December 31st, 2009 by Hoopleton

2010. A decade into the second millennium of the modern era. Two years to the Mayan apocalypse.

We approach each New Year’s Eve with a curious mixture of excitement and trepidation. We think about what’s past and anticipate what is yet to come. We make predictions. Resolutions. Plans. On a primal level we’re simply happy to have made it as far as we have.

We’re a strangely optimistic species. Despite the fact that little in the way of substantive change occurs from one year to the next we hold out for bigger, better things with every toast and every kiss.

I gave up on the idea of prediction some years back, but a few generalities can be assumed.

Barring an asteroid impact or the rise of a new Soviet Empire, the world will continue to spin as it always has. War in the Middle East. Instability at home. Triumphs and tragedies. Heartbreak and revelation. The markets will heave and slump. Movie stars will die. Politicians will lie. Most of us will get a little bit older.

As we move closer to the much foretold singularity and the promises of eternal life, though not life as we know it, I much rather offer you my best wishes than reviews or predictions.

I hope 2010 brings you greater fortune and greater understanding. I hope 2010 brings you greater peace and compassion.

I speak to you as Eugene V. Debs. I speak to you as Kenneth Patchen. In that I am you. In that I believe in the sort of brotherhood that may change this world.

Even I can be an optimist, if at least for this night.

Happy 2010.

December 29th, 2009 by Hoopleton

What is happiness? Can it be found in a wedding ring? Or the bottom of a whiskey glass? We do both have our own ideas on the subject. I dare say neither of us has it figured out. But please, where are my manners? How are you? How have you been? Have you found happiness yet? If so, how long do you expect it to last? Forever doesn’t seem plausible now does it? So what is happiness exactly? I hear the bank account is well stocked. I hear the kids are doing well. And you like your job. Swell. Swell. It does seem we can’t go back from the choices we’ve made. We can’t undo anything, only minimize the damage if it comes to that. Or, and forgive the question, but you’re not settling are you? You haven’t given up fighting have you? Is that it? Are the choices you’ve made just the sum of your resistance breaking down? All those times I saw you sitting up alone at night. All those walks you used to take in the early morning. All those times we’d fight. Don’t tell me they were all just for show. I listened to you more than perhaps you knew. I understood what your anonymity meant to you. Is happiness love? How long does that last? And what happens when it’s gone? No one wants to be around then. We tie ourselves down. We leap without looking. Our only incentive being that story we’ve heard of that one couple that somehow managed to endure. Managed to endure. Is that happiness? You may say I’m bitter. You may say I’m hurt. But honestly, offer me proof. Proof that all this coupling and compromising is really worth anything other than insurance against withering away and dying alone. Please forgive me, I don’t wish to presume. I’m just curious as to an answer. A motive. A primal truth. So please do tell me. Please. What is happiness? Have you found it? Have you defined it? Is it worth the things you’ve done? Is it worth what you’ve become?

December 27th, 2009 by Hoopleton

December 25th, 2009 by Hoopleton

Aftermath

by Siegfried Sassoon

Have you forgotten yet?…
For the world’s events have rumbled on since those gagged days,
Like traffic checked while at the crossing of city-ways:
And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow
Like clouds in the lit heaven of life; and you’re a man reprieved to go,
Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.

But the past is just the same-and War’s a bloody game…
Have you forgotten yet?…
Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you’ll never forget.

Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz-
The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?
Do you remember the rats; and the stench
Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench-
And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?
Do you ever stop and ask, ‘Is it all going to happen again?’

Do you remember that hour of din before the attack-
And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then
As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?
Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back
With dying eyes and lolling heads-those ashen-grey
Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?

Have you forgotten yet?…
Look up, and swear by the green of the spring that you’ll never forget.

December 25th, 2009 by Hoopleton

I imagine you dancing in a dark basement club. Face to the lights. Arms wrapped up over your head. Eyes closed. Lips parted. Breathing in electricity.

Do you know me?

You’re free. Caught in the whirlwind. Spinning like a dynamo lifting toward the stratosphere.

I can feel the heat off of your skin. The dryness on your mouth. The beat of your pulse.

I’ve dreamt of you all my life. Always out of phase. One second out of grasp. You’ve haunted me. Erased me a million times over. Pushed me away and embraced me. It’s always been you. In every kiss. In every caress. In everything. It’s always been you. Staring back through the fissure of time. A thousand lifetimes over and over again. Staring into the night sky.

But I imagine you dancing in a dark basement club. Even now. Touched by guilt. Desire. Longing. Regret.

I imagine your heart racing. The taste of nicotine on your tongue. Your veins full of alcohol. Your skin flushed. The pounding of your legs and arms shaking the walls.

I’m staring at a parking lot covered in snow. No one but me will remember this moment in the same way. It’s a fixed point in the universe. The anchor for all that I am.

I wish you could see it. Now, dancing on that floor. I wish you could see what I see. The brilliance. The innate beauty. Reality upon reality. Absolute clarity.

I’ve dreamt of you all my life. Just as you are. Face to the lights. Arms wrapped up over your head. Eyes closed. Lips parted. Breathing in electricity.

