For my friend, Fred Arcoleo

Fred Arcoleo had his CD party yesterday at the Bowery Poetry Club. I went to it and afterwards forced myself to do the pub crawl with Zev Torres.

Fred's party was packed - every seat filled. I sat at the bar with Robin Glasser (our famous Washington Heights author of My Life As A Concubine and Liz Popiel, a well known set & costume designer also from the heights. There were easily 60 people there at 10 bucks a pop - all of us there to support Fred and his new CD seeds.

If you'd like to listen to Fred to know more about him and hear his music, click on his name in this sentence.

Quite a few people followed Zev in his pub crawl which is exactly that. Not being much of a drinker I participated in a couple of rounds of poetry with features and all. Finally I got too cold since the temperature dropped and I left. Should've rocked my hoody for that outing, but who knew - after all the weather is not predicable.

A shout out to Fred for a wonderful evening and the party packs of Quinoa that he gave out at the end that I will definitely use and look up on the internet.

kute kold kitty kats

I'm sorry so sorry it's taken me this long
sometimes
i recite lines of poetry in my head then forget to write them down...
sometimes I feel like a motherless child billie holiday reborn
never fun being a child when your main concerns are about money for rent and food
arguments about nothing taking its place in the next turn of events


Meet Davie. David Died on the day Davie was born, August 10, 2010. I adopted Davie - who is very similar to David in personality - hence I named him after David. I got Davie in October when he was 8 weeks old. Sphinx cats have a very unusual history. More or less, two different versions of the same hairless variety, appeared pretty much simultaneously in Canada and Russia. A regular offspring of the well known domestic cat just happened to come out hairless. This hairless variety was bred with a Siamese cat. Then the half Siamese /half hairless offspring who came out hairless was bred back to the original hairless who had been bred to the Siamese, in other words his mother.

I didn't realize that Sphinx cats are more work. They get cold, the same as you do if your apartment gets cold as they only have no hair, only a bit of fuzz in a few places at the most so you have to dress them. Sphinx cats also have an oily secretion on their skin and under their nails. They must be bathed regularly.

On the positive side, they are extremely communicative and sensitive.

They are also extremely curious and will approach any stranger and tap them on the shoulder to say hello.

Little Davie curls up under covers at the end of the bed while Cleo and Starr, mother and daughter curl up together at the head of the bed.

Isn't Davie funny he is hiding and peeking out.

Above is the work of our featured artist for next issue of The Cartier Street Review, Claudio Tomassini.

Starr is Tortoise point and her daughter Cleo is Flamepoint.

A moment to watch mommy snap photos.

Davie decides to hide as he is cold and tired now.

The 50 Most Unforgettable Female Protagonists in Literature

Anyone agree or disagree with this list or want to add to add to it?

50 Most Unforgettable Female Protagonists in Literature


Personally I would have included the modern Lisbeth Salander from the Millenium Trilogy by Steig Larrson who spent his working days hunting Nazi criminals and fighting fascism in his newspaper Expo. Larrson wrote this trilogy to give some fun and spice to his life. I wrote about this here and have a long comment published at Larson's website under Life & Work, page 48 on the comments.

a work in progress

This following four photos represents two full days of work plus a couple of additional hours. Last Friday Harry began breaking down wall tiles and installing the new ones I had bought. By the second day he had completed about eighty percent of the walls. Before this the tiles only went half way up the walls and then the rest of the wall was just regular plastered and painted walls so when he installed floor to ceiling tiles, the ones that began on the wall needed a bunch more of thinset behind them to make the walls even and he had to put a lot of thinset behind the tiles.

 

The wall tiles are Italian, Sant Agostino Light 8 x 24 Damanti Tiles and are mid priced tiles.

I wish I had bought more of the darker ones now and done more research to find the tiles cheaper too. If you live in the NYC or Yonkers area - here is a link to my tile man/handy man, Harun.

Harun gives excellent prices and I recommend him highly plus he is very funny and engaging.

 

Yesterday and today was the third and fourth day of work and now I have my toilet working and the sink half mounted but not working. The new showerhead is mounted as well but I'm not certain I will like it as much as the water saver interferes with pressure. 

I still can't find handles that fit tub faucets. This is an older building and we're not allowed to replace the inner part of a faucet because we'd have to be plumbers and break down the wall to get to what we need. The cobalt blue medicine cabinet is mounted too plus a new wood door is mounted.

