Planning

"So here I stand before you preaching organic architecture: declaring organic architecture to be the modern ideal..."
- Frank Lloyd Wright, An Organic Architecture, 1939

If being a spider is a matter of planning -
I will make a plan.
Nephila, golden orb spinner, prophesizes money,
which has little to do
with real luck, much with blueprinting, black and white,
the art of hiding in pockets.

It’s the pedicel waist, mocking Muffet’s eating habits,
that ticks most ladies off.
This ballooning around sewing walls together needn’t be so difficult;
tight-roping on eight legs might be.
But I can master spinning my own story. Preparing,
strand by strand,
for a perfect night of sleep in one’s own slick silk
might just be the ideal plan.

And that caustic fear of being trapped, entangled
in routine,
children on the back, the sacrificial course
loving takes
with dreams, with nests, the lust for
status, jerked meat;
all mythology, though tastier than a crusty wing.
My string’s sounder.

How unexpected it must be for you stepping into my plan,
my vampire’s kiss,
the web across the door.

- m.r. kidd

Spider Web - Joan Osborne
Spiders - Say Hi
Bug In A Web - CallmeKat

Newton’s Dilemma

She flies into bed with me
and says, “Sorry, I must kill you tonight
but your dying will be like flying.”
She takes out a comb, “it’s okay,” I say,
“I part it on the left.” Tears run seams
in her face. “No,” she insists,
“feathers part in the middle.”
“Try to think like a butterfly,
symmetrically. After, I will
slip you in the thickest book,
flatten your dark edges.”
She switches open my razor,
singing the aria I wrote on birds,
and starts removing me hair by hair.
I forget the song of yellow
warblers, redstarts, only the black
grackles caw; the aria crescendos.
By dawn, she’s taken a lot out of me
but stops at my chest. “This is so hard,”
she cries, pecking at my heart.
“It weighs so much.” The aria
has only one sharp note; like
the awkward way magpies walk.
“I’m too tired,” she says, “I would stay
at this, but your fingers are so cold
and my stomach just growled.”
“It’s okay,” I say, “you’ve done so much,
I couldn’t ask more of you.”
She nods, wipes her eyes.
The aria’s left unfinished.
A murder of crows waits out of reach.
She leaves me the razor,
an apple on the pillow,
her light apology for leaving me
in the middle of such weight.
I don’t blame her for flying off,
after all, if I can make love
weigh so much, imagine
what I do to birds.

- m.r. kidd

Gravity - Rickie Lee Jones
Gravity - John Mayer
Gravity Rides Everything - Modest Mouse

October Onion

His life is in the dreaming vegetable;
Months of rain, sun, and moon.
In the dank cellar he cans his onions
and seals in the seasons.
Breathing gym-like air, he stews
flabby, pungent late tomatoes,
and suns the yellowed skins soft
to score and peel easy with a knife.

In the late afternoon
he picks the last October onion
remembering a faint kiss he once tasted
on a girl’s tear trailed cheek,
a kitchen window pierced by sunlight
falling on the necks
of canning jars,
and foil-wrapped potatoes baked
beneath a fire of fallen leaves.
He feels the face
braided in his skin, “It’s late,
past harvest for you,” he says
to the onion he drops in the dark
pocket of his red checkered jacket.
In the distance he watches
the blue and deep orange of sky trade places
and his concerns turn to the food,
the spice in stew, the table’s cloth,
the old familiar
taste of onion.

- m.r. kidd

Fields of Cotton - Danille Howle

When The Leaves Have Fallen - Willy Mason

Autumn Leaves - Pianafiddle

Time Of No Reply - Nick Drake

Summer vacation is over in many ways. Last week I took my oldest daughter to college where she will start her freshman year studying visual arts. The summer started with me coming to terms with her graduation from high school and my accepting her transition into adulthood. Now, as this summer comes to a conclusion, I must force the greater demon in me to accept that she is no longer my little girl and that she's making her own way in college. However, I am the one who must learn to deal with her moving on and being so far away. Unfortunately, I lack her grace and aptitude and will probably never learn to accept her absence.

Poetry with a Daughter

She wants to write about human suffering,

so I tell her the difference between

metaphor and simile,how a word

is only as strong as its closest companion.

"Father," she says, and scribbles a line.

We talk about comparisons. Sky is not "blue"
but "the color of Windex?" "Oh, like
a new bruise," she says. Another line.

Then there is contact vs. impact. She looks

away. Pay attention. We could have so much

to talk about. How a lemon tastes like a new tooth.