I’m there with you. Just as free. Just as hurt. Just as alone. And when you’re ready I’ll be here for you.

December 24th, 2009 by Hoopleton

December 23rd, 2009 by Hoopleton

They shot John Dillinger today. The same people who bombed Dresden and manufactured Agent Orange by the vat. Cool, meticulous characters with a taste for power and expensive suits. Two shots to the chest, another in the head. The quick and dirty way to a new world order.

The bloodstains are still there. I imagine the same old janitor scrubbing turpentine for the last seventy-five years. Tourists by the bus full chipping brick to stuff their pockets. Wholesome, god-fearing faces pressed to the glass. Next stop the Roman Coliseum.

It is as it is.

I think we should get near the exit before the stampede. Before they realize the whole damn thing is burning down. The end credits are already on the screen, there’s not much time. Outside the firing squad is reloading. I’ve never seen so many fedoras in my life.

The madness of decency past out of fashion years ago, right along with bowlers and bow ties. Even then it was just a myth. Bought on credit, as all things are I suppose. And now we’re speeding toward uncertainty. Toward our end.

I’ve seen the lights come on with a spark down Lincoln Avenue. Like God taking a photograph. Suddenly there were shadows where there had only been darkness and the sky glowed of fire. The cars all stopped. People spilled out onto the street. Their voices were raised. Chaos. Confusion. No one knew. And out of their ignorance there came bliss. Perfect and innocent and warm.

They shot John Dillinger today. A soundtrack played. Steal guitar and drums. Fast pace. No nostalgic ballads here. Violent and full of rage. Carnal. The chaos turned with the beat. There was dancing. Hands raised and hips gyrating. Feet kicking straight into the air. Bodies drenched in sweat.

It was only when the ground started shaking that they realized what they’d done. Ten thousand souls sold for cheap seats at an American tragedy. In the aftermath was when the panic returned. Where there had been certainty just moments before now there was the inescapable reality of truth. Ugly, perverse truth.

It is as it is.

I imagine the moment has passed into infamy. Celluloid and book deals, the purview of historians and movie producers. And here we are at the end of the film, getting ready to brush the popcorn off our laps before we murder eachother. What’s the lesson here? I for one can’t be sure.

All I know is that the Biograph is dark again, though the crowds are still there. Howling from now till the end of time. Chipping brick and recounting what they were doing and who they had been, while those meticulous characters gape from around the corner in utter astonishment. Guns in their holsters. Blood on their hands.

Did you hear? They shot John Dillinger today.

December 20th, 2009 by Hoopleton

December 19th, 2009 by Hoopleton

The back of the yard boys used to climb the church steeple at the high point of summer and throw their books onto the roof of the rectory building. On the days that the wind would come in off the plains the pages would catch and rain down a blizzard of dead writers onto the street. Fragments of high literature. White yellow-tinged pages covered in black box print. The shops would empty out and crowds would gather on the sidewalk watching in disbelief as a troupe of nuns danced through the snowing words. The wind was like a gale. The sky would be a blue so vibrant that it hurt your eyes just to glance up at it. A blue that went out past the asteroid belt. Looking hard enough you could see sparrows circling Mars. Seagulls diving into the sulfur lakes of Venus. Pigeons surfing the eye of Jupiter.

We were never as bad as the back of the yard boys. Although we liked to think of ourselves as the masters of all creation, we possessed little by way of violent wherewithal. The type of determination that’s required when breaking someone’s skullcap. They’d sit under the viaducts along St. Michelangelo Street and lay spikes in the road hoping to overturn a truck with a load of cigarettes. Or light the tails of small dogs and send them racing into department stores, yapping in absolute terror. I once heard that two of them killed a kid and dumped his body somewhere where the river forks.

Walking down the streets you knew not to make eye contact with them. Pug noses and not a jaw among them that hadn’t seen the edge of a stoop. If you saw them running you knew to get out of the way. If they were running for you, you knew to run too. The cops made it their daily duty to knock their heads. If something happened in the neighborhood it was assumed, rightly or not, that they were to blame. They were called a menace. Delinquents. Criminals. Hooligans.

The back of the yard boys were an army. Thirty strong at their peak. Unbeaten and unrepentant. One could imagine that they’d reign the neighborhood forever. Old men with baseball bats sitting in their rocking chairs under the viaducts. But somewhere along the line the rules changed and in time the back of the yard boys all fell away. New gangs replaced them, but none with the same style or grace. Their violence lacked a poet’s touch. Drugs. Money. Guns. They were pedestrian thugs.

I remember a time when it rained books. The nuns would dance and the priests would rush frantically to catch each page. Months later you’d find a browned sheet of Yeats or half a Shakespeare sonnet crumpled at a sewer grating. You’d read the words. You’d laugh.

The sky doesn’t seem to get that blue anymore. The wind has died down since then. There are no more books on the roof of the rectory, nor back of the yard boys to throw them there. And the streets? They’re not any safer.

December 15th, 2009 by Hoopleton