Rupert Wondolowski's Blog, page 8

Pope Croke Tribute #2 - A Poem by China Martens

Pope, I pull you up like a cloke, constant thoughts
The loneliness of human beings

You found your way, your pleasures,
sarcasms, sweetness, forgiveness I’m sure.
Clever, wit, culture, elegance,
bluntness, crudeness, truth,
peering out from under glasses


At your funeral, there were seven wives
and many girls left crying
Cats drove the car - you don’t know this . . .
It was a secret

Where did you come from to talk like that?
Jumping over the chair at Charles theatre like your James Dean
like a crows black feathers gleam

✧

Pope, where do I gather to send the
sentiments, drifting?

Regrets we could have talked more -
now you aren’t here no more,
humanity, daily, that’s how it is.

Leaves on the ground

I felt like you liked me;
and thank you for that;
I want to bring you flowers now.

Places before and after,
Maryland Avenue,
this door way, that door way

Time and place, sadness, no sadness,
this is what we have, parting, depth,
shallow, care, remember,

by China Martens

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China Martens is most recently the co-author of Don't Leave Your Friends Behind (PM Press) and the editor/author of the long running zine Future Generation, which Atomic Books published an anthology of in 2007.
She is extremely tall but she will not smite you unless you really really need an ass whuppin. My wife is fond of her slender porcelain hands.

Pope Croke was a fixture on the Baltimore music and arts scene. He passed away on December 26th from a MRSA infection and problems related to kidney failure from 14 years ago. Some of his groups were Infant Lunch, Kneeling On Beans, Mo Fine and His All Blind Orchestra, She Bites and Furniture Falling Down The Stairs.

Pope was a true Baltimore original and there will be more posts about him to follow.

Pope Croke Tribute #1

RIP

Song Pope swung

octopus

piano

by Chris Mason

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Chris Mason is a poet and musician. He is the author of Hum Who Hiccup (Narrowhouse Press) and a member of The Tinklers and Old Songs. It's rumored that he's in a duo playing Woody Guthrie songs also, but when asked about it he replied "I will not share my essence."

Pope Croke was a fixture on the Baltimore music and arts scene. He passed away on December 26th from a MRSA infection and problems related to kidney failure from 14 years ago. Some of his groups were Infant Lunch, Kneeling On Beans, Mo Fine and His All Blind Orchestra, She Bites and Furniture Falling Down The Stairs.

Pope was a true Baltimore original and there will be more posts about him to follow.

The Assembling of a Mole Suit Choir

I haven't delved into musical collaboration or playing out live since Magic Gurney Ride rode out down South on the rails, the train car freshly tagged with "Soft Serv", but at last year's Shakemore I sang a few things accapella and the powerfully talented Liz Downing said we should get together. I've regarded Liz in the top pantheon of Baltimore mischief makers since back in the '80s when I first saw Lambs Eat Ivy and they singed the puffy scrub of my Glen Burnie fro off.

(Above in foreground is the back of the head of beloved Charles Brohawn of The Tinklers. The fact that he remained in the front row Is a testimony that we weren't sucking. Charles doesn't stand by for sucking.)

LEI performed Appalachian opera mixing Jung and mythology and Southern gothic into a wild giddy blend. Three swooping, soaring sets of lungs, brainiac but simple lyrics and homemade sets and costumes. So the idea of singing with Liz made me dust off the maple parlor guitar and hit a few verses of "End of the World".

The transmigration of Christopher Toll in October brought even more of a feeling of inevitableness and purpose to it, as one of Liz's first songs was putting "Moon Clue", a collaboration between Chris and I, to music. She also put three other pieces of mine from The Origin of Paranoia As a Heated Mole Suit to song, which blew my tiny brain. I've written a fair number of songs in my day, but for me these pieces had been ingrained as flat words on the page, their only music the rhythm of their syntax.

A few wonderful winter Sunday late afternoons went by with us hanging on the couch warbling with Kim Jong Ev, Max, Binky and Peanut as our audience and we suddenly had a set that included two other Chris Toll related pieces. The icing on the cake was Father Daniel Higgs asking us to open for him at Normal 's, an auspicious sign. It felt incredibly liberating to sing with Liz's beautiful voice and to celebrate life and comrades who had gone on beyond it.

And I bought a kickass triangle.

