mercredi 28 décembre 2011

the DEA is killing me


a unpoetic rant about the end of oxycontin...


the DEA* is taking away my life
the little life i was left with 15 years ago
when pain ascended from hell
and took over my brain and body
like some great martyrdom
i have born it all
with the help of oxycontin

the most sensitive core of me
is light on its feet
it cannot support opioid medications
they put me to sleep
and render me helpless
with no ability to concentrate
nauseated nodding slumbering
with dreams like strange movies

but one was different: oxycontin
it took away my pain and
woke me up to a new reality
enabled me to have a life
to sit and write or watch a movie
without falling asleep at the denouement
or struggling to finish what i started

but now the DEA has declared
that doctors are under the gun
and all the states are pressuring doctors
to relinquish that one narcotic
that has given me life with less pain
without half-wittedness
and they are all falling in line
like doctors did before the fascists
and with about as much compassion

first my doctor said there were "side effects"
and i never was sure what she meant
and then others followed with "we understand
but we can no longer prescribe it"
so how about trying methadone
that highly addictive poison from which
one in a thousand die in the first five days
it's only $30 per month and though we haven't
studied it much "if i were a gamblin' man
in a casino i'd put my money on it"

well doctor i've tried it
and for a month i did not wake up

well there's long-acting morphine
puts you right into the arms of morphée
and you can stay there for a thousand days
dream away pain wake up in nightmares
and sweat feel like vomiting
then stumble around like a drunken cow
looking for a toilet to throw up in

doctor i've tried it and for a month
i never woke or sat up
and when i did i was sick as a dog

fentanyl patches perhaps
of course you do have tachycardia
which will put you at risk for
a heart attack from hell
and even though two of your friends
with the same illness as you
had anaphylactic shock from it
and another one's heart went to 190
we can prescribe that one

no doctor i refuse a medication
that i know will bring my heart
to the breaking point
poison poison poison

well there is the new opana
based on oxymorphone like oxycontin
but two times stronger
so if you are sensitive to opioids
it's guaranteed to make you sleep
plus there's no "high" like oxycontin
(whatever that means)
oh yeah i see
the end of pain that i experience
the rush of relief ist jetzt verboten

the DEA is killing me
by denying this pain patient of 15 years
the one medication that offered her
a life without narcolepsy and nightmares
without nausea and disenfranchisement
they told doctors to give up prescribing it
because they didn't adhere to the rules
didn't take it seriously enough
and now everyone wants it
and some are dying from abusing it

i always took it seriously
i adhered to the rules for over 10 years
but that counts for nothing
nothing at all i'm doomed

sick as i am on my little couch bed
i could still have a small life
stay in touch with friends and family
write a letter listen to music read an article
no it wasn't perfect it's been damn lonely
but oxycontin relieved the pain
left me awake and alive
and now they are denying me it

there are no alternatives
i cannot live with this pain
untreated or undertreated
i will die from it quickly
for i refuse to live in unending pain
or over-drugged and unconscious

the DEA is killing me
and not only me but many pain patients
who were given back their lives
in small but important ways
thanks to oxycontin


*DEA - the federal Drug Enforcement Agency

samedi 24 décembre 2011

Merry Christmas and a Compassionate New Year 2012!

Merci mille fois pour m'avoir lue cette année. Je vous souhaite tous un bon et 
paisible 2012! Amitié toujours ~Laura, ton petit moineau poète xoxoxooxox

Thank you so much for having read me this year. I wish you all a good and 

peaceful 2012! Friendship always ~Laura, your little sparrow poet xoxoxo

mercredi 21 décembre 2011

The B-52's "Roam"

A beautiful memory: roller skating and dancing along the paved-over train track 
in San Juan Capistrano, Christmas 1989. xoxoxoxooxox
 


mardi 20 décembre 2011

pain that doesn't end

there's no metaphor in me
no irony or pathos
no poetry

just a stark pain
running down my arm
into my rib cage

there's no singing
no christmas
no holiday cheer

just a wish that my
heart would stop
knocking at my breast bone

it's simple:
when pain does not end
and you know it never will

what reasons can be given
for pushing through the heartbreak
of life on earth?

