There's a tear in the fabric of your favorite dress
and I'm sneaking glances.
--Ben Gibbard
 
This window to skin
is a PG peepshow of your hip.
I want to rub my thumb over it like velvet,
go underground and butterfly kiss
the crime scene to hear your gigglegasp.
 
I cannot tell by your blinks or the way you cross your legs
if you even know that you have a porthole to Teaseville
attached to you like a holster.
You have to feel the night air licking the open wound.
You have to know that pixies are charging a dime to dustmites
for the privilege of seeing the tiny burlesque show
that is the half-inch of flesh right below your waist.
 
But this is not what we talk of.
We rattle on about who said what
and rave over recipes, while all I can think about now
is rushing to your closet and engineering
tiny flaws in all of your wardrobe;
I am a moth on a mission.
 
As we get up to leave, as you smooth down your layers,
I am almost certain I see you linger there,
fingers wading in the absence of cotton. 
You become translucent for the space of a spark.
Perhaps you knew all along.   This is how
I will always remember us;
two spies entered into the imp competition,
a tangle of wispy secrets, a chorus of winks.

There is a burst of chaos that is clapping
and snapping her way through the subway station.
She looks like Armageddon and sounds like manic popcorn.
 
I am not close enough to read the nametags of her demons.
I do not know which end of the dial her static lands on.
She seems ready to fight everything:
dollar bills, containers, ambulances, comfort.
 
As she begins to fill the space with shrieks and declarations,
I do not subscribe to the notion that she is talking to God,
unless God is a badger with M80s for teeth
and the voice of Brian Wilson on a bearded day.
 
I am so beat up tonight that I start to wonder
how many clicks away I am from meeting that badger.
Is it the result of too many punches to your disappointment bone?
When do you decide that none of it matters?
The piss-stained pants, the hyena teeth?  The way you talk
because the truth pushes your face against the train windows,
a bully that forces you to recant, repent, scream
until you are satiated; one with cold concrete and praying
that sleep sweeps you under the bus bench forever?
 
I get off three stops later.  Her madness is muted by my music,
the one wall that stands strong with riff and clever mortar.
I cannot abide insanity, I tell myself.  I hate the looseness of it.
The way it jitters and bursts, like tantrum, like a blaze.
 
I shuffle up the mammoth escalator at Santa Monica and Vermont,
flipping my cell phone to my ear halfway up,
calling no one,  instead reciting a new poem to myself into the Hollywood night.
I pray it will shake loose the infection
that The Loud One is trying to slide under my skin.
 
Grace of God, I mumble.
Less fortunate, I hear myself justify.
It is only the bully debris in the wind that makes me well up.
Only the sting of that.

Patience + Tilapia + Freshly Squeezed Lime Juice + Spice Blend = Kick-ass Late Night Ceviche.

While doing a little self-Googling this morning (you know you do it too), I found out that one particular piece of mine, "At The Museum On Our First Date", has been reprinted (with credit), on a site called Your Life Is Beautiful, and someone else took it from there (again, with credit) and posted on their LJ.

It's never the poems or stories that we sweat over, that we craft within an inch of their lives, that end up tacked to the refrigerator.  It's the ones (at least in my case) that come stumbling out, fully awkward and vulnerable. 

I think I've gotten better about finding a balance between the two, but still.  Interesting.

Don't take much for that emo wolverine to quit hiding in the corner and take a swipe at my chest again.

Sleep, make it better.

If we had to drop a bomb anywhere in the continental US, I would highly recommend that it hit Sherman Oaks, CA.

God give me strength to get through this summer.

Flotsam and jetsam are foot soldiers in my civil war.
They meathook into my embarrassment
and let it drip indelibly all over all the host's carpet.
They throw themselves overboard at my zero hour,
believing they're lightening the load.
 
This is why it took decades before any polished surface
was not anathema to my stilted vision.
I was just sure that someone was taking pictures of my fumbles;
playing clips of my meager masturbation on loop in the ha-ha room.
 
Ain't gonna lie:
There are still plenty of days when I feel like I'm trying
to dance Swan Lake in moon boots.
Sometimes I try to croon Cole Porter
and I crack like slipshod puberty.
I am a slow student,
but I'm learning to wipe the blood and whiskey
of my swollen bottom lip,
passing it off as glam-rock-deep-breath-up-against-the-fence bravado.
 
I'm building a superhero out of the throats of kids
who were the last picked.  I am brandishing
my rickety puffed chest and sucked gut
like the Hollywood hooligan I should have been years ago.
It's not ego if you're still learning to believe it.
 
