Vertigo in a Cactus Garden

The one and only Al Banberg’s operetta Little Lulu

Livestreamed from the Center for Rare Combinations

In Alpha Centuri West.

It’s like vertigo in a cactus garden

Is the best way I can describe it.

Stone cholos turned nouveau riche

Against a backdrop of insurgents surging like false positives

Licensed in all fifty states

Of insanity, when state of the art

Becomes art of the state.

Against a backdrop of flight control teams

And their counterparts in counterintelligence

Tracking rocket grade ice cream trucks

In confirmed free drift

Through the identical twin sister cities.

Against a backdrop of artisanal data mining

And weewee pad manufacturing,

Think tanks and citadels,

Supernumeraries telling plenipotentiaries

Personal stories about giving back.

Against a backdrop of spikeball and berthing ports,

Bulky item pickups, burning fiery furnaces,

Short lists and free 30-day trials,

Peanut Farms and marathons

Global pawn shops and digital trading posts.

Against a backdrop of cabanas and verandahs

A pensive forest, cumbrous copse or stand,

Birds gathering in the gathering trees

Like gatherings in the lobbies and concourses

The nooks and alcoves of the convention hall.

Against a backdrop of theory freaks and black brant geese,

Funny boat racing on the Venice canals

Or that Grand Canyon train tour

Or a cabin by the lake

Or the starter wickiup near an evaporating wadi.

People meet at pickleball,

Fall in love,

Partner for eternity.

It has a very happy ending.

Aw baby don’t cry.

© 2020 Randy Stark

Please visit my website at www.randystark.com and my page at Write Up The Road.

Two poems: Big Game; Give Me Liberty

Big Game

Big Agra

Big Pharma

Big Finance

Big Education

Big Data

Big Oil

Big Carbon

Big Food

Big Tech

Big Tobacco

Big Soda

Big Media

Big Chocolate

Big Banks

Big Paper

Big X overhead

Cancelling your ass OUT.

Give Me Liberty

Liberty head.

Liberty cap.

Liberty seated.

Liberty standing.

Liberty walking.

Liberty driving.

Pretty red car.

Pretty blue plates.

Liberty dining.

Liberty at the club.

Liberty behind closed doors.

© 2020 Randy Stark

Please visit my website at www.randystark.com and my page at Write Up The Road.

Clouds (a work in progress)

Sometimes they’re dense.

Sometimes they’re smart.

Some are pure anarchy.

Some morph into lattice.

Sometimes they’re the problem, sometimes the solution.

Sometimes they’re abstract and sometimes precise.

Sometimes they’re a Netflix series about a Netflix series.

Sometimes they have no online mojo at all.

Some are greater than eight but less than ten.

Others have swollen heads full of data.

One minute they’re cutting across the middle of South America,

The next they’re running up the west coast of Africa.

Sometimes they wander lonely as a poet.

Sometimes they quit with less than two-weeks notice.

Sometimes they’re crushing the mountains trying to extract juice.

Sometimes you have to be union to move them.

Sometimes they are flayed umbrellas.

Sometimes they are starting a family.

Sometimes a silver platter and chalice set.

Sometimes they’re tied in the pickup truck bed

Like a dirt bike, or a calf, or a washing machine.

Sometimes they’re trending.

Sometimes they pause.

Sometimes they stream.

Sometimes they’re thunderstruck.

Sometimes serene.

Sometimes they look down on us but mostly we look up.

Some appear to be texting and planning to hook up.

Some are fluffy, some are like roots,

Some are like laws on the books.

Some gather like herds, or demonstrate hive behavior.

Some were there at the ascension of our savior (sorry).

Some are batting, grandma hair, penumbrae,

Or auditioning for the part of Antarctica

In the annual World Atlas Show.

Some are preauthorized,

Some shop at Home Depot, some shop at Lowes,

Some are like nymphs, some just the clothes (sorry).

Sometimes they loll like odalisques.

Some clot like thrombosis.

Sometimes they play for the Kerrville Cottonmouths.

Some scatter like meiosis.

And sometimes they’re swollen, or abetting a swelter,

And that’s when it’s time for the wise to seek shelter.

© 2020 Randy Stark

Please visit my website at www.randystark.com and my page at Write Up The Road.

Two poems: Yeah That's Me Too; Royal Fork

Yeah That’s Me Too

Now at orbital sunset

After six decades of wokeness

I never outgrew anything but my Superman costume

And what I learned in school

I want to lay my burdens down

For too long I’ve been the driver.

Once or twice something fell into my lap

Otherwise I’ve always been hustling.

I need to be the passenger more often.

Like a Croatian registered cruise ship quarantined

In a bottle off the coast.

Captain conducting a go/no-go poll

Whether to wash up on shore.

Royal Buffet

We ate them like the Donner party.

All the little princess and princes,

The Williams and Harrys,

The Kates and the Margarets,

Queens, Kings, Earls, et al.

Then we take and sell their jewelry at swap meets.

Most of it is made in China.

The same 100 factories that are involved

In the production of raw materials needed to produce fentanyl.

And we wonder how the virus got here?