i've gone through them all
over and over in my head
but i'm still left hopeless

for sickness and pain
do not have an up side
beyond the cliché

and nobody knows
what it takes to keep doing it
alone in your room

shiny toys


Shiny Toys Festival 2010  - http://creative.arte.tv/fr/space/SHINY_TOYS/messages/


how sad we are
grasping at these straws
that divert us from
ourselves and one another

we're wired for consumption
hardwired to be bottomless
yet all our goods
do not unite us

we're estranged from
the very thing we want
communion with others
and unconditional love

we become
slaves to desire
for there will always be
something newer and shinier

the raw materials alone
will require brutal wars
we're standing on the graves
of starving children


jeudi 15 décembre 2011

Beautiful Girls


Frantz Charlet, A Morrocan Beauty Holding a Parrot


Girls, your beauty will not save you
the more beautiful you are
the more the hounds will follow you
wanting that beauty for themselves
and once they are done
you will find yourself alone
because some hounds have nothing
beyond what lies between
their legs, it is insatiable
and no one beauty will satisfy it

I've seen the most beautiful girls
whom artists would praise as goddesses
throw themselves at the first hound
that follows them because
to be wanted is everything
to be desired is the highest honor
for a beautiful girl who has
no sense of her own value

You are not this body even if
today it appears dazzling
tomorrow anything can happen
and will happen and
it will take all your endeavor
to maintain that beauty that
men once found so desirable

Girls, you will suffer
girls, you will be forgotten
girls, live for knowledge
throw yourself into your life
and forget the hounds that follow you
clean out your closets and
learn to sing a song that has
nothing to do with belonging
for you belong even if
no one acknowledges you

There are worse things
besides loneliness
and the wounds you get today
a lifetime later may not heal
love and protect yourself today
for there is but one life and
one beauty that does not fade
the beauty of self-honor

mardi 13 décembre 2011

Mysogyny

for radical feminists everywhere and those who want to be...

Cut off my head
hands and feet
I won't grow a penis
but I've got one tucked
away if i need it

I didn't need
Bettelheim to tell me
about refrigerator moms
or Lacan to warn me
about absent fathers

I've wrapped myself
in yards of sackcloth
since I was girl
yet I still had to hide
in too many closets

Nature or nuture
philosophy or psy-ops
religion or culture
each one is founded
on Mysogyny

Throw off the masculine
ideological shackles
Women will never be free
until we're ready to
start from zero


vendredi 9 décembre 2011

Little creation, big message

mars and venus


Mars and Venus by Di Cosimo Piero (Renaissance)


come jupiter
come mars
come venus
night after night
until egos fold
and we realize
how small how fragile
how enduring

when mars was setting
over the house next door
blinking blue then red
it brought up your memory
because mars fought with
venus in you
and i had to run across
the icy street to find
venus rising
just to complete
your life cycle

if only you had not
needed to fight so hard
for every bread crumb

if only you had been able
to follow your nature
and succomb to romance

the toro that was you
still rides the skies
and now that i see you
rising and falling
in these crystal nights
i know a little more about
how strong you were
how strong your love was
and it breaks my heart

love never dies
it just rises and falls
every night with
mars and venus


red mars

mardi 6 décembre 2011

humbug


cartoon by Chris Sims


yeah they're coming around again
all my friends
with spiced wine hot toddies
and all the myriad problems of
early christmas shopping

i told them christmas is dead
and god too for that matter

they've got telephones dripping
from their greazy fingers
they love to make calls to
their loved ones back home
and talk for hours

i told them i don't have the infrastructure
to talk long on the phone
i'm too weak to maintain
a two-way conversation

that's okay they love me as
i am broken at the kneecaps
they can manage the call
all by themselves if necessary

ho ho ho they stammer
ringing my bells
as if the messiah of hope came
and lit a 26-hr candle

and when i'm quiet for a couple of days
it all fades back into the woodwork
where it came from

that's okay with me
because i have nothing left to say
no christmas presents
no wishful thinking
no thinking at all to be honest

