Monday, May 31, 2010

Broken Glass

My callused hands grasp broken glass
Made smooth by the sands of time
Opaque, a different shape
Warm and smooth now in my mind

Different colors, different sizes
I collected and prized them all
But what these bottles looked like
I cannot quite recall

Still I pluck their remnants from this shore
Alone on the beach with nothing to do
Trying to empty my head with this tedious chore
In the absence of something new

Were they just vessels for my outpourings?
My hopes, my dreams, my fears?
Did you pour in some of your own
Sour wines or bitter tears?

Either way there was little left
But a container, an outline
After we poured their contents out on the beach
When came the ending time

Did I smash them, drunk, angry, glad?
Or could it have been you?
Our eyes are cameras that reuse the film
Life erases the memory of what’s true

And the artifacts are hopelessly changed
The glass now smooth as stones
I can’t even see what the breakage looked like
Nor can I leave them alone

My pack is heavy and battered
Zippers ripping from the strain
Of carrying rocks I haven’t dropped
But all I can think to do is complain

And cram these relics in my bulging pack
Amongst the heavy stones
I grunt and heft it on my back
And turn and walk towards home

Once there, I root around inside
And blindly cut my hand
These trinkets, once safe, are safe no more
So I start mixing stone and sand

To cement this rebroken glass
Into something whole and new
A mosaic with strange patterns
A fresh take on what was true

And if you see this new creation
When I hang it on a wall
Will you know it came from me and you
Will you recognize it at all?

--Alfonso Mangione
   May 29, 2010

Sunday, May 30, 2010

The Golden Gate Bridge


This was taken from the Golden Gate Bridge in August, 2009.

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Cosmos

Sex and the City
Is why you feel shitty
Plus you done drank up everything in the Cosmos
I saw stacked by your shitter
While you were hitting the one-hitter
At the wrong end of a no-hitter
Bitter
Obliterating yourself, now you wanna hurl
Slow it down, baby girl
Break the blues, make new blueprints, your own plan
Don’t try and be a man, that don’t make us feel good neither
Take a breather
Stop the treadmill
If you wanna get some head, we’ll
Work it out without
Screwing each other over
Aww, who am I kidding?
I’m not a pimp
Just another love gimp
Limping from one sick doctor to another
Getting blue balls
‘Cause no one makes house calls
And to forget about the ouch
I will lie upon the couch
My memories are fed
By the movies in my head
So I need random pictures, war dead,
Something shocking to replace the dread
I feel it too
I’m alone at 32
But still I hear the clock ticking, same as you
When I’m home alone
No one gives this old dog a bone
But it’s later for me than you, and I’m hungry too, so
I’ll head out, a tortoise now, with less than a house on his back, but a pack, just enough to avoid
Being home with the lack
And the panic attack
Slow and steady doesn’t win in the end, sometimes it just leaves you lonely
And as I crawl past the pubs I see you and your girls,
I look up at the cosmos
And laugh
‘Cause you could drink a carafe of it
And you still wouldn’t know the half of it
You’re a giraffe, not an ostrich
Holding your head too high
To get it down in the sand
While I live in the dirt
So it doesn’t hurt
As much
At least when I put on that shell
It saves me from hell
But it keeps out touch as well
Maybe I should shell out some clams for a softer one
But I’m afraid of everyone
Even though I have no basis
I’m all up in your databases
A ghost in your machine
It’s mean
But I’d rather talk about you than me
It hurts less, you see
To see where you go wrong
Than me, I can’t follow along
With my own logic
It’s tragic
But I don’t believe in magic
Putting a stop to this
With a fantasy kiss
I don’t know how to end it
So I’ll just defend it
Trying to be a poet
By writing about your shit
If you wanna be a friend, it’s
Gonna cost you

- Alfonso Mangione, May 14, 2010

Saturday, May 22, 2010

Dumped Truck

I took this after work on Friday in the West Loop and figured I'd share.
(© 2010 Alfonso Mangione)

Bleeding Hand

Did I know you long ago
Were we deserters from that war
Veterans stacking sandbags
Who found the chore a bore
Trying to fight the flood and dam this river
Or did we think it safe to swim, me, you, him
Damn your liver
And lost sharks smelling blood
I’m a forgiver
Who came
With the heart of a dope
And veins full of same
Who can’t give up this slender rope
Where’s the harm?
I’ve got a hole in my arm and a bleeding hand
And a sliver of hope
To reach dry land

- Alfonso Mangione
  May 5, 2010

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Czech Countryside

I've been missing Prague a lot lately. Two years ago, I was there for two weeks, working on the Heydrich book. It was long enough to make friends, and to start going to grocery stores instead of restaurants, and to start recognizing Czech words once I got there. (Hruska = pear.) I took this picture in the countryside; I'd rented a bike and pedalled up there so I could see the things Heydrich's assassins had seen, and ride the routes they'd ridden. I thought I was happy with the book; now that I'm waiting for feedback, and compulsively thinking about the fact that I haven't gotten it yet, I'm not so sure. Still, I am grateful for the journey.

