The end of '08

Seemingly overnight-- or more accurately-- the wkend before X-mas wk, a bunch of people got into the holiday spirit & threw up their decors. So the city did end up looking a lot more festive than i thought it would. Anyway, i'm really looking forward to next yr. I have great expectations for myself. Here's a fragment of a poem i started... to be continued @ some point in '09. Or maybe not.

I feel like hatin' on '08
but i won't,
i'd like to start off the
next year
with a dark slate
brushed clean of dust, dirt
the dander of so much
disappointment...

City Spirits

I was down in the financial district, a little before 9 this morning, looking for the location of a building i was sent to about a job. When i saw just this horde of people coming from the PATH station down by the world trade center. I was heartended. First, because i was so glad i'm not one of the masses commuting on the PATH. And second, because i was happy to see how many people have managed to hang on to their jobs. Because of all the construction, there were a bunch of traffic cops out in the area, & as soon as the lights turned green, they were blowing their whistles, waving their red flags like bullfighters at the lumbering buses & tailgating cars yelling "go,go, go!" Leaving the impatient crowd, who missed their sprint across the street, chomping at the bit.
It then turned out i've been going the wrong way for, like, twenty mins. So i had to go back down to Wall Street where the National Museum of the American Indian is located. This is one museum i've been really wanting to visit. And i'm going to try to make time someday soon. Anyway, I found this interesting poem on the legend plaque located in front. It captured perfectly how i've always felt about life in NYC. And considering the lost Native Amerian population of New York, and recent discovery down here of the Afican burial ground, it seems fitting.


City Spirits

Whenever I go to
the city I would
always feel a sense
of loss and a sense
of despair. One
day I realized why
I was depressed.
The Earth had
been trapped
underneath the
concrete and
steel. And it was
their cries that
I felt whenever I
came to the city.

By Wil Grant
(Anishinabe)

Gratuitous cat picture

My sister's cat Kimi, whose #1 goal in

life is for everyone to leave her the hell

alone!

Been rding Billy Collins new collection of poems

and all i can say is Whoa! The man has come out swinging in this book. His trademark thoughtfulness is still there but the book is titled after one of the poems where he imagines that " the executed book was a recent collection of poems written by someone of whom I'm not fond... ." Some other poet(s) has obviously pissed him off and that's why he's fired back w/ this bullet to heart. Maybe this other guy/poets, attacked him personally (called him a sissy or old or something). Or even more personally, they said something about B.'s poetry. Because the blood seem to be flowing thru the veins of this collection like whitewater! In Carpe Diem, B. is essentially saying: to *ll with you you dilettantes. I might be old but i'm the modern day 21st century Robert Frost, B *Ach!
Poetic rivalry. Just like hip hop. But, hopefully, w/out the bloodshed.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas?

It wasn't until i overhead two ladies talking & one said how it doesn't look like The Holidays, & last week when I saw the x-mas decors in front of two houses on an otherwise dark block i realize then that i really haven't been seeing much of the x-mas spirit. This wk though i saw a few more decors. But it still wasn't the massive overdo that you would normally see. Maybe, like me, nobody is really into a celebration kind of mood. It's probably that a recession depression has set in.