
my choice of warmth
of lonely hearth
despite your offers
of outside entertainments
fit at best this night
to distill
sweet bitter healing wines
from vines of loss and sadness
stardust to stardust
platinum tin golden
even so
our hurting hurts
not your doing that
thoughts wind round
in helixes
intertwine in interstices
jumble and crumble
re-form then taunt
sense is far from sensible
expertise no panacea
logic takes a walk
my heart an art museum
i wrap your affection
in saran wrap
curate it
in the fridge
between eggs and lidless
marmaladed tupperware of lust
covered carefully with foil
disregarding
the etheric evaporation
and fungibility of feelings
knowing fully
chilled rewrapped cheese uneaten
still gets old and funky
crusty moldy
and vote for candidates
who say they can relate
to folks like me
as if anyone can know
what creosote coats
our chimneys
fresh out of butter and whimsy
swaying aloft on flimsy scaffold
barely bearing the weight
of my pretensions
unsure
if more
seek to live
than simply
not to die
so knowing repeated
ruminative rendition
of human conditions
has been shown
is known
to desultorily result
in harmful emissions
of overblown emoting
i half laid out by virus
half from grieving
begged off
took two pills
and said
i'd call you
in the morning
–Jim Keller
January 1, 2007
This edit: 5 Jan '07 v.4 Draft © 2007 rights reserved
Title from a line by ES Vincent Millay
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or
Dec. 29th, 2006 | 10:14 am
location: the high wasatch valley
mood: grateful
music: we are stardust
or
if rather interesting and doubtlessly peculiar
we are gossamer passing things
of no great consequence
here briefly newly uncertainly
micro motes on a sea
of trillions of planets
14 billion light years wide
where chunks of rock and ice
a few miles in width
with regular irregularity
wipe half or all life off of globes
in one convulsive impact
novae and black holes
eat whole solar systems every second
entire galaxies collide
in majestic relentless violent ballet
slamming symphonies of stars into each other
the milky way and andromeda
but two headed straight for each other
all in a cosmos we're told
is running down
to end in cold dead
infinity for eternity
big bang to big chill
our mind worlds expand rapidly as well
thrilling daily discovery of things places and notions
never contemplated or expected
filling childhood blank slates
more gradually as lives take shape
turn to challenges and opportunities
met in every variegated human way
and then horizons shrink
rapidly suddenly gradually
become our homes
a nursing home
hospital room
a chair a bed
a gurney
a wind and snow-bitten cliff side
like black holes falling falling into points of darkness
in pain in peace in fear asleep
in war a car
earthquake hurricane cosmic calamity
infirmity neglect disease
where do
can we gain succor
facing such overwhelming seeming insignificance
spit in its face
until we spit no more
believe in afterlives redemption reincarnations
of becoming one with all
fight senescence with science
stoically resign to nature's nature
rue the rigors of the world
of blooded creatures
or all of these
or
questions i'm asking
the week i lose my mom
willing myself
even in sadness to savor
love
creation
overcoming
seasons past
the present
fantasies
futures family friends
mere nano pimple
on vast impassive universe's ass
i'm down with that particular perhaps
as if in the end both it and we
were born to die
we're not a whit more mortal than
existence
while gluts of facts
of whats and hows and whens
accumulate apace like lemmings
whys
lie as ever far and few between
e may equal but is not mc2
this i have accepted
letting go of wishes
the imponderables of thences
too far beyond my ken
to merit much absorption
what's surest is
we are we live we want we can
we will
until
we don't aren't can't
so won't
enough my mother embraced being
with grace and purpose of her own
was wanted could and did
until she couldn't
leaving by example
my own sand sifting through
at peace to try to too
thanks for this and so much more
i love you mom
james h keller
december 21 2006 this edit 28 dec v4
draft © 2006 j keller rights reserved
if rather interesting and doubtlessly peculiar
we are gossamer passing things
of no great consequence
here briefly newly uncertainly