How poetry is tart in so many ways,

poems about crayoned people on the fridge

dashing headlong into the invisible wind, their bodies

hollowed with white, waiting to be colored

with children who keep on growing, until they have

perishables of their own,
and children. "Mother," she says,
and the poem is finished. I read:

Father makes lemons blue,
children color in the wind.
Mother keeps babies teeth,

To remind us what is true.

- m.r. kidd

She's Leaving Home - The Beatles

Losing You - John Butler Trio

So Far Away - Carole King

Teach Your Children - Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

As of June 16, 2008, 4,101 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq since the war began on March 19, 2003, and at least 30,000 have been wounded. Last year, USA Today claimed that of those who’ve lost their lives in the war, one in six were too young to buy a beer. About two dozen were old enough for an AARP card. Eleven died on Thanksgiving Day, 11 on Christmas, and at least five on their birthdays. One percent were named Smith.

Unfortunately, coverage of the war in Iraq has declined precipitously, to about one-fifth of what it was last summer, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism. “Five years later, the United States remains at war in Iraq, but there are days when it would be hard to tell from a quick look at television news, newspapers and the Internet,” Richard Perez-Pena writes in today’s New York Times. “Iraq accounted for 18 percent of [broadcast television networks] prominent news coverage in the first nine months of 2007, but only 9 percent in the following three months, and 3 percent so far this year,” Perez-Pena notes, citing figures from PEJ.

The Fallacies of War

Ad Hominem. Against the man
and why not, he started it?
Ad Hominem Tu Quoque. He is false.
Most people are.
Appeal to Authority. Misuse of Politics
fascinates the opiated masses.
Appeal to Belief. God must exist
ask most people.
Appeal to Common Practice. We’re in a hurry.
Speeding isn’t that wrong.
Appeal to Emotion. I love you
when you wear nothing underneath.
Appeal to Fear. If you do
you’ll go to hell.
Appeal to Flattery. You may have
a singularly brilliant idea there.
Appeal to Novelty. You’re so yesterday
I’m new and improved.
Appeal to Pity. I need this job,
I’m a Jew.
Appeal to Popularity. As you know
these are dangerous times.
I have in my office thousands of letters from people
who heartily endorse killing you.
Appeal to Ridicule. Those tree huggers think
my Hummer is melting their ice.
Appeal to Spite. You never
did anything for me.
Appeal to Tradition. Of course I’m right,
it’s in the Constitution.
Get on the Bandwagon. If your friends
bash gay marriage, avoid the ridicule.
Begging the Question. Since pigs don’t vote
God must mean for us to fight.
Biased Sample. Our polls show 90%
blame Iraq and believe TV.
Burdon of Proof. Torture for truth
but destroy the tapes.
Circumstantial ad Hominem. Just ignore his child abuse
views, he’s a priest for Christ’s sake.
Composition. Atoms are colorless. You are made of atoms.
You are colorless.
False Dilemma. You must accept
the Patriot Act or live in fear.
Gambler's Fallacy. He’s been wrong so long
He’s bound to get something right.
Genetic Fallacy. His father was a fuck up.
Guilt by Association. Cheney
and Satan, well…, the friends you keep.
Hasty Generalization. Those sexist pigs
all hate your big fat ass.
Personal Attack. You’re a known
lesbian feminist, what could you possibly have to say?
Poisoning the Well. Don't listen to me,
I’m a liar.
Red Herring. If you want peace
we’ll need to kill these people.
Slippery Slope. First, it’s just a few troops.
Next, let’s burn some books.
Straw Man. You don’t believe we should be in Iraq?
How could you want us so defenseless?
Two Wrongs Make a Right. Rights? I’ll take yours.
You would’ve taken mine.

- m.r.kidd

Masters Of War (mp3) Bob Dylan

River In Reverse (mp3) Elvis Costello

How Long (mp3) Keeny White

Girl In The War (mp3) Josh Ritter

I live in Washington, DC. There are a lot of fancy words and acronyms continually churned into hot air here. Most of it rises out of Capitol Hill and from a specific residence on Pennsylvania Avenue and gets blown up our rear ends. Twice this week (and it’s only Tuesday) I’ve heard young congressional staffers assert that ending the war in Iraq is not a relevant 2008 presidential campaign issue anymore as the “Surge” has been a success. The economic condition is the focus of the country’s political attention; the need to ease the American family’s suffering over mortgage shock and from the ever so prevalent pain of putting gas in the SUV. I agree that our economic condition is critical. However, I don’t know, and may be it’s only me being me, but I think getting your ass blown off would prove a lot more painful than getting stupidly over-extended on a bad loan or having to walk a little more and drive a little less.

