Pope Croke Tribute #2 - A Poem by China Martens

Pope, I pull you up like a cloke, constant thoughts
The loneliness of human beings

You found your way, your pleasures,
sarcasms, sweetness, forgiveness I’m sure.
Clever, wit, culture, elegance,
bluntness, crudeness, truth,
peering out from under glasses


At your funeral, there were seven wives
and many girls left crying
Cats drove the car - you don’t know this . . .
It was a secret

Where did you come from to talk like that?
Jumping over the chair at Charles theatre like your James Dean
like a crows black feathers gleam

✧

Pope, where do I gather to send the
sentiments, drifting?

Regrets we could have talked more -
now you aren’t here no more,
humanity, daily, that’s how it is.

Leaves on the ground

I felt like you liked me;
and thank you for that;
I want to bring you flowers now.

Places before and after,
Maryland Avenue,
this door way, that door way

Time and place, sadness, no sadness,
this is what we have, parting, depth,
shallow, care, remember,

wish you well. See you later,
in my mind and where you travel,
hope it’s kind.

by China Martens

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China Martens is most recently the co-author of Don't Leave Your Friends Behind (PM Press) and the editor/author of the long running zine Future Generation, which Atomic Books published an anthology of in 2007.
She is extremely tall but she will not smite you unless you really really need an ass whuppin. My wife is fond of her slender porcelain hands.

Pope Croke was a fixture on the Baltimore music and arts scene. He passed away on December 26th from a MRSA infection and problems related to kidney failure from 14 years ago. Some of his groups were Infant Lunch, Kneeling On Beans, Mo Fine and His All Blind Orchestra, She Bites and Furniture Falling Down The Stairs.

Pope was a true Baltimore original and there will be more posts about him to follow.

Pope Croke Tribute #1

(Above are Pope on the left, Chris Mason in the middle and Chris Toll on the right, at Shakemore 2010).

RIP

Song Pope swung

octopus

piano

by Chris Mason

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Chris Mason is a poet and musician. He is the author of Hum Who Hiccup (Narrowhouse Press) and a member of The Tinklers and Old Songs. It's rumored that he's in a duo playing Woody Guthrie songs also, but when asked about it he replied "I will not share my essence."

Pope Croke was a fixture on the Baltimore music and arts scene. He passed away on December 26th from a MRSA infection and problems related to kidney failure from 14 years ago. Some of his groups were Infant Lunch, Kneeling On Beans, Mo Fine and His All Blind Orchestra, She Bites and Furniture Falling Down The Stairs.

Pope was a true Baltimore original and there will be more posts about him to follow.

The Assembling of a Mole Suit Choir

I haven't delved into musical collaboration or playing out live since Magic Gurney Ride rode out down South on the rails, the train car freshly tagged with "Soft Serv", but at last year's Shakemore I sang a few things accapella and the powerfully talented Liz Downing said we should get together. I've regarded Liz in the top pantheon of Baltimore mischief makers since back in the '80s when I first saw Lambs Eat Ivy and they singed the puffy scrub of my Glen Burnie fro off.

(Above in foreground is the back of the head of beloved Charles Brohawn of The Tinklers. The fact that he remained in the front row Is a testimony that we weren't sucking. Charles doesn't stand by for sucking.)

LEI performed Appalachian opera mixing Jung and mythology and Southern gothic into a wild giddy blend. Three swooping, soaring sets of lungs, brainiac but simple lyrics and homemade sets and costumes. So the idea of singing with Liz made me dust off the maple parlor guitar and hit a few verses of "End of the World".

The transmigration of Christopher Toll in October brought even more of a feeling of inevitableness and purpose to it, as one of Liz's first songs was putting "Moon Clue", a collaboration between Chris and I, to music. She also put three other pieces of mine from The Origin of Paranoia As a Heated Mole Suit to song, which blew my tiny brain. I've written a fair number of songs in my day, but for me these pieces had been ingrained as flat words on the page, their only music the rhythm of their syntax.

A few wonderful winter Sunday late afternoons went by with us hanging on the couch warbling with Kim Jong Ev, Max, Binky and Peanut as our audience and we suddenly had a set that included two other Chris Toll related pieces. The icing on the cake was Father Daniel Higgs asking us to open for him at Normal 's, an auspicious sign. It felt incredibly liberating to sing with Liz's beautiful voice and to celebrate life and comrades who had gone on beyond it.

And I bought a kickass triangle.

Murder Your Darlings' Review of Mattress In an Alley, Raft Upon the Sea

Thursday, January 17, 2013

Rupert Wondolowski's Mattress in an Alley, Raft Upon the Sea

Mattress in an Alley, Raft Upon the Sea, poems by Rupert Wondolowski. New Orleans: Fell Swoop, 2012.

