No Birdbrain He-mu

whose three-toed football kicks clean
into every goal.

Your vampire girls couldn't be more proud of you, John Adams & colleagues

Bird Flu

More avgolemono on tap. One bird barely on the mend and another on the decline. The DeLong festivities slept right through as well as L-Bo's phonecall (miss you!) It's an achy, icky day for ailing emus.

The Syrupy Daze of Summer

Slow-trickling and unwealthy. But the BFS concert was wonderful. And that I had to miss my beloved Old 97s last night was a little more okay because my good bird generously allowed me an outing too extravagant for summer and it was a blast.
My good bird is a little bit undertheweatherbird which means gallons of avgolemono soup and tea and Drusilla as heating pad. All the good coziness.

The yard sale that I posted to craigslist but not to my blog was a bit of a bust. Next time, more fliers, more vintage, more planning and yes, bloggers, all of you.

Java-ed with my dear friend Jixie yesterday and will be Arlins-bound for some All DeLong festivities on Friday. I am jonesing for NY and SLC and Tampa. Something will soon be done to remedy these tremors, but for now, I have gathered laundry money enough for a coffee after my work-out. Ah, the glamourous life.

I raise my glass to you, Bird. (G&T Double)

Bowling for Soup Anyone?

Me & mine are hitting Bogarts on Monday July 23rd for the concert. Contact Headquarters for details. We are hoping you'll want to go, too.
If you haven't heard Almost or Come Back to Texas, you're kind of missing out.
(Speaking of missing out, the emu loves certain someones like Nathan Parker, Joel Brouwer, my unflakey-filo: Joshua Butts (Dr. Friday calls him The Good J,) Phil B. Stuart Vail--people the emu hasn't even met, by the way. The emu feels very shakey about some of the rest of y'all withholders. Maybe you're too good for emu-haiku? Maybe you should just write epics & Immortal Verse. But the thing is: Joel Brouwer's no slouch. Nathan Parker? Joshua Butts? These are the kind of quality peeps that would make an emu peck hard (not in a good way) at any disparaging comments.

There's nothing wrong with Ohio. There's nothing wrong with a little not-so-clandestine but so-hot emu luv. Give it up, already!

Frustrated Bird

Emu in heat makes
the most pitiful cry. Please
please the sorry bird.

Poets, friends of poets, fiction writers, lovers, fighters, summer-bored and murderous one and all, I am begging you. We, me and Doctor Friday/Sir Emu/The Pretty Bird and Drusilla the vampire vamp cat from hell are on our eight knees.

Hotemuluv isn't getting any. I see you there, your links, your you-tubes, your networks and extended networks, your friend and family plans. Our bird eyes you too, and what it sees is some stingy-assed literati. We are asking for you for seventeen syllables. Seventeen teensy syllables of courtly love or raunchy throw a bird up against a car kind of meter.

Make it the new meme for you and yours. Go to hotemuluv.com
Click on Give Birth to Emu
Check out the haiku
Hit submit your poem.

Then, send every single person you know to see the bird. S/he'll make it so worth your while. (Or you might at least appear on a t-shirt.)

Leaving Louisville

where the leaves on the side of I-65 seem to be already thinking autumn-wise. There was a white corvette with painful red leather interior, an afternoon on W Fourth where the streets are ready for a later-fervor and just up the road, all sharply-ironic, Ryan Adams will be singing tonight. I drove away from Ryan A. b/c that's the kind of genius-knot with which I'm tied.

In other news I wrote a poem in response to Danielle's poem. Maybe I'll post it and someone can respond to my poem about Danielle's poem which mentions another poem. Or should we start a new stone in the water and the group of us (you know who you are Poets, Emus, Countrymen) can ripple out.
Any takers?

For You
I once read a poem that compared

a pomegranate to a heart. And there

sparrows darting in and out

of the lines, violets throwing off

moonlight like old coats, and

a student raising her hand to say

I don't get it. Someone loved Someone
Else, though Someone Else didn't love

Someone back, or Someone Else did

but there was an obstacle, maybe

the sparrows darted dangerously

near the pomegranate and pierced it

or the violets stole Someone's letters,

kept them folded in their small blossoms

because they believed they deserved them

more than Someone Else. This poem

is based on that one. And also on

the time we took a scenic route through

aspens and you told me how they always

spread after a fire season because

when the pines burn down they leave

enough space for new trees to grow.

The poem was entitled, "For You."

And we kept driving and driving until

winter came, smoothing the roads white

with tiny combs of ice — your fingers

ready to sculpt my shape out of snow

so that you could ease into the hollow

chest and leave a pomegranate safe

from sparrows — the violets suddenly

confessing everything to the student

whose face opens like sunrise when

she says I understand now — I understand —

--Danielle Cadena Deulen

Veace & Me

have been working on some stuff together. This makes me feel like writing here as scratch pad, to say things like:

I could wait all day for the call right back, but I won't. What I wait for is more and less tangible than the trilling to touch of telephones. What I wait for goes like this: the cat's doughnuted herself beneath the desk. She has slept against your chest. She has a thing for intermittency, cold chicken, and the kind of skin that smells like olives and a kind of pine-chill aftershave. Even the bedding remembers.