Pac-Man

15 years later the same four fucking people
doing the same shit, I say,
What does that say about us?

My brother says it means
that we know what we like.

The ghosts are chasing Pac-Man
through the maze on one
of his arcade machines.
Pac-Man never escapes that screen.
Everywhere he goes
the little dots shove
themselves down his throat.

Remember when we swam
in the laundry room? John-Ryan says.
Jake tokes up and plays
us a song he recorded, alone,
an orchestra of himself.
We want him to turn it off
but we see the dreams bleeding
from his eyes
so the song keeps looping.

Circumstance made us friends,
our mothers having
moved into the same apartment complex,
but now it seems this is our choice.
In this room we are
the truest versions of ourselves
that we've yet created.

The ghosts flash blue
and Pac-Man turns in pursuit.
I have been waiting all my life
to become myself.

Cameo

I felt that surge when
I saw God on Waverly,
that surge you might get
if you saw Brangelina or McDreamy
suddenly appear on the same streets
as the rest of us.
I thought Is that
really Him?
It can't be.
He’s much smaller than I thought He’d be.
Be cool. Pretend
you don’t notice Him.
It’s just God.

Should I say something?
I’ll regret it if I don’t say something.
He probably gets pestered
all the time. And what if He’s
an asshole? I could never
look at Him the same way.
It’d ruin all His stuff for me.
Fuck it. I deserve two minutes
of His time. I've seen all His
stuff. Least He can do is talk to me.

Men fluttered before Him, aiming
their cameras, flashes shining.
His face was impervious, blank behind
His great beard
of clouds (it's just like you'd expect)
and mirrored
sunglasses. His bodyguards
kept everyone away as He disappeared
into a big, black SUV, resealed
into a life normal people can only speculate
about, a life of anti-wrinkle creams,
champagne wishes and caviar dreams,
private jets, spas, Beyonce.

I told my friends
and they asked me what
He was like and what I said
and did I get a picture
or an autograph? I said He looked
like He didn’t want to be bothered,
that I couldn’t imagine
what His life was like,
having no one to relate to,
all that pressure,
all those people knowing who you are
and you don't know who they are.
Must be lonely to be God.
He deserves
His privacy
like everybody else.

REASONS FOR LIVING: April 4th 2010

LAKEBOAT - Written by David Mamet, Directed by Joe Mantegna

A hilarious, beautiful movie about a vanishing way of life (or maybe one that's already disappeared), Mamet based the play (and subsequent film) on experiences he had on a boat as a youth one Summer on Lake Michigan. The excellent cast includes Peter Falk, Denis Leary, George Wendt, Andy Garcia, the great Charles Durning, Mamet's brother Tony, and Chicago theatre legends (and guys who should be famous) J.J. Johnston and Jack Wallace. Robert Forster gives a tender, gorgeous performance as Joe Litko, a brooding lifer not quite sure how the hell he became himself. Mantegna gives the subject a wonderful dignity, capturing the crisp, autumnal nature of working on a freighter. He elicits stellar performances all around, but screws up by inserting flashback footage over some of the monologues, which are delivered with such mastery that they don't require the over the top reenactments. I love this movie so goddamn much.

GLENGARRY GLENROSS - Written by David Mamet, Directed by James Foley

Watching this movie has become a nightly, post-bar ritual (well, we don't go to the bar every night, but when we do, the movie invariably follows). A once-in-a-lifetime cast, the movie gets better with every viewing. The script, I think, is much better than the play. We get more Moss, get to see Levine in action on a sit, AND we get Alec Baldwin as the yuppie from Hell. A modern classic.

A WHORE'S PROFESSION - Essays by David Mamet

A compilation of Mamet's essay collections "The Cabin," "Writing in Restaurants," "Some Freaks," and "On Directing Film," I picked this up a few years ago at Half Price Books and it is one of the five books or so I hope is always with me. Mamet's essays are endlessly readable. His life has been extraordinary, his opinions are always welcome, and I've learned more about theatre from him than anyone. I would advise, however, taking everything in "On Directing Film" with a grain of salt, as I think he is a much better writer than a director. I don't agree with much of anything he says about filmmaking, and, although many great films have been made from his scripts, I think his material is usually handled better by others. Also recommended is "Make-Belive Town," a later collection of essays. I was a drama major in College, but I found myself consistently at odds with what they were teaching me, with what everyone else was doing, what they expected me to do, and Mamet seemed like the only one on my side. His books have been my real education.

RHAPSODY - Frank O'Hara

(The final stanza)

I have always wanted to be near it
though the day is long (and I don't mean Madison Avenue)
lying in a hammock on St. Mark's Place sorting my poems
in the rancid nourishment of this mountainous island
they are coming and we holy ones must go
is Tibet historically a part of China? as I historically
belong to the enormous bliss of American death

Bound in a Nutshell

I was at my Dad's house today for Easter and I found a bag of my old notebooks, one of which featured this comic I drew two years ago. It's about a film version of Hamlet made a few years ago in which I played Guildenstern...