Wondolowski's zine-format collection begins with "1963," a snapshot of the year Kennedy died, which sets a bittersweet tone for the collection. In "Sometimes," he continues with sardonic humor: I grew up next door
to a friend with a former
Miss North Carolina pageant
winner for a mom
who always left the door
open using the bathroom.
Plus I went to Catholic School.
I never had a chance. (lines 7-14).

Wondolowski's world is surreal and dangerous. "Anything Pointed, Edged, Angled or Blunted" describes:
...a gang in the remote Peruivian jungle
[which] kills people for their fat
-keeping the liquid in little vials hanging from their belts. (lines 16-21).
What can one do to guard against something like this? "...there's no way/to walk the/night streets/without your fat." He says (lines 33-36). This is so horrifying, it can't be real, right? But reality is darker than anything one could dream up. "Before Work" demonstrates this. It describes a visit to the doctor. "This is not where the shit goes down, this is/where we find out if you can take the shit/coming down." (lines 18-20).

But there are moments of joy. Wondolowski looks back to Superbowl Halftime commercials, old toys from childhood, pills. "Spring Makes Me Small," is one of the more upbeat poems, despite itself:

I am not as cheerful
as my shirt would indicate
or as horrified
as my hair


in between the seething
pause
fur can be futile
and jackals make good dads


tumble me this yoga mat
a sun rises from my
ribcage into my esophagus and
there just isn't room for it.


What stands out throughout the collection, of course, is Wondolowski's wit and cunning observations. There are many standout poems. "Some Late Night Thoughts of Mortality While Staring Glassy-Eyed at Karen Black," I mean, how could that not be a great poem? There's an underlying joie de vivre in these poems that I'm thankful to Wondolowski for sharing. In the final poem, "For Everly," he sums it up: "Drop the feeling nto a river and watch it spread/in far reaching ripples." (lines 7-8).

* * * -CL Bledsoe

Marie Osmond & Hugo Ball, Together Again

LAST CHANCE TO WIN A CHEVY MALIBU for Chris Toll by Joel Dailey

(Fell Swoop publisher and poet Joel Dailey wearing the NASA manufactured glasses that enable him to see up to five feet in front of him and two to three feet behind)

LAST CHANCE TO WIN A CHEVY MALIBU for Chris Toll

Urbane     urban      or simply 'ur'
77% of Americans live paycheck to Johnny Paycheck
Who placed the log in logic?
The form's the thing         ask Bob Zimmerman

Even in recession-cursed Europe chauffeurs hesitate
Top notch hillbillies populating Norway freeze
Why is taut in tautology?
The torque is possible        impossible

The official spokesperson for motion activated endtables
My string bikini skedaddle frontloader
My cloistered grief
Here's to your definitive thumbnail 24 hour coverage,
        wandering Brother Man

Visitations From Remarkable Humans In The Warm Bubble of Bookstore World

Not only do you get to hide out from the cruel world working in a book and record store like a genteel troll or cavewoman, communing with humankinds' various attempts to contact the sacred or primal firepit, you also get to rub elbows with lots of interesting people.

Sometimes those people have been drinking alcoholic egg nogg at 9am to settle their stomach before hitting the hard stuff or walk in wanting to lay a wet wool cape of hatred on you no matter what dance step you perform for them, but the vast majority are amazing, warm book and music lovers who speak passionately of the culture that has changed and shaped their lives.

Then occasionally there are the days when not only good friends and mind pilgrims are present, but there are visitations from wandering cultural warriors who have scaled high the walls of meaning and brought back Truth packaged that is then offered up to the public in said book or record stores.

At Normal's Bargain Cobbley World, we've had some fun visitors over the years - Chris Rock making that president movie - his "campaign headquarters" was one of our old slumlord's many vacant spots - and popping in to sign "Kiss my black ass, Chris Rock" in one of his books I'd put in the window one day and then buying a book on pimps we had another day; Mike Kuchar of the glorious Kuchar Brothers - visionary dwellers of the cinematic cesspool; the gentle fellow dog and serious serious bookstore loving Jeff Mangum who gave us a shout out from the stage later that night and was a blast to hang out with and then this week Sir Thurston Moore who helped introduce folks like Stockhausen and Daniel Johnston to a wider public while stretching and breaking the walls of punk rock into a wider sonic realm. Plus he's a poetry lover and writer and advocate and even plugged books by me and Blaster a few years back in Arthur. So I hold big love for him indeed.

Many thanks to him and his bandmate for indulging me, Amanda and Max the dog in a photo shoot.