Confessions of a Human Nerve Ending

A Weird Kind of Day

dbodinem@gmail.com (Don McIver) — Wed, 23 May 2012 20:36:11 PDT

So, I'm not particularly superstitious, but this day has been kind of weird, and I'm not sure which way its gonna go.

Lunch...some random dude drops a coupon off for a restaurant that's nearby that I've never heard of. Close by...a restaurant, so I break for lunch and head there. Not terribly big and in a location I would've never thought to look for a restaurant so I sit down and order a sandwich: Hawaiian Ham on sour dough. It comes out and I eat my cole slaw (not too sweet) and then start eating my sandwich: lettuce, tomato, mayo, pineapple, but no ham. Seriously, no ham. I ordered a Hawaiian Ham sandwich and they forgot the ham. So I call my waiter over, show him the sandwich and watch as he whisks my hamless ham sandwich off. A few minutes later, he sets down another sandwich, with ham and a new side of cole slaw and says, "Chef says lunch is on us."

Hey free lunch.

Day goes as planned. I talk, answer e-mail, finish up some paperwork and head out to a surprise meeting at payroll as my department representative. Over the last 3 years, all salaries at the college have been frozen. But last year, if the budget situation improved, the college decided that it would grant a one time disbursement to all employees (if they were still employed by such and such a date) and had started work before February 2012). Yippee! Free money. I go to the meeting, listen to payroll explain how the process worked, why they're having to give paper checks instead of direct deposit, how they got it so that everyone received the same amount (if you were full-time you got $900...no matter whether you had a lot of dependents or none at all). After about 45 minutes of glad handing, questions, etc. we each a get a big stack of checks to take back.

Back at the office, we start going through the checks and the only one missing is mine. Everyone in our department got a check but me. No plausible explanation (no I'm not having my income garnished for delinquent child support; yes, I've been employed since 2002 and am still employed), but I don't have a check. Ironic? The one person who went to the meeting to pick up the checks doesn't have one.

We make a few phone calls and discover that as we were speaking my check was winding its way to the Westside campus (where payroll still has me located even though I haven't worked at the Westside for 2 years). Weird. I rest a bit easy, plan on not spending as much money at the grocery store, and relax. The money's coming, but probably not till next week when they figure out I'm not there anymore and drop it in the mailbox.

Hey free money...sort of.

End of the day, I'm hungry and against my better judgment decide I'll give Wendy's a try. I order and specifically substitute out my fries for a side order of macaroni and cheese.

The front counter guy starts filling my order and puts a big order of fries on my tray.

I say, "I subbed out the fries with mac and cheese."

He nods and then says, "Don't worry. You can have those too."

Hey free fries....but now I'm really confused. This has been a weird kind of day.

Girl Wake

dbodinem@gmail.com (Don McIver) — Mon, 14 May 2012 12:08:01 PDT

Blond hair

pulled back in a pony tail,

black sports bra

short, tight black shorts with red trim,

you ran by me on the other side of the road.

One guy working on a roof nearby

stepped towards his buddy,

tapped his shoulder and pointed towards you

then gave me the thumbs up.

A young man on a bike

made the Sign of the Cross

watching you and riding.

Three men, on your side,

dutifully parted

then craned their necks towards you.

A dog let out a lonesome howl;

a cat froze in place in the middle of the street;

a screech of brakes erupted;

a finch fluttered overhead,

and I smelled Honeysuckle.

Did you know you were a wave
and would leave so many men gesturing
and staring in your wake?

Did you think your wake would cause this
on your lunchtime jog?

Caja Del Rio

dbodinem@gmail.com (Don McIver) — Tue, 01 May 2012 08:39:49 PDT

The wind picks up. Encased in a tent, I'm attached to a kite

about to take flight,

and tonight I'm thankful for plastic.

The rain fly strains at the sown straps, tent stakes, and plastic snaps,

and I, tucked inside, watch the walls bend and buckle,

then snap back in place.

Dry, I peek out the transparent screen knowing the low clouds

reflecting the city lights of Santa Fe,

make the plateau a dull gray as a smattering of raindrops fall.

In the morning, green grass, white cactus flower,

Indian Paintbrush, brown volcanic rock,

and two unknown peaks, bathed in morning light, frame us as we pack up.

The wind picks up. On my bike, I'm attached to my bike pedals by shoes,

and my legs push at the pedals

and today I'm thankful for muscle.

All the guidebooks suggested I might see horses,

but we don't and find our way back to the road

and set out towards our car.

How much personal space must a cow need?

Clearly timid and afraid, they run, never away or across the road and up,

but together they run in the same direction that we travel

Separated from others by a barbed wire fence,

two calves run away from us and along the fence with the others

on the other side.

They always run, and at times,

the calf has to skirt too close as the fence line and road converge

and it panics, skips ahead even faster causing the others to full on sprint as well.

Finally, they somehow squeak through the fence and find themselves with the others.

I can’t find a break in the fence

and wonder how they suddenly crossed?

What process did it go through to go through the fence?

To decide that enough was enough?

To suddenly find themselves with a fence behind instead of always in front?

Are there fences that I run along?

Are there fences that move on without a break

that I can just walk through?

For 10 years we ran along the fence

and never looked for a break

and now we see the family that may never be ours.

Science has its limits.

No more clomid,

the hysterosalpingogram was enough to say stop.

In a room, with diagrams and machines,

all the plumbing's in place and the data confirms what we know.

Time is a calf running out. Life is a series of fences.

La Palabra: the Word is Woman

dbodinem@gmail.com (Don McIver) — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 12:19:32 PDT

Backstage, I stepped between Jive Poetic and a woman.

Jive, a very tall, svelte black man, was upset and letting her know.

She , being Texan, didn't take to kindly to a black man stepping up on her.

But this is not a poem about race relations.

No, this is a poem ducks issues about race,
weaves around gender relations,
even blocks issues of regional pride and
jabs at my body
in constant flow.

This body seems a little different every day,

and as I watch the slow addition of gray hair crawl across my chest,

I know I'm not the same person, mentally, emotionally, or physically

as I was at eighteen.

So, it was with a huge degree of skepticism

that when my doctor suggested I try

and get back to the weight I was when I graduated from high school,

I queried, "Really?"

He cited some statistic about how most people are fully developed at eighteen

and their weight then is ideal.

My body has never been a statistic,

and I wasn't one at eighteen.

At eighteen, I was at the height I am now,

but weighed about 40 pounds less.

Yes, in the almost thirty years since I graduated,

I've added 40 pounds, about one and a third pound a year.