 Now thank God the throne is back up and more importantly working so I don't have to keep running to some one's apartment or holding it. And the cobalt blue medicince cabinet is installed. This was the last toilet Kohler had in Syklight which is a blue color and lucky me because they won't be making this blue anymore. Also my new solid wood door with the lock installed is up. The light is a problem too because these guys didn't even see the glass covers for the light set and although the bulbs aren't ugly I'd still like them covered like they should be and I can see this is a problem because the light fixture has to be unmounted and they are so high it almost is to the ceiling and how in hell will I add new bulbs uggggrhh.
Missing is the metal storage cabinet from the back of the door which still has to be spray painted to match the cobalt blue of the medicine cabinet. And the door to the front of the medicine cabinet - is now installed too. The shelves are not. The sink below is mounted but not yet usable because one of the pipes below didn't fit and I have to get one that fits.

 The shower pole is installed.They somehow scratched it while installing but since I am buying chrome spray paint for a few pipes and brackets under the sink these scratches on the pole can be refreshed with fresh chrome paint.

 This sink came from ebay with everything included for only $179 and will match the shelving unit of chrome and glass I plan to buy for over the toilet.

 And looky here, half the floor tiles are down in my five by five too. Yippee a new bathroom look is here. What really convinced me was that the wall backing the shower tiled wall was completely rotted out and molded because clean me keeps bleaching away the remnants of sixty year old grout. The floor is already level and the same type of tile is being installed but these are glass tiles. I've seen them in other places for up to thirty dollars apiece but I paid nine bucks at Home Depot. The cobalt blue nutone recessed medicine cabinet is also from home depot. It comes in many colors such as fire red, gold, silver, sunburst orange, and racing green. The toilet is also from Home Depot. The wall tiles can be bought at any specialty tile place

Tattoosday

 If you are a tattooed poet, then send your poetry with a photo of your ink to Bill Cohen. Bill runs a site called Tattoosday.

Send a bio with links you'd like him to feature. He is especially looking for tattooed poets in various parts of the county.

I'm today's feature.

Tattoosday

Review of 39 Poems

Article first published on Blogcritics.org as Book Review: 39 Poems by Charles Butler

39 POEMS by Charles J. Butler

ISBN 978-0-9772718-8-7

Publication date 2010

74 pages

No Shirt Press, Brooklyn, NY

Reading through the 39 Poems brought to mind Hitchcock’s movie, The 39 Steps because each poem stretches the reader and the page towards the next poem and set of steps without explaining where he is going. Also the poems on the pages of the book are laid out in emulation of climbing up and down steps so that while reading I felt like I was skipping steps. Each poem relates to life’s struggles; the various ways love affects us and how meaningful respect is. He writes about everyday things moving us up and down steps lyrically and emotionally.

Butler describes how one can be oblivious to a murder and walk across bloodstains on our big city streets without recognizing them in the book’s first poem, Crimson Stroll. Suddenly while stepping over the red brown stains, the author recognizes it for what it is, seeing a stark vivid beauty of someone’s life bled out on the streets.

Someone’s life bled out

At your feet

              Think on it

                             Times you bled

Times you made others bleed

            Look on it

            Big dark path on 8^th ave

            Brooklyn side

                                    in your way

look on it

the fuel that moves us all

dried out on a dirty sidewalk

who bled …

are they dead

                        look at it

a dark stain

                        it’s almost…

beautiful

            a bit of Canada                         flashes up your neck

and ears

back in the world you move around it

and move on

                        wishing for cold rain

to wash away the stain   human sin

most of all

                           your own

We’re all here – all human and suffering –  and this is the grist for this author to describe how we’re all the same and different at the same time, but he wants to show us that we have the capacity to be and do more that drives us and of course this is what drives this poet to create poetry. The stains our lives create must contain beauty otherwise why do we exist? Butler’s struggle is to align himself with the humanity in all of us, despite the murder the chaos, the beauty the differences between rich and poor, black and white, and he struggles with it all, climbing up and down, retreating and coming to terms with wrongs and rights and even the grays and imperfections.

The problem is that our climbing stretching and reaching is never done. You go up you descend and then you begin all over again because that’s the way life is, it’s never done until you’re done - or dead and gone - is more like it - or if you’re a quitter. Butler is no quitter and no matter how far down he’s gone – he bounces back to reexamine his roots and the course of his life, fighting to stay in touch with his spiritual side. This spiritual side is at the root of Butler’s talent, as he controls his anger hurt and humiliation when he’s experienced racism. For any of you who have never experienced racism, normal is a good place to start to understand what it’s about when you get stopped on the street because of the color of your skin.

