I just did a Googlesearch for “Ode to Nutella” to see if possibly my poem would come up, and this guy’s comes up. And he wrote it over two years before me! What a crock of… It’s too calculated to be a true ode! It should come from the gut! And what’s all this white, black, green junk? It’s all about the brown! The brown!

Please!

There are some days where I get home and I look at my cat and have to say, “yeayuh!” It is because even if half of the day was crappy, later the pooper-scooper man comes and cleans it all up for you. It’s like waking up early Christmas morning and finding under the Christmas tree some new downhill skis that fit you perfectly and your step-father coming downstairs to tell you that “they’re for your mother” and “go back to bed,” and then coming back to the tree later that morning to unwrap the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Part Wagon!

That you knew cost more than thirty dollars! AND the Casey Jones action figure! Yeahyuh. The crappy part, the throw-up in your throat, is covered and replaced with butter. And not the waxpaper-covered wands you get at Cub, but the real deal. That you could eat with a spoon. That’s what it’s like.

That, and Nutella!

Ode to Nutella -or- If I Could Brush My Teeth with Nutella

O Nutella, lovely, lovely,
Licky, licky with my tongue.
O Nutella, not rubeola,
Choco-hazelnutty bung!

Give it to me, give it to me,
Mm-mm-mm-mm,
Chicka-berka, Chicka-berka,
Lips coated with thick, brown paste!

Check this out. The end is rough, but his transitions and execution are well done.

I have to take the back routes to my home now because about a month ago I hit a deer. The encounter took out my left front headlight, my left rearview mirror, and a medium-sized doe. So, now I’m targeted by the Inver Grove Heights police whenever I drive down my usual route on Concord Blvd. I’ve been stopped twice now for equiptment violation. I’ve wanted to go to the junk yard and find parts, but it’s been rainy lately so I’ve been forced to avoid the authority rather than drive by, five miles over the limit, with confidence. I should be thankful that the neighborhood police have little better to do, but I am not presently finacially willing to pay for their excitement and their pastries.

And the steam outside looked like an escalator.
It caught my eye while I was sitting here
thinking about writing this poem.
I found a pick (a guitar pick),
a four of spades, and a Swedish Fish
under the chair coushions.
I can’t remember how to spell cooshians.
I was looking for money because
I thought that mabe some rich guy
dropped a hundred and all I needed to
do was check.
I couldn’t leave it unchecked.
I think that this pick must be some kind of omen
because only a few minutes before I found it
I was wishing I had brought my guitar on tour with me.
This will be the pick I play with
when I get home tomorrow.
It has character; it will make me play better.
I actually on some deep-down superstitious level
believe this pick will make a difference.
Poor soul who lost that four-of-spades.
I wonder how long it takes for someone who
lost a card to realize it’s gone, on average.
Depends on the game I guess.
But I was thinking about how I
wanted to write how I feel like I
am on the verge of being a really good dancer.
I wonder if this is a reaction to the newspapers.

Then I start to think that this is just another
one of those stream of consciousness poems.
The ones where people who think they have ADD
write down whatever comes to their head
because they think that they are geniuses and everybody
wants to know what goes on in a genius’ head.
And it pretty much is one of those poems
and I’m a little embarrassed, except for the order.
Order like a letter in a word in a sentence
in a paragraph in an article.
Order like a pile of old newspapers that goes back in time.
Two weeks, maybe longer. A month, with Sunday
usually out of order and picked through.
Pages, sections missing, used for new puppies
or gift wrap or set aside to be a reminder
of a writer you forgot you want to buy.

And now I can’t see the steam anymore
that looked like an escalator
because it never really was an escalator:
it was steam.
But this lost Swedish Fish is real.
But I won’t archive it, I won’t keep it.
I’ll leave it under the
cooshians, cushions, cushans,
pass it on.
Besides, real things don’t have much of a shelf life.

Here’s a version of “Summer Rain” with harmony and a little reverb added to the verse, the “Ooohs,” and didgeridoo vocals, and reverb and “amp simulation” effect to the verse harmony. Which one do you like better? The original has no effects… other than cupping my hands for the “Ooohs”:

Summer Rain (with harmony and FX)

***************************

Here’s a song I made tonight playing around with GarageBand. It was a poem I wrote last year when I was teaching kids how to write poetry (our theme was “water”) and how to use it to make a dance, but I never used it (I madeand used a less weird one) because I knew they would have probably thought it was dumb. I didn’t think it was dumb. It did just kinda sat in my notebook, though, for the last year unfinished as a sort of snapshot of what I thought it might have been like for my mom (in particular) and dad to find out they were having me, their first child together. I hope you enjoy it and are not wierded out. It sounds best with headphones.

