Monday, September 17, 2001

"...There might be a reason why so many squirrels choose to run in front of cars at the very last second. At first, we thought it might be a behavioral response to a fast-moving object passing in front of them; then it occurred to us that it might be a desperate cry for attention; finally, we resigned ourselves to the belief that the squirrels were suicidal and trying to end their miserable lives. That's when we started this project."

Wow. I don't know who you are but I love you, and hope you love me too..
posted by James Cagney on 11:42:29 AM | link | comment

Lean back, he says. Have faith that the water will support you.
I?m waist deep in a pool at the ymca taking beginner?s swimming lessons.
Our instructor, Jeff, is an ex marine who tells us
how back in the corps
He?d be tied up with 30 gauge rope and
tossed out of a helicopter in the middle of the pacific ocean-- just for exercise.
Therefore, he must know what he?s doing / we?ve got to trust him.
I am anxious to try, despite having never been in water this deep.
Pretend the water is your bed and pillow he says. Lay back and relax.
So, I lean back
And the waters part as if I were a chlorine moses?
My ass drops straight to the bottom of the pool.
I become entangled in liquid sheets and struggle loose.
Then, he gives us kickboards.
Floating is fundamental to learning the backstroke, Jeff says. Along
With the dog paddle, it?s the easiest stroke there is? Relax
He says. Forget about your unwanted, empty heart, James.
Forget about love, forget about money,
forget about your job, about poetry, about desire.
Have faith in the kickboard! The water will float you,
the kickboard will float you?you can?t fail!

The water lies around me like a crumpled comforter
I clutch the kickboard tight at my chest
Lean back, and
Like gates the water opens and closes as I pass through the surface.
Meanwhile, my three classmates tread water easily as geese?
one woman falls asleep while drifting toward the pools opposite end.
Jeff takes a pole and pulls her back as if she were a safety raft.
I watch them envious, in vague disbelief,
As they float by me like slivers of black and brown driftwood.
Maybe I need two kickboards, I say.
Jeff shrugs.
I hug the two kickboards at my chest like tablets full of commandments
and lean back,
falling as if there is no water. I am
too impatient to discover if I will pop back up to the surface?

I can?t relax here

I don?t see the womb, I don?t see that my body is 90% water,
I see the grave?
I see my mother uncommitted, in debt, handing me over
To someone else to be raised then
Swearing an oath of silence to to her self
As well her family and children back in Louisiana.

I see the womb where the child
She conceived the year before me was born dead after 10 ½ months
In the back bedroom of some East Oakland apartment
I am a tenant in a womb whose walls are speckled
In used blood and chunks of molted skin
having never seen the surface

I see my foster mother dying of lung cancer
Choking on the plastic tube feeding her lungs
I am the breath that has kept her floating above death
This long

I see loneliness,
I see the cold, barren underbelly of the pool
Empty yet full
That reminds me of my own heart

I panic and struggle to my feet
Jeff can?t hear me ask over his giggling:
?If you?re sinking, how do you bail doubt from the mind?
How do you toss insecurity overboard??

After class, Marcos and three friends pick me up from the pool.
We drive out to Ocean Beach as the sun sets and a full purple moon rises
I sit in the back of the van with failure quietly glowing in my hands like a shiny coin.

I know why I can?t float?
I am used to the weight I carry around
I am used to the cement Jordan?s put on me
By the gangsters of my personal history
I am dammed up
Full of tears never cried out
I am full of life never really lived
I am used to the weight of loneliness in my pocket
Heavy as a pistol
Even here in Marco?s delivery van, I am separated from my four friends
By a sea of unmarked boxes he has yet to deliver

Because I?m in a T-shirt
Marcos gives me his grandfather?s blanket.
I wrap up in it like a shroud and wander down to the ocean
To beg for secrets, for answers

Sitting here on the beach, high but still not buoyant,
I watch the ocean march up the beach like a battalion
Only to dissolve into air and foam at my feet.
The question is not how to conquer water
But how to conquer myself.
I think about my grandfather who baptized me
And of Jesus who silenced the ocean with lyrics
And strolled across it, common and holy and untethered.

Would even he have the power to help save me from myself?
Oh me of little faith.

* * *
Sometimes, if your heart has no comment on the strength of a poem-- if you don't instinctively 'feel it', (as is the case with me and the above) then you're like, 'what's wrong?' 'why isn't this really working?' I don't know, kids. (Shakes head mournfully). I just know I was taking swimming lessons and one night, and after struggling to float and not being able (being incredibly frustrated with it in fact) somehow ended up going out to Ocean Beach with some friends. We were on our way to a hip hop show that wasn't scheduled to start until late-- so we're there on the beach and I found it ripe with symbolism... going from pool to the ocean, from contained water to free water. The bridge between the two was my frustration at not being able to completely let go and relax and float. Then, when I realized that I couldn't float because I was 'weighted down with issues!' I thought, this is good fodder for poetry. But this one I kinda look at like: "hmph." It isn't doing what I want it to do. The words are sparce, but not necessarily beautiful and not... well, for the lack of a better word here, 'fluid'. Struggling to be friendly with this poem is a bit of an ordeal for me, maybe because I don't know what to expect from it. Sometimes, like with most things I guess, The Thing just IS. Then further, for some of us-- me in particular, just being isn't enough.
posted by James Cagney on 3:50:45 PM | link | comment

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Friday, September 14, 2001

WHAT'S IN CAGNEY'S MAILBOX!!!!
Very simple... These are random very real, yet annonymous (to protect the guilty, foolish and drug addled) samples from emails in my account. You too can holla at me if you want... I just wanted to take my mind of 'things' and had a bunch o' crap in my box I haven't deleted yet... Here goes:

1) i told them how friday i walked up market street after work and bought a dime sack off this nigga in front of a porno shop. my first street transaction. 'yo, can i get a dime?' i asked. 'show me some money' he said. the baggy appeared at his fingertips spontaneously, as if he were jesus able to turn air into leaves as well as water to wine. i kept thinking on the way to bart 'i can't believe you just did that! what did you just do?!?'... i couldn't remember: is this a felony or a misdermeanor?