Murder Your Darlings' Review of Mattress In an Alley, Raft Upon the Sea

Thursday, January 17, 2013

Rupert Wondolowski's Mattress in an Alley, Raft Upon the Sea

Mattress in an Alley, Raft Upon the Sea, poems by Rupert Wondolowski. New Orleans: Fell Swoop, 2012.

Wondolowski's zine-format collection begins with "1963," a snapshot of the year Kennedy died, which sets a bittersweet tone for the collection. In "Sometimes," he continues with sardonic humor: I grew up next door
to a friend with a former
Miss North Carolina pageant
winner for a mom
who always left the door
open using the bathroom.
Plus I went to Catholic School.
I never had a chance. (lines 7-14).

Wondolowski's world is surreal and dangerous. "Anything Pointed, Edged, Angled or Blunted" describes:
...a gang in the remote Peruivian jungle
[which] kills people for their fat
-keeping the liquid in little vials hanging from their belts. (lines 16-21).
What can one do to guard against something like this? "...there's no way/to walk the/night streets/without your fat." He says (lines 33-36). This is so horrifying, it can't be real, right? But reality is darker than anything one could dream up. "Before Work" demonstrates this. It describes a visit to the doctor. "This is not where the shit goes down, this is/where we find out if you can take the shit/coming down." (lines 18-20).

But there are moments of joy. Wondolowski looks back to Superbowl Halftime commercials, old toys from childhood, pills. "Spring Makes Me Small," is one of the more upbeat poems, despite itself:

I am not as cheerful
as my shirt would indicate
or as horrified
as my hair


in between the seething
pause
fur can be futile
and jackals make good dads


tumble me this yoga mat
a sun rises from my
ribcage into my esophagus and
there just isn't room for it.


What stands out throughout the collection, of course, is Wondolowski's wit and cunning observations. There are many standout poems. "Some Late Night Thoughts of Mortality While Staring Glassy-Eyed at Karen Black," I mean, how could that not be a great poem? There's an underlying joie de vivre in these poems that I'm thankful to Wondolowski for sharing. In the final poem, "For Everly," he sums it up: "Drop the feeling nto a river and watch it spread/in far reaching ripples." (lines 7-8).

* * * -CL Bledsoe

Marie Osmond & Hugo Ball, Together Again

LAST CHANCE TO WIN A CHEVY MALIBU for Chris Toll by Joel Dailey

(Fell Swoop publisher and poet Joel Dailey wearing the NASA manufactured glasses that enable him to see up to five feet in front of him and two to three feet behind)

LAST CHANCE TO WIN A CHEVY MALIBUfor Chris Toll

Urbane     urban      or simply 'ur'
77% of Americans live paycheck to Johnny Paycheck
Who placed the log in logic?
The form's the thing         ask Bob Zimmerman

Even in recession-cursed Europe chauffeurs hesitate
Top notch hillbillies populating Norway freeze
Why is taut in tautology?
The torque is possible        impossible

The official spokesperson for motion activated endtables
My string bikini skedaddle frontloader
My cloistered grief
Here's to your definitive thumbnail 24 hour coverage,
        wandering Brother Man

Visitations From Remarkable Humans In The Warm Bubble of Bookstore World

Not only do you get to hide out from the cruel world working in a book and record store like a genteel troll or cavewoman, communing with humankinds' various attempts to contact the sacred or primal firepit, you also get to rub elbows with lots of interesting people.

Sometimes those people have been drinking alcoholic egg nogg at 9am to settle their stomach before hitting the hard stuff or walk in wanting to lay a wet wool cape of hatred on you no matter what dance step you perform for them, but the vast majority are amazing, warm book and music lovers who speak passionately of the culture that has changed and shaped their lives.



Then occasionally there are the days when not only good friends and mind pilgrims are present, but there are visitations from wandering cultural warriors who have scaled high the walls of meaning and brought back Truth packaged that is then offered up to the public in said book or record stores.

At Normal's Bargain Cobbley World, we've had some fun visitors over the years - Chris Rock making that president movie - his "campaign headquarters" was one of our old slumlord's many vacant spots - and popping in to sign "Kiss my black ass, Chris Rock" in one of his books I'd put in the window one day and then buying a book on pimps we had another day; Mike Kuchar of the glorious Kuchar Brothers - visionary dwellers of the cinematic cesspool; the gentle fellow dog and serious serious bookstore loving Jeff Mangum who gave us a shout out from the stage later that night and was a blast to hang out with and then this week Sir Thurston Moore who helped introduce folks like Stockhausen and Daniel Johnston to a wider public while stretching and breaking the walls of punk rock into a wider sonic realm. Plus he's a poetry lover and writer and advocate and even plugged books by me and Blaster a few years back in Arthur. So I hold big love for him indeed.