But most of that weight was added in my 30s,

when my weight would rocket up during late fall and winter,

then drop as spring turned into summer.

As my 40s approached, it no longer dropped,

and my weight hovered at where it is right now.

So in a sense, my weight, now, is not in constant flow,

but the hair that covers my chest keeps crawling,

such that I no longer have a cute line down the middle of my chest

but a mat, a carpet,

that seems to spread out like some slowly evolving inverted bowl and doily spider web,

and hairs that would range from brown to red,

now contain a smattering of gray as well.

I don't think I'm a big man,

yet I often chide my lover when she cooks to double the recipe

because the measurements don't seem to fill this beast of a machine

for more than just a little bit.

I find myself eating two meals to her one,

and sneaking away to recharge.

I'm not starving but have the appetite for more, always more.

So when Jive looked down on me, I think

he, in his anger, might've thought,

If this guy really puts his weight into some blow,

it's gonna hurt,

and he stepped back,

took a deep breath

and used his words not his body.

What's Your Story

dbodinem@gmail.com (Don McIver) — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 16:01:29 PDT

I don't question where the muse goes,

the unbridled, quick reflex that leads me to pick out books on a bookshelf,

the random internet post that leads me to an article,

a list of tracks I should be listening to,

so when I stumbled upon your name on a list,

I thought I'd give it a go.

The "Jezebel" of Jazz,

you bucked trends by not singing in an evening dress,

preferring skirt and band jacket

to place you squarely in the band

instead of in front of it.

The wikipedia entry says

through a botched tonsillectomy

it left you without a uvula

Thus you created a percussive, short note style

because you couldn't hold long phrases or use vibrato.

So surprised that I'm not hearing

"I'm going mad for a pad," filtering out through some weird internet commercial for Apple,

but, hey, maybe they're not as hep as I think I am.

Jump jiving Jezebel, you join Kenton, Goodman, Krupman, Herman,

you loved pot,

and moved on to harder stuff

that surprisingly didn't claim your life,

but spent months in jails

and talked candidly about your usage, your struggles with "the life."

So Morning Glory, what's your story?

Bread and Circus

dbodinem@gmail.com (Don McIver) — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 18:18:34 PDT

--For a friend's Facebook friends who suggested they take out a bounty to "kick me in the nuts"--

On April 10, 2005, Al Lucas died after being hit during a kick-off between the Los Angeles Avengers and New York Dragons, two professional arena football teams. I didn't know that before I started writing this, but its a fact that while his mom was pregnant in 1978, I missed a block during my pre-youth group tackle football game,causing my youth group leader to sustain one too many hits, and I watched as his knee twisted and his tendon snapped. My missed block; his broken tendon. My guilt; his walking with a limp for the rest of his life.

Football is a brutal game.
I pretty much stopped caring about football after watching the Denver Broncos get trounced 55-10 by the 49'ers. The payoff wasn't worth it. I'd be angry for days and suffer the constant ribbing from people who "hated" the Broncos and watch as the real news cycle was buried under the constant barrage of speculation, conjecture, any minor bit of information that dictated that Denver was a Bronco town and football was news item number 1.

It didn't make sense to get this worked up over a game; and while watching a team be successful is fun, it, in hindsight, is basically bread and circus. Don't get worked up over the war in Afghanistan; the Saints are in the Super Bowl. Don't get involved in stopping the Excel Pipeline; Peyton Manning is now a Bronco. Don't bother watching the slow erosion of women's rights and liberties; Tim Tebow is now a Jet. Don't worry about why your income has stayed relatively flat; the Saints had a bounty program.

Wait...what was that? The Saints had a bounty program?

Yes, a bounty program.The New Orleans Saints had a program that rewarded players for injuring opposing team players. In football, there is a 75 percent chance of getting a concussion, and once you've had one concussion, you're twice as likely to get another. Yet, the Saints had a bounty program to injure other players.

Football is a brutal game.
When I apologized to my youth group leader, he was more than gracious and didn't blame me even though I was clearly instrumental in his injury. And when my niece was transformed from a volleyball player to spending her days in a wheelchair from a car accident, I didn't really see the connection then. As a result, the life expectancy of my niece is only 65. That's and expected 12 years of her life that is gone because she didn't wear a seatbelt, and Darryl Stingley?

New England's Darryl Stingley was hit by Oakland's Jack Tatum, his spinal cord was broken between the 4th and 5th vertebrae and he spent the rest of his life in a wheel chair--19 years before he died at the age of 56.

So when you take a sport as brutal as football and put a bounty on players' heads to take them out, you really are playing with their lives. So, to all the Saints fans who jokingly put out a bounty to kick me in the nuts, here's more ammo for your attention. I say ban and fine Sean Payton and any other coach or player involved and make sure they never play this game they love again. And if you're so clouded by your devotion to your team, that you'd want, like that friend's Facebook friends that you'd want to kick me in the nuts, I'm right here.

A Space Odyssey

dbodinem@gmail.com (Don McIver) — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 19:40:53 PDT

I had the pleasure of watching Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey again the last couple of nights. Its definitely been a few years, but I was actually surprised that the movie didn't really seem all that dated. I know its a pretty celebrated picture, and totally agree that it deserves all the accolades its gotten.

There are particular sequences that are simply amazing. For example, when David Bowman goes to disconnect HAL and the only sound is HAL's comments and David's breathing...the whole sequence is stunning, almost terrifying and sad: "I'm scared Dave."

I particularly like that the director relished in the vagueness of not only HAL's malfunction but also what Dave experiences at the end. Too often we try and tie everything up...and quite often release director's cuts that answer everything...I'm looking at you Donnie Darko. Film is a collaborative art and while I think there are good reasons for directors to re-cut movies (see Blade Runner) sometimes its best to just leave it alone (I'm talking to you George Lucas).

So the next time you're staring at your iPad or smart phone, think about this movie. There's some devices that look eerily prescient.

Librotraficante or william carlos williams eat your heart out

dbodinem@gmail.com (Don McIver) — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 22:24:43 PDT

I'm going.

Mindy was going to meet me there.
We'd both love a ride.
Mindy could meet us there and hopefully
               ride back with us.
She'll have her bike.
So if we can fit
             the bike in,
we'd love a ride back (just back for Mindy
and her bike
and me)
after just me).

