cspeak

[Drundaar Rockheart]

Well than I'm Leonardo Da'vinci

[lucimay]

The Death of a Screenplay
...for Rick Bradley & Chris La Valle


It’s a slow-moving jazz dirge, Leo
with mutes on the horns,
an alto sax that’s talking about smoky bars
and nights spent wondering which name to use;
a secondhand sharkskin jacket over a black T-shirt,
playing pool with your eyes when you can’t get a table.

It’s remembering the strange music of a street player,
a tune that doesn’t make sense but won’t go away, like you,
Mr. Dyed-in-the-Wool, hard-core New York,
your tendancy toward neatness and
scrap metal on the wall for the sake of art;
your voice, translating Brooklyn-ese to Southern Nouvelle like cuisine,
and whatever comes out is Shakespere, Leo.
Whatever comes out is worth it,
like subways on Christmas, jammed but happy.

The good ones die in the edit and only the endings are predictable.
Too much cliche, too much like a Joe Papp production in Central Park,
or a one-man-one-act that never gets produced
because the script is lying, unfinished,
in a cardboard box in your sister’s garage.

So how do I talk about the ending when
the best parts will never be in the film,
like pieces of celluloid left on the cutting room floor,
swept up by the night man and
put into some dumpster somewhere in Kerouac Alley or Saroyan Lane?
It’s like slow-dancing without a score, Leo, without even an orchestra.

And I am still sitting in the empty theater
when the houselights come up and the credits roll by,
wondering how to miss someone that I didn’t know well enough,
wondering how to believe in the finished product
when I can’t hear the dialogue anymore,
wondering how much the box office is taking in
at the expense of the actors.

[lucimay]

Translations



steaming cups, cool hands, bridgewater
I’m speaking my own language now,
carparks, handtrucks, beacons
I have crowded around the tower of babble with you for too long,
porchswing, mudpie, halfwit
speaking in tongues,
oro, pensione, follie au deux
thinking I was deaf because I could not decifer your codes
dogtime, dogma, doorknob
moaning in silence because you thought me mute or obscure,
waste not want not wicked
this is not high english
potholder, peacoat
this is not slang
madrigal, maelstrom
these are my consonants
one potato two potato
my definitions
three potato
my translations
four
paydirt, pantheon, immolate
I’m speaking my own language now,birdwatcher,
and this is my party line.

[lucimay]

for those of you who were wondering when i'd get off my lazy duff and update cspeak...it has been done.


and i put a couple of new ones in this thread if you just want a sample.

[Avatar]

God damn LuciMay.

I'm starting to think that you're one of the best poets I've ever read. That whiskey and cigarettes voice...

Really. I don't have anything to say except how good they are. *bows*

Liked Mercer County The Tattoo and The Bonsai Juniper most.

(You into bonsai?)

--A

[lucimay]

God damn LuciMay.

I'm starting to think that you're one of the best poets I've ever read. That whiskey and cigarettes voice...

Really. I don't have anything to say except how good they are. *bows*

Liked Mercer County The Tattoo and The Bonsai Juniper most.

(You into bonsai?)

--A

wow. sheesh. thanks bub!

the juniper was Ger's. he grows other stuff now. i have a small 7 year old aftrican violet that i grow. for my grandmother. the real lucy may.

it makes me very happy that you like my work, Av.

[Avatar]

Credit where it's due and all.

Everybody kills their first bonsai or two. I've got a 5-year old Serissa Foetida that I'm training into a semi-cascade.

--A

[lucimay]

Everybody kills their first bonsai or two. I've got a 5-year old Serissa Foetida that I'm training into a semi-cascade.

--A

cool! i looked up photos of the serissa (great name for a cadre mage in the malazan army by the way )

check it out...a tiny little bit of Andelain!!! (too big to post and i'm to lazy to download it and size it, heh)

home.hccnet.nl/j.vd.elsen/BonsaiDocu/Bo ... erissa.jpg

[Avatar]

Nice little forest planting. They do work well with exposed roots, although in general, the Y shape in the trunk is a no-no for bonsai.

Once this one is cascading nicely, I'll go for a "root over rock" with it as well. But bonsai are all about patience.

--A

[lucimay]

of which i have very little. post some pics of your serissa! make a bonsai thread!