Many thanks to him and his bandmate for indulging me, Amanda and Max the dog in a photo shoot.

November 30th Shattered Wig Night: A Booking Guy's Dream

It had been a year since the last Wig Night and many hairs lost and swirled down the old tub drain. For some reason I still get more nervous about these events than any kind of half-cocked performance I myself could do in front of folks. I guess it's the party throwing experience of worrying whether anyone will show and if they do, will they be happy or trash the couch and spill drinks on the oriental rug of your soul.

It was a fresh rollicking night from the get go since the long dormant 218 W. Saratoga building now also houses a gallery and none other than Julie "Never Saw An Event That Couldn't Be Helped By Some Bare Nips" Fisher was holding one of her wild erotic somethn' somethin' events. I even saw a blurry Plushie!



The lineup this brisk November night was golden and drew in around 60 folks despite the usual Baltimore flood of events these days.

The first reader was Cort (C.L.) Bledsoe who I'd first seen at Artichoke Haircut readings. He quickly took the air out of my Macy's Popeye balloon from finding out I'd been nominated for a Pushcart Prize by telling me he'd been nominated for three Pushcarts this year and that omnipresent sea mollusk Joyce Carol Oates was one of the judges. If you could go back in time, would you go back to when Joyce Carol was a kid so that you could live next door to her and traumatize her so that when she grew up to drop a novel every few weeks there might be something interesting in them? Break her Fisher Price typewriter for starters?


(ABOVE - Bledsoe with a very contented smile after telling me that my Pushcart nomination, like my 52 years, is meaningless)

Between scheduled readers we had a special visitation of Twain's spirit due to it being his birthday and it being a literary type event he hopefully would not have despised. His spirit was ably channeled by Alan Reese who spun some Clemmens' gold off the cuff and enchanted the crowd. Many thanks for that Alan.



And who could possibly have the effervescent gravitas to follow the haint of a literary legend but the ever brilliant and commanding Heather Fuller? Not only is her writing brilliant and fresh, but she also has a relaxed pro delivery that kept folks' Friday brains off the bar. She did not one but two funny scathing pieces about the bacterial squelch named Dick Cheney receiving a new heart. My aged fingers shook too much when I took her picture on stage, so here is a repeat of a photo where she could be in the dictionary next to "Health":



After Baltimore's Greatest Living Human & Artist Laure Drogoul watered down the crowd with bar beverages during intermissions, the sublime Omoo Omoo took the stage. With only guitar and a few effects pedals he transported me once again to verdant spaces near waterfalls. Intricate and surefooted yet never predictable his compositions be. The biggest surprise of the night after seeing the Plushie upstairs rub a one legged man's bare foot with an orange Louffa was when I asked Omoo Omoo after his set if he had cds to sell and he said Yes! These hairy youngsters of New Folk don't usually get the merch together. Pick up the Omoo Omoo cd. It's very different from the live experience, more like almost new age krautrock, but awfully damn good.



The grand finale was Saint Nathan Bell taking the stage with Kate Porter on cello and Eric Franklin on electronics. Nathan never fails to hit me down deep in my gut and this night was no exception. His interweaving with Kate's cello, a standout for me from his amazing "Colors" lp, was a particular treat. Sadly, he was having problems with his banjo strings so the set got cut slightly short, but that left folks time to move to an after party and time for me and Madame Drogoul to discuss mortality, Baltimore and the afterlife. Her altar has expanded with the grand spirits of Morris Martick and Chris Toll and we wished them a good night.

Heather Fuller: any number of signals - Books - Baltimore City Paper

Heather Fuller: any number of signals - Books - Baltimore City Paper

Sorie Kondi of Sierra Leone, Baltimore RetroCineFest, Justin Sirois on “So Say the Waiters,” and Rupert Wondolowski on… pills.

Sorie Kondi of Sierra Leone, Baltimore RetroCineFest, Justin Sirois on “So Say the Waiters,” and Rupert Wondolowski on… pills.