The Host Summit

dbodinem@gmail.com (Don McIver) — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 16:32:54 PST

Week 1:
Sunday-Chatter (Every Sunday)                 Feature                                   Don McIver

Spoken Word Hour (Every Sunday)         Feature (Radio Show)          Ijah Umi

East of Edith (Every Monday)                    Open Mike + Feature             Collective

Hakim Be & Friends (1st Tuesdays)         Feature                                   Hakim Bellamy

Poetry & Beer (1st Wed.)                            Open Mike +                          Don McIver & Eric Bodwell

Week 2:
Sunday-Chatter (Every Sunday)                 Feature                                   Don McIver

Spoken Word Hour (Every Sunday)         Feature (Radio Show)            Ijah Umi

East of Edith (Every Monday)                    Open Mike + Feature             Collective
Adobe Walls Open Mike (2nd Tuesdays)      Open Mike & Feature         Ken Gurney

MAS Poetry (2nd Wed.)                                     en Mike & Slam +                  Kenn Rodriguez

Smokin' Slam (2nd Thursday)                          Feature & Slam                          Katrina Guarascio

Week 3:
Sunday-Chatter (Every Sunday)                 Feature                                   Don McIver

Spoken Word Hour (Every Sunday)         Feature (Radio Show)          Ijah Umi

East of Edith (Every Monday)                    Open Mike + Feature             Collective
Fixed & Free (3rd Thursday)                       Open Mike & Feature          Billy Brown

Week 4:
Sunday-Chatter (Every Sunday)                 Feature                                   Don McIver

Spoken Word Hour (Every Sunday)         Feature (Radio Show)          Ijah Umi

East of Edith (Every Monday)                    Open Mike + Feature             Collective
Merimee's Poetry Salon (4th Thursdays)       Open Mike                      Merimee Moffitt

Speak, Poet:   Voz, Palabra y Sonido (4th Thursdays) Open Mike & Feature    Andrea Serrano

Final Fridays (Final Friday)                         Open Mike, Slam +           Jazz Cuffee & Khalid Binsunni

Regular, but not fixed:

Jule's Poetry Playhouse                                                                            Jules Nyquist

Peace Center's Peaceluck Gathering                                                         Zachary Kluckman
Works in Progress                                                                                     UNM

Variety Shows:

V.I.P.
Vagrant Variety
Reptilian Lounge
Encyclopedia Show
Tourette's W/O Regrets
Outspoken

Yearly:

Grand Slam
WOWPS
Youth Slam-Off

Ode to the Stove

dbodinem@gmail.com (Don McIver) — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 21:09:12 PST

Now I suspect (though I have no method to confirm)

that the reason Henry David Thoreau

wrote so little during those two years outside of Concord,

hanging out at Walden Pond,

was that he was chopping wood, and starting fires, and tending fires,

and just basically busy with the business of staying warm.

When you are worried about staying warm,

writing just doesn't seem to be all that important.

Writing is pretty sedate,

just you and your own thoughts running out your fingers.

But I admit that when I embarked upon moving the wood pile

so that it was closer to the house and splitting axe and splitting log,

the moving seemed more important too.

But the words were already coming, spilling out,

running down my muscles into these two hands.

Thank God I learned to type cause the words come so much faster now

making it hard for me to keep up.

And I admit I had to hold that first stanza in my head for a bit

as I moved that 1/2 cord from one part of my yard to another.

But I did it

(stubborn I suppose),

and now I'm looking

at the fire and how much it draws my eye.

At two in the morning, +

I wasn't thinking about the poem I planned on writing today.

No, I was trying to get the fire started again,

so my house will stay somewhat warm

without my paying tribute to the Gas Company.

Now I admit, I admire Thoreau,

and wished he'd managed to stay out there for more than just two years.

Just two years of chopping wood, drinking water, burning oil for light,

and thinking about being disobedient.

In my own way, I'm being disobedient too,

but only as much as my fire will allow.

The 4 Stooges

dbodinem@gmail.com (Don McIver) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 20:18:15 PST

Greetings.

My name is Jean Phillipe Gillespie Nate the III.

And while I am one of three:

my grandfather from a land so far away

and my father who looked a lot like me

let me endeavor to showcase to you

my ruminations, extrapolations, expostulations, affirmations, enunciations, and articulations

on why it was 4 wise men who set out to see what was hanging out

under that big ol' star.

"O' beautiful star of Bethlehem"

Cause you see my gift neither glittered like gold,

or fragrated like frankincense,

or was as malodorous as myrrh.

My gift was fresh spring water,

that rolled down Mt. Ararat

over gold flecked granite

and watered the Burseracae Tree

but dried up before reaching Commiphora Myrrah.

My water is what made all this possible,

and I was giving it to you.

And during the walk, I lost track of what was yours and mine, and drank yours.

So I had to go back...and they kept on.

This old wise fool is always late.

And I might've had some questions I was going to ask had I made it to the church
on time,

Cause, you see, I'm the inquisitive sort

and don't see myself getting fingers jammed in eyes,

hit below the belt

or my nose tweaked because

I'm .Jean Phillipe Gillespie Nate the III and when Larry, Curly and Moe reached you first,

they gave their gifts and didn't really understand that the greatest gift is life itself,

and I'd want to know exactly what you were thinking.

This shit, this life, is crazy....

For all we know we're here all by ourselves

and there is no one in charge,

minding the store,

behind the steering wheel.

This thing called life is some sick sort of runaway mule heading for that cliff.

No...if you'll forgive me for my protestations but emancipation ain't all its cracked up to be.

Why Larry, Curly, and Moe just want to keep everyone laughing,

I want them laughing too but I want them laughing because they know.

This shit, this life, is crazy....

and its scary and its a bit jacked up

But the alternative?

The alternative to life is....

So, if you'll forgive me, I really, really, want to know what exactly were you thinking?

Were you bored?

Or perhaps, you don't have any answers either...

now chew on that one for a bit.

Mnemosyne Forgets

dbodinem@gmail.com (Don McIver) — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 19:31:14 PST

The long bowed wood left marks on the hardwood floor,

so we tried to keep the rocker on a rug.

It didn't work and every house would have these streaks

where our rocking had stripped wax off.

Memory is a hesitant thing,

a thing best left on shelves for rainy days.

What troubles me is remembering,

remembering August ninth-

nineteen ninety five.

A boundary day, a before and after day.

He wasn't just a guitar player missing the upper bird digits of his wing-ed finger.

He wasn't just a singer, who often strayed off key.

I struggle to write what he was, and still is,

some 16 years later as I remember remembering.

That day was long neglected friendship calling just to see how I was holding up,

sorting through dated and venued bootlegs,

listening to over-mixed studio CDs,

holding my two black dogs and rocking and crying,

and rocking and crying.

Once a year we made a trip,

made arrangements for inside.

Locking knowing eyes with others

--he forgot a verse or teased the next song with a chord.