Mano Solo - Janvier

désolée que ce blog est si silencieux... j'ai une pneumonie, paiement pour paris. bisous. xooxoxooxoxox



dimanche 27 novembre 2011

habitude

i took the latch from off my door
and woe is me could write no more
i danced a holiday in france
drank with friends and spun romance
climbed up to sacré cœur at dawn
smoked cigarettes in the light of the moon
visited my buried love in the père
wept with the shattered dreams we share
then i came home again to rain
my little couch bed, my muted brain
the gray skies reflect a very sad song
but even then with anticipation
the floodgates are broken yet nary a word
there's no music in joy for this broken bird


kestral with broken wing

samedi 26 novembre 2011

samedi 5 novembre 2011

Packing for Paris (Tales of Moineau)



I can't see straight in the morning light
I'm blindly far-sighted and dry at the mouth
and sleep will come if I would just lie down
but the miles I have driven hover and pound
'til I'm black and blue and deep crunchy fried

Yes! I'm hypo but hazy listening to the rain
The traffic is heavy for a Saturday
It was four thirty-five and now it's eight am
I'm still compiling the list of my alibis
plotting my excuses, summoning some lies

Dear God, I'm human! How much more
bodily pain am I supposed to ignore? "All!"
Select the suitcases, then pack up the pills
as the clock in the kitchen goes tick tick tick
and another day goes by and I still sit

My mask of preparedness begins to slip
My do-or-die mouthpiece is starting to drip
and I'm scared to walk because I might slip
back into the kingdom of the fearmonger
back far enough to feel my infantile anger

Oh Mama! Paris is at my feet
if i just stay awake and complete my list
Two shirts, two pants and one umbrella
insulin, eye shadow, this list is Orwellian!
'Cause the world is gonna end the ninth of November!

Look it up! You can see an asteroid is coming
or a planet or a comet, they aren't sure what
and I'll be in the air on my way to France
but so what so what so what so what
if the world is crushed to ashes and dust

For then I'll use my sparrow wings
to navigate another blue morning
A foghorn blasts near the Columbian bar
as boats launch into a tipsy blue ocean
and Moineau sets off for another adventure

jeudi 3 novembre 2011

LA VIDEO en avance de la sortie de "L'homme à tête de chou" de Bashung!!

One week before I take off for Paris... They are using my subtitles! Hurray!




Extrait de l'album « L'homme à tête de chou » à sortir le 7 novembre
http://www.alainbashung.fr

Production Company : ChezEddy
Director : Maxime Bruneel
Producer : Nicolas de Rosanbo
Line Producer : Coline Six
Production Manager : Anne-Lise Mallard
Animation : Antoine Ettori - Emmanuelle Walker - Matthieu Gaillard - Vincent Verniers - Gaëtan Louet - Hélène Marchal
Editing : Manuel Coutan - Olivier Guedj
Subtitles: Laura Tattoo

Fragile - Sting

Lest we forget how fragile we are




If blood will flow when flesh and steel are one
Drying in the colour of the evening sun
Tomorrow's rain will wash the stains away
But something in our minds will always stay
Perhaps this final act was meant
To clinch a lifetime's argument
That nothing comes from violence and nothing ever could
For all those born beneath an angry star
Lest we forget how fragile we are

On and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star like tears from a star
On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are how fragile we are