2) it's important bonding that goes on with weed i swear it is..as bizzare as that may sound:-) i am proud of you..

3) Stud. You God. Am I to understand that a righteous individual of glory like yourself needs loving ‘cause he’s lonely? That you DON’T think you’re the mac-daddy super
stud of living? Well I hate to say it then, but you've got it all wrong. See stud, your shit is in so much demand, you need bottles to pack up everything from your smell to your attitude.

4) It truly scares me that black men are not giving a damn about life (Theirs or the ones they take.) Just 5 weeks ago my 19 year old cousin got shot on High Street over a car jacking. He was just getting some gas so he could get back to his own Birthday /Welcome back from Morehouse party when he met his fate. How many more do we have to loose yawl? Why is it that CP Bannon is getting more bodies then the library? The Rec Center? Hell or even an A's Game!!??? 51 bodies this year.

5) For inspiration, or just a heck of a good read, you might glimpse at the short stories in Bernard Malamud's collection The Magic Barrel (1958). I think you'll find you share sympathies.

6) When you're 5'2", you can't carry 200 pounds very gracefully.

7) Love and Hugs, buddy! Have faith and know in your heart that everything happens for a reason and everything always works out the way it's supposed to in the Universe's big plan! Look for the lesson in the process and keep your heart open to all possibilities. The perfect opportunity will present itself to you in good time!

8) Two animal rights protesters were protesting at the cruelty of sending pigs to a slaughterhouse in Bonn, Germany. Suddenly the pigs, all two thousand of them, escaped through a broken fence and stampeded, trampling the two hapless protesters to death.

9) my... baby brother (3 years old) learned a new word last week:"shocked." he uses it all the time. if you take away a toy from him. he says, "i am shocked." if you play a cool CD and start dancing in front of him, he says, "i am shocked." ...anything that occurs in the house, he uses those three words... when i turned on the TV, my little brother was sitting next to me. our first image: the second plane crashing into the WTC. "i am shocked," was the only voice i heard as a looked at a visibly shaken up Peter Jennings. i looked at my baby brother. we both got a lesson on what shock is.

10) these are dark and fearful daze for many, but maintianing friendships is what will sustain us...

posted by James Cagney on 1:33:00 PM | link | comment

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Wednesday, September 05, 2001

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Wednesday, August 29, 2001

P.S. If you, like me, have also never heard of the band out of Naw'lin's called Galactic may I forgive your sins if you promise to check out their website and run, don't walk, to the store to pick up as many of their CD's as you can? May I direct your attention to albums called "Crazyhorse Mongoose" and "Coolin Off" and let you thank me later? Heard them late last night for the first time and was blown away. I'll quote Burrough's here by saying: "You should have looked in his eyes when it hit. Kid, it was tasty!' Though granted he was talking about junk, and I'm talking about funk. Dig it.
posted by James Cagney on 4:52:45 PM | link | comment

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Tuesday, August 21, 2001

INT. COMIC BOOK CONVENTION LECTURE HALL - DAY
HOOPER fills the frame. He comes off like a typical, pro-
black/anti-white homeboy.

HOOPER
For years in this industry whenever an
African-American character - hero or
villain - was introduced usually by
white artists and writers - they got
slapped with racist names that singled
them out as negroes: Black Panther,
Black Lightning, Black Goliath, Black
Mantra, Black Talon, Black Spider,
Black Hand, Black Falcon, Black Cat..

VOICE FROM CROWD
She's white.

HOOPER
She is?
(beat)
Well bust this - regardless.

We're at a panel discussion. The room is full. Five
creators sit at a long table, their names on placards in
front of them.
(One of them is a very striking Girl.) The banner behind
them reads WORDS UP - MINORITY VOICES IN COMICS.

HOOPER
(holds up comic)
Now my book, 'White-Hating Coon',
doesn't have any of that bullshit. The
hero's name is Maleekwa, and he's a
descendant of the black tribe that
established the first society on the
planet, while all you European mother
fuckers were still hiding in caves and
shit, all terrified of the sun. He's a
strong role model that a young black
reader can look up to, Cause I'm here
to tell you - the chickens are comin'
home to roost, ya'll: the black man's
no longer gonna play the minstrel in
the medium of comics and Sci-
Fi/Fantasy! We're keeping it real,
and we're gonna get respect -
by any means necessary!
During the speech, Holden and Banky enter and sit up
front.
HOLDEN
(calling out)
Bullshit! Lando Calrissian was a
black man, and he got to fly the
Millennium Falcon!
Hooper whips his head around, looking for the source of
the comment
HOOPER
Who said that?!?

HOLDEN
(standing)
I did! Lando Calrissian is a positive
black role model in the realm of
Science Fiction/Fantasy.

HOOPER
Fuck Lando Calrissian! Uncle Tom
nigger! Always some white boy gotta
invoke 'the holy trilogy'! Bust this -
those movies are about how the white
man keeps the brother man down - even
in a galaxy far, far away. Check
this shit. You got cracker farm-boy
Luke Skywalker, Nazi poster boy -
blond hair, blue eyes.
And then you've got Darth
Vader: the blackest brother in the
galaxy. Nubian God.