micro motes on a sea
of trillions of planets
14 billion light years wide
where chunks of rock and ice
a few miles in width
with regular irregularity
wipe half or all life off of globes
in one convulsive impact
novae and black holes
eat whole solar systems every second
entire galaxies collide
in majestic relentless violent ballet
slamming symphonies of stars into each other
the milky way and andromeda
but two headed straight for each other
all in a cosmos we're told
is running down
to end in cold dead
infinity for eternity
big bang to big chill
our mind worlds expand rapidly as well
thrilling daily discovery of things places and notions
never contemplated or expected
filling childhood blank slates
more gradually as lives take shape
turn to challenges and opportunities
met in every variegated human way
and then horizons shrink
rapidly suddenly gradually
become our homes
a nursing home
hospital room
a chair a bed
a gurney
a wind and snow-bitten cliff side
like black holes falling falling into points of darkness
in pain in peace in fear asleep
in war a car
earthquake hurricane cosmic calamity
infirmity neglect disease
where do
can we gain succor
facing such overwhelming seeming insignificance
spit in its face
until we spit no more
believe in afterlives redemption reincarnations
of becoming one with all
fight senescence with science
stoically resign to nature's nature
rue the rigors of the world
of blooded creatures
or all of these
or
questions i'm asking
the week i lose my mom
willing myself
even in sadness to savor
love
creation
overcoming
seasons past
the present
fantasies
futures family friends
mere nano pimple
on vast impassive universe's ass
i'm down with that particular perhaps
as if in the end both it and we
were born to die
we're not a whit more mortal than
existence
while gluts of facts
of whats and hows and whens
accumulate apace like lemmings
whys
lie as ever far and few between
e may equal but is not mc2
this i have accepted
letting go of wishes
the imponderables of thences
too far beyond my ken
to merit much absorption
what's surest is
we are we live we want we can
we will
until
we don't aren't can't
so won't
enough my mother embraced being
with grace and purpose of her own
was wanted could and did
until she couldn't
leaving by example
my own sand sifting through
at peace to try to too
thanks for this and so much more
i love you mom
james h keller
december 21 2006 this edit 28 dec v4
draft © 2006 j keller rights reserved
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Jim K and Repo at Cab Voltage! Wed. 9/27 10:00
Sep. 26th, 2006 | 12:06 am
location: The City of Salt
mood: excited
music: Season of the Witch
Along with the incomparable Repo,
I will be co-featuring at Cabaret Voltage
Wed. 9/27 at 10:00.
I will be co-featuring at Cabaret Voltage
Wed. 9/27 at 10:00.
We'll be dishin' our contrasting but unique brands of take no prisoners free speech slammetry -- Repo accompanied by harpist Brawna Howard -- plus finger-twitchin', bootie shakin' music by The Coyote Hoods thrown in to the Cab V secret mind sauce. You aren't gonna get a higher octane spoken word and music mix in SLC.....
And listen up:
This will be the last SLC feature appearance for both of us
before I head out NY way for a bit
and she leaves for Cali for a few months,
so NOT a poetic occassion to be missed, hear??
This will be the last SLC feature appearance for both of us
before I head out NY way for a bit
and she leaves for Cali for a few months,
so NOT a poetic occassion to be missed, hear??
So be at The Urban Lounge, 251 S. 500 E. in SLC for the gig, all youse buds and badasses....!!
Never been to a CV shindiggery-do? Here's what a recent "In" Magazine piece had to say about Chris Leibow's performance love child, now entering its improbable but glorious 3rd year: High-Voltage Entertainment at a sexy cabaret
by: JOE BEATTY
Put down that knitting, the book and the broom it's time for a holiday. A holiday to celebrate two years of Cabaret Voltage, Salt Lake's most unique counterculture showcase, arguably Salt Lake's only counterculture showcase.
"A couple of years ago me and a friend were annoyed that nothing's been going on in town," said Cabaret Voltage founder Christopher Leibow. "We decided to stop complaining and do something about it."