The whirling line of solo dancers in the breezeway

--patched long skirts drawing breath,

the lights synced with every song,

the grilled cheese, sugar cubes and cheap beers

the after-concert parking lot.

Seeing the Dead live made me feel like I belonged,

like these freaks had some sort place for me.

When Jerry Garcia died in rehab,

I remember a part of me dying too.

Breaking the 4th Wall

dbodinem@gmail.com (Don McIver) — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 16:26:29 PST

I'd been promising myself I'd write a poem every day during my too short two week vacation. Most years I'm in Colorado dealing with my mom's inability to do anything quietly or the franticness that my sister approaches buying presents for her husband's side of the family. But, this year, I'm home and really wanting to spend my time writing. Usually that involves poetry, but this year, the essay seemed to tickle my muse and I've found myself drawn to the form again and again. So, here I am, Christmas morning and I'm thinking and wanting to get my thoughts down on paper because I don't really know what I'm thinking until I put it down on paper (virtual paper). The pattern this year seems to be to really break down how art works (or at least how I see art working), so after finding myself talking about my set at the Green Mill and my next morning conversation with Marc I thought I'd get it down and relate it to Louis CK's show at the Beacon Theater.

When I began thinking about my set for Chicago, I knew I wanted to do work that I connected with. I also knew that the deadline of the show would force me to memorize work so I included pieces that were haphazardly memorized and pieces that needed to be memorized (for a longer monolog that I want to perform next summer). Here was the list (with notes that I'll talk about):

Setlist for Chicago:

(change to Chi-town references-casual intro) Answer me that Jack

(first poetry reading and about Chicago) When the Revolution Really

Deja Vu

Dear Tom

Underwater

So...what I've really been interested in is when a performance start and what constitutes performance in a poetry reading. Now I'm not particularly fond of the "traditional" way poetry sets are arranged. Most of the time, an experienced reader/performer will have some sort of anecdote/comment and then say something like "This poem is called...." or "My next poem..." It seems to me to be this is a rather clunky way of letting the audience know when they should focus and when they shouldn't. I, however, wanted a way to hold the audience for longer chunks of time, to string poems together. I wanted to take the audience on a longer journey (20 minutes) not just 2-3 minutes, then a short breather, then 2-3 minutes, etc. So in picking the first poem, I decided I wanted to make the poem conversational, so that the audience wouldn't know that the reading had started and I'd have to sort of coax them into paying attention instead of metaphorically announcing, "Pay Attention." So what I did was take the below poem, "Answer Me That," and change the references so it seemed as if it just happened. Here's the original:

I’m sitting in a coffee shop on Central and I’m a little shocked by what I just saw on the walk over. A white truck with a black dog in the bed pulled out in front of this green Saturn and was struck by it and spun around ninety degrees. The dog became a cart wheeling bundle of black fur and twisted and turned in the air for a good twenty feet. None of the people were harmed, and the cars – good old disposable cars – who cares. But the dog – he trotted back to the truck and jumped into the bed like nothing happened.

Now I can’t get the image out of my head, this black mass flipping and twisting in the air and I’m almost glad I didn’t see him hit the pavement, and I couldn’t stop and say I was a witness and give my name and address because I kept seeing this bundle of black fur that I didn’t even realize was a dog at first flying through the air in a mass of legs and paws and I’m supposed to write about Kerouac. I’m supposed to write about the disjointed style and verbal barrage of The Subterraneans when all I see is the black fur flipping and twisting and that image is juxtaposed against an image of my own black dog running out into the street and hitting a car and running back inside and dying on my living room floor. And I’m supposed to write about Kerouac when I can’t help but shake and freak out.

Take this image from my mind Jack. Take it with you on the road and you and Cassidy can mull it over and talk about how grand it is as you plow through the eternal present of 40’s America. And I wonder if you could write fast enough Jack. I wonder if the very act of writing is counter to Zen because you have to absorb the world then spit it back out. Then why write? Why write Jack? Answer me that.

Basically my tone was conversational and I changed one reference "Central" to "Broadway," because the Green Mill is on Broadway. From my perspective, the audience was actually sucked in and it worked. My anecdotes were simple and short between poems: going to hear Peter Michaelson as my first poetry reading before a cover of his poem (which is basically set in downtown Chicago), talking a little about part of the reason I was in Chicago (which actually was my nephew's Bar Mitzvah), noting that I still don't have "Deja Vu" memorized, and talking about me and Mindy's sort of "Panel Discussion"/reception with her family to announce our marriage (which was the preface to a love poem that I added to the set right before I went up there). And it worked. The crowd listened, laughed, and I got many compliments after the show.

So, in talking to Marc the next morning, I asked him what he thought of my set--(Seriously. You're sitting in Marc Smith's apartment and have a chance to get feedback why wouldn't you ask for it?). He was generally complimentary but actually surprised me because he felt that I "betrayed" the audience with my first poem by starting it that way. Betrayed?

Wow! I didn't feel that. My experience was that the audience was with me the whole time. Marc felt that I lost them but regained them because the rest of my set was authentically me. Interesting. So what I'm left with is this: do poetry audiences have expectations of the performer? Obviously, a stand-up audience expects to laugh and the lights will dim when the comic comes out on stage (but they also know to pay attention when the comic comes on-more on this in a bit). And an audience in a movie theater knows the movie is going to start because the lights basically go to black (even beyond the dimming during the previews). But many poetry shows don't have visual cues, the light don't dim, etc. so the poet has to provide the "roadsigns" so that the audience is in on the act.

When I started my set the way I did, I actually kept the audience out of the act. They didn't know that my first poem had actually started, but that was what I was trying to do. So the question really is, "Did it work?" and taking Marc's criticism to heart, I don't think that it did. He pointed out that for it to "work" I'd have to let the poem be more than it was....it really is a pretty simple poem. But, I think there's another way to do it and that would be to really change the poem so that there are no markers to it being a poem at all.

Ironically, Louis CK's new special (downloaded off his website) starts with Louis walking to the Beacon Theater (through the streets of Manhattan-deliberately similar to his intro from FX show) and then into the crowd mulling around the entrance, people handing over their tickets, taking their seats, etc. Finally as the crowd settles in the camera follows Louis onto the stage and him explaining he's going to do all the necessary announcements (turn off your cells, etc). And then he's off. The lights are dimmed (but Louis's already on the stage and initiates it) but there really is no marker that the show has started. And it works. I think part of the reason it works is that Louis's whole act is sort of "conversational." But can it work with a poetry set?

Bond. James Bond

dbodinem@gmail.com (Don McIver) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 15:55:24 PST

Bond. James Bond.