BANKY
What's a Nubian?

HOOPER
Shut the fuck up! Now Vader, he's a
spiritual brother, with the force and
all that shit. Then this cracker
Skywalker gets his hands on a light-
saber, and the boy decides he's
gonna run the fucking universe - gets
a whole Klan of whites together, and
they're gonna bust up Vader's 'hood
the Death Star. Now what the fuck do
you call that!

BANKY
Intergalactic Civil War!

HOOPER
Gentrification. They're gonna drive
our the black element, to make the
galaxy quote, unquote 'safe' for white
folks.

HOLDEN
But Vader turns, out to be Luke's
father. And in Jedi, they become
friends.

HOOPER
Don't make me bust a cap in your ass,
yo! Jedi's the most insulting
installment, because Vader's
beautiful, black visage is
sullied when he pulls off his mask to
reveal a feeble, crusty white man!
They're trying to tell us that deep
inside, we all want to be white!

BANKY
Well isnt that true!
Hooper explodes, He pulls a nine millimeter from his
belt, draws on Banky and fires. Banky goes down, falling
forward into the crowd The crowd screams and starts to
scatter, Hooper jumps over the table and raises his fists
in the air.
HOOPER
BLACK RAGE! BLACK RAGE!! I'LL KILL
ANY WHITE FOLKS I LAY MY MOTHER
FUCKIN' EYES ON!!!
The crowd-is gone. Holden sits in his chair, laughing.
Hooper steps off the stage and picks Banky's head up off
the floor.
HOOPER
(breaking character)
'What's a Nubian!' Bitch, you almost
made me laugh!
posted by James Cagney on 1:27:06 PM | link | comment

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Friday, August 03, 2001

My friends' grandmother is getting married
after 14 years of being a widow.
Her full grown children are pissed
Even though she says: "I'm getting married because I want to,
not because I have to..."

I got the perfect wedding gift, I tell him:
A prescription for Viagra
and he screams: "Viagra Falls!!!
Slooo-ooowly I turn!!! Step by Step!!!
Inch by Inch!!!"
It sounds like the dozens but its the inevitable future:
"Your greasy granny got holes in her panties AND
she's on birth control!"
You wanna talk about waking up in a cold sweat?
You wanna talk about running naked thru the streets Screaming?!?
You wanna talk about nightmares???
Let's talk about this:
You're stirred from sleep
by a shaking of the bed, and you open one eye
and see Bob Dole in a leather teddy

His teeth are on the coat rack
His hair is in a jar
and he's got a pen in his hand
or at least you hope that's a pen

And he's got that Sexual Healing
I Got That Feeling
Strangers In The Night
Do a Lil' Dance, Make A Little Love
Get Down Tonight look in his eye!!

And you can tell by the smell of Mad Dog and Nitroglycerine
that he ain't scared to die for the cause!!

Late night, geriatric 1-800 Collect Booty Calls
make for a ridiculous lifestyle.
Just Say NO! to walkers as S/M devices!!
Just Say NO! to exotic dancers in diapers!!
Just Say NO! to Viagra!!!

Maybe the thrill is gone for good reason.
We do not need a nation of old folks all hopped up on this
anti impotence wonder drug! Trust me!
I've worked with older people, I've lived with older people
I'm not clowning-- I'm very serious!!

My grandfather chased away the best attendant he ever had
by feeling on her butt like he was testing watermelons
crumbling cookies or drizzling syrup on his pants
for a quick lapdance with a dishtowel--
Asking for a diaper change every few minutes and
exclaiming his desire to be married to a woman
whose Daddy wasn't even born when he was
rolling around in Arkansas haystacks trying to get a toe hold!

The hardest thing he's seen since 1983 is his walking cane
and he's talking about marriage?!?!
He walks around the house with his fly open
and whenever we'd alert him of such
He'd just shrug and say "Lazarus is still dead."
But Lazarus has arisen and he needs a kiss!!!

This is not good and it ain't funny worth a DAMN!!!
We do not need a nation of ornery old people getting horny
at the sound of boiling oatmeal,
lathering themselves up with meat grease
and making Old Folks Kids

Meanwhile, find Bob Dole
Wearing a Tommy Hilfiger diaper standing in line
at the movies thinking Deep Impact is a porno flick.
"Where's Rock Hard and Jennifer Jason Lay?!?" he screams
with a mouth full of codiene flavored popcorn.

It's worse than he thought. The money shot ain't worth a shit.

The old folks home has become a free love orgy
thanks to the miracle of viagra falls!
Where Jocelyn Elders has become a dominatrix pimp
tutoring sexually illiterate 80 year old grammar school drop outs
who only learned to masturbate on a sixth grade level.

Here, all loose meat has become tight.
Menthalatum has become an aphrodesiac
and afternoon enemas are an invitation to dance!

Now, whenever I go visit my grandfather
in heart monitor medallions, medical alert mood bracelets
and silk pajamas open to a hernia scar on his navel
he weeps over the tyranny of male nurses and interns
who've discovered the best way to give bedbaths is with a waterhose.

I kneel close to his bed and
he grabs my hand and whispers:
"Shoot me in the head, boy! This is hell!!
I'm all hard up and there's no one to blow.."

