Goin' Home Soon

Photo by Grant Hall

D/PoWriMo

The Fat Lazy Tiger Battles The Sloth

From your forced perspective
my paws, face, and feet meet
to make you look just like me,
sloth, but our fate will be found
in the strange angles of uneaten
Trident and pennies dumped from
the bottom of my shaving kit. Each
stretch of my striped muscles
will intimdate you further
as I laze across this living room floor.

By Request from Michael Schiavo

Pamela Prefers Rolex, Cartier, and Breitling

Rolex just for the
Ottoman extravagance of it, tacky but
Lovely just the same.
Even in her sleep, the ticking clinks like
Xylophones.

Cartier will
Always have her heart; diamonds have a
Romance
To beat the blues band.
In comparison
Every other stone can just
Roll.

Breitling brings to her a new
Respect for time's nautical nature.
Every time the hour strikes,
It strikes her that on the ocean
Time is pure. Rise to set, sailors
Look unencumbered at the sun.
In the sun, she sees herself -- there's
Nothing a sailor would like more.
Get home quickly, boys.

DePoWriMo

Seasonal Discontent with Tom and Shafer

Now Tom's winter is made warmer
with baseball's meetings, where
men in suits will converge on Dallas
to lament the fact that baseball season
is still many wide months away.

Spring's hope comes late for Shafer
in December with the Bowl Championship Series
laid out before him buffet-style.
And Monday Night Football comes just once a week
this time of year. Shafer shudders
to think of the "S" seasons, sans football.

December is National Poetry Month!

Don't Worry, I'll Be Right Beside You the Whole Time

Sarah from New Orleans tried marijuana
for the first time in twenty years. This was
last night, and when New York went off the air
for a few hours, her date was so proud
to be elected guardian angel of and by
this spacey chick who he had met
on the internet the week before
while he was surfing strange websites
calculated by programmers
to blow his fucking mind.

Now he was in charge, and the simple job
of escorting her arm
through relatively harmless downtown streets
made him feel like a man. From the first
"I'm feeling a little paranoid"
to the last "Oh god, I'm so embarrasssed,"
he was a clean-cut spiritual advisor,
ethically free to occasionally clear
his throat and say
"don't worry, don't worry, don't worry."

Recent Publications

Discover (or re-discover) more Shafer Hall poems at Kulture Vulture, at No Tell Motel (archive) and at Ducky.

You can also find some new poems in the current issue of the Indiana Review and in the upcoming issue of Jubilat.

A Very Freqy Holiday

Fishes,

Please join us tomorrow at 2:30 PM at the Four-Faced Liar for the last Freq of the season and the official Freq of Good Cheer, aka Christmas Freqy or however you celebrate the Holidays. I do it with Bing Crosby.

So c'mon out to hear Carey McHugh, Oni Buchanan, Tom Hummel, and Allison DeFrees, who is moving back to Texas so I added her to the bill without consulting my co-curator, (can you say Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire? I am gonna be in trouble.)

I do hope to see you all there. Snow is in the forecast so let's drink Irish Coffee (or Kentucky Coffee) and get our final Freq on.

xo,
Shafer

Tonight Lucas Said

"You know, I guess at some point I knew that there was actually a person inside of R2-D2, but it seems strange to me now."

Another Scott Challenge

The G Train Waits Patiently For No One

The patient wait for the G patiently,
which is the only way to wait for the G --
Subway Steve at Rosemary's will tell you stories,
but don't believe him -- the lonely G
is not the object of bad civil planning;
it is predicated only on its own lonely
inclinations: to rumble low
past the closed eyes of these commuters
earnestly praying to get to work on time.

Anatomy of a Poem

Here is the IM conversation that led to the below poem:

Scott: how you doing
Scott: too cold for tennis
Scott: ?
edmonshafer: No I was supposed to meet Jeff but I woke up late.
edmonshafer: Damn me!
Scott: what ekse are you doing
edmonshafer: Doin' a little writing.
edmonshafer: Anything you'd like to have a poem written about?
Scott: hhhmmm
Scott: not being able to profess my true love for tj
edmonshafer: You know, I almost said "anything except being gay." You need to change up your material a bit.
Scott: how about apoem about wine tastings
edmonshafer: OK.
edmonshafer: Maybe I can work both of those into the same poem.
Scott: co-ed naked wine tasting where the grapes dangle from your midsection
edmonshafer: OK maybe YOU should write this poem.
Scott: or a poem about marco and his danglign berries
edmonshafer: Definitely your territory there.