Perhaps we should ask some of the veterans who have returned from Iraq with fewer body parts than they possessed before they were sent to fight for…I forget…what was it they were sent there to fight for? Oh yeah, they were supposed to find and destroy weapons of mass destruction. No, no, no. That’s not what the war’s about. It’s about liberation. Whose liberation? No, no, no. That’s not the reason. It’s about our freedom. That’s what the spinners on ol’ Penn. Ave. keep blowing our way. We’re in Iraq fighting for the greatest and penultimate term used in the American doctrine; freedom. But this current, supposed reason for the war in Iraq – our freedom – that’s been declared an irrelevant issue in the 2008 campaign for what was once viewed as the highest seat in the “free” world.

I would say I can’t believe it, but I do. Of course it pisses me off. I want to kick a brick, punch a block, grab, squeeze and shake political necks until their lying eyes pop out of their bullshit spouting heads. But I am, like god, war and this country, inaccurate with my rage, and can only comment on how we need a change. Isn’t that the term Obama was saying just awhile ago; the language of change? If talking about the war and freedom is no longer relevant, perhaps we should start by changing the language of freedom.

As our country prepares to celebrate the anniversary of its declared liberation on July 4th, I have an acquaintance who will forgo the party, and instead, will mourn the 3rd July that has come since his daughter’s death in Iraq. I don’t know words that could ease the pain for American families like his. So, I’m going to work on developing some new language skills. I’m going to use old words like, peace, freedom, honesty, responsibility, and integrity, like they are new words, like they are relevant words that merit the foremost consideration and eloquent enunciation in the 2008 campaign for leader of the free world. And I am going to sing them as loud as I can until I am joined in harmony or I go hoarse from trying.

Newspeak

Do you know
I do not talk American?
I cannot speak American,
and therefore cannot answer
to this Tin Man’s war
chattering in stethoscopes
behind the Bush denying
all evidencing bodies
of our dying atmosphere.

Do you see
I have no tongue in American?
I cannot say in American
the wonk’s work is wicked,
and, therefore, must use my fingers
to point at what I mean to them
and such gestures are often misconstrued
for like: There he is. Shoot.
You missed a spot.

Do you care
I do not know American?
I cannot affect an American
accent. It makes my lips spout sores
when I respond, Hey, hombre,
your yard is finished,
we’ll take cash, your huddled masses
the wretched refuse teeming on your floor.

Do you get
I do not understand American?
I cannot parlez vous American
and cannot partake in sordid conversation
or ask permission to be excused
even though I am held in view
the un-better child seen who cannot say
I’d rather be left behind.

Do you follow
I cannot relate my past in American?
I cannot pretend a voice American
telling la nostra storia
my mother’s journey
flowing from the fountain Neapolitan diaspora
with just her soft tufo stone tongue
a shattered village effort
and a vine of hope.

Do you think
I could not hear a new American?
I could re-cipher an old code American,
be proud as a founding father
espousing how to adopt the words
we yearn to claim our own;
the science of panagglutinin,
the construction of quiggly holes,
schmusn on ye’ old musaphone.

And in turn transform the speech of sectarian speakers,
of obtuse deciders swinging their sticks
at little balls, huge white women humming
in trucks massively destructive
while giving 51 cents a day
so the last child in Somalia
can eat while reading
the fin on the un-detonated metal
protruding from his home.

There are so many who don’t understand that American,
and the American that twice asked for that American.
That American lickspit
uttering a boat of cloth,
weaving over a war
that isn’t yet composed,
that is the ultimate battle
between fact and fiction,
and the American that swallowed that boat
is as thick as rap in Latin.

Though it translates plainly into the universal of talking shit.
Even I, with so little language know the sound of that prattle.

Will you pardon
that I do not speak that American?
I refuse to learn that American.
Its horrid grammar lies
behind the reason I asked
“do you” instead of its “don’t you”
in the first six stanzas
of this verse.

- m.r. kidd

Our Song (mp3) Joe Henry

The War Was In Color (mp3) Carbon Leaf

Wall In Washington (mp3) Iris Dement

So Wrong (mp3) Eric Anders

I have been away far too long; I apologize. I appreciate the emails and the requests for more.

It's been a very busy six weeks for me as my oldest daughter is graduating from high school next week. It doesn’t seem so long ago that I was wearing a cap and gown sitting through endless speeches waiting to have my name called by someone I had spent my high school career avoiding so he could hand me my diploma, which seemed to me at that time like a release form from servitude. It wasn’t.