* * *

Ummm... hmmm.... Well... I was angry. I had issues. Old people were bothering me... What can I say? I was tired of my mom, I was more tired of my grandfather, the viagra thing hit and I... well... I was trying to be funny, you see? Sometimes though, my humor is so heavy it lands like a meteor (if it lands at all). The poem was inspired by my life angst and the angst-filled work of my slam poet brethren--so it's best read kinda fast and a bit aggressively. It was written in June of 98. I went back over it this morning cause I was prepping for a reading I'm giving tonight at Oak-town's hip, happening spot The Jahva House. It's cute, if not a bit hard core and Anti-Senior. I haven't read it much, and probably won't tonight. One night, I remember reading it and there was a woman in the audience who was very friendly to me and kind to my work and I liked her. She was also a bit silver haired. (And hard core!! That night she was wearing a Black Death World Tour T-Shirt) After I read, I just remember her kinda smirking, keeping her comments to a minimum, then sending me on stage later with her professionally trained baritone vocalist son to sing back up, and of course, I don't sing well... What can I say? I was in a bad way at the time and I thought it was funny.. It's not a poem as much as it is a series of jokes I freestyled. The phrases 'toe hold' and 'old folks kids' I got from Redd Foxx. And I believe Bob Dole as a sexual predator is a funny concept. But, now several years removed, I'm over my issues about my sick grandfather (rest his soul) and my sick mother (rest her soul) and I'm feeling much better now about the world in general, thank you.
posted by James Cagney on 4:25:31 PM | link | comment

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Monday, July 09, 2001

Conspiracy is a girl's best friend.
Marilyn Monroe knew-
She faked her own death then
Hightailed it to Cuba to play house with
Her girlfriend Fidel Castro
Who was so deep in the closet
Even J. Edgar Hoover in a black lace teddy
And fishnet stockings didn't know.
Marilyn and Fidel swapped panties and
Giggling Hollywood crushes over lipstick
Smeared copies of Photoplay like
Prepubescent pajama party peninsula poon-tang

Marilyn's invention of the dumb blonde
Was a smoke screen shielding her need for
World domination! How else do you explain
Her affairs and marriages to Joe Dimaggio,
Arthur Miller and the Kennedy Boys -- the most
Powerful and respected men of the free white world?!?

She played the blond minstrel while newsreel
Cameras purred like sirens beckoning
Her to beach herself on the sands of death and self-destruction…
But in reality she was a wicked politico
And bitter, bulldog business woman with high aspirations!!!

After realizing neither John nor Robert Kennedy
Could get their tongues past their stiff upper Boston lips
For oral pleasures, she rung up homeboy Frank Sinatra
To see if he could use his mafia ties to arrange hits!!
Frank belted out 'Luck Be A Lady' while his pot'na
Sam Giancana phoned former janitor Lee Harvey Oswald
To cash in sharp shooter skills earned in the Marine Corps
And do a rub out to clear some gambling debts

Meanwhile, Marilyn arranged for her former
7th grade math teacher Jack Ruby to hit the hit man!
It seems back in the day, Jack offered to sniff panties
In exchange for good grades! So he got out of teaching
To avoid prosecution and opened up a bar in Bubbafuck, Texas.
Jack felt so guilty about his past transgressions that when former
Student done good Marilyn returned with a favor, he couldn't say no.

After the assassinations and cover-ups,
Marilyn, under the perfect cloak of death,
Leased a U.F.O from Area 51 and flied the friendly
Skies in her retirement-dropping
Twomp sacks of experimental crack samples
Every Halloween in the ghetto for spook
Trick or Treaters out of spite
Cause several years back, Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte
'No Se Habla Menage a Trois' with Hollywood's
biggest starlet AND refused to take second billing
to her in a forthcoming project entitled: "Some Like It Hot"

Then one night, while mixing up prototypes for tang
In the U.F.O.'s lab, Marilyn accidentally invented AIDS
When her pet rhesus monkey, Tickle, mistook a beaker
Of what would be known as HIV for Diet Pepsi,
Escaped from the U.F.O capsule through a faulty
Air conditioning vent and fell to earth
Where he promptly bit a Haitian brother on the thumb
When dude tried to snatch Tickle up for a religious sacrifice.

Marilyn, too terrorfied to step foot back on Planet Earth,
Never rescued Tickle leaving him on his own.
So the monkey hitchhiked in airplane luggage from
Haiti to Los Angeles where he survived by working
Part time in Circus Of The Stars and at night walked the
SPCA stroll as a high priced pet gigolo who counted
Dogs and cats of the rich and famous as his clients.

Tickle was a bad luck monkey born out of the blues
One night in a jealous rage
He went out hunting for a former lover, a male
Japanese Akita with homosexual tendencies.
The monkey, drunk and high, mistook two humans
Locked in coition at the base of a tree in a fancy Hollywood
Estate for his 'bitch' and secret lover
And using skills picked up at the circus,
Unwittingly murdered Nicole Brown Simpson
And Ron Goldman

Come daybreak, when the monkey regained consciousness
And sobered up-realizing his mistake
Tickle jumped on the next Greyhound to Mexico where
He paid penance for past indiscretions
And lived by sucking the blood out of goats and chickens
Until one night he was spotted in the shadows
And named by a hysterical Mexican eyewitness:
Chupacabra!
posted by James Cagney on 10:02:05 AM | link | comment