Summer Rain
When my mother’s water
broke before I was born
they knew I’d be a healthy child.
It drained like summer rain
through a clogged house gutter;
warm as a sitting summer pool.
I was to be the first
son for parents hoping,
the firstborn of infant lovers.

***********************

I’ve recorded a few songs and made a few mixes using my new used iMac and GarageBand (The songs are not exactly Glam; I felt I wanted some kind of alliteration and it is late and I don’t care. Besides, I could be meaning that recording and posting my own songs is itself glamorous and, while, at the same time alluding to my days of cross-dressing and Michael Jackson impersonations!). Anyway, I’m really enjoying it! Here are some samples:

Home Now
– A song I wrote a few years ago. A the first song I wrote. This is a rough recording as I just thought, “Hey! Let’s test out this GaraeBand thang!” and I just used the built-in mic (you can hear the buzzing and certain notes vibrate the desk top or something). It sound pretty good considering.

Brunomix1
– This is my first mix I made using GarageBand. The organ sounding thing is actual a guitar that I played with because I didn’t like their organ options. The ending seems random, well… it is. I was more or less tesing the equiptment.

The beginning.

I feel God hovering over me
like I took Catholic communion;
I feel like a bearded man.
I dialed the number and invited myself.
And now, rolling under the clouds like a sunset
I don’t need to look to know
twilight on my tail.
Which way is up, which way is earth?
But there is a table and there is a man
passing salmon into my hands.
Take the cheek, he says, it’s the sweeter part.

I go
back to the drill.
I leap
off of the roof.
I spin
like a turbine vent powered by the wind.

And the Easter salmon is still on my fingers;
And my name is still in the books.

Last Sunday, the Star Tribune put in a nice front and back spread highlighting four Twin Cities dancers. I was included in that group and got a very nice photo on the front of the Arts and Entertainment section. In addition, the article mentioned that my day job entailed serving as a substitute teacher for St. Paul Public Schools. So I wondered if this little publicity would bleed into my teacher life. I mean, it’s got to, right? There must be a solid number of St. Paul teachers who read the STRIB. So I figured it was just a matter of time that some wrinkly, eighty-year-old teacher in need of a sub would mention, “Hey! Didn’t I see you half-naked in the paper?”

To which I would respond, “I’m sorry about that, ma’am. When I went in for the photo they said it would be nice to be able to see the line of the…”

“Don’t be sorry, Sonny! I just want to know if I can feel them abs. Why dontcha go and flex for me?”

“Ma’am, I don’t feel comf…”

“Go on, boy! Show us a little dance!”

“Mrs. Grandma, I reall don’t think this is appr…”

“Well, what good are you then!?! Sheesh! You can’t find quality…” She mumbles off and out of the room taking her coat and leaving me stunned in front of her classroom full of curious seventh graders. *Blech*

Well, it’s happened. Not exactly as I imagined, but I just accepted a job on Thursday, February 23rd at Johnson Senior High for a mature sounding teacher. And the teacher (I’ve never met her, but I’ve subbed for her before) records in the special instructions that she has seen me in the paper. Now, granted, she mentions nothing beyond that she saw the article and that it was “neat” or something, but it’s something weird to me that the teacher for whom I will cover this Thursday has seen my nipples! Take a second and ask yourself how many people can say that their “senior” coworkers have seen their nipples? Huh!?! And I’m not talking to the ladies here. How many guys can claim that that old lady who does the filing… Frances!, has seen your publicly exposed torso? Or Alberta in accounting! Rose in receiving! What about Grace the gofer! Or Edith the executive!!! All are privy to your naked undeveloped mammaries!

I’ll give that some guys feel more comfortable without a shirt. And one might argue that male dancers are often displayed topless. It’s no faux pas, right? Well, dear reader, a nipple is still a nipple and a grandma is still a grandma, and in my book nipples and grandmas don’t mix! Maybe if the perpetrator is in diapers, but I’m talking about full-blown man-nipples! And she’s not even my grandma!