I've been on a bit of a Bond binge,

dabbling round the series,

taking stock,

wondering why the series kept me engaged

for all these years.

Now, I'm not one who'd argue that it was some sort of pinnacle cinema,

yet, there is something comforting,

something suburban

about seeing them all again.

Back before the VCR, I'd watch them when they aired on ABC,

and in high school...I'd make sure I saw them when they came out,

and now I'm revisiting them again

and strangely intrigued once again.

What is it about nostalgia?

about the romanticized life that my adulthood has never resembled?

Disposable

dbodinem@gmail.com (Don McIver) — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 15:59:06 PST

I'm not one to advocate,

nor am I much into prescriptive rules,

and really love language and words,

but a thought occurred to me today

and I want to tease it out.

Let's just eliminate the word "disposable"

in the hope that the concept will be rethought.

Cause you see nothing is really disposable.

Disposable plates, napkins, forks, etc. get put in some landfill

where at best they're somehow recycled.

Even plastic, given time, will break down into something,

so its not really disposable.

Perhaps relocated.

Now, this poem would take a possible leftist bent if I pointed out that we really treat people as disposable: forced labor being discarded, but at their best their bodies are recycled

if the sentience just sort of disappears.

So, planning a picnic, party, or social get together?

Why not just use cleanable dishes as opposed to dishes to just pass on to others

whether that be now or 50,000 years.

August 9, 1995

dbodinem@gmail.com (Don McIver) — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 12:20:44 PST

August 9, 1995

I'm not exactly sure what I was doing, but I know I wasn't happy.

My first long term relationship was winding down and I was restless,

unsure of the promise that it once held,

and ignoring plaintive appeals from my muse to write more,

get involved in something larger than myself

and lonely.

There were moments that held a clarity for me,

that shifted me off whatever path I'd been on,

and hearing the chorus to "Fire on the Mountain" from outside the amphitheater in Kansas

sparked some weird cognizance in my LSD addled brain and I had to get back in.

The security guard did not agree.

After getting pummeled we came to some measure of understanding

and I passed the rest of that concert --July 4th, 1991--on my own.

This was a turning point for me Jerry,

and however clichè it may sound I became a "Deadhead," a hippy,

jumping into some other way of being that I still struggle to define.

What I was melted away as my consciousness slowly returned in Bonner Springs.

Being in Boulder didn't matter and we relocated to Albuquerque a year later,

made one last trip to see the Dead in Colorado

and just got on with our life.

And then you died.

I remember hearing the news in the morning from some friend calling me from Colorado

as we roasted in a small duplex in the War Zone.

The prime spot for listening was somewhere between the floor and the rocking chair

in the middle of the room and I hung out with the dogs on the floor

sorting through my small collection of bootlegs,

and a few studio CDs that just didn't quite capture what I'd experienced.

As day rolled into night, I moved up into the wooden wicker rocker

and just let the music wash over me,

and cried.

We'd already decided we were going to make another show,

no matter how far away,

and I was so terribly sad.

I like to think you'd approve of how my life has unfolded.

I write, perform, think about my impact and how I treat the ones I care about.

I'm just some fan, Jerry, some random guy from Colorado,

who just wanted to understand what all the fuss was about

and just couldn't possibly understand why so many people that I respected

were drawn to your admittedly bad voice, unpolished compositions,

and a catalog that seemed to meander across genres,

never quite fitting in any of them easily.

I still don't get it, but I miss you.

Miss what you said to me, though I'm not exactly sure what that is.

Addictions

dbodinem@gmail.com (Don McIver) — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 10:22:28 PST

Just when you think you have it licked,

have it under control and can dabble without fear of it grabbing you,

can moderates its influence,

it creeps back in

and you're sitting at your computer,

waking up at night and logging in,

using phrases like, "I just messed around on the computer all day,"

not really lying but not forthright either.

Addictions take many forms,

and they work;

they mask, soothe, or otherwise disrupt the low level malaise

that daily life seems destined to become.

Even poetry is not enough,

a productive day of doing things that seem worthwhile

even necessary to keep your life moving forward,

but it doesn't quite disrupt it in the same way

that addictions do.

What sort of a life have we created?

Is this a life worth fighting for?

Are we just too smart?

And there's only so much living we can actually tolerate?

Surely, my addictions don't have an answer,

but at least they halt these thoughts.

The Great Tomato Massacre of 2011

dbodinem@gmail.com (Don McIver) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 07:27:26 PST

The year of the tomato,

and the 3 plants took over a whole section of the garden,

wrapping around and bursting from the conical wire tomato cage

to keep it growing up and up.

Late fall, we had a bumper crop,

more tomatoes than we knew what to do with...

salsa and marinara mostly,

but at a pace I'd never be able to match unless I canned,

which...

So after an early frost, which killed all 3 plants

and left probably 100 fruits unripe and still hanging,

now drooping from the cage

now gallows like

for green-slowly graying fruit,

I pull the spidery plant from the ground,

unwrap arms from around the cage,

and scoop gray-green fruit into the compost bin.

How much life goes wasted?

How much of it is lost, annihilated, massacred by forces beyond its control?

And who is there to pick up what's left,

get caught up in the changing of the season and look down on it from a relative above?

Swimming in Samsāra

dbodinem@gmail.com (Don McIver) — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 16:02:59 PST

There's a ghost in the natatorium.

I see him when I'm coasting before I tap the wall

and then turn around.

I never mastered the kick-turn

and see no reason to start now

as the ghost keeps pace.

In the blue light of my swimming goggles,

I imagine that it uses its legs a bit more and swings its waist,

so that its left arm doesn't overstretch for its counterstroke.

Surely the ghost doesn't take a breath with every stroke,

and never loses count of how many laps its done.

Yet, it never passes me, never seems anything but fixed.

I mark and think in this monotony,

this simple increased heart rate, moving muscles plunge.

Does it too have a roving, yet discrete lecherous eye and tries to check out every woman:

college freshmen to veteran faculty who stop and catch their breath before getting out?

No. I like to think that the ghost is focused, putting all its will into shedding pounds,

toning upper body muscles, and now I've forgotten what lap I'm on

and spend a half-a-lap trying to convince myself one way or another.

Counting laps is tedious, much like meditating,

only the stretch between one meditative breath and another is 50 meters.

And the ghost is matching me stroke for stroke.

Damen Stop

dbodinem@gmail.com (Don McIver) — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 18:58:18 PST

Come and show me another city with lifted head singing
so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.

--Carl Sandburg--

A rickety ride

on a the Blue Line to Bucktown.