Poem Challenge from Scotty

Where the Grapes Dangle from Our Midsections

At the coed naked wine tasting last night
Columbian Jews leered curiously
at the boys from the 'burbs.

"I'll just flip a coin," Scott said,
"and heads I'll be straight tonight,
and tails my grape stained feet
will be feather-light."

The coin flipped gymnastically
in a grateful arc, and landed
in the museum's vice-president's
wife's wineglass, where
it was determined to predict
that Scott's sexuality for the evening
would be "ask me later."

So Scott ambled aimlessly around
this party that started out pretty fun,
and T.J. shambled home
another lonely Rockland County undone
by the wide vagaries of the City.

The Durge Report

Sybil Durgin is very jealous because Lucas and I spent all night at Sputnik without her. We missed you, Sybil! It's true!

Now maybe I should write a poem or something...

One Thousand Naps Later

It was the Thanskgiving of One Thousand Naps, but I am back now. I missed you.

The Freq

Fishes,

The Freq of the Week will feature Matt Longabucco, Carley Moore, Aaron Tieger, and Nick Moudry (yes! it IS a really incredible lineup!) so I will see all of you at the Face tomorrow at 2:30. 165 W. 4th St. Saturday, November 18th.

Much Love,
Shafer

Our Friend Karen

Our friend Karen Miller just published a very good short story here:

http://www.mrbellersneighborhood.com/story.php?storyid=1733

NoPoWroMo

Union Jack

A jack is a flag, but flags
can't always say everything
you want to say, jack, jack
as in person or bro or bloke
over there where they
fly the Union Jack. A jack
is a small square flag
used at sea, and when
the Union is flown at sea,
it is a jack, jack, and therefore
it is referred to as Union Jack.
At home, the Union Jack
has fallen into common usage:
jacks refer to jacks as jacks,
even though on land a jack is a flag
not a jack, jack. A jack is always a flag,
jack, but a flag is not always a jack.
What I am trying to say, jack,
is that jacks say exactly what
each jack means to say,
and there are many jacks
under every jack.

from www.howtodrawtheUnionJack.com:

The larger pieces each have area (335-75√5)/2; the smaller each 445/4-30√5; giving a total blue area of 1115-270√5 ≈ 511.261646 square units, which is slightly more than 1.44% larger than the cross of St George. The red of St Patrick is in four pieces, two larger and two smaller, these respectively each having area 20√5 and 20√5-5; for a total of 80√5-10 ≈ 168.8854382 square units. Thus the flag is red : white : blue in the proportions 494+80√5 : 191+190√5 : 1115-270√5 ≈ 37.38% : 34.21% : 28.4%.

The Freq

Fishes,

Scott Glassman, Adam Davis, Tom Haushalter, and all the way from St. Paul Paul Dickinson will be at the Frequency tomorrow at noon. Full details here:

http://frequencyseries.blogspot.com/

xo,
Shafer

For Mike Sammons

Waiter! More Shrimp!

Tonight let's drink
until we can't see
and tomorrow I will lay
on the floor on my back
while angry moments
phase into our morning
from outside my window
where they're upset by the Man.

And you, like a
cat can curl
up on my chest.

We will be married for a few hours,
for a few fine forevers.

She Finds Sweatshirts

My Houston Texans sweatshirt (that which Tom and Joanie refer to as "Shafer's Leather") has been returned!

Jess Larrabee dove into the Sputnik lost and found, and she reunited me with That Which Is Most Holy.

Jess Larrabee drives this finely-tuned machine. I will keep you updated about shows in Brooklyn and around the world.

You can hear Jess jam here

http://shekeepsbees.com/sounds.html

and here

www.myspace.com/shekeepsbees

Those of us who survived what is now referred to as "The Night of One Thousand Jaegermeisters" (a.k.a. last night) are deeply devoted to Jess.