One of the strange ironies of life is that parenting is assigned to young people with no parenting experience. Let’s face it; I didn’t know anything about raising a child. I was, in most ways, still a child myself. I barely knew how to take care of myself those early years, much less, act like I competently knew what to do for a baby girl. That part about figuring out what I want to be when I grow up seems to be taking an awfully long time. While I’ve been busy working on that puzzle, my daughter was busy just changing from a child to an amazing adult. It’s one of life’s cruelties that as children we wish to be older and when we’re older we wish we were children again. But as I was trying my best to manage the minute-by-minute, the days turned to years and the years zipped on by.

Here comes the major cliché: it seems like only yesterday that I sat with her in my hands and cried over how beautiful she was. I promised her then that I would protect her with my life. This is the first and most enduring oath I took as a parent: “I will always be there for you. I will always protect you.”

If I am allowed only one regret, and I don’t want to think of my life as one to regret, it is that I’ve spent so much of my life rushing around in search of things that proved to matter little, while I walked past the things that matter most; like spending more time with my daughters.

They are always in my thoughts. They possess so much of my heart.

To them, I will say it again: "I will always be there for you. I will always protect you."


Ask Me

I don't know what growing roses is like,
but I am a father.
Wild Mountain Thyme singing girls
tenuously seeking to soften the barren ground
of my heart seem sweet. They have so much color.
And from the way they talk, like orchids
drunk on steamy sub-tropic air;
they make me wonder
are all flowers so lovely?
I wouldn't know. But ask me
about smiles that bloom from a cry,
of fragile laughs minute and perfect,
that turn sour grapes to warm bouquets,
how all creation is buried beneath
their nurturing shroud,
and I'll tell you they're
God's blossoms in a world laid bare.
I'm a daughter's father, ask me about roses.

- m.r. kidd

Daughter (mp3) - Loudon Wainwright III

Daughters (mp3)- John Meyer

Wild Mountain Thyme (mp3) Al Petteway

Birthday and taxes...it seems I'm doing a lot of counting today.
Also born on April 8, Ponce De Leon. He searched for the fountain of youth. He found Florida instead.

Carrying Numbers

Before parts of me began to hurt,
the clock mapped me along
leading to an hour I could count on,
tolling it out to hear
so I would know if I had arrived
somewhere – a number
to pin things down, three o'clock
for example. And I'd tell myself
all is well. It’s an even deal I am
still walking, talking,
fusing time
with color.

Now, the clock lops off years,
marking the diagnoses of new hurts,
dolling out smaller rations of itself.
I place odd seconds
in my pockets, look for color
in those numbers - like
between now and death,
what number is that?
An uneven hue
cool and heavy.
When I check the clock
I see what I learned
in the long hours of arithmetic;
that if anything is leftover,
I have to carry it.

- m.r.kidd

Does AnyBody Really Know What Time It Is - Chicago
Time of No Reply - Nick Drake
Borrowed Time - John Lennon
Time - Tom Waits
Your Time Is Gonna Come - Led Zeppelin
Time Waits For No One - Rolling Stones
Time Is A Lion - Joe Henry
No Time - The Guess Who
Time - Pink Floyd
Right Time - Ray Charles
Hard Times - Yo Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, Mark O'Connor, James Taylor

Calliope

She hits me
in the face
with a dictionary,
a thick one,
the kind that sit
on bookshelves.
Before I can recover
she asks what I did
with the vowels.

I say I don’t know.
She hits me again,
but harder.
The spine snaps.
Ink runs from my eyes.
Please, the words, I beg,
they’re between
the covers.

I try to write down
what I don’t know for her.
She rams the edge
of the dictionary against the bridge
of my nose and asks again
Alright…I cry
the vowels are in the closet

next to the patent leather boots.
She uses the dictionary
to make a stool
and ties me to it.
She puts the boots on
and leaves
with the vowels.

- m.r. kidd

Freckle on Lisa

So little in life
claims perfection;
flaws demand detection.
Yet seamless work
artists apply
to deny a crooked nose.
But, bantam and lone,
like a dimple in stone,
yours is no mole or imperfection.
In more than dreams
I dream to kiss
the freckle in your complexion.

- m.r. kidd

Freckle Song (mp3) - Chuck Prophet

'(Till) I Kissed You (mp3) - The Everly Brothers

The Pathetically Honest Romance Novel

It’s the same ol’ song and dance;
there’s always a girl with a heart
like an oven, a designer peasant skirt
and a history of just so much hurt not to be
pathetic. The boy is thick
with repetitious morals
but has a fantastic house
and there’s always an English country-

side where he ponders sermons
to give his victims, to make hurts
hurt more, tongue his war wound, his leaving
woman, over whose body his salt swarms.
A thing most strange and uncanny

as pink paper-maché over the breasts
and sawed-off arms on the sewing mannequin.
In the attic the girl must sleep in when not
cleaning she reads the signs that the story
was forged from another language,
the setting changed, the dates updated,
and only he’s there to say he’d never lie

to the fiery wrenched-up girl
on whom the story cannot center
because she’s playing in the parlor
a bourée, a dance that does not exist
in English. She sees past him in the pink
paper filled with Spanish or French or some
other words that are not real and says, God
this story really sucks, and starts
ripping out the pages, the pages before
which the real pathetic
heart is breaking.