Snow falling on the city as we grind up the self-imposed hill

as the train goes from subway to elevated

and the city opens up down below both windows:

small wooden decks with neglected grills,

graffiti only a commuter will see

and no eye contact,

head phones,

small quiet conversations,

people concentrating on books

as each stop is announced

and suddenly its Damen--my stop.

Platform made of steel,

covered in creaky weathered wood

with grey snow pushed up into corners

and the crowd steps off the train into weather,

windy, wet, wintry weather

and we wind our way around an equal number getting on

and we march in asyncopation,

bottled up behind a big, lumbering black woman,

carrying too many bags to make these slip-steel steps

something navigated haphazardly.

She slips...

and the air from the rush hour commuters withdraw in one long, uniform gasp.

No one,

no one steps around or over,

even people down below her stop and crane their necks to check-in.

"Are you okay?"

comes a muted question from someone on the Damen stairs.

She mumbles, then lumbers up,

with the help of some stranger as he helps her down the steps.

Chicago...Carl Sandburg calls you the "City of Big Shoulders,"

and today you showed me why.

Although Of Course You Wind Up Liking Something You Liked Before

dbodinem@gmail.com (Don McIver) — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 20:24:17 PST

In 1987, I was a small, yet sizeable, group of young men that were drawn to David Foster Wallace's The Broom of the System. I'd devoured Pynchon's V. and The Crying of Lot 49, and really was drawn to frenetic, post modernism but still didn't have the requisite skill to tackle Gravity's Rainbow. So when a friend of mine recommended Wallace's Broom I read it, loved it, added him to a short list of author's I'd keep track of. What that meant was that I'd buy Girl With Curious Hair, read a bit of it; buy Infinite Jest and A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again and give up on the first and devour the second. And then I sort of lost track. As usual with books I love, I loaned out Broom and never got it back (along with Jonathan Franzen's TheTwenty-Seventh City and Strong Motion: A Novel) and just moved on.

So it was on getting ready for a road trip and having some sort of "Free Download" that I downloaded the audio book of Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road trip with David Foster Wallace and then burned some of it onto a CD for a Thanksgiving trip to Denver.

The book was great and though we didn't listen to the whole thing, I ended up buying it and reading it.

David Lipsky was careful to not interject too much of himself in the interview and basically just let DFW roll. And roll he does. The man is thoughtful, thoughtful about writing, promoting, the game, how television works, what good art should be, movies, music, you name it. His thoughts are a great way to get reacquainted with him (in my case) or acquainted with him if you haven't experienced him before. And, as is now obvious by his suicide in 2008, he was way too "heady" to survive for very long. As a lot of intellectuals can do, he could box himself in rather quickly and you could hear the gears sort of grinding in his head and proclaiming the actual futility of it all. Not fun, especially when you know the ultimate outcome of the story. I can't recommend this book enough. If you are interested in a frank discussion about pop culture, art, what success can and can't do for artists then read this book. I'll even loan you my copy... and expect not to get it back (its that good).

For What Its Worth

dbodinem@gmail.com (Don McIver) — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 12:23:05 PST

Ryk McIntyre and Rachel McKibbens had a lengthy post on Facebook about money and art. In commenting, I kept finding myself going on and on about the subject and felt I should probably just do a long piece about it rather than just keep filling up Ryk's page.

For What It’s Worth

… I am a Poet. My job is writing poems, reading them out loud, getting them printed, studying, learning how to become the kind of man who has something of worth to say. It’s a great job.

Naturally, I’m starving to death….

--Lew Welch--

When I started writing and reading poetry, I didn't even know that it was possible to make money at it. I just wrote, and in 1985 (about once a week), I drove down to Muddy's Java Cafe and read it out loud sitting in a small circle in a back room. I wrote, but outside of a small circle of friends, did almost nothing with it. Writing just didn’t seem to be a viable career option, so I became a teacher. As a teacher I did very little creative writing. I wrote lesson plans and papers, lots and lots of papers. I could write certainly, but write creatively? Maybe not.

Or so I thought.

In the Spring of '97, I started seeing this band, The Withdrawals, on a regular basis. As I got to know them better, I realized that they weren't really waiting for anybody to come and anoint them as rock stars. They weren't really all that different from me. If these guys can do it, why can't I?

I started reading my poems again at the various open mikes, only this time it wasn't in a small circle but up on a stage (a small elevated part of the venue) and was behind a microphone and people clapped when you finished. The feedback was immediate. If it was funny, people laughed; if it was sad, people would comfort me afterwards; and if it was just simply strange, (which it was a lot of the time) they may not know how to react at all. And I was hooked.

By this time, more and more performance poets were getting paying gigs and making money performing poetry. I started to make enough myself that I paid taxes every year rather than get refunds. While writing clearly became my career, I wasn't trying to fit my writing into some sort of institutionally accepted format like academic poetry or genre fiction, yet the motivation was changing my writing. When I started to read my poems at open mikes, I wrote because I had an overwhelming desire to write, to be a vehicle for the poetry, merely a carrier where writing a poem was akin to giving birth. But writing because you have this overwhelming drive to get it out (birth something) is different than writing something that people want to hear.

Art for an Audience

At first, I didn't notice the difference. As I wrote different things, the audience's reaction to my work became more predictable. I started to be able to peg certain poems as "performance" pieces and others as something else. I started winning slams, getting my name out there as a slam poet. My aesthetic was changing, but I didn't necessarily see that as a bad thing. Instead I merely acknowledged that there's a conflict between what is accessible to an audience and what resonates with me. By producing art that was more accessible, I was developing a "feel for the game." Pierre Bourdieu writes, "...a form of the feel for the game, which excludes cynicism, which even demands that you get caught up in the game, taken up by the game to the point of being able to anticipate its future" (148). The influence of the audience was changing how and what I created.

Some poets embrace the change in their aesthetic, and perhaps it is indicative of a change to a more sophisticated aesthetic, but the change is not something that is coming from within. It is change that comes from without. I had poems that went from being longer, more discursive, complicated pieces to shorter, tighter, simpler pieces because I could deliver them in 3 minutes or less. More often than not the shorter version is a better poem, but the process of editing is not one that is arrived at organically but "imposed" from without.

As I made the transition from private poet to performance poet, I became a "cultural producer." Bourdieu stresses the significance of what that means when he writes, "I could say that artists and writers...are a dominated fraction of the dominant class" (145). While he acknowledges we are no longer dominated in the way that a patron dominated an artist in earlier eras, the influence of the market certainly is a "...form of structural domination exercised through very general mechanisms" (145).