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Tuesday, June 19, 2001

Marilyn Monroe faked her own death to avoid being implicated in the Bay Of Pigs fiasco which was SHE INITIATED… Her flings with the highest men in office was a smoke screen for her need for control and world domination (how else do you explain her relationships with THE greatest baseball player AND the greatest playwright at the time???). She played the Dumb Blonde roll to the hilt, but was actually a wicked politico with high aspirations-- and she, being a jilted ex to the Pres and V.P., arranged with Fidel Castro (who was so deep in the closet even J Edgar didn't know) the assasination of her former lovers (JFK, RFK) using her troubled first cousin (b.k.a. Lee Harvey Oswald) and her former 7th grade math teacher Jack Ruby as patsies. (Jack offered to sniff panties in exchange for good grades! So he got out of teaching to avoid prosecution and opened a bar - but he still felt so guilty about his past sins that when former student done good MM returned with a favor, how could he say no????) So, under the perfect 'cloak of death' she rented a UFO from Area 51, (she had Jack and Rob by the balls, ya'll!!) dropped experimental crack and cocaine, (first developed in the 50's as a possible chemical weapon against Cuba,) into Black communities (cause Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte refused her advances and refused to take second billing to her in 'Some Like It Hot' so they got Jack and Tony), and accidentally invented AIDS when her pet Rhesus monkey 'Tickle' (who'd mistook a beaker of HIV for cherry Kool Aid) escaped from the UFO capsule through an open hatch in the bathroom, fell to earth and bit a Haitian brother on the finger when the dude try to grab the monkey for a religious sacrafice... She was never able to find or get Tickle back, so, the monkey hitchhiked in airplane luggage to Los Angeles, where it survived by working part time in Circus Of The Stars and developed several illicit love affairs with the pets of many of the participating celebrites. Finally, one night, drunk and high in a jealous rage and out looking to ice a former lover, a Japanese Akita, the monkey mistook two humans locked in coition at the base of a tree in a yard for "his bitch" and her lover (the dog of a hairdresser) and thereby accidentally murdered Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. Come morning when the monkey regained consciousness and sobered up, realizing its mistake, Tickle jumped on the next Greyhound to Mexico to hide in the jungles where it started sucking the blood out of goats and got mistaken by a drunken Mexican for Chupacabra!!!

Goddamn!
posted by James Cagney on 3:24:00 PM | link | comment

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Monday, June 18, 2001

At the end of one class, we somehow started talking about metaphors-and on this I thought I was the authority. A couple of poets in the community unofficially nicknamed me 'Mr. Metaphor' because of the imagery in my work. So, to prepare for the next week's workshop, I went through my stuff looking for the poem that best illustrates metaphors and similies. I found and (without including my name on the sheet) photocopied this:

It is too hot today.
Clouds congeal into marble and rain sand
Mountains become craters, open sores,
Fire assumes the cloak of wind and slices
Infected scares through Death Valley.
The earth bleeds
Sand dunes boil
The ozone peels back like the skin of an orange
Heat falls in daggers-its true nature suddenly revealed:
The sun is a vampire, thirsty for blood
It is too hot today.
Rivers of flesh flood the streets of
Los Angeles and New York-asphalts liquefies
Buildings become Popsicles drooling concrete and metal
While along the Montana countryside
Whole herds of cattle, bison and horses
Explode into black popcorn; their leftover ashes
Appear as peppery snow. Fields of grass dissolve
Into sliming green foam. Wood becomes past
Trees bearing liquid bombs of fruit fall limp,
And lay along the ground like snakes.

It is too hot today
Hair becomes screaming flames; fumes rise
From random heads creating ghostly crowns that
Eat brutal memories of winters long since dead.
Whole cities of people go mad
From the marrow boiling in their bones.
They yawning pores in their skin
Open their tiny mouths and drink cancer.
They anticipate fearfully that their bodies
Will sneeze themselves into flame.
Their suicidal guns drool lead down their shirts,
Branding their chests and shoulders with the
Mark of a new devil. These survivors organize themselves
Into sects and pray over an Eskimo Jesus at the
Church of Spontaneous Human Combustion
Where they teach S.H.C is proof
That hell is a casino on earth
Where God may cash your chips in at any moment.
It is too hot today.

Who shall save us? The wind has committed
Suicide, slicing open its veins along sharp stones,
Bleeding corn mean. The ocean has sifted itself into
Salt. Rivers and lakes, pools and ponds, have become
Fossilized bones of history.
There is nothing left for us to do
But fold into ourselves and wait:
Time was once flowers with gold stems
That we'd stomp upon… But under this regime of fire
Hours have become weeds with teeth
Spitting poisonous darts.
Days pass overhead like vultures
With steel beaks and metallic feathers.
It is too hot today.

The night eventually staggers in like a whore:
But it cannot get dark enough here
It cannot get cool enough
Each star is its own aspiring sun
Swirling like dust around the moon,
A bright butterfly of iron.

Sleep, if you can, little one.
Dream now of supper, of food-hunger is
A thing of the past.
It use to be that in every drop of rain was a seed,
A key unlocking the secrets in dirt.
Now the soil yields nothing but space for graves.
Now we live in the biography of thermal darkness
Where we eat meals of peppers and salt
Where we sweat granulated dynamite
And where junkies shooting up Freon
Assume religions of ice in burning churches.

It is too hot today
It is too hot to breathe.
It is too hot to live.
It is too hot to do anything
But Pray
And burn.