On and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star like tears from a star
On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are how fragile we are
How fragile we are how fragile we are

jeudi 27 octobre 2011

truth what truth



do you really want to know the truth
really really really
the brutal truth of a killing
at the 11th hour
far from the madding crowd
or where the madding crowd was found
with fisticuffs and daggers and guns
who descended like crazed crow to carrion
who drug a mad king out of his tunnel
then pummeled his head so hard
his blood fed the desert floor
all the while laughing and shouting
allah akbar allah akbar 
and who knows what else since
most of us don't understand the language
yes sodomized punched and stabbed him
in some kind of righteous victory
psychopathic glee
then decided to shoot him
this chieftain clown king
this magnate of 40 despotic years
snuffing out the lies and the truth
boasting about it on video
how i shot him in the head and chest
when they came to bring him to justice
justice shall be mine sayeth the lord
and believing himself to be righteous
even as the clown king did before
he shot him dead but not until
the rebellion boys had had their fill
all they had raped killed and died for
to prove beyond a shadow of doubt
to record and distribute
their manhood oh yes
and the war's triumpant end
are you ready to watch it
are you ready to ask questions
to be caught in a sandtrap
to see it all through the eye of a camera
to hold back your nausea
and withhold your humanity
and afterward to ask
why men are such barbarians
why the rule of law has no more merit
and how far away from truth
we will have to get before 
it's you you you you you and you
sliced up on the hood of a truck
or thunderstruck by an aerial drone
or put in solitary for years unknown
because you are vanished
stripped bare and humiliated
tortured until you'll say anything
to stop these crazed headhunters
these masters of video war
and its main stream press surrogates
and its agent provocateurs
who have stoked your anger until
they put in your hands a gun 
in the name of your father
in the name of jesus or allah
and tell you you can't fail
they've got your back
it's the perfect plan hallelujah
are you ready really really really ready
to plunge into this illusory world
or shall you have a cigarette first
change the channel and exclaim
that they all had it coming
the truth so veiled that if you heard it
you'd declare all nations insane
i won't go there angel
i'll just leave you with these images
and believing that you are freer now
than before we killed them
as these same mocking madmen
sell you and me further down the river
all of us the 99%
like herds of cattle to slaughter
but none the wiser

mercredi 26 octobre 2011

Song for an Occupation


Marcos Santos for NY Daily News, Rainy Day at the Occupy Wall Street protest


I'm shuffling through a street
filled with brown fallen leaves
I'm whistling Dylan songs
and slugging eau de vie
I've got nothing but goodwill
for myself and others
And then a crowd gathers
like birds of many feathers
each with a song and then
a chorus and then
a harmonic consensus

It's late October and
the night air is chill
We will fly in spite of it
My sisters, brothers, cousins
unfurl flags like wings
to honor the birth of another
Occupy Wall Street
our little hope and change corner
where justice and peace
confront terror and greed
and every bird shall be free

"Rise up oh ye phoenix hallelujah
Our hope has never died"


samedi 22 octobre 2011

a woman song


Laura Nyro


time, i've almost forgotten thee
as if you or i never existed
the listless hours spent
scanning row after row
of movie covers on the roku
while my limbs are ricocheting
off the couch cushions
kicking away the blankets
then lying very still so as
not to awaken more demons

it's a time of teacups and pain meds
and i find that i'm addicted
to coffee again
just to have something warm and
flowing to fill the deep hole
the steam swirling about me now
a white fog that reminds me
that my brain is dying
and how time dies away
when the dignity of unique thought
and my passion for words has fled
as readily as i was born with it

grief knows no time
it ridicules all escape clauses
like trying to read a book
when i can't remember
the last paragraph i just read
or picking up the book
only to realize i'm reading the
same chapter for the fourth time
and i don't realize it
until i'm halfway done
and then i can't remember
what will happen next

i'm watching gods and monsters
as passionately as a child
watches her favorite movie
over and over learning
and relearning the songs
do adults do this too i wonder
as i slip into a wormhole
i'll wake up like arthur c. clarke
on a strange new planet
or rip van winkle with 20 years gone
knowing no one

time is forgetting all about me
and everything i accomplished
i think about laura nyro
and that "one child born in a
world to carry on to carry on"
like her, i only wanted freedom
i too drove away demons
and hit refresh but it's never any use
i'm left with my own woman song
and a little bit of time to forget
the treason of chronic illness
even as i will be forgotten

mardi 18 octobre 2011

Deathwatch (from 1977)


C. R. W. Nevinson. A Taube. (1916-17)


Silence, amigo, men are dying.
Once a fiery cannonball, blazing missile,
now the perfect arrangement of strewn youth.
Who's today's hero?
Lenin is dead
and so are the children of this dark place.
This impermance suffices to say,
well, maybe in the next loophole,
that we all gotta go.
Saturated in the emotional counterplay, wait!
Who's dying? Not I.
Who's arguing the cause of existence?
Or its annihilation? Or its subterfuge?
The rights of these generals and undergraduate
innocents, the rights of the children and
what was once playtime...