So the market dominates, or shapes, how I create. But in what way am I part of the "dominant" class? Again Bourdieu spells it out, "They [artists and writers] are dominant, in so far as they hold the power and privileges conferred by the possession of cultural capital and even...the possession of a volume of cultural capital great enough to exercise power over cultural capital" (145). Cultural capital in artistic endeavors bestows upon the holder a "feeling [of being] authorized to speak about the 'people' or of speaking for the 'people'" (150). It also, as Bourdieu elaborates, means that

the properly symbolic power of showing things and making people believe in them, of revealing, in an explicit, objectified way the more or less confused, vague, unformulated, even unformulable experiences of the natural world and the social world, and of thereby bringing them into existence" (146).

Thus, according to Pierre Bourdieu, a French Ethnographer and Sociologist, artists and writers not only speak for the people but create the world. Heady stuff.

Created Equal?

But not all art is created equally. There is a difference between a writer and a musician or painter. The first difference is that writing (provided we go to school) is something that we all learn. Many of us may have been in band, but all of us studied writing from day one in school until, for many, the last day. So, being a poet is an easy entry art form. That's not to say it's easy. But it is easier to create poetry than it is to create music because most of us know how to write.

The next consideration is the general state of arts education. I know many people were lucky enough to have stellar arts education, but most of us had our first experience with poetry by listening to our teacher read Shakespeare or Poe or Kipling to us. It was a snooze fest.

If we take the general state for funding for National Endowment for the Arts as an indication, Arts funding has decreased. For example, in 2011, the Obama administration requested $161.3 million, which is close to the same as the funding in 1995, but still not quite up to the record high of $176.0 million from 1992. Undoubtedly, the comparable amount in 2011 does not go as far as it did in 1995 (http://www.artsusa.org/ ). And funding from local school boards for arts is drying up as well.

Since poetry is an art form that most people don’t experience casually, how it is taught in schools matters. With music, after school, I'd listen to rock music on my friend's stereo or on a buddy's car radio, so I was certainly exposed to modern music. With poetry, my perception was shaped by my teacher's taste and most of the time his or her taste didn't include anybody actually living. The point is...if we want to cultivate an appreciation of poetry, then our schools (perhaps the only place that we'll hear it) need to expose us to what is being written today. So, if I'm a kid from the suburbs and you want me to develop an appreciation of poetry, then wouldn't I be better served by poetry that understood my experience? Wouldn't I be better served by Shappy or Robbie Q., or Ernie Kline, or Big Poppa E. than by Shakespeare or Wordsworth? But back in the late '70s to early '80s that kind of poetry wasn't being produced. Thus, how could I learn how to examine modern poetry critically if I was never exposed to it?

And I'd argue that our teachers have a similar experience. Most teachers that I met in my education program were the students who loved English, read a lot of books, really dug Shakespeare (I dig Shakespeare, but I certainly didn't in high school). Yet, most of them don't have any idea how to approach modern poetry let alone modern performance poetry.

The Value of Poetry

We argue that poetry should be valued yet we don't even have a well defined criteria for what is valuable. How many slam poems have you read where the poet actually unintentionally misspelled words, didn't know how to use the basics of grammar? Then we ask him/her to come into a school setting and teach kids to write? By all means express yourself, but do your homework too.

I'm not trying to be snobbish about it. What I'm saying is that since the general lack of arts education is not preparing the students who are now the teachers, then the criteria for what is considered good is a really low bar. Thus, the value of poetry is set incredibly low. So why not see if you can get a poet to perform for free (and many of them do) because they pretty much just wrote what he/she is performing that afternoon and didn't bother to try and hone it as a musician would or a painter would?

Now, I know this is an exaggeration, but if we want to be valued as artists then we need to value our art. And we value our art by being well versed in the art form (not just the canon or modern poetry but hip hop, comedy, political speeches, etc.), understanding the basic conventions of the language (grammar and spelling), and talking and discussing it critically. As a poet we have to show we value our art if we expect it to be valued.

And we have to be honest.

I'm not in this thing to make money, so I pretty much don't say "No." But I don't have any issue with any poet asking point blank, "Is there any money available?" It's similar to going to the grocery store and looking at the price tag. No one begrudges a grocery store from advertising their price on oranges or paper towels or tampons, thus no one should begrudge a poet if he/she says, "I need to get paid."

But does my willingness to do a free show work against someone else's wanting to get paid to do it? Perhaps? If a high school teacher asks me to do a gig, I'll more than likely do it for free if my schedule allows it. I won't call in sick or take annual leave from my real job, drive very far, nor put much thought into my actual performance. By asking me to do a free gig, he's getting what he paid for. Now, if someone else comes to me and says, "I want you to come perform at my school and I'll pay you $500." The lengths that I'll go to will be much greater and I'll put on a better show. My point? If you want to get paid to do your art, then you better be great. Cause if I can come in and do basically the same show and do it for free, then why should they pay you?

For What It's Worth

There's something happening here
What it is ain't exactly clear
There's a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware
I think it's time we stop, children, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
There's battle lines being drawn
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind
I think it's time we stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

-Stephen Stills-

When we sign-up to be a poet, our motivations may not be entirely clear. Maybe, like me, we just need to get things off our chests? Maybe we're intrigued by the musicality of a particular phrase or have a compelling story to tell? There's, perhaps, a hundred different reasons for committing pen to paper, for taking up the mantle of poet, but realistically making money is never really a consideration. Yet with success comes a desire to do more, and this more requires time; and time requires money. So why not try and do both?

For me, poetry is worth more than the tiny amount I can earn off it. If the muse speaks to me, I don't want to have to listen to it, reflect, and then wonder if what I'm creating is marketable. I just want to write. And I don't want that simple desire to be cluttered up with other considerations.

Work Cited

Bourdieu, Pierre. In Other Words, Essays Towards A Reflexive Sociology. Stanford Univ Pr, 1990.

Status of Arts Funding: “Arts advocates asked for more Tuesday, saying the NEA's funding should be [2007] $254 million if its 1992 funding were adjusted for inflation.” http://www.keepartsinschools.org/News/Materials/Congress%20Tackles%20Arts%20Funding.pdf

NEA Budget this year: “Today, the President released the details for his FY2011 budget request to Congress. This included a $161.3 million request for the National Endowment for the Arts, which is the same level the President requested last year.” http://www.nea.gov/news/news10/budget-request.html

50/50 and the normalization of Marijuana

dbodinem@gmail.com (Don McIver) — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 10:59:50 PST

I was up at my my sister and brother-in-law's over the holiday weekend.   Good liberals in a small conservative town and we decided to head to the small art-house cinema see a movie.   The movie, 50/50 , is based on a true story of a young man's brush with an unexpected cancer. It's funny; the chemistry between the two main characters: Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Adam) and Seth Rogen (Kyle) was good.   But what struck me and surprisingly didn't strike my brother-in-law, who's a doctor in a medical marijuana state, is how "normalized" they chose to show the pot smoking.

