Christopher Luna

Six Poems
 
 
 
 

	161st  St. – River Avenue
A spiked baseball bat  for Ward Connerly
	Bus Stop Outside La Estrellita: Reverie
Native is Dead: Long Live the Wienerites
	Near 9th Street & Canyon Boulevard
heresies questioned on the way home

 

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161^st  St. – River Avenue

There was a bird
   on the sidewalk
attacking a chicken bone
pickin it up and throwin it down
pickin it up
throwin it down

 
 
 

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A spiked baseball bat
for Ward Connerly
 

The sky is slate grey and its raining and a day spent mired in preparation for an article on the dismantling of affirmative  action has left me kinda depressed and I’m sitting on the company bus next to a co-worker who may or may not be aware that she is a lesbian and I’m reading Richard  Brautigan’s Revenge of the Lawn particularly charmed by the stories for his daughter he is always gentle and sweet and reverent toward her and I gaze out the window wondering “is this how it’s going to be in Washington?” wondering whether I’ll be able to handle it or will I succumb to light deprivation anxiety I don’t drink coffee after all (except with my love) and Rose is on the bus and the nervous disheveled girl who reminds me of Marie Grosso my first girlfriend in tenth grade who would not kiss me no matter how far into the woods we went and I listen to the excited chatter behind me as the bus makes its way down the street and as we turn the corner I once again check out a brick wall where someone has painted: J-LOVE TAZ SHORT BROWN TINY and we pass Dean’s Shoe Shop and JCR Percussion and Highbridge Fashions (now closed) and I wonder about the folks living in these tiny apartments we pass and just then I notice a sliver of blue splashed across the horizon above Yankee Stadium and the windows on the apt. building light up and twinkle like glitter and as the green greenery of the oh so green trees passes by I become happy as I nod my head to the tune I have just constructed but before this new attitude can take hold I see a blonde haired girl with one hand over her newly bruised eye speed down the street, her righteous swaggering red bandanna bedecked boyfriend a few menacing steps behind and now I sense that it is truly time to go home.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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Bus Stop Outside La Estrellita: Reverie
 
 

Ghost train splatter over
tree limb splay
‘cross inattentive infants
inside rabies addled
decomposing squirrel heads.
They’re much more aggressive out here.

This poem is not about assemblage.
Would you care to be tone leading
team player? Secret societies have
their advantages. The mediocre
lobby for and obtain permission to
run red lights with impunity.

There are many Method Actors in waiting
                 gradually expanding from too much pasta
                                  shoveled into Stanislavski pie holes
Dinner theater more likely than raging bull
                 Mysteries involving murderous bus boys
                                  performed to the delight of middle-aged
                                  middle class married couples.
“Now this is what I call real entertainment, Harv.”
Where’s Tennessee when we need him?
 
 

Digressions dissipate with disappointing regularity.
Never know how to dress in this town.
Inner ear mariachi serenade as I wait at cold bus stop for my baby’s return.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Boulder, CO
11/23/98
 

 
 
 

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Native is Dead: Long Live the Wienerites
 

Who is Tom Peters and why am I banned from the open reading at Penny Lane? It was not his original intention. He found that subconsciously he had set up the space that way. No human being in this world is not without his or her yardstick of godless emptiness. So many were outright HOSTILE. Miguel Cerceda says that racism is everywhere in Boulder. “MONKEES ARE SMARTER THAN MEXICANS,” read the spray-painted message. Some of the people who were more successful at dealing drugs began buying up areas downtown and opening their all-natural $50-candle gift shops. Escapist New Age attitudes and yuppie consumption being a one-way ticket to fascism. 1,000 people set couches & dumpsters on fire. Call it boredom. Super Bowl Fever. Bruised civic pride. Lingering feelings of sexual inadequacy. For trying to drink, Michael Schwarz will spend more jail time than a host of Boulder’s violent offenders combined. Most of the people in Boulder are tree-hugger types, and they just don’t get it. “I hug all of my trees,” Smith admits with a grin. “And then I cut them down.” COPS HAPPY WITH RIOT PERFORMANCE: “We were being pretty tolerant, letting them even have a fire, which is something we don’t like to see. When some of the individuals chose to remain, we deployed the chemical munitions,” Hughes said. There were no signs of “black magic,” and there does not appear to be any significance surrounding the date. We kind of need you to overlook the idea that Boulder is Nirvana. We have had some spectacular homicides. You have one year to prepare for the world’s impending demise. I’m waiting for the movie with John Travolta as Pa Ramsey and Celine Dion as the Mom. A vicious rapist is on the loose. Finding him quickly, as it turned out, would have been quite simple. If you live near Tantra Lake, it’s appropriate to have jitters. And soon our lives will consist of little autonomy or choice. You might consider moving.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