And, yes, this is the 3 AM post-last call infomercial
where I sell you every miracle cure that has ever made me sit straighter,
talk louder, chew coal into diamond dust.
You know who you are.  I have placed the phonetic outlines of flowers
on your lapels.  I have praised you in hymns and footnotes,
your palms have been tagged like overpasses with my kiss.
 
I am done sparring with the mirror.
My knuckles have bled all the lessons I ever need learn.
This excitable boy is staring at the wet salty beast in front of him,
and learning how to breathe
like he means it.
 

I reckon Heaven is a place
Where time is nonexistent, yeah
And the things that are important, yeah
Don't take any time at all

An awful lot like like outer space
Where everything is weightless, yeah
Even heavy things are weightless, yeah
Don't take up any space at all

CHORUS
Right on, right on
Oh yeah it's so clear
All the bad things are gone
All the good things are here

Right on, right on
Oh yeah it's so clear
All the bad things are gone
All the good things are here

Almost exactly like this place
Where you and I are fighting, yeah
I'm so sick and tired of fighting, yeah
Up there we'll never fight at all

I reckon Heaven is a place
Where everything is weightless, yeah
Even heavy things are weightless, yeah
Up there we'll never fight at all.

I have so many amazing friends.  ones who deal with real issues, about  family, sickness, intolerance, on and on.

There are days (or nights) when i feel my little corner of heartbreak is so stupid and selfish.   Friends and extended family, I quote E. John and B. Taupin when I say that I thank the Lord there's people out there like you.

Yeah, man, it hurts, but you're still standing.  You will sing some Gloria Gaynor and get through this.  Chickenshit.

I must be wound up, because I rarely want to throw something heavy through a window.  Both for the damage, and just to hear it echo my frustration.

I'm trying to plan my all-over-the-damn country hey-i'm-a-full-time-poet tour.   Having been out of the slam loop for four years and without my own venue for at least two years now, I do not have the contacts that I used to.  I do have some dear friends who will be helping me out, as they are current touring poets.  I am gleaning everything I can from them.

My tour parameters are very sketchy right now, as I'm trying to time this for the release of my Write Bloody book.  A recent email from the WB bookmaster has me pegged for a possible October release.  October also being, of course  iWPS, which I plan to attend, if not as a competitor, at least as a presence.  It'd be an ideal place to kick off the tour, or at least an ideal early stop.   And, folks, I want to go EVERYWHERE.   I plan on a long run of the East Coast, I wanna hit the Northwest, the Midwest, everywhere that'll have me.  This is kind of what I've been building to since I first read a poem called "The N Word" on the stage of Da Poetry Lounge in 2000.  I was much more Saul Williams then.   Now I'm me, and I can't wait to get out there and see all of you and hear your words and be inspired.   I am bursting at the seams for this summer to be over.  Heh.

I'm also finding out that the internet does not always yield the most recent results as far as venue information goes, so if you have any interest in booking a slam vet for your venue, holler...

Woke up to a perfect note from a best friend. Caught up with a close homey. Did the work thing and it didn't kill me. Was sent some fun pics from recent features. Told a bedtime story to a nearest and dearest. Watched Hulk Hogan cry. Today? Cube said it best.

So because I have not surrendered to the new technology and because my adapter cord for the ol' laptop decided to fray and leave me in the lurch, I am typing this via predictive text (which I'm quite good at) on my sorry-ass phone. Saving grace is I do have web access on this bad boy, so I have been able to check in on you all, and do a little bit of sound byte response. I ordered a cord today, as it was 20 bucks online as opposed to 90 at Best Buy or Staples. I'll be back up and running by mid-week, at which time I will start setting up my impending tour in a major way. It's my first venture out as a full-time poet, but I told myself long ago that I was going to do this before I turned 40. Whew. Just made it.

Thus it begins with a small speed bump. Now to watch Top Chef Masters and fall in love with life again.

Yes, ladies and gents, it is indeed the day that we celebrate the birthdate of one APRIL JONES, aka jonesysnout .  

Not only can she carve a whole turkey in five minutes using a nail clippers and a magnifying glass (given that there's a open window and hot sunbeam action--otherwise, it's all pocket knife action), but she can make warring nations solve their problems via dance-off!!!

That, and she's one of my nearest and dearest on the planet.

Hurpy Burpday, Apie.  You are the shit's knees. 

Love love love,

Slimmy.

• 00:49 www.blogtv.com/people/mikemcgee
  
  I may or may not be rocking poems between 1 and 130, if my comp and my Skype don't fuck up. HOLLER #

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• 12:32 @DefSound: You going to SD tonight? I'm trying to get my ride sitch straight. And the number I have for you is DEAD! #

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