Purple Pressed Ass

A seldom-sober pseudonym takes on the totality.

Monday, February 22, 2010

Statements from the March 2010 Issue of Ranger Rick Magazine, Arranged from Least to Most Believable

“Boobies have an impressive fishing style.”

“Boobies also have excellent vision . . .”

“Boobies are fishing pros.”

“They got the ‘booby’ part from long-ago Spanish explorers . . .”

“This booby is coming in for a landing . . .”

“There are also . . . brown, masked, Peruvian and Nazca boobies.”

“The boobies come together in big seaside colonies.”

“Not all boobies do the same dance . . .”

“Finally, a nearly naked chick breaks out . . .”

“Boobies live along the Pacific coast, from southern North America down to northern     South America.”

“Brown boobies are the most widespread of all the boobies.”

“But no matter how different . . . they are all still bibbidy-bobbidy-BOOBIES!”

“Turn to page 16 for much more booby lore.”

Monday, March 10, 2008

Today's special three-year-old unwitting guest blogger is . . .

The following's a little Xia story, as dictated to her preschool teacher.

Part I

Once upon a time there was a cat who rescued other cats. And she gave them nice kitty food. Actually it's me! Then she gave them a nice chewy ball, and then they played with all her fuzz balls, but she didn't mind. Then she let them leave. But she called "Kitties" and got them all on one leash. The end.

Part II

Once upon a time there was a cat who had a wand. She went around and played on her bed, and then she fluffed her room up with her tail. Then all the cats saved her, because she had a monster in her room who was going to eat her. The cats got there on time and saved her! The cat was a famous cat called "Cat on the Move."

Monday, February 25, 2008

Another one, thanks be to bourbon

Silence equivalent to freedom.  Ah, glory.

I learned yesterday that my dearest friends are to be returned to Seattle and to me.  In joy then I let go of the bit I wrote when first they left.  Welcome again, and gods speed, dearest necessary ones!

a valediction: of the christians

ten years a prelude to your parting,
baby-laden into the west,
out of the autumn once welcoming,
out of the torrents, the damp
that grew moss on our mustaches,
to sever the north from the northwest,
to brave again highway to almost home

almost I mourn, almost,
this dissection, allotment of dream
parceled to each now tighter tribe,
increasing each though in small walls,
small circles into longshot leaps,
city to city and decade to when?

out of the autumn once welcoming
to us, young vagabonds and lovers
and lovers-to-be, our touch then
so tentative each to each, and needed,
and believed: that if not free
or comforted we could be warmed
at least by wine by words by our
proximity, pragmatic on monday till
ecstatic by friday—oh,

to love was to survive was to
afford and nothing more? belie this,
spicy wine and grinning tryst,
leaps laughing over fences into cemetery
(how boldly we told death to fuck off then),
to live off meager muffins, cisco sips,
and pantomiming innocence adrift
in frozen metropole forced into home,
this drenchèd dismal grey roof dawn to gloam,
under whose frown we feared to be free,
still were freed till unafraid we stayed
we stayed and owned it all,
needle and beacon in our threadbare pocket
or elsewise-empty purse—sound citizens
we, glad sodden sousèd company—

and what’ve we conjured for legacy?
into the west toward the first city I ever aspired to, where we rehearsed (unknowing then) our emigration, read ‘candy’ between north beach and Chinatown while waiting for a cablecar (my first & last trip thereupon), where my future heather met raccoon by the beach—“silly raccoon”—and so won my love months before I knew it—
but not before the wind machine speedhelmed had delivered five pilgrims to the hawks’ great american aerie and alley and heaven thereafter—
not before you michael had schemed to desert, to slough off your uniform and go underground in berkeley, itself in hiding two decades or more—
and not before you’d grown there summer by summer, michael my bestman—
will so your wonderful rowan grow? and what luck to show such memory to your heatherlover own, at first within that selfsame summerboy home—
so much she’ll know so well,
and boy, and all . . .

lord all the love I’ve stolen from
you three (yes even you littleone,
a mere but mighty year into
a blazing bounty of centuries)—
lord how long you’ve sustained me,
raised me, made me believe
that belief is real,
is synchronized when love wills,
is twin and tangible when bound for the
(in damn-near unison) next of us:

our buggins and monkeyshines, mete to meet
the future’s greatest griefs and shatter them
to timid atoms! yes! but each to each,
and inbetween, the drift, whate’er it is
’tween cities (christ if I know anymore)—
yet may the magicks intercede
to hold these babies hopeful to
their origins their granted majesties,
that all these wanderings ahead of them
be foreordained (if but in blessèd
sentimental hindsight, yes,
when we are great with grey and care,
immobile save for wheelchair)—

lord all the love no lord
nor counterlord could contradict
betwixt us fated blessèd friends
no distance no remiss no parting
even so, but fastened forward
love to love,
inevitable as a drunken autumn

Not only is it a nifty calibre for a handgun, but . . .

 . . . 38 is also my age as of today.  I've crested now: am more than half my father's age for the first time in my life (but still the exact same age as my twin sister).  As a little self-indulgent autopresent, and to keep this blog wheezing along, I throw down with creaky arthritic fingers my favorite self-composed poem, see.  So, see.

christen, with cigarette kisses,
me, unchristly gallant glowering out
my window to black wonder--
and hey while you're at it
toss me that Wild Turkey--
got words to waste
with that old benighted bird
or any other in his liquid flock--
got threats to taste
and memories to pound into
disconnected molecules . . .

as brutally usual as possible

Friday, February 22, 2008

Infern Ham Paean

So a friend of mine's been daily sending a blasphemous prayer into the MySpace aethyr--prayers to Satan, to Iblis, against Christ and Mary and so on. I sent him the following gentle ribbing (not the Trojan sort) and was surprised to hear his reply: "I love it! Can I post it?" But he didn't. So, here: 

O guy on the can of Underwood-brand deviled ham,
oldest existing trademark still in use in the United States,
smear thy spicy piggy mischief
jambon de l'enfer
on all my friends and "friends"
at the Stygian picnic, bankside of th'accurst waters,
or at Boston's Russia Wharf in 1822--
anyway just be sure to smear that ham crap all over 'em,
get mustardseed all in their ears
and some B&G Sweet Midget Gherkins up the ol' Khyber
for good sticky measure
this vengeful quarter-to-three-ish

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Back From the Beyond, with Company!



I just couldn't stay away . . . and neither could Sefira Sofia.
Born: 2/9/2008, 9:50 pm
Birth weight: 9.5 lbs
Cuteness: Oh, my, yes
Destiny: Empress of everything!

Friday, July 06, 2007

What Businessmen Tell Me

From the national bestseller Getting To Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In: "Either we have free will or it is determined that we behave as we do. In either case, we make choices" (p. 53; derisive emphasis added).