© 2020 Randy Stark

Please visit my website at www.randystark.com and my page at Write Up The Road.

from Head Light 6/13/2020

From the Locker Room
http://writeuptheroad.com/from-the-locker-room/

www.randystark.com

From Head Light, June 11, 2020

http://writeuptheroad.com/hot-coals-only/

Tryna Focus

It’s only now just beginning to dawn on me, the significance of the last week or so. Around the house there has been discussion, amplification, books out, art viewed, music listened to, memes shared.

Music: Edna Tatum’s Gospel Classics, Duke Jordan Jazz Lab, Fats Navarro Memorial, Elmo Hope, a set of music videos by Vince Staples, George Frideric Handel’s 1710 oratorio Apollo e Dafne, Gary Eister, and a ton of birdsong.

Names and other subjects that came up in conversation, came to light in contemplation, came to hand to be read; : George Floyd, the George Floyd mural (by Cadex Herrera, Greta McClain, and Xena Goldman), James Baldwin, Claudia Rankine, the Harlem Renaissance, more art by Ebony G. Patterson, MB Tolson, Robert Creeley, Audre Lord, Jenny Zhang; a Kindle that right now would open to poems by William Wordsworth (about which more later) a tablet used for LARB, NYRB, NASA, Bomb, Unlikely Stories, Jerome Rothenberg, Bernstein, there’s a Magritte monograph, there were discussions of a collage art project George Floyd-inspired, and Ani DiFranco’s autobio; Rattle magazine, the adult and kids versions (a couple of good, creative pieces in each) and a world atlas.

Lydia

Also Nyachiro Lydia Kasese and Ngwatilo Mawiyoo and Hope Wabuke.

Ngwatilo

Hope

The Christo half of the Christo/Jeanne-Claude art duo, passed away. Jeanne-Claude predeceased him.  I’ve read they were “firmly independent, eschewing a reliance on the art world to financially support their work. They funded it themselves, often selling preparatory drawings to do.”

"We pay with our money! No grants, no money from the industry," he said at the opening of "The London Mastaba" in 2018. "All these projects get initiated by us. Nobody asked us to do it. Nobody asked us to wrap the Reichstag. Nobody asked us to install floating piers. We decided that we do exactly what we like to do."

And the meme: 

 

New work at Unlikely Stories

https://www.unlikelystories.org/content/dessert

https://www.unlikelystories.org/content/dessert

Expanding Lines

BRIEF SUMMARY OF IMPORTANT INFORMATION

The train leaves in 15 minutes.

LOOK IT’S FIVE STARS

Five stars!

EXPANDING LINES

Is this what Tuttle was talking about?

Bringing Matisse into the discussion?

MANAGE HISTORY

Two laps equal a mile

Lapses into naps and denial

Here is your chance

Download the app.

CUNNILINGUS

For the best experience,

One simple trick.

SEE ALSO

Seer.

WE’RE ALL ABOUT YOU

Terms and conditions apply.

REDOUBT

Temporary fortification against getting fooled again.

HAIR DONE COOL

Like he got triple hair.

PUSS, MUG AND MAW

LLC.

THE PERFECT BODY

That tired, old lie.

BOUNTY HUNTER

Tracking runaway rolls of Bounty.

(Is Doha in Qatar?)

WHEN I CAN’T GET ENOUGH BECAME MORE THAN AN EXCUSE

Cell phones guaranteed a penis for everybody.

CALIFORNIA FAN PALM

A susurrating 14-hour grandfather clock.

INTERTEXTUALITY

Plus intersectionality

Equals intersexuality.

CONNECTIVITY

The tissue issue.

YOUR MARRIAGE

How’s that going for you?

STABLE TILT

Made possible by a major gift.

BUCKET LIST

Death.

AT LEAST THE CELL PHONE STAYS STIFF

Hey. Right?

© 2020 Randy Stark

Please visit my website at www.randystark.com and my page at Write Up The Road.

The Avenue of Kisses

I have a route in mind but no destination. Upper division action. Harrowing, startling adventure. Highly experimental. Deeply haunted. Arguably soaring. Gripping and passionate. Tenderly sensual.

So what are you waiting for? Agree and join. Everything’s wiped down. and nobody gets coronavirus on their pee pee. It’s only been me here, who knows where I’ve been?

ISS sightings and reading and listening to music and writing and surfing the web—in these uncertain times that’s mostly what I do. Al-Jazeera (too many popups) and NASA are my go-to sites. I’m also redeveloping age-idled talents such as drunk calling, drunk emailing and drunk texting.

Not sure what the drinking does, but the other stuff gets me thinking.

And it’s more than not being able to do things you used to do (good handshakes, male and female, I miss those terribly), it is having to do things you never did before, things that as long as human beings have walked this earth en masse they haven’t ever had to do en masse.

When I started writing into tuna salad as a sandwich, I couldn’t sleep, knowing I had to post on both blogs. And when finished reading I thought to make tuna pasta salad would be fine.

I read today that superheroes have no problem with otherness.

And I read some poems by Mina Loy and Andre Breton!!! (The title of this post is from The Magnetic Fields by Andre Breton and Philippe Soupault, a surrealist text published in 1920.) And I looked at some super amazing artwork by Chitra Ganesh.

OK OK It was a long drive but it wasn’t like oh my god I’m going to die, right?

© 2020 Randy Stark

Please visit my website at www.randystark.com and my page at Write Up The Road.