Once a lovely view through Chicago,
now ghetto mania, ripped apart by city planners
and big rats.
Look, when you live this far out into space,
the whole scenario unfolds slowly
quietly violently until the entire population is
blinded by syphilis or controlled by
machine gun or worse:
When is the final Judgment?
Overwhelmed by hostility and a protective instinct,
the war could be won by pregnant flies.
Does God mind? Is he sinking into an old skin
or rummaging through letters we've sent him?
Does he save our prayers like birthday cars?
Mi amigo, I look at the stars
blasted in my imagination and they break apart
as real as I am sitting here,
letting the tape type and erase all this
deathwatching.
Tired, tired, tired of your slender view,
I swim to the backroom, open the window,
call your name, "Omega!"
and then reform.

Audience is not necessary for my anger,
eating leaves is natural.
Friend, friend, at best
we can move to the suburbs
or buy a condominium in Miami and
learn to speak Spanish.
I march from living room to
kitchen in search of Russian refugees, I want to
feed them and breed with them and
perhaps hear their stories.
Is anger hereditary?
If so, we'd have a wild race of
democrats.

You and me, amigo,
standing over these deceased,
we've got a long way to go.
The feeling is living in the skin, dormant
and yet,
at best we can heat ourselves on the death
fires escaping from the bloody nostrils,
and I won't cry through
the gates anymore or open my view any
wider than theirs and we may be safe
a few more years if the rats
don't find us first or God
decides to make a kind of emergency landing.
As long as he sleeps and the flag
keeps on flying, we'll be fine.

(May 30, 1977)

samedi 15 octobre 2011

prophesyin'




a pinch of this
a pinch of that
and we'll all die happy
lulled to sleep with
valerian and poppy
unoxygenated
crushed between rock
and joblessness
outfoxed by a media giant
who told us
once and for all
that there was a magic bullet
called demogoguery
yet all along
it was a siren call
for sleeping pulpits
and upraised goblets
from which we drank the blood
of christiandom's nipples
but were never satisfied
no, not good to the last drop
no, not nourishing but
a sexed up huffa
huffa huffa doll
going down faster
than it ever went up

they call me the c team
curmudgeon, corpuscle
join me on the mattress
and let's get it over with
and when it's done, brother
sister, when it's done
we'll wrap ourselves up
in our magic dragon
and fall asleep
listening for a starship:
there ain't nothing
that matters here no more
nothing another puff won't cure
or riding that huffa doll
into maximum vinyl
ain't nothing nothing
NOTHING more important than
how i love you
now get on over here
to the c-side, baby
we'll put on our
crash helmets
and ride into the sunset
just nickle 'n dimin'
huffin' 'n puffin' 'til
the big one comes

and we won't give a damn
no more ♪♩

mercredi 12 octobre 2011

Tu mourras moins bête

mais tu mourras quand même! (You'll die less stupid, but you'll die all the same!)

Photobucket

Part bd, part science, the book is out Sept 22, 2011. But there is also a delicious science blog by Marion Montaigne (click her name to visit!)




mardi 11 octobre 2011

Two Sonnets


                          I.

I spied a girl in deep concentration
Whose very heart the stone she sat upon
Kept 'til daybreak her own fascination
And followed where a mirror could be drawn.
Her life was hidden in a bloody vessel
The rim of which its contents could not hold
And which the age of leisure could not lessen
Entrance of death in the night of her soul.
Her body fades away of clear distinction,
And sight and sound and light they all converge:
For light's sake the memory extinction;
For light's sake the power and the purge.
     Her body and her heritage have flown;
     She sailed over the valley on a stone.