2/3/99
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 

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Near 9th Street & Canyon Boulevard
 

SPAM was served to all of the military, and they laugh about it – but there was another product that was served to the military called a ‘spiced luncheon meat.’ For your prophetic information, those funny-looking lights in the sky are all “fallen angels,” flitting about here and there, doing paranormal/psychic vibration work on your brains and generally doing the work of their master: Satan. “Jesus hates homosexuals, and all those who would defend them,” Debra e-mailed me. According to the police report, she was “just trying to help the girls out.” And ‘spiced luncheon meat’ is completely different than SPAM. Finally, I just threw away my glasses and trained my eyes to see on their own. It is said that no man is a prophet in his own land. And then there was SPAM. In some cultures it’s considered a magic trick. A lot of the troops that ate spiced luncheon meat called it SPAM, they called it all SPAM, but it wasn’t. The penis was in plain sight and exposed for anyone to see. The man was found with a gunshot wound to the head and a revolver next to him. Boulder Police reported seeing him asleep on the Pearl St. Mall with his genitals exposed. A lot of the things that they ate were not SPAM. That’s another misconception. Despite all the temporal/earthly efforts to stop it, the supreme “battle royale” is quickly and fiercely coming down the pike. The narcotics buys on Pearl St. and at Central Park represent, on a small scale, the program’s goals. The good stuff was SPAM, and the bad stuff was ‘spiced luncheon meat.’ There really is an overseeing spirit. Not a god, more like a pixie. The one we liked best was called the ‘Spamwich.’ You don’t understand the situation, Missy, you fucking bitch. We all remember that if there was a way to eat SPAM, we ate it. A disabled man who successfully campaigned for wheelchair access to Tom’s Tavern – because he loved the restaurant’s cheeseburgers – died Tuesday after being struck by a dump truck. You talk about SPAM and everything, but you think about everything Dad did for the community, and the kids who grew up in the community, and for me that overshadows anything he did.

10/27/98
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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heresies questioned on the way home
 

                                                            I.

                                                      desire teems neath the restless city
                                                                      steel exoskeleton beast custom designed
                                                                                                to spit on all crapulous creeds

 then   in the tunnel
 a hand is raised          an instrument communes with fatigued lips &
              an ode to joy ever so cautiously blown
              musical tribute to the reverie of the faithless

                                                 one tentative step
                                       tempered by a measure of humility (?)
 
 

                                       & this is the sound of
                                                     and that there’s
                                                                  the sound of
                                       everything that resonates is
                                       follow you home song

                        and you may find that they talk too fast
                        but what harm could come from a principled expansion
 

old words mask          older tones

                                        “you don’t let me finish – forget it”

                                                                                                            ancient drone too intuitive
                                                                                                            to be merely inherited

                          it’s in the blood, son
                          all that’s left
                          after the creditors come
                                       not much?

                                                             far far more than enough
                                                                          now listen:
 
 
 
 

                                                               II.
 

documents mass critical
not to eat not edible

                           you’ll get a papercut on your lip
                           mark of the criminal
                           senza scruples nor hesitation

                                                                                                there’s always some clown
                                                                                                wants to take the long way
                                                                                                don’t see autumn landscape
                                                                                                as impressionistic red orange brown

                                                 the word red is just that
                                                 don’t stop that kid
                                                 from pissing under the bridge
                                                 this is NYC what would you suggest?

                            too close she doesn’t like it
                            still my proximity remains unintentional
                                        just kinda ended up like this

                            second nature dread shake
                                          kick that bag
                                                               26 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS

                                   He threw his infant son from the 15th story window.
 

         something happened there a lesson a visitation
                                                 were you there
                                                              were you listening?