New poems, new book, New Kids On The Block

Here's a new post:

I have some new poems on Mannequin Envy. They're new and sparkly and fun for the whole family.

At this point, it's safe to announce that I have a new collection of poems scheduled to be released by sunnyoutside press in Fall 2009. The collection is titled After The Honeymoon, and it picks up where the chapbook Honey, I'm Home left off. In fact, in many ways, it's the full-length version of the chapbook, including some of the same poems. In the meantime, sunnyoutside will be releasing new books from a couple of my friends, Tim Horvath and Rebecca Schumejda . So keep an eye out and buy their books while they're new.

When I was in 8th grade, I lost my girlfriend to Jordan from The New Kids On The Block. Perhaps I should clarify. This was circa 1988, shortly before I'd start sporting my new mullet, and my girlfriend, who we'll call Bitch Who Ripped My Fragile Young Heart Out, bought a new glossy folder with a picture of The New Kids On The Block "hangin' tough" on the front AND back. After several days of staring at the folder, BWRMFYHO decided that she preferred the presence of Jordan on her new folder to me.

Shit, she was probably right.

Dave Church, R.I.P.

Last night, while I was staying at my parents' place in Rhode Island, I received news via e-mail that the Rhode Island-poet and my friend Dave Church had passed away at age 61. It has been years since I've spoken to Dave---or corresponded with him through letters, which was our primary line of communication---yet the news hit me hard.

During the years of 2001-2002, I would receive long letters from Dave, typed on his old electric typewriter, and fire letters back zealously. Today, when I returned home to New Hampshire, I went through a box of personal items---poems and stories I've written that never saw a second-draft and many of my old letters from writers, friends, ex-girlfriends, etc. Since the dawn of our technological age, e-mails seem to have made the art of the epistolary form obsolete; and digging up Dave Church's old letters and reading through them this afternoon, soaking up the wisdom, heart and honesty that went into them, it seems to me that this is more than a damn shame.

Maybe some other time I'll write about my experiences visiting Dave in his attic apartment in Providence, the characters and improbable episodes that unfolded, but right now, it doesn't seem right to eulogize him with fancy or funny anecdotes. I can, however, say this: I learned as much, if not more, about life and writing from talking and corresponding with Dave Church than I have in most of my MFA workshop classes (and I've had some fabulous workshop professors). Sadly, for the last half-decade, Dave and I lost touch, and consequently, I missed out on an education, at a time when I most needed his perspective. I want to post a poem that Dave sent me in a letter dated 8-14-02---every one of Dave's letters came to me with poems, fliers for readings, or audio tapes---and if this poem has been published somewhere or is copyrighted by someone else, please let me know, and I'll take it down. But it seems to me, right now, to be especially apropos:

"And I'm The Star"

The same movie has been playing in my head
for three nights now. It's called
THIS IS YOUR LIFE!

In the beginning
there's plenty of action---
fast cars,
easy money,
a babe on both
sides of me,
and two
on my lap.

The middle moves along
in an ordinary way.
The action is packed
with more corn
than pop.

It's the ending that bothers me---

I'm falling...

Dave Church
9.02

God bless you, my friend. Rest, I hope, finally in peace. And, by the way, you've been right in all of your advice. All of it.

Well-done, Keith. Bingo.

I found this video on the poet William Taylor Jr.'s Myspace blog, and it nearly moved me to tears. I haven't heard a more intelligent, beautiful response to the bigots in California who voted for Prop. 8. Everyone should listen to this.

The Drop-Down Kid

At one point, I put up a post about my addiction to Googling my own name. So you can only imagine the consummate bliss I experienced yesterday when I went to type "Nate Graziano" into the search engine, and before I finished typing it, I saw the name appear on Google's drop-down menu next to "63,600 results." For a narcissist like myself, this is veritable dream come true. As I understand it, it means that 63,600 of my closest friends have been looking for me. I actually began to tear up. This will likely be my only flirt with fame.

Strangely---and I'll admit this was a bit disconcerting---when I searched "Nathan Graziano," which is the name I publish my work under, it did NOT come up on the drop-down menu. Why? Thus are the mysteries of the universe. But, hell, I'm not complaining.

I also have some new poems up on Word Riot. I gave you the link, but I'm sure if you Google-searched "Word Riot" and my name, it would come up.

Rock and roll! Hello, Cleveland!

Happy Hallo-weenie

I'm getting old. I don't mean John McCain old, or "walk-around-all-hunched-over-and-grumbling-to-myself" old, or "while-whistling-Glenn-Miller-big-band-songs-I-happen-to-crap-myself-and-don't-miss-a-note" OLD; but old in the sense that I see myself becoming more and more of a curmudgeon.

