Tilted
head, right arm
behind the back, fingers
curled around the left arm’s inner
elbow
We all live on the Hudson, America’s only true river. It’s
a driveway, a landing strip, and a dead end. The Hudson is not the only river
to become a school, but it is the only one once beheld by the likes of George
Washington, Melville, and Sir Winston Churchill.
When the new principal
under the direction
of the educational
consulting company
asks you to train
your minimum-wage replacement
I am melting from realizing some
unfixable holes in this carton of dreams.
Someone carried down my teenage
ambitions in a sack and slung them
onto the floor.
The heat from the stove had warmed the small kitchen from inviting through cosy to where it sat now at uncomfortable. Abyan knew it wouldn’t be long before it became unbearable, but she had to finish all of the cooking before then anyway; their guests would arrive somewhere between uncomfortable and plain hot so the kitchen would be left to its final stages of heating up and cooling down again without her. She would be in the lounge room serving light refreshments of sambuus while Ramaas poured the hot, spiced tea by then. Her nerves made her impatient and she resisted the pointless urge to remove the lid from the cubed chicken and prod it into cooking faster.
“So how often are you reaching out to the guys in your recovery groups?,” my counselor asked me.
“Reaching out? Like actually talking to them or just being in group?”
“No, he said, “actually texting and calling other men to talk.”
PODCASTDrunk Monkeys Radio5 Answers & 1 QuestionJ.D. Scrimgeour
An interview with poet J.D. Scrimgeour, Drunk Monkeys Writer of the Month for June 2017!
PODCASTDrunk Monkeys RadioFilmcastAudience ChoiceThe Hunt for the Wilderpeople
To avoid Pirates of the Caribbean, we let the audience choose our feature, 2016's The Hunt for the Wilderpeople. Also, a poll question: George Clooney or Brad Pitt, and discussion of adventure movies.
EITHER/OR: George Clooney v. Brad Pitt/ WHAT WE WATCHED: Alien: Covenant (2017); The Graduate (1968); The Passion of the Christ (2004)/ AUDIENCE CHOICE: The Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016)/ ADVENTURE MOVIES: Swamp Water (1941); Adventures in Babysitting (1987); Willow (1988)
PODCASTDrunk Monkeys RadioGuardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
The Filmcast celebrates its one-year anniversary with a look at Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2! Also games, an LVH rap, and much, much more!
“You’ve seen The Hospital?”
This was a small conversation I had the other day. The guy I was talking to, probably in his mid-30s, scoffed. “Of course I’ve seen The Hospital.”
Not of course. Fuck you. I can count on both hands the number of people I’ve met who have seen that movie, and I’d probably still have a few fingers left.
For me, there is no significant joy in being a member in good standing of a movie fan club whose membership numbers are somewhere in the low double digit range.
PODCASTDrunk Monkeys RadioThe Fate of the Furious
Family. Cars. Submarines? The DM Film crew reviews Vin Diesel and The Rock's latest Fast and the Furious film, Fate of the Furious, also starring Charlize Theron and Michelle Rodriguez.
Tulips lift toward the sun
not as lips parting,
but cycloptic eyes, self-blinding
to defy dozens of faces
that peer directly inside,
In nature, good and evil do not exist. All actions and events in the organic world follow elemental law, which is to survive despite chaos. Good and evil are constructs of the human experience and relative to situations within that experience. They are value judgments regarding how we perceive situations to be; we make them either of benefit or detriment to our individual interests, ethical and moral frames. The natural universe is morally neutral.
Mr. Butterchips returns for Issue 5 of Drunk Monkeys in nine sharply relevant panels.
I accidently knocked over
the Singer sewing machine,
an old black metal one I found
in a junk store.
The waves are shaped by sirens
and the sea walls built to echo
silence.
Boys, this is what I have wanted to say, what I want to say, all I can say about my folks. It will have to do. You connect the dots. I don't want to or don't know how.
Bamboo and rain drum the time I was a child and my mother was mapping the neighborhood dynasty with her sister Corrine. For years they plotted to overthrow the geriatric mindset of their mother who kneaded Judaism into me and my sister’s Play-Doh.
In 1955, Emmett Till was murdered. He looked wrong. He’d looked at someone who looked wrong. However you’d like to put it. He did nothing.
Then we caught the killers. Wasn’t hard, because there was nothing surreptitious about their murdering. Their motives were loudly proclaimed. We didn’t have a cellphone recording of Till’s final moments, but we had most everything but.
The killers were found not guilty. Free to walk.
“…..I’m a believer in Christ, and I am a recovering sex addict.”
Those were the jarring initial words I heard after I walked into my first Christ-centered twelve-step meeting several months ago, before I had admitted to myself that I couldn’t control whatever had gotten me to this point. Ok, I just have to dwell on those initial words for a moment. A “believer in Christ AND a recovering sex addict?” How is that even possible? What does that mean and how does that apply to me?