Today is a good day to
drop out of sight. Disappear
like fish from Tokyo harbor.
Realize there’s no place for you
among the living, even if the gifted
will always remember your name.
Spend the morning watching movies that never run on TCM.
Convince yourself there is no one you know watching the uncut
1954 Japanese language version of Gojira right now but you.
Serizawa on the ocean floor, air hose
in one hand, knife in the other. Ogata,
rising to the surface, screaming his name.
Goddammit, Serizawa.
Is this how friends find
each other, too late?
(Godzilla, to the uninitiated)
Sex Positive
Oh, Little Ben,
you say Slut Era
like it’s a bad thing.
Consoling incels everywhere
that there’s no scary monster called
the Female Orgasm.
Just ask your wife.
We say Sex Positive
as a phrase used by people who
don’t fear sex.
So, Little Ben,
tuck your foot back inside
the covers of your
tiny twin bed,
and pray the monster
never finds you,
or your wife.
Sirens
Night breathed,
sweet enough for me to think
that I wasn’t hearing
sirens.
Death’s attention,
spent this hour elsewhere,
while I lived the lie of
flowers.
Norma Desmond
And I am too much,
what’s the word,
afraid?
Afraid she’ll do
something equal parts
dangerous and stupid.
I no longer ask about
her ex-wife, the alcoholic.
I don’t think she’s ever
heard a word I’ve said.
Not in the sense that
we were ever having
a conversation.
When she texts,
it begins with the words,
Are you there?
I am never there.
Not in the sense that
I would stop replying.
But remember I am,
what’s the word,
afraid?
Afraid she’ll do
something dramatic,
like Norma Desmond did
to Joe in Sunset Boulevard.
Something permanent.
Also possibly involving
bullets and a swimming pool.
After that it’s
fuzzy, like Joe,
floating in the pool.
My horoscope says I’m
undergoing dramatic
life changes, and obviously
death is as dramatic as
life changes get.
Are you there?
I am never there.
I realized the other day
that I have always been a
Norma Desmond magnet.
Because I self-identify
with a dead writer
named Joe.
Half-Staff
I guess the next thing is
to outlaw flags at half-staff,
if we’re not going to
outlaw their cause.
This would be easier, because
remembering the names of
dead children is hard.
Last Rights For An Anarchist
We live in a hateful world.
A world that I want to hit with
my fists, kick with my boots,
and hurt, the way it has hit,
and kicked, and hurt, me
and those I love.
But the world isn’t a person,
to be hit, or kicked, or hurt.
It’s a thing. It’s a whole
fucking system, and nobody’s
ever bitch-slapped a system.
You can’t counter-punch
politics, or swing a barstool
at the lying church that
taught you God is Love, then
showed you who and how to hate,
and in doing that, usher in
God’s Kingdom just by trusting
in their pasty white Jesus, and
in his pumpkin-colored high priest.
Their crucified and bleeding,
para-military Lamb of God.
You can’t throat-punch
a paradigm that makes
billionaires like it used to
make millionaires, or break
the kneecaps of a structure that
rewards politicians with millions.
And turned the middle-class into
foot soldiers for fascists.
You can’t choke the system that
gives you life, whatever that
life looks like now, because
killing the system that keeps
you alive ends what’s left of yours.
Choke it until its eyes cloud over,
and hear its windpipe crack, stealing
the last of its breath, unless
you’re ready for your own eyes to
cloud over, and for you to
breathe your last.
I’ve been impatient, I know this,
because I’ve lived long enough to
see what old looks like in a mirror,
and how the end of my life is getting
closer, but the end of the system isn’t.
And I feel about as lifeless as the
system that gave me life, then took it
all away, until all I want is for
this system to die.
So today, the only question I have
left is, am I prepared to die with it?
Because I already feel so dead.
Someone Commented On…
A funny thing happens in November. A GOOD funny thing, to be sure.