                         II.

When all is said and done we sit
Like stoic pictures on the wall,
When every line is carefully writ
Lest we lose our course and fall,
Digest we fragments of the truth,
We, the dark-encountering clan
Spew our matters toward the sooth,
The celebrated birth of man.
We do not fear the awful cost,
(Like fools we hold a beggar's cup)
And covet thus the minor loss
Of time and words and death's triumph.
      Of darker poets still ye see
      They do infect the air we breathe!

                      (1980)

Paintings by Edvard Munch: A Nude and Moonlight on the Shore

samedi 8 octobre 2011

New Bashung! L'homme à tête de chou

Nobody's positive that this is the cover of the new cd that finally (finally!) is coming out from Barclay/Universal but it's making the rounds. // Rien n'est certain sur la pochette mais cette image vogue sur les sites... Nov 7, 2011!
 

Oh ça me coûte le goutte-goutte/ Goûte goûte!




vendredi 7 octobre 2011

rain song


Crow in the Rain by Rea N. Radifer


in the rain crows go quiet
they rest on wires
ruffling first one wing
wringing the next
then sit as still as statues
until a sudden urge to float
throws them down to
eek out worms

rain has much the same
effect upon this poet
who sits non compos mentis
on her little couch-throne
eyes barely open
in a rain-soaked dumbness
the will to live gone
yet eeking out poems


postscript.
after i wrote this, i watched a little tribe of soaking wet
sparrows pecking at seeds on my patio. it was such a 
pathetic sight. it seems the heavy oregon rains are back,
along with the struggles of all us birds and bird lovers.
~lt              

mardi 4 octobre 2011

winter song


Melancoly Laura by Edvard Munch (1899)

a winter song is springing
to my alerted ears
the soft roar of rain
that replenishes my tears
soaks open my heart
and takes in the winter songs
of dead and the dying poets
i wash and dress their bodies
gather the last autumn roses
then lay them on a boat
for the long journey home
standing on the shore as rain
falls down upon my head
i hope someone will care for me
as i have cared for them

vendredi 30 septembre 2011

i wish (but it's all in vain)

i wish (i wish i wish i wish)
i wish (i wish i wish)
but it's all in vain (it's all it's all in vain in vain)
~Chumbawamba


Morning by Edvard Munch

i wish i could see troy davis
sitting at the right hand of the father
encompassed in a hallowed light
while angels at his shoulders
sing the hallelujah chorus
and all the little beasts of burden
throng at his sandaled feet

i wish i could see jews and arabs from
all the great lands of the middle east
hand each other olive branches
and call each other auntie cousin niece
as tears stream down their cheeks
in a moment of great reconciliation
with acts of heroic forgiveness

i wish (in vain perhaps)
that western powers would donate
one meal a day from each of its citizens
and that such a simple act would lessen
the body fat of overweight americans
and end the hunger pangs of
continental africa and everyone else

i wish someone would tell us
what those planes crisscrossing
the blue skies are spraying and why
i wish i could stop thinking about it
and watch the old cloud forms roll by
as sweet winds cool the summer heat
and rains fall down to cleanse the earth

i wish they would discover
the cause of my disease
and i could experience a day again
without this pain and misery
may no one else live 15 years 
with perpetual pain and zero care
and the disbelief of ignorant doctors

i wish we would destroy
every weapon in our arsenals
all the guns of china and russia
pakistan israel columbia
india libya united states france
every weapon yes the end of wmd
talk to everyone and live in peace

this fragile peace does not exist
not peace but cold wars
cold wars turned to hot wars
violated women innocent children
begging dinars at car doors
and at the end of the fumes
an iraqi sunset and the bitter dregs of war

i wish i wish i wish
but it's all in vain but it's all in vain
i wish i wish i wish
but it's all but it's all but it's all
in vain in vain ...


Video by moineau