The Big Empty

part one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZHkqNbAJLE&NR=1

part two
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBoOC0ETbKk

The Room by Addonizio

At the door, each guest weighs in with a sorrow.
A woman in a bright shawl brings
a family of dead. She'd been in the kitchen
when the earthquake hit, had heard the cries
of her kids in the collapsed room, watched
as the bodies were brought out, covered
with dirt. One by one she places
their names on the scale, folds
them up like laundry and goes in.
A man in fatigues hesitates, embarrassed, then
palms his severed genitals onto the tray.
After a moment he quickly slips them back
into his pocket. The two lovers behind him link arms
and enter as one, having measured out
a handful of T-cells, a fine dust that swirls
in after them. You're next
with your freshly broken heart. But you hang back.
You can see how pathetic you are, how your heart
will lie there prostrate, a slab of meat on the block,
the needle above it fluttering at zero. Suddenly
you feel ashamed to be human. You stand there
gazing stupidly into the room: weeping and stories,
a few embraces, even snatches of song. You can't
imagine happiness in such circumstances,
or why you're here with your grief
over nothing--a face, a body you're already managing
to forget for hours at a time, that eventually,
you know, will be a dim regret--
you are sure you don't belong here, and you turn away,
to go home and be alone with the TV and maybe
a stiff drink to keep your heart from whining.
But the hallway is packed with other people, shoving
you forward to the threshold, each one impatient
to get in, so you do the only thing you can:
set down your burden for the angel
to record, and give back,
and you enter the room of the living.

Good Girl by Kim Addonizio

Look at you, sitting there being good.
After two years you're still dying for a cigarette.
And not drinking on weekdays, who thought that one up?
Don't you want to run to the corner right now
for a fifth of vodka and have it with cranberry juice
and a nice lemon slice, wouldn't the backyard
that you're so sick of staring out into
look better then, the tidy yard your landlord tends
day and night — the fence with its fresh coat of paint,
the ash-free barbeque, the patio swept clean of small twigs —
don't you want to mess it all up, to roll around
like a dog in his flowerbeds? Aren't you a dog anyway,
always groveling for love and begging to be petted?
You ought to get into the garbage and lick the insides
of the can, the greasy wrappers, the picked-over bones,
you ought to drive your snout into the coffee grounds.
Ah, coffee! Why not gulp some down with four cigarettes
and then blast naked into the streets, and leap on the first
beautiful man you find? The words Ruin me, haven't they
been jailed in your throat for forty years, isn't it time
you set them loose in slutty dresses and torn fishnets
to totter around in five-inch heels and slutty mascara?
Sure it's time. You've rolled over long enough.
Forty, forty-one. At the end of all this
there's one lousy biscuit, and it tastes like dirt.
So get going. Listen: they're howling for you now:
up and down the block your neighbors' dogs
burst into frenzied barking and won't shut up.

"What Do Women Want?" by Addonizio

I want a red dress.
I want it flimsy and cheap,
I want it too tight, I want to wear it
until someone tears it off me.
I want it sleeveless and backless,
this dress, so no one has to guess
what's underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty's and the hardware store
with all those keys glittering in the window,
past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old
donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,
hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.
I want to walk like I'm the only
woman on earth and I can have my pick.
I want that red dress bad.
I want it to confirm
your worst fears about me,
to show you how little I care about you
or anything except what
I want. When I find it, I'll pull that garment
from its hanger like I'm choosing a body
to carry me into this world, through
the birth-cries and the love-cries too,
and I'll wear it like bones, like skin,
it'll be the goddamned
dress they bury me in.

fortune strips

You will have good luck and overcome many hardships.

Struggle as hard as you can for whatever you believe in.

finding fortunes, breaking cookies, dunking in unsweeted tea, pickled cucumbers, fish motif, rainbow noodles...

...driving by old haunts that are no more.

Tears as I was Swinging

I saw his round mouth's crimson deepen as it fell,
Like a Sun, in his last deep hour;
Watched the magnificent recession of farewell,
Clouding, half gleam, half glower,
And a last splendour burn the heavens of his cheek.
And in his eyes
The cold stars lighting, very old and bleak,
In different skies.

-Wilfred Owen, "Fragment"

Martin Willett's voice

The day will break
the light will dawn
when we awake
to find our thirst for war is gone
when wealth will have no power
when fear will have no reign
when faith and hope and love rise up to take the place of pain

the weeping soul find laughter
the sleeping soul awake
the people who in darkness walk will find the day will break

when those in poverty's oppression find release
when shouts of anger break no more from city streets
when the cries of the unwelcome and forgotten children cease

the day the captor liberates
when hate no longer separates
when all creation celebrates
a new creation right before our eyes
in peace forevermore