In August of 2004 Leibow and co. presented Cabaret Voltage as Salt Lake's first spoken word, music and visual art show. Since then, the show has been as varied and malleable as you would expect from a 10 p.m. Wednesday cabaret show that caters to people begging for an escape from the physical and societal grid system of Salt Lake.
On any given night at Voltage you might see poetry jams, big-name singers, spoken wordsmiths, paintings from local artists or independent films. The only rule is that whether you are Bob Marley or a bag of Fig Newtons, the marquee will display your name in the same size font.
"Our motto is everybody's equal here," Leibow said. "We are all about egalitarianism. Whether you are a big band or you've never performed before, everybody's equal. If they aren't OK with that, they don't perform."
Luckily, the ego clashes haven't been a problem. In striving to create a truly potpourri-like cabaret atmosphere, Leibow has succeeded in making Voltage into a place where everyone comes to try out something new in front of like-minded folk.
http://www.inthisweek.com
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A brief public service announcement (honest!)
Sep. 18th, 2006 | 04:18 pm
location: SLC
mood: impressed
music: Jailhouse Rock
Having trouble connecting in this harsh world?
You just might find that special someone in...
...unexpected places...
http://www.ladiesofthepen.com
You just might find that special someone in...
...unexpected places...
http://www.ladiesofthepen.com
Text cut and pasted directly from the web site:
"Verify Your Ladies' Information
through our Prison Information Database.
Get current conviction, prior convictions,
current release date, and other personal information
about your "Lady of the Pen"
"Verify Your Ladies' Information
through our Prison Information Database.
Get current conviction, prior convictions,
current release date, and other personal information
about your "Lady of the Pen"
Except to add I'm pretty sure it's a for real site,
no further commentary needed.
It speaks for itself....
no further commentary needed.
It speaks for itself....
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Blogger, blogger, where's the blogger?
Apr. 23rd, 2006 | 10:07 pm
mood: 
pensive
music: Should Auld Acquaintance be forgot
Well, I seem to mostly have moved shop over to MySpace since that's where my Slam Team (Salt City Slam '06) has its page and all but one of the team members have individual pages there.
And it's where most of our fans hang out when thinking of connections poetic and otherwise.... ...hard to fight city hall (until the next hot thing comes along I guess. A shame because I like many of the tools better over here on LiveJ......
....Anyway the fact is I get alot more hits, contacts and things actually happen because of people I interact with over there. But I may post some random "public" thots here now and again.... ....ironically knowing how "private" they'll be.... ...however, I will come back to follow some of my LJ Friend's journals.....
OH WAIT, there's also the full-fledged Salt City Slam Website I'm running (newly slimmed down and faster, as of today). Gads, I'm everywhere www....
So, since it may be awhile before I post again, as a now full-time slam poet, I'll leave a little quote for you all (or for me....) for the nonce.
So, while I don't generally identify with Warren Beatty as my lodestar, by that measure, this is the most successful I've been in my life..... ...and if you do happen to stumble across this click on the links here to catch up with me....
And it's where most of our fans hang out when thinking of connections poetic and otherwise.... ...hard to fight city hall (until the next hot thing comes along I guess. A shame because I like many of the tools better over here on LiveJ......
....Anyway the fact is I get alot more hits, contacts and things actually happen because of people I interact with over there. But I may post some random "public" thots here now and again.... ....ironically knowing how "private" they'll be.... ...however, I will come back to follow some of my LJ Friend's journals.....
OH WAIT, there's also the full-fledged Salt City Slam Website I'm running (newly slimmed down and faster, as of today). Gads, I'm everywhere www....
So, since it may be awhile before I post again, as a now full-time slam poet, I'll leave a little quote for you all (or for me....) for the nonce.
You've achieved success in your field when
you don't know whether what you're doing is work or play.
So, while I don't generally identify with Warren Beatty as my lodestar, by that measure, this is the most successful I've been in my life..... ...and if you do happen to stumble across this click on the links here to catch up with me....