Recently, I actually had to stop myself while saying to a friend, "Can you believe the Halloween costumes these girls are wearing these days? They look like whores." What the hell is going on here? In my younger, hipper days, I had a term for those costumes: eye candy. You would never hear me complaining about them being too "skimpy" or "revealing." In fact, part of what made this country so great, in my eyes, was the fact that one night a year beautiful women walked around dressed like strippers and prostitutes in establishments that served beer. God bless America! Here I am, at the age of 33, saying stupid things like that aforementioned comment to a friend.

Either I'm getting old or gay. Let's go with old, all right?

Now, something else just occurred to me. While I was writing this, I went on Google and searched "sexy Halloween costumes." It seems that just about any occupation, regardless of what you do, has been sexed-up and made into a Halloween costume. With just a short 35-minutes perusal of the pictures, I found a sexy nurse, a sexy police officer, a sexy referee, a sexy secretary, a sexy school teacher, a sexy diner waitress, a sexy soldier, and the ubiquitous sexy French maid. Looking at these things, one would think the costumes had been pilfered from the set of a Ron Jeremy film. But no. They're sold for everyone, anyone, and in plus-sizes.

This got me thinking of occupations that you won't see a sexed-up and made into a costume, feel free to add more to this thread: 1.) a sweat shop worker 2.) anything where a hairnet is required as part of the uniform 3.) a janitor 4.) a housewife (I'm dead for saying that) 5.) a disgruntled postal worker 6.) a social worker at an STD clinic 7.) a telemarketer 8.) an assistant in a basement meth lab.

By the way, I read somewhere that the number one costume for women this year is Sarah Palin. I'm not sure how I feel about that. Oh, who am I kidding? She's hot.

Another Bloody Sock?

The score was 5-0 in the third inning. Oh God, I thought, why put myself through this? Again.

I don't care how many times The Red Sox have come back in an ALCS Series, (and, for the record, the answer is twice) for lifelong Red Sox fans, you never, never shake the feeling that they'll break your heart. For this new generation of Red Sox fans, these pink hat cheerleaders, the come-back has become routine, a final theatrical act. But for those of us that remember Buckner and Boone (and Bucky and beyond), and the winters of heartache that followed, Thursday night seemed be fixing toward a merciful exit: The Sox soundly beaten by a better team.

But no.

For a man who grew up knowing that the pretty girl's smile is never followed by a kiss, I refuse to get strung along. The anomolies of 2004 and 2007 were the most unlikeliest of lays. Those were the "I smiled at the beautiful woman and it just so happened she was so drunk she slept with me" moments. It was the baseball version of Knocked Up. Twice.

Yes. I want to see Josh Beckett be the Josh Beckett of 2007 tomorrow night. I want to go out and feel proud when a drunken fan tells me I look like him. But I don't expect it. And I never will.

Here's the deal: I went to bed. I was convinced they lost.

Part of growing up as a Red Sox fan was learning, at an early age, to deal with disappointment. I'm not sure if this is an Eastern or Western idea, or something I stole from a Bukowski poem, but the only way to assure that one is not disappointed is to NOT have expectations. I've learned that much as a Red Sox fan---although I feel like a shit-heel saying this in the presence of any Cubs fans who might be reading this.

So I expect nothing from the Sox tomorrow night. Logic and statistics tells me that James Shields will be nothing but "Big Game James." Recent history tells me that Beckett is hurt, and the Sox brass are mum. Will The Sox win tomorrow? Will we see another Bloody Sock?

If you jumped on the bus in 2003 or 2004, when The Idiots became vogue and a pink hat became sexy, cue up your Neil Diamond and Dropkick Murphy's CDs and wait for a celebration. Call your up B.U. buddies from Long Island, or text them, tell 'em that you're having a playoff party. "And, hey, did you hear, Cody got tickets!"

For the rest of us, we'll chew our thumbs and know Longoria and Upton and Shields aren't accidents; we'll know that comebacks are both magical and whimsical; we'll try to realize what Gatsby never learned: you can never recreate the past.

And in the process, we'll throw the middle finger at Manny and Damon and Nomar, who are all at home, bathing in bucks, watching the game with us.

My picks for The World Series

Let me start with the National League because, for me, it's not a real league, unless The Sox make the World Series and must efficiently dismantle one of those bands of rogues who don't even have the decency to use a DH.