[Avatar]

Haha, it's not ready for pictures yet...give me another year or two.

--A

[The Laughing Man]

yea, Lucimay got the shine, don't she?


I gave my mother a bonsai for Mother's Day, once, as she was always good with plants and the house was always full of them....little did I realize she always chose plants that were regarded for their toughness and ability to flourish with sparing attention, heh.....it died....

[Avatar]

She does indeed.

(They need scrupulous care really. Far more than people realise. Those you just buy from some home/garden shop especially. (Mallsai's) The only thing to do with those is replant them immediately. (I know, mine was one. ) If you're interested, I'll give you a URL for the bonsai forum I'm a member of.

Now let's allow this thread to return to praising LuciMay.

--A

[The Laughing Man]

better than Cail's ass!

[lucimay]

thanks guys 'preciate it.

[Drundaar Rockheart]

Just wanted to take a quick peak at one of my favorite places to go to at the watch and I must say... It was a good descion. I must tell you lucimay I am absolutely enthralled by your work

[lucimay]

i'm enthralled that i could possibly enthrall anybody!!!

[lucimay]

you might not like this one as much, DR...

this is the sorta "lennybruce/lewisblack" Lucimay, she said, envoking the heh.

What’s The Problem Here?


I think it started with Johnny Tang, the effervescent Tang-Man, manager at the copyshop where, for five cents a copy, that’s FIVE cents a copy, you can use and abuse the poorly paid counter help with the stringy, two-toned hair that looks like a before picture in a shampoo commercial, argue that you just need ONE five cent copy, even though there are signs posted on every inch of the self-service machine that say 25 CENT MINIMUM!!!!, and Johnny Tang wants this poorly coifed counter girl to do an oversized copy OVER because he has decided that she did it incorrectly.
“I’ll just do it tomorrow. It’s almost time to go home.” I say.
“But you have to do it like THIS!”, he says.
Once again, emphatically, I tell him that I WILL do it like that, but I’ll do it tomorrow. And once again he says, “...but you did it WRONGLY!”
And I say okay, I’ll do it tomorrow! Johnny Tang-Man is getting redder and redder, and his voice is rising in pitch, and finally my co-worker leans over and whispers in my ear, “Say you’re SORRY!!”
Oh, I think. “Sorry.” I say.
And Johnny Tang-man stomps off, not looking as satisfied and well-pleased as I envisioned he ought. And I’m thinking, what’s the problem here. I said I was sorry. Wasn’t that enough?