                                    nature of the beast

now

            I’m not gonna say I’ve lost

count o’the many times I’ve been blackstopped

but

            it’s more than a few

remember

                        I’m 16

walkin’ on a bed-stuy street

goin’ noplace fast

            blue n’ white rolls up on me

unis pile out …

            nicely they ask me if I’m carryin’

a gun

            nicely I say no

nicely

            they  ask if I would submit

to a search

                        mind you             they don’t have

to ask me

                        a goddamn thing

and they know it

I know it

                        An’ the brother

watchin’ this

                                    who wishes right now

he was            

            someplace else

knows

            it

nicely

            I say

                        go ahead

I can relate to this struggle and suffering. All my life as a Jew and especially in my childhood I was called a Christ killer. The recent advent of the Mel Gibson movie and his ensuing drunk arrest and slurred comment about Jews brought it home to me again. But this is a tactic of the upper echelon. They want to keep us all at each other’s throats so we will keep our busy bee status and keep making the rich richer. It’s a means of control and humiliation and it makes us hurt. Mr. Butler knows this hurt intimately and writes about it poignantly.

           

39 Poems cover a range of experiences; awareness of the haves and have-nots, racism, love, hurt, abandonment and loss, and more importantly the urge to understand and come to terms with it and explain what it’s all about. After all this everyday stuff is the mesh of our lives. The ability to sublimate sets humans apart from other species, to take our hurts and pain and transcend them for the greater good – to create beauty in ugliness is the work Mr. Butler attends to.

In DMV rag, Butler speaks for all of us who have ever been to the DMV.

We’re in the dmv now

                        Hundreds of black

And brown faces

                        some whites

all of them wanna be someplace else

but here we are …

                                    it’s all mad

gotta be

            half the world is on fire            an’

the other is on line waiting for their number to be called

lookin’ for a place t’ sit

an empty seat

is like

            fool’s gold

Don’t we all feel like this when we visit official offices, public school registration, social security, Medicaid, even the closed down US passport passport bureaus, and welfare’s the worst. I have a poem about it called, “Welfare’s Still A Bitch!”

The searching and questioning never stop just like in the movie The 39 Steps, there is always another side to examine to analyze understand and conquer. His poems speak to maturity and growth and show how youth and mistakes although unavoidable are only part of climbing and descending those steps, a poem for each step.

In word one baby, Butler explains why a writer writes.

why 

write?

writing                         since he was eleven

thru                        good days

                                                and dark times

the pain of living

                                                the come hither call

of death

            and madness inbetween

even hung                        ‘em up for a time

didn’t last

why write?

he’s free

Is the author describing himself here or is he speaking for everyone? We all know writers write about what they know and well, … if they write about what they don’t know … everyone knows that doesn’t work. Artists from time immemorial have been known to describe angst which often spurs their creative urges. Does every writer experience angst? I can’t speak for every artist. Many writers have spoken and written about their angst yet angst alone doesn’t make a man an artist. There is some other indistinguishable indefinable something that inspires a writer to create, that makes his writings stand out among others, something that prods him to spend his time writing while others commune, have sex, watch tv or do other things while writing remains a lonely task which takes time.

Words don’t miraculously appear on the page. Writing is what gives Butler the freedom he speaks of above. His words create a freedom that exists nowhere else around in our world and he helps the reader to feel it too. Through that freedom we see what he sees; a stark world filled with fertility and barrenness that provides us not only with a place to survive but a place to grow and thrive. The growth in Butler’s poetry and words inspires me too. I recommend 39 Poems sincerely and without any reservation.

Cartier Street Review March 2011

Cartier Street Review March 2011

new bathroom ensues with issues

I like this combo, the blue glass floor tiles, they're 12 " X 12 " - each square glass is 1" X 1" and they are mounted on mesh. The box has special installation instructions. I found these at Home Depot for $8.97 apiece. They sure are pretty and this would make a pretty floor. Its name is Blue Lagoon by Daltile.

These blue ceramic tiles look nice for the wall - it's not the cheapest I could go but not the most expensive either, kind of a compromise between the two. I'd go with the large flat tiles in the middle below for the shower area and the rest of the walls will go halfway up with this same flat light blue below.

Then for the upper part of the wall to the ceiling I want to use the blue center ones like in the photo below. These tiles also come in 8 " X 24 " strips mounted on mesh too. These are not flat and come come up on each corner, nicely shaped. 

And then that pretty blue glass floor...



Whaddaya think?

marble living room table

marble living room table

hand painted night table /stand

hand painted night table /stand