Adam doesn't drink or smoke and his first dosage of medicinal marijuana is in the macaroons offered by Phillip Baker Hall (Alan) to deal with the nausea caused by chemotherapy.   From there, the filmmakers actually show Adam stoned, smoking with Kyle, and even socializing with Mitch (Matt Frewer) and Alan and smoking again.   It was suddenly normal for cancer patients to sit around smoking pot. And the only noticeable effects that it seemed to have were the visual tricks it played the first time Adam ingested it.

Now I liked the movie, and as you know, am an advocate for legalization, but I almost thought that the movie was a tad bit deceptive.   For one thing, it does show that alcohol is bad when it shows Kyle so messed up he can't drive home, yet, it never shows Adam having any sort of detrimental effects from smoking.   You never see Adam stoned at work, or Kyle getting behind the wheel of an auto stoned.   So, from propaganda standpoint, we now see pot as harmless and alcohol as bad; we now see pot as medicine and medicine only.

Now my argument with the movie is not only that it was deceptive in how it showed pot, but it manipulates the viewer. If the audience is anything like Adam (who's never smoked before the macaroons (?)), then don't you think he'd be a little bit more cautious?   Or is this generation (mid-20s) so exposed to marijuana that the scare tactics of DARE just didn't have any effect?

John Prine-Popejoy Hall, Albuquerque 11172011

dbodinem@gmail.com (Don McIver) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 17:09:37 PST

I guess I'm glad I don't let labels tell me what I should like anymore.   Of course, I'd be lying if I tried to hide behind the old cliche, "I like what I like" or "I think there's really only 2 kinds of music: good music and bad music," cause I do think labels are important.   Not that I use the label to help me decide if I like it or not, but I do use it to try and understand it.   Thus, even though I've known many of his songs, I probably wouldn't have seen John Prine in concert just a few short years ago.

When I went to concerts, I wanted them to do something different than what I might get from listening to their work on the stereo, and most concerts just simply don't do that.   One of my earlier concerts, The Cars during their Heartbeat City tour reinforced that position early on.   Why would I want to pay to basically hear the album?   So, my choice of concerts was carefully screened:   would they do something different than what appears on the albums? did the concert feel uniquely crafted for that night or are they going through the motions and playing the same set night after night?

But, now that I'm a performer too, I have a more discriminating eye and frankly, "I like what I like."   So, even though I didn't move around very much or John didn't take particular flights of jam fancy, his show had this real sense of introspection, reflection, a deep and abiding affection for the songs that he's created that made me want to cry at times.   I felt distinctively middle aged and whether it was holding Mindy's hand as he crooned, "There's a hole in daddy's arm where the money goes..." I couldn't help but think that John, frankly, doesn't have much longer to do this.

He wasn't frail, but I could sort of feel how hard being on the road must be.   And, for me listening to John Prine, who's probably spent the better part of his career being on the road for the last 50 years, live was a real privilege.   I don't think about it often, but at times, I'm downright thankful for what life has conspired to bring me and last night, up on the Mezzanine at Popejoy Hall, I'm not sure if there was any other path I could've taken that would've put me there. The show felt like mine; the songs written for me; and the night, chilly, but calm, was one I wouldn't be replicating any time soon.

Thanks John.

Thrive: the Movement

dbodinem@gmail.com (Don McIver) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 17:10:37 PST

Released via the internet on 11-11-11, I decided I'd sit back and give the movie a viewing.   Foster Gamble (of the Proctor and Gamble fortune) is the narrator and basically walks you through different types of "discoveries" that he's arrived it in his effort to understand what it would take for human beings to "thrive." Of course, what the movie does is package all the traditional conspiracies together:

Nikolai Tesla & Free Energy----------------------------------------------------Check
Alien visitation & Crop Circles--------------------------------------------------Check
The Rothchilds, Rockefellers, Morgans and the Illuminati------------------------Check
Federal Reserve ponzi scheme--------------------------------------------------Check.
Control of food production as population control--------------------------------Check
Eye in the Pyramid on the dollar bill----------------------------------------------Check
Real Purpose of the Pyramids----------------------------------------------------Check
And the nice little wrap-up at the end is that we can all live in harmony.

I know this makes me seem a bit cynical, but the movie wraps way too many "mysteries" in this nice glossy package.

I'm left with a couple of nagging doubts. I'll only touch on a couple of them because I'm not sure I want to sit through the movie again to address all the problems I have with it.

If the Tesla Coil is so efficient and can basically create energy out of the air, then why hasn't anybody created a marketable version?

Now, it may make sense that the oil/gas/coal industry is in collusion with the power companies to suppress this technology, but the level of sophistication and coordination involved seems flat-out staggering.  Solar Power and Wind are also a direct threat but I see windmills and solar panels on a small scale.   Yet, the Tesla Coil powering someone's house?   Haven't seen it. I was unable to find anything on the net on how to actually make one that works.   Bring it on. I'd like to power my house with one.

Why does he hint at the Truther Conspiracy and 9-11 as a False Flag Operation by showing the collapse of Tower #7 without acknowledging that the view that is always shown neglects the actual damage to the building on the other side that basically destroyed the building?

My ultimate criticism is why is it easier to believe in some sort of conspiracy than it is to believe that we are culpable in a really dysfunctional system? If indeed we are on the verge of a great transformation, a great awakening, what is that going to look like?   Am I going to lose my job, my house, actually have to go through a few years of horrifying existence as the system transforms from a "fractional banking" system to something less speculative?   I hope not.

I guess if I want to dream about a better world, I prefer these approaches:

Empathic Civilisation
The Future of Energy

I don't want to live in a world where I'm dependent upon some benevolent E.T. to show us how to live together.   If we've been visited by aliens, then where are they?   How come they don't come and land on the Whitehouse lawn, strike up a position above every major capital until the powers that be have no choice but to acknowledge their existence?   I don't want to live in a world where I have to believe that our elected leaders are stooges, there's a ruling family that is hellbent on keeping its power and resources at the expense of way too many other humans.   It may make for great Hollywood, but it doesn't jive with the people I know.

We, and we alone, have created this mess and its about time we took some concrete steps to reform the system to make it better for all because if we don't we're going to find ourselves living in a world that with every year becomes increasingly less livable and no amount of money, power, or control is going to change the fact that we've screwed this place up bad and we don't have any other places we can go.