Then, I think, the cop in the Louisville airport was next. The Kentucky State PoLEECEman. Mr.My-shirt-is-too-tight-and-my-briefs-are-in-my-crack-and-my-gun-is-too-fuckin’-heavy-for-my-Phillip Gall & Sons-PoLEECEissue-too-tight-belt-but-I’m-cool-anyfuckin’ way-Cop.
“Jew see thayut STOP sign back ther?”
I didn’t. I didn’t even know what he was talking about.
“uh, well, I uh...”
“Yew jus’ roooolled on through that crosswalk, didunya?”
“Crosswalk?” I say.
“The CROSSWALK. At the STOP sign?”
“What crosswalk?” I say. I am getting CROSS myself now. ”No. I didn’t see any crosswalk.” I say, frowning at his southern cop sunglasses and starting to feel indignant.
“Don’tchoo get smart with me, now, honey. You know I can cite you right here and now for that violation? Lemme see your license. California, huh? Jus’ rooolled right on through that crosswalk. You know, that’s a (lookin’ beady-eyed over the top of those aforementioned shades), that’s a fifty-five dollar citation, unless you wanna appear in the Jefferson County Courthouse on your vacation from, uh, lemme see here, San FRANcisco. They problee got some sissy-assed laws out there in fairyland, but here in KenTUCKy, we STOP at crosswalks for peDEStrians, Miss Snyder, MAM.
“Oh!” I say, finally figuring out what the hell this guy is talkin’ about, “You mean that crosswalk in front of the front door of the airport! Oh jeez, I couldn’t figure out what you meant at first!” I’m relieved to finally be on top of the situation. Sorry, I say, without much enthusiasm. I’m tired, I’m jet-lagged, I’m nervous to even be driving a car since I haven’t driven since the wreck the year before that totaled my car and knocked me unconscious. I’m hungry because the pretzels on the plane just didn’t do it, I haven’t had a cigarette in 6 hours, and this guy is looking at me. Waiting. I can tell he’s waiting for something, I just don’t know what it is.
“She’s so sorry!” my older, wiser new-best-friend-in-the-world says, leaning toward the driver’s side window and smiling the most sincere smile I have ever seen in my life. She has taken control of the imminent downward spiral of the conversation. She is positively glowing with sincerity. “She just got in from California,” she says, “and it’s her first trip back home in two years, she’s from Lexington, you know, Kentucky, and she’s really, really tired and she’s really, really sorry.”
“oh, yeah,” I say, looking back at the cop, nodding my head in absolute agreement, “sorry”.
Now I think I might be starting to get an inkling of the nature of the problem, starting to see the BIG picture as they say.
And then there’s Harry. We, at the old copyshop, refer to him as “Andy”, because he has a bad case of Andy Griffith ears and a sidekick of a GM who has red, Opie-like hair. Andy and Opie. And Andy / Harry’s butt is getting wider by the minute, sitting in that CEO chair, looking at me as if I just crawled out from under a particularly slimy rock, telling me, over and over, that I have failed. Failed. “You have FAILED.” Five times he said it, over the course of five minutes time, and I’m smiling at him, just sitting there, SMILING, thinking about how big his butt is and how serious that case of ears is; thinking to myself, that I can’t HELP it if I cannot lift three to six hundred pounds of paper a day, take orders from 12 frantic store managers, and second guess 120 idiot counter people every eight hour shift of my life. But I say it anyway, because now I am beginning to get THE BIG PICTURE.
“I’m sorry” I say, still smiling, “but I’d like to go back to the shop as a counterperson. I just can’t do this job.
“Give it another few months, see how you do. Maybe you’ll get the hang of it. Take a few notes. Have you taken any notes?” he says, leering and nearly drooling from the corner of his mouth. I know what he wants. It no longer evades me. I know what he’s after and I just can’t bring myself to give it to him.
You see, you can’t give it to them with a smile on your face. It has to be crest-fallen, eyes down, lip trembling. But I walk out of his office like the Cheshire cat, and take a cut in pay for my inability.


And then, like it always will, my smugness comes back around on me like the tail of a strange animal. Smugness never pays.
I get on the bus. The Geary line. Fifty-three thousand people a day ride the Geary line, fifty-three thousand, very sorry people a day. You have to be sincere on the Geary line, because people don’t move and you have to edge your way through them in the aisles saying “sorry, sorry” as you go.
Two transvestites get on ahead of me. The bus is not that crowded but they stop before they get even a quarter of the way back. And so, in my smugness, I say, excuse me. But they don’t move. They block the aisle and chatter on as if I don’t exist. They remain planted, drunk, weaving and bobbing and filling the aisle so I cannot easily move past them. Excuse me, I say, a little louder, knowing they hear me. And they look at me but don’t budge.
So I push past them, cramming them into each other and dragging my book filled backpack through, plowed through them, actually, to the other side and under my breath, mumble,”sorry”. And as I turn to face them and their loud protests that I have violated their personal space, I say, in a not so kind or tolerant voice, “I SAID I was sorry.
The big one (not that either of them are small) comes at me with the flat of his hands and shoves with all his weight at my jaw and my shoulder, and my feet fly out from under me, and my books rain down on the other passengers, and I am stunned beyond belief, BUT I HAVE GOT IT NOW. I have the whole entire picture and it’s perfectly clear, and Johnny Tang and The Ky State Cop and Andy / Harry all come together in the body of a man in a dress and a bad wig and foul whiskey breath, as he lays it out for me as simply and succinctly as possible and says,
“NOT SORRY ENOUGH, BITCH, NOT NEARLY SORRY ENOUGH!!!!”

[dANdeLION]

Wow, that's powerful. I don't know what to say, but, believe me, I'll never date another Geary Line transvestite!

[Lorelei]

Wow, that's powerful. I don't know what to say, but, believe me, I'll never date another Geary Line transvestite!

Yeah, those long distance relationships rarely work out. ....