The Los Angeles Dodgers. After the Manny trade, which Bill Simmons wrote a most excellent article about, The Dodgers became a blip on my baseball radar. In fact, before the trade, I was quasi-rooting for them to do something that Joe Torre could ram right up the asses of Yankee ownership and fans everywhere, and lo, now they're one of the final four teams left in baseball. Where is Joe Girardi these days? Maybe Fox Sports took pity on his sad ass and brought him back an as analyst, or maybe he's stacking cans of Fancy Feast at a supermarket in Long Island. Who cares? Baseball's most bloated budget really fielded a dream team this year, huh? And next year, when The Evil Empire swoons down with their bag of blood-money made on their new stadium and steals Manny away from his new favorite place in the world, LaLa Land, may the same curse of mediocrity befall them again, in their new House of Overpaid Losers. But watching the Dodgers right now is bitter-sweet. If there were to be a Sox/Dodgers Series, it would be fun to hear Manny's homecoming greeting from the Fenway Faithful---guarantee it will make Johnny Damon's first game back look like a group hug---and it is nice to see Torre taking another team into October while A-Rod sits at home and counts his money like Dickensian villain. Then there's Derek Lowe---an alcoholic, philandering, man-child. In other words, my kind of dude. However, those poor fucking Cubbies fans. Jesus, if John McCain is elected, I think Chicago might burn to the ground.

The Philadelphia Phillies. Other than the fact that Ryan Howard may be one of the largest and most dangerous black men since The Sandman in Mike Tyson's Punchout---does anyone remember that son of a bitch? I blame my inability to show love in my adult life on the beatings I took from him---I really know very little about this team. Let's see. There's Chase Utley. Has there ever been a whiter name than Chase Utley? He sounds like he should doing crew at Phillips-Exeter Academy. "Hey, Chase, can you explain to me what a sub-prime loan really is?" But The Phillies took The Mets out of the playoffs, so they get props for making the city of New York a little more miserable this winter. Other than that, I got nothing. Like I said, The NL is not a real league. For me, they might as well be Hobbits competing in some strange game that involves a wicker basket and a yarn ball where Leonard Nemoy does both the play-by-play and analysis.

My pick: The Dodgers in 6 games.

Now to The American League, something I know only slightly more about; however, being a man who has talked out his ass for 33 years now, I do not find it even slightly daunting to act like I know what I'm saying.

The Tampa Bay Rays. What happened to the Devil in the old Devil Rays? I liked the Devil, loved him even. Now the Devil is gone, and in its place is this strange team that seems to have come out nowhere. Actually, that's not true. At first, I thought they were sent by some Prime Mover who controls all that is good and evil in the baseball world (hence, the dumping The Devil) simply to teach The New York Yankees a lesson about avarice by having The Rays finish ahead of them. But as I waited and waited for their Lindsay Lohan-like collapse, it never happened. Now they've become analogous to that girl in high school who was pimply, a little overweight and on the bad side of butt-ugly, who shows up at the 10-year reunion trimmed-down, made-over and showing her enough cleavage to make you painfully aware of the fact that she'll never, regardless of the circumstance, ever sleep with your sad, flabby, drunken ass, nor any of your now-loser buddies who are organizing a Beirut tournament at an afterhours party. Did I say never? Oh yeah, and she changed her name, too. I spent the past ten years making fun of the Rays, now I'm staring at the very real possibility that they might eliminate my Sox, dash their dreams of becoming the first team in nearly a decade to win back-to-back World Series (I can't remember the last the team). To finish my analogy, let's say Crawford is the left tit; Longoria the right one; Carlos Pena the bush (groomed to a landing strip); Garza the left leg; Shields the right; Kazmir the tight ass; and shimmying in a little slink dress, pulling it all together, there's Joe Madden. Okay, Joe Madden's face on a female body just ruined it. Reciprocally, I hope I just ruined The Rays.

The Boston Red Sox. The Boys from Beantown, The Olde Towne Team have, somehow, against all probable odds, made it back to The ALCS. They have a banged up Mike Lowell, a recovering JD Drew, a Josh Beckett who barely resembled his stunning playoff self (that sounded gay, didn't it?), and a dismantled 3-4 line-up that was arguably the most lethal hitting duo since Ruth/Gehrig. But now they have youth and energy, and a couple of guys in the infield---Pedroia and Youk---who have to at least be included in MVP conversations. They have baseball's next left-handed ace in Jon Lester, and I'll always feel comfortable, Manny or no Manny, when the game is on the line and Big Papi grabs a bat. No, this is not a team as colorful as the cardiac Idiots of 2004, but they're professional, especially Jason Bay who came over when Theo sent Madonna to a place where he might land a cameo on Entourage someday, smoking a joint with Turtle. That's assuming it's before the Evil Empire, now headed by Hank "Every Bit the Douche Bag as Dear Old Dad" Steinbrenner, scoops him up by the dreadlocks and transplants him to The New Stadium. Listen, I still have to pinch myself when I stop and think that five years ago I was sitting in catatonic state in a rocking chair after Aaron Fucking Boone's blast in Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS, convinced that the Sox would never win a World Series in my lifetime---which is why you'll never see me laughing at Cubs fans. But here they are today, seven wins from their third World Series in five years, sealing the deal on becoming a veritable dynasty. Goddamn it. If The Rays beat them, it will be the work of The Devil. God is clearly not looking over our economy right now, so he must be watching The Sox.

My pick: The Sox sweep!