This year, more than any other Blog November, I’ve gotten almost as many comments from ANONYMOUS, as I have from any other blog-reading friends over the past 9 years. While I’ve had several reasons explained to me why this might be, and why it might be a WordPress-Only thing, it’s still funny to me.
(keep reading BELOW the photo)
It’s almost feels like getting a note from a secret admirer, but without the Trader Joe’s bouquet of flowers that go with it. More quirky, less creepy. And on this day *BEFORE ELECTION DAY* when, for all our sakes, I’m trying to keep things light, and nerves on simmer, not boil, this was about the easiest thing for me to scribble in this space as I ask, if you’re leaving a comment, and it says you’re commenting anonymously, just drop your name in the comment so I can properly say thank you back. I mean, I already appreciate you being here and all, I just want to know who it is that’s making me smile with their comments.
Anyway, I’m so glad you’ve been here so far. Let’s keep going.
Talk to you tomorrow.
*a wi-fi glitch caused this post, written on November 4, to be posted on November 5. I owe you one more post, later today*
Full
Trying to remember
the last time I felt full.
The way a grave feels full
with a coffin inside it.
The way a coffin feels full
with a corpse inside it.
The way a corpse feels full
with a life of regret inside it,
and nowhere for the regret to go,
so it always feels full.
Trying to remember
the last time I did not feel
like a corpse.
Love Poem
Is a love poem always about love? Yes always,
although sometimes, a love poem is about
baseball, or a dog, or where you were raised,
even if you couldn’t wait to get out of
where you were raised, before you knew the
first thing about love, which you probably
only learned from baseball, or a dog.
I learned that love can make you angry when
things don’t go your way, like when the Dodgers
lose to the Yankees, from something as out of
your control as Reggie Jackson’s right hip.
I learned that love can make you cry when the
best friend you’ve had since you were six
looks you in the eyes at the vet’s office,
right before you go home without him.
And all of this, somehow, SOMEHOW prepares you
for a moment when you finally, FINALLY meet the
love of your life, who understands all of this,
and does not let you go while your child self,
that loves baseball and dogs, is working out
all the things that will lead you, one day,
ONE DAY, to them. Until you are home.
Home with your memories, and home with
each other. And you understand that yes,
a love poem is always about love.
Hello, my name is…
It’s been a minute, so let me re-introduce myself.
My name is Friday. Bill Friday. A lot has changed for me since 2015, The first year I signed up to do National Blog Posting Month, or NanoPoblano as it was called, before Cheer Peppers became our official name. Back then, our Forever Admin and Moderator Emeritus, Ra Avis, asked me ever so politely if I wanted to do this thing, though I’d already been a WordPress blogger for a few years, so that I could discover the joy… and occasional panic… of writing a blog post a day for 30 straight days.
And after Rara gave me the hard dinosaur side-eye, I willingly caved.
Now it’s 9 years later, though not 9 years in a row, and I feel like I have some unfinished blog business. That’s why, just a couple of days ago, I let our little corner of the bloggy world know that I was back.
But don’t call it a comeback. I been here for years.
Now, the basics, for those I haven’t met. Blogger since 2007, author of two books of poetry with one more on the way. Born, raised, and almost died a few times, in Southern California, but now living in the cautionary tale known as Long Island, New York. I have two grown children, three grandchildren, and three grand-dogs, all spread out across the country, and friends… my chosen family… even more spread out than that.
And for right now, I think I’m going to take this month to not only re-introduce myself to you, but re-introduce myself to myself. I’ll be sharing thoughts I scribble much too quickly into the ongoing journal I’ve been keeping since 2017, both the joyous, and the painful. Things in the news, which will likely piss some of you off. And poems I’ve written that will, soon enough, find their way into print. Maybe even poems about love, or baseball. Probably both.
And you never know, I just might tell you about my long overdue creative plans, that really ought to see the light of day, before it’s too late. So for now, let’s all get settled in. I’m looking forward to reading as many of your posts as I can this month, and for us to get to know each other along the way.
Talk to you tomorrow!
William S. Friday 