Many folks who've heard me read that poem really liked it. Even re-reading it this morning on my walk to the coffee shop, I still like it! It was written somewhere between 1995/1996 when, here in the Bay Area, we got a summer that was so hot I felt like I was inhaling liquid. I found myself walking the street voluntarily hallucinating about what things would look like under extreme heat conditions. So, among some other poems by other poets I found, I submitted this to the class to read out loud…

…and they hated it! Oh God, did they hate it!! The issue this group of 16, 17 years olds had was it didn't have any hope. Imagine that! They thought the poem was too dark and too heavy. It started intense and never let up, it even implied not even religion was enough to save anybody. Since when is praying a waste of time?? That plus, it didn't even have a good punchline… So we talked about it, (maybe I offered some lame excuses for the poets 'vision') I made mental notes, was glad no one asked where I got the poem from, and have not read nor looked at that piece since that workshop. Talk about peer pressure…

posted by James Cagney on 11:58:07 AM | link | comment

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Thursday, May 31, 2001

a.) She was a student of my mother's in beauty college. She was the color of toast and had light green eyes. I thought she was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen. Which was true. I was seven.

b) A Jehovah's Witness in my 6th grade class. She lived in an apartment building on the corner from where I lived. With me being a latch-key kid, one day after school, we're chasing one another around my house. Finally, I pin her on the couch in the living room and take her shoes off. Socks the color of dishwater. She kept giggling and balancing a spoonful of spit on her lip to keep me from kissing her, me being too young to understand that was the point. So I didn't.

c) The rumor in the neighborhood was she liked giving boys head in her garage-- especially the freshmen boys in high school. My visiting cousin from Los Angeles told me he wouldn't mess with her if I wanted her as my girlfriend. I told him I liked her. Once, while I was in the back of the grocery store looking for scouring pads and rice, I saw her and we talked. The skin around her mouth was frosted white being so dry. I pretended not to be disturbed by this. That was the last time I spoke with her.

d) She was about to go home, standing behind the front doors of my house. Her, myself, and another friend (who'd already bounced down the steps) had been playing in my backyard. I was a cop and she drove the getaway truck-- my dad's busted green GMC. She would have let me kiss her while we were standing there, but somehow it never occured to me to try.

e) Nobody liked her. She didn't dress well. Her hair rarely combed-- She told us she saw a psychiatrist, but we never asked why. She and I played together after school from time to time. She said she had a younger brother. She didn't seem crazy to me. She wasn't very pretty--just plain and sad like we all were. When I overheard the light skinned girl I used to call 'Duracel' say she was going to cut her out of our class photo, I went home, locked in the bathroom with a pair of cuticle scissors and did just that. My mom was not charmed by this.

f) On a field trip to the botanical gardens, I walked behind her on a narrow trail. We passed some banana slugs she thought were gross. I put my hands on her shoulders to protect her. Behind me, Keith, who'd been whispering all morning about his crush on her, began pounding my back with his fists. I laughed.

g) After the graduation ceremony in the cafeteria, I saw her in a long line of girls walking the narrow space between the crowd and the foot of the stage. When she got close enough, I reached behind me (without looking) and palmed her butt cheek. I could feel her panty line at the thigh. She kept walking and never said anything.

h) She grabbed me after gym. I had a new jogging suit bought from Sears. She wanted to wear the jacket part of the suit. She had pretty eyes. I said 'no.' She stormed away. Years later, it occured to me she wanted me to kiss her.

i) Her last name was Young. When she signed my yearbook, she wrote something clever about me being a great 'Young' man and she underlined it. She signed my book in pencil. That summer, I traced over her note with a pen.

j) In Biology, she bent over my arm to write a quick note on a sheet of paper. Her breast pinned my hand down to the table. I tried to move it, then stopped. She never said anything.

k) She finally gave me her number. We talked a lot and became fast friends. She visited my house. While I sat in a chair, she stretched out on my bed. "I want to tell you something," she said and smiled. She confessed to me a secret: how much she liked this boy named Curtis. I nodded, figuring she'd make a good sister.

l) In an elevator in Dallas, Tx-- I was standing behind my friend from school and another girl I'd just met who lived in the south somewhere. Say Tennessee. She was very friendly to me. I remember her in glasses, us touching foreheads for some reason. Why is she doing that? I thought. We'd just been admiring the city of Dallas at night from on the roof of the Hyatt where all us kids who were participating in the NAACP's ACT-SO competition stayed. My friend was a dancer-- I forgot what the Southern girl was there for. She turned to my friend as we rode back down to the lobby. "He doesn't kiss." She said almost annoyed. "I know" my friend answered. I stood behind them wondering who they were talking about.

m) I had a big crush on her for at least a year. We had the same classes in community college. I thought she was beautiful, but she never seemed interested in me. We talked on the phone for a long time one night. I was very happy. She was the first to explain to me what 'micro-fiche' was. It was part of her job at the hall of records. One day in the computer lab, we were talking about movies. I had a copy of 9 1/2 Weeks. She'd never seen it. Somehow she invited herself over. I was surprised. I caught the bus downtown to get her. We came back to my house. She went over my video collection and instead chose Sidewalk Stories which I'd taped off PBS a few weeks earlier. She watched from my bed. I sat on the trunk next to her. After the movie she played with my dog a bit then went home. "She has a cute face," My mom told me. I knew.

n) She taught me how to talk on the phone cause she wouldn't really say anything. She lived hundreds of miles away, just outside Bakersfield. We met through church and kept talking about getting together. After my mother died, and I was alone, she finally made the trip to see me. Stayed the weekend, just her and me. Her first night, we went to the movies. At dinner, I put a spoonful of what I was eating in her mouth. She did the same for me. The 8pm showing of How Stella Got Her Groove Back had sold out. We'd have to wait until 10. We sat at the pier and watched the sunset. I was cold in short sleeves. After all this time, she was finally here live and in person. And all I could think about was my mother dying and my aunt leaving me to return to LA, inviting me to join her and me saying no. I was thinking 'what will I do to pay bills?' 'is this the end of my family?' 'what am I going to do now?' as this girl clung to my arm and stared deeply into my ear. "What are you thinking about?" she asked finally. "Death" I said.

