palace of winds

We had to write curse poems for creative writing, and though yesterday and this morning I was feeling milk-mild and gentle and loving of everybody, now I’m all self-righteous and angry again. It’s going on two years this February, and I still hate him. A lot.

Om Mani Padme Hum “Nonviolence,” you claimed. “Lovingkindness.” Well, I’ll give you nonviolence. You stand there with your needle mouth up-curled, smirking, and with your sleepy Buddha eyes like you’re looking out beyond all of us, your platoon of trick sheep, out over the whole world and you’re knowing e v e r y t h i n g . Bet you’ve even guessed this, the fire in my twisting stomach and all the things I’d really like to say to you, all these words drooping a little at the edges, cowed, my lowing scorn, but remember: a flower can stand against the barrel of a gun. So next time you say The midterm is important You will fail the midterm I don’t give tests early I do not want to hear it don’t give us a “fun day”. Don’t chuckle at half of St. Louis ditching when I’m stumbling into Minneapolis at 2 a.m. my car shivering with frost and the night like pitch and the street lights out and the radio faltering and my mind swimming back to 7:30 a.m. wake-up time ’cause if I ditch now what it means is upside down in a snow bank. I am more than this body filling another seat in your classroom three days a week without fail five minutes early and ten minutes late (because we do not need to eat and those markers on the clock, those numbers, those are just suggestions, right? and we are not shifting in our seats we are not watching that clock’s spinning arms and thinking 5:20 on a Friday night 5:22 . . . 5:25 . . . 5:27 . . . ) We’re all finally free of you and your “lovingkindness”. But don’t mistake me: I have learned something. Now these thoughts are bullets these thoughts are nails and my mind a hammer and you splintered wood.

So last week I saw Guys & Dolls in my Film Musicals class. My basic summation of said movie: mmm Marlon Brando. He’s like sex incarnate. I dunno, go see the movie.

While looking for pretty pictures to show you, I found out some amusing things. 1. Marlon Brando became a teenage icon because he died young. And 2. Bono is an object of ridicule now because he’s no longer sexy. Now, both of these things are blatantly untrue. Our lovely Mr. Brando was an icon because he was dead sexy, true, but he’s still alive. No longer Mr. Sex Pot, but we have the old movies and pictures, so who cares? And Bono. Come on, have you seen/heard the guy?

I rest my case.

For creative writing tomorrow we’ve all been charged to plagiarize a poem from our book (Thus Spake the Corpse) — to steal the form and/or idea and make it our own. So, I did.

FAREWELL TO MINNESOTA POEM (in the tradition of Ronnie Burk) Bye now! abominable marshmallow coat factory, Mall of America ringing w/ wedding bells & screaming roller coasters, Dakota bone-sewn bedrock, old plump Norwegian housewife ancestors miles belowground, radio humming Garrison Keillor, I love you too! Showy Lady Slipper blinking pink beneath tall black ever-greens, moon hanging huge & orange & unseen above raging white blizzard, tiny Halloween witch-girls anticipating candy corn, cars full of waving friends-not- yet-met, Northern Lights white picket fencing stars all the way to Canada. Big red cherry balancing on big silver spoon at The Walker biggest ball of twine in Darwin Snoopy snooping around downtown Lucy offering advice near the Mississippi riverbank where I, for old time’s sake, pose with F. Scott Fitzgerald have a shot at the Pig’s Eye w/ ghosts of Al Capone, John Dillinger, Babyface Nelson see ya later friends, relatives, sprawling family tree grown up around potlucks w/ hotdish & bars & lefsa & lutefisk around ten thousand lakes, a hundred thousand boats barnacled w/ sly Eurasian milfoil motoring around heron, herring, mosquitoes, loons, monarchs, fishers reeling in sleek trout shivering w/ mercury, teach me to sing! robin in red-breasted fall maples over Summit Ave. copper dome roof of the Basilica of St. Mary turning slowly green in late Indian (Minnehaha Mahtomedi Wayzata) summer may your blessings spread over this coming winterland, quicken cold hearts & old hates into the sudden spring rapture of every fresh start…