Monday, May 17, 2010

Through Your Life, Darkly

I posted a review of Through the Darkened Window by the Pinstripe .45s (a formerly local band) here.

Sunday, May 16, 2010

Still Waters


A favorite pic of mine. I took it in Alaska in 2003. Thought I'd share.
(© Alfonso Mangione)

Pawnshop Laptop

Actions speak louder than words and all you ever do is talk the walk of shame it never fazed you I’m amazed you love that strut you want lovers you don’t have to love yourself myself I talk a lot, too, but I can do anything better than you you’re a pawnshop laptop your jobs, I’ve had them, I seat them at a two-top or a four-top in my black and whites I nab them, I cop to that, I grab them, I’m a table whore, I gab them up, like a horny whore getting money for what I’d do for free anyways my talk is cheap but I do it for pay and I touch my rent a dollar at a time each day and and sometimes I hate myself for it, these same stories always, it’s a bore, but they don’t know the score, they’re a conveyor belt chore, so I stay game, I walk a good game, I’m a geek to the Greeks up front and the Mexicans in the back making the food Greek, camisas and cabezas all I see, and all I do is run it out and why can’t I judge myself against me and not against you, and why can’t I get paid for what I love and not just what I do.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

A Poem About Hipsters

Tramp stamps on food stamps
These hipsters get my palms damp
Little Hitlers on bikes, a critical mass
Of pompous ass
But every one pretends they’re not one
A spectator, not a dictator of taste
A waste of a college degree
Same as me, too much humanities,
Your histrionics tire me
And you’ve got too much ink, I think
On your skinny arms; the only exercise you get is pumping irony
And I don’t drink your PBR
But I do what you do, I sink
Into the couch at the trendy coffee shop
With my laptop, but not a Mac, a Toshiba, black, writing poetry
No Starbuck’s for me
Unless I can’t see another place to get a fix
And get off on mental masturbation, the generation of verbal jism
Our nation of criticism
And lies I despise
Your Chrome bike bags
And hurl invective
At Animal Collective
But still go to Pitchfork
And drool
And thank God it’s finally cool
To be a dork

- Alfonso Mangione
  5/5/2010

Monday, May 10, 2010

Technicolor Dreamburst

So I'm trying something new on the blog. Rather than just posting criticism and rants and things of that sort, I'm also gonna put some poems up here and there, and maybe a photo or two. (Granted, the poems may themselves be criticisms and/or rants, but, hey, what do you expect?) Anyway, here's one I wrote back in April; it also recently appeared in a literary newspaper called The Deadline that my friend Liz put together. OK, here goes:

I’m a supernova, baby
Brighter, hotter than the blues
A Technicolor dreamburst
With a million different hues
And it’s not about you ‘cause there’s
A thousand other yous
I don’t choose these thrashing fevered nights
Booze used to turn them off but now I choose not to lose the
Queues of yous
That form outside my head
As I thrash about, my bed
Energetic
But it’s potential, not kinetic
It’s pathetic
What can set me off
A smile, a look, a wave
Surging crashing foaming surf
Until it lands upon my turf
A clean white page
These thoughts rage
Or better yet race
Motorcycles in a death cage
My empty head
But now I’ve fled
My empty life, at least,
Netflix, no wife
And coffee, wired, watching the Wire
Eating peanuts, butter toffee
Feeding the fish, a betta, Max
Not compatible with VHS fish, blue from loneliness too, perhaps
At least I get to go out and see the other fish, the sea
While he’s in his bowl
But he looks whole
Content with only me
Or so it seems
But still I wonder
Does he wish for other fish
When he dreams?

- Alfonso Mangione
  April 21, 2010

Saturday, May 01, 2010

Buried Treasure

I posted a review of Neil Young's "On the Beach" here. This is a very underappreciated album--one that might be the best thing in Neil's catalog. Anyway, check it out if you get a chance.