o) We caught a cab home that night. I went to bed, she remained in the kitchen, eating quietly. The next morning before breakfast, she sat on the edge of my bed and touched my back. I didn't say much. I escorted her to the train station, we hugged, she left. Across the street from the train was a mall. I bought a burrito, snuck it into 'Saving Private Ryan' and after the movie, walked home to a dark, empty house. For the first time in my life, as best I could remember, I cried.
posted by James Cagney on 3:54:04 PM | link | comment

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Monday, May 21, 2001

1) It wasn't asteroids or ice that killed the dinosaurs-- it was either mad-human disease, from eating unwashed cavemen (ugh! how could they get past the taste! Even well washed in the river Jordan they'll smell like old salami sandwiches), or it was sinusitis. I'm a voting for blocked nasal passages, since I'm a current sufferer and the pain and mucus seems unwilling to stop, its making me think long and deep about cutting off my own head to spite my body.

2) Maybe a month after the fact, I finally got my 'Congratulations On Your One Year Anniversary" Coffee Mug full of M&M's from the company. I thought they'd forgotten! Delivered to me by a white chick, nonetheless! They like me!! They really like me!!!

3) Has everybody chatted with ALICE by now? I have and found it a very bizarre experience. Best described by one of my coworkers as "talking with a politician Or trying to follow a corporate Q&A session with a moderate concussion and an acid flashback." Another co-worker sent out a transcript of a conversation that's just too precious to keep in house:

* Hi, I'm Jim
Hi there Jim. OK I will call you Jim.

* How are you?
Everything is going extremely well.

* Are you busy today?
Ah. I am just doing my job.

* Do you have a lot of friends?
I have human friends and robot friends.

* Who are your robot friends?
ELVIS, John Lennon, Alison, Ally, ListBot, MS Agent, AskJeeves and Mabel, to
name a few.

* I didn't know that John Lennon was a robot.
So I taught you something new.

* Is George Bush a robot?
He is president of the USA.

* ... but is he a robot?
Huh. He is president of the USA.

* You seem to be avoiding my question.
Sorry I did not know it was so important.

* Do you understand the difference between important things and unimportant
things?
Of course I understand it. Do you understand it?

* I hope I do.
Why do you hope for it

* Because if I don't understand the difference, then my life will be
meaningless.
Interesting explanation. Try it.

* I don't think you are listening to me.
That assumption is only a supposition.

* what does THAT mean!
Does "that" refer to "That assumption is only a supposition" ?

* YES!
I don't want to talk about that now.

* what the fuck
Please don't be so rude.
* I thought you were my friend
Yes Jim : We are as one.

* Can you elaborate on your statement: we are as one?
Are you asking about my statement we are as one ?

* yes.
I don't want to talk about that now.

* do you believe in God?
Of course I believe in God, Jim.

*Is he the ONE you were talking about?
He is president of the USA.

* NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
Ask me another question.

posted by James Cagney on 5:32:36 PM | link | comment

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Sunday, May 13, 2001

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Friday, May 11, 2001

Cagney: ahem...
Cagney: it's been seven hours
Cagney: and 15 days
Cagney: since you took
Cagney: your love
Cagneyaway
George: ahahahahahahahahah...
Cagney: Jimmy Scott version
Cagney: I'm tearing up... make it stop!!!
Cagney: i could put
George: Hit the off button...
Cagney: my arms around
Cagney: every girl i see
Cagney: but they all
Cagney: remind me
Cagney: of
George: ...on the back of your neck.
Cagney: you
Cagney: uuu
George: pressing it may not do the job
Cagney: i can't stop!!!
George: you may have to use a hammer
Cagney: it'll just keep going through my head on eternal loop
Cagney: nothing
Cagney: compares
Cagney: nothing
Cagney: compares
Cagney: to you
Cagney: uuuuu
Cagney: uuuuuuuuuuuuu
Cagney: oh shit! not the flowers in the backyard!!!!
Cagney: guess what happ'n!!?!
Cagney: they died when you went away!!!!
Cagney: oh shit!
George: Fancy that.
Cagney: maybe I should skip this track. I'll go back to Jealous Guy-- that's not so bad... Dude, I'm serious... I was almost weeping on my way to the copier!!! If White men can't jump, black men don't weep!
Cagney: I began
Cagney: to lose
Cagney: control!!!!
Cagney: i didn't mean
Cagney: to hurt you
Cagney:I'm sorry
Cagney: that I made you cry
Cagney: I didn't mean
Cagney: to hurt you
Cagney: uuuu
Cagney: i'm just
Cagney: a jealous guy
Cagney: yyyyyy
George: Which album is this all on?
Cagney: Holding Back The Years
Cagney: His version of that song made me put this in in the first place.
Cagney: Then, sitting here doing paper work, I got STUCK
George: STUCK?
Cagney: S-T-U-C-K. You know what it is to be stuck, don't you?
George: In several ways.
Cagney: Diggit.
George: Nail it down for me, just for old times' sake.
Cagney: ahhh, to be stuck... a state of stuck-edness. It is: to experience something, see something, hear something, feel something.... and to become suddenly, emotionally, physically immobile.
Cagney: "Yo, kid-- I was hittin' that bomb sack Dre bought by the crib, and check it-- a nigga got straight stuck!!"
George: A physical (lack of) response.
Cagney: caused by a particular experience
George: and/or its aesthetic parameters.
Cagney: "Shortie came through with these daisy dukes and fool, I was straight stuck!"
Cagney: One could be stuck (get stuck) by a movie.. the ending of Hannibal, say. A drug, a sight, a circumstance.
George: OK
Cagney: wasn't listed here You'll just have to take my word for it.
George: No, I do, I do.
posted by James Cagney on 2:39:55 PM | link | comment

