Horseshit Ideas

I propose idea for a million dollars number five, Joyce's Choices. 

Joyce's Choices, a brand of generic food products that comes with a list of things I wish I could cook or bake would have known now if I'd made wiser choices while living with people who were handy in the kitchen.

Exmpl: Joyce's Choice's brand Molasses would read, "Pretty sure you can make cookies with this brown slime. A guy I used to drink on a roof with must've used molasses  in those sugar cookies he burned every Wednesday, but I was younger then -- too busy throwing shoes on the telephone pole or screaming into my pillow or trying to kill God with my diary."

The previous four ideas worth a million are as follows.

1. I Wish I Could Cook That: a baking show for the inept, features Joyce's Choices products.
2. Leftovers: a restaurant that only serves leftovers from other restaurants.  
3. Emotional Sunrise Tea: a tea that makes you erupt into tears after a single sip, leaves you feeling decent and clean, emotionally cleared up. 

I thought I could remember them all but I cannot.   

Cool Poems

A poem for vipers

BY JOHN WIENERS

I sit in Lees. At 11:40 PM with

Jimmy the pusher. He teaches me

Ju Ju. Hot on the table before us

shrimp foo yong, rice and mushroom

chow yuke. Up the street under the wheels

of a strange car is his stash—The ritual.

We make it. And have made it.

For months now together after midnight.

Soon I know the fuzz will

interrupt, will arrest Jimmy and

I shall be placed on probation. The poem

does not lie to us. We lie under

its law, alive in the glamour of this hour

able to enter into the sacred places

of his dark people, who carry secrets

glassed in their eyes and hide words

under the coats of their tongue.

 

6.16.58

My friend Vicky says she only reads some poets b/c they make her want to write more, not exactly because the poems are good or moving in a deeply emotional way, just that they cause her want to wear sunglasses and go for a walk. 

This John Weiners poem makes me feel similarly. I love the sounds of "up the street under" and other preposition entrances, and also the moments in writing when people sit around scheming things and then lift off like geese or bombers to go and cause them, successfully or not. The title coming at the end, I like that, too. 

Here is something you might like to play in the background while cleaning your filthy kitchen or bedroom, too. --> Poetry Foundation: Short Oral History of Frank O'Hara w/ John Ashbery and Others 

The Last 7 Days

• In the last seven days, I could've zip-lined, but I was terrified. The zip-line tower was two or three stories high. Some kids said, "Do it! Zipline! What're you scared?" I told them I was very, very scared. 

• Rode my bike by an SUV limo on Clark St. that smelled like absolute dog shit. Powerful!

• Went out on Lake Michigan on a boat (a tiny yacht?) called the Free Spirit. A guy named Capt. Joe owns it. Lots of alpha-males and liquor, but delicious catered food from Greektown, too. When I jumped in the water with everyone else, to show I was not scared, Capt. Joe threw an inner tube at me. "Jesus Christ," he said, "you look like you're drowning." 

• I went to the library to get a comic book called Old Man Logan. It's a Wolverine comic where Wolverine is an angry old man and there are Hulk babies everywhere. In the comic, Wolverine cannot be killed but usually wants to die. He drinks whiskey and stabs people all the time. I see a Catholic saint in there somewhere. At the Lozano Library, my local branch, I saw that my Wolverine comic was not on hold as the CPL website told me. When I asked a librarian for help, she buzzed around the room checking spots, then asked, "Wait, Wolverine? Oh, I bet a kid has it. That movie just came out. All the neighborhood boys have been snatchin up those comics." "Oh they certainly have," said her co-worker. So that's why I couldn't read Wolverine.