- m.r. kidd

Love Junkyard (mp3) - Rickie Lee Jones


The Last Time I Saw Richard (mp3) - Joni Mitchell

Spencer

In honor of Spencer, one cool cat. A good friend who liked to nip my coffee, my scotch, and always, my heart. Don't rest in peace, instead have a good go at whatever you do, like you did when you were here. Cheers ol' friend!

Below is one of my favorite animated shorts, "The Cat Came Back." The song is a children's folk song originally written by Harry S. Miller under the title of "The Cat Came Back: A Comic Negro Absurdity" in 1893. The song is humorous in nature, telling a silly tale about a man who had a cat that he did not want, and when he tried to get rid of the cat, the cat kept coming back. The song is the basis for this famous 1988 short by Cordell Barker.



Also see Cat Stevens - Teaser And The Firecat

Moonshadow (mp3) Cat Stevens

Pink Panther (mp3) Henry Mancini

FYI, I've come to believe, at least in my searching, that there are far more songs about dogs than there are about cats.

What the Cats Aren’t Saying

Of all the ones we bind and morph
they are the ones who mind
us having speech the most. Listen how,
when they stare you down, they scrape
off insults with their tongues.
How they choreograph their every stride
to say they know when and how we’ll die,
saving breath for that triumphant cry.

What conniving prima donnas; hairdos
perfect, licked down in mom-spit, rubbing
body smells on our black pants and spewing
fanatic propaganda. Grace they’d trade in half a sec
for a leather jacket and a nickel plated
Colt held in your face. But here in my office
their fury is patted down and hinted at
only when they shudder back

disgusted at fate’s tone of voice,
despite the scads of cat-prayers ever spoken,
because religions like us to see our souls as cats,
leaping from high to higher wire performed
with pluck and in power of the dark.
Imagine how they must feel:
cock-blocked, cheated, mocked by god.
What they’d like to do is cuss up a storm
but they’re held to tact and dangerous body language.

- m.r. kidd

Stray Cat Strut (mp3) Stray Cats

Speak To Me (mp3P Rocco Deluca & The Burden

Numb Hand

It still pinches, points and picks,
but it won’t play what I love.
How I used to baby it, clean it,
marvel at its tricks. Now it’s just
where part of me ends.

I’m going
to slice it off and wrap it
in birthday paper; it’s a pretty gift.
I hope you can use it for something,
a paperweight, indicate directions,
pin it on your blouse,
“I’m With Stupid.”

It can’t feel
what it’s done to me. Dumb lump
didn’t drop a tear as I handed away
all my veined guitars.

In the bathroom
while I cried I thought it hardly
worth my ass as I snotted out
a laugh. I can’t trust a thing like that.

Be careful around it, it is deadly.
Look how it scratched out my heart.
I would give you both
but I still need my other hand
to cover up that hole.

m.r. kidd

Amputee (mp3) Scott Matthew


The Hand That Held Me Down (mp3) Two Gallants (black sessions)

Hand Made In Spain

Her body is smooth as bone
and smells alive, old, strong
rosewood, cedar, ebony and pearl.
Her butt and bout cut, bound
and twisted, beat back
against my three points of touch;
sternum, thighs, both in and out.
Left fingers, one, two, three,
then four, grip her flat black neck
wider than all electrics. My stronger hand
hovers just above her hole.
Index, middle, ring, and thumb
exchange just so much pressure
and release each other to rest
before the next execution.

But sitting with beauty is never easy;
a maze between wanting and hearing
skin rip, sweat run, the muscle twitch.
Though my freakish posture veils
any real violent motion; the hammer
on must be like breathing.
Exercise secures the pattern.
Sharpened tools and sacrifice
to neatness over speed
have made my awkward habits
come alive until I die.

In space kept humid
I tilt, stroke, flail and pluck
a mass of sound from her.
Such work is worth some blood
and little care for more.
For more time, for tone,
I sit alone behind her body
to which my hands are nailed.

- m.r.kidd


Las Abejas mp3 Augustin Barrios


Dark Eyes mp3 Alexander Gluklikh