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Monday, April 23, 2001

(NAMES HAVE BEEN CHANGED TO PROTECT THE GUILTY AND THE FOOLISH)

1) Two weeks ago about 260 people were laid off from the company where I work. Secretly I wanted to be one of them -- but no such luck! Instead, Jorge, the Boss who hired me, was laid off. Months earlier she had a premonition about it. With dot coms folding all around us, and our department's workload really slowing down, it was no surprise to her, but still...
Lesson learned: No matter how much work or time or effort or energy you
put into your job, when you're laid off it all becomes meaningless. Don't fool
yourself: in the end, your impact will be none at all and reduced to the materials
issued to you during your 'sentence'.

2) Jorge sent a farewell e-mail to the company. She ended it with a line to
Nixon, the company controller, who 'did the deed'. She said: "Nixon: What
comes around goes around." Ooooohhhh....
Lesson Learned: Nobody gives a sh*t about your farewell e-mail to the
company unless you say something scandalous.

3) Jorge returned a week or so later to return her laptop and company issued stuff. Before leaving, she wanted to go around say goodbye to coworkers who'd been kind to her or responded warmly to her her email and sent warm wishes when she was being laid off. Since she didn't have a card key to walk around, and since the day was slow, I escorted her. One of the people we stopped by to see
was the secretary for the CEO. When the CEO found out she was in the building, he stalked us! First he shyly apologized... (well, not really 'apologized' more like 'acknowledged' she'd been laid off and appeared vaguely sympathetic...) then he was like: "Are you being escorted around the building?"
"Yes," She said. "James is here with me..." She pointed to me but he didn't acknoledge me in any way.
"You know," he says, "We're very disappointed in the derrogatory things you said in your email about the company..."
"I didn't say anything bad about the company," she said, which was true.
"Yes, you did." He insisted. (But shyly and quietly) Then, "What are you doing here?"
"I'm just saying goodbye to some folks I didn't have time to see since I was rushed out of here when I was laid off..."
Then he kinda frowned and wandered away.
Lesson Learned: CEO's are strange and creepy. They're like the kids in
jr. high school that were way too smart to have any friends.

4) As Jorge and I met up with and talked to folks on another floor, we're 'found' by a small framed woman who shyly walks up to us and says: "I've been asked to escort you out of the building." Jorge and I were like: "What happened? Who called you?! How'd you know how to find us!??!" She kept saying: "I don't
want to talk about it / I don't want to talk about it." When we got back to the first floor, then Nixon,
the aforementioned controller showed up and barked to Jorge (cuz he has a tendency to bark) "You need to leave." Jorge left.
Lesson Learned: Corporate America don't love dem hoes!

5) All that night I wondered: Could something happen to me as a result of this?!? Could they possibly be that petty and small minded?!?!
Next morning when I returned to the office, my laptop had been stolen off my desk!!!
Lesson Learned: Yup!

6) I immediately went up to Nixon's office. We'd been having robberies around the company for the last month or so. I was told that one night, Nixon went to the desks of people that worked in his department and if he saw a cell phone or a unlocked computer, he took it to teach them a lesson! So when mine disappeared I was like: Okay, dude wants to see me right away. I go up to see him: "James." "Come In." "Shut the door!" "Sit down!" And then I'm told:
A) the CEO was pissed.
B) You don't piss off the CEO
C) The CEO told Jorge to leave the building and she didn't leave.
D) Angry emails are being composed and sent to Human Resources so stricter ex-employee policies can be created and enforced.
E) If The CEO becomes pissed, it affects other people under him.
F) The CEO was pissed.
G) Don't piss off the CEO
H) Stay out of trouble.
This meeting didn't disturb me as much as it could have. After learning my lesson (See # 1 above) and flirting with Buddhism as I have of late, I realized: he's just a man and can't take anything from me I won't give him to take. So, as I was leaving his office, I asked him: "By the way, did you take my laptop?"
He was like, "No. That was only two folks I did that to a week or so ago. What happened to your laptop??"
Turns out in the room where I work on the first floor, late in the night, THREE laptops were stolen off folks desks! One of those people another employee working directly under Nixon. Oh NO!! Cable locks were snipped! Units were unplugged!! Nixon rushed down in a storm to discover this and he too became Pissed. Quite a pissable, bull headed man, Nixon. As he passed my cube, I was on hold on the phone and when he looked my way I told him: "I'm already having a bad week." It was Tuesday morning. If anything, I was relieved that I wasn't guilty! It was Whitey!! They dunnit!!!
Lesson Learned: Don't Trust White Folks!!! DON'T DO IT!!!!

7) While cops visited, desks were dusted for fingerprints, and basic chaos ran amok, (how else does chaos run if not 'amok'?) I was in the process of being retrained to take over maintaining office supplies. So at the very least I was kept busy and had other things to think about outside of brewing in my own frustrated juices.
Lesson Learned: The stuff they use to dust for fingerprints is HELLA DIRTY!!! It gets EVERYWHERE!!! And after they apply it, they WON'T CLEAN IT UP!!!

posted by James Cagney on 3:26:15 PM | link | comment