 |
att | February, 2001 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ason | Volume 32 | ||||||
| agazine | "More fun than the Friday night Hamster Fights!" | Number 1 |
| |
att | February, 2001 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ason | Volume 32 | ||||||
| agazine | "More fun than the Friday night Hamster Fights!" | Number 1 |
MMM: So, is it true?
Mason: Well, apparently so, it says right here that if you work on the Sabbath then we're supposed to stone you to death, meaning we need to get down to McDonald's or Wal-Mart this weekend and start teaching ‘em to respect their God.
MMM: No, is it true you're secretly married to and have a family with Piggy?
Mason: Huh?
MMM: Oh, come on, don't deny it!
Mason: Huh?
MMM: Come clean, Mason!
Mason: Damn paparazzi, why do you keep following me? Get a life!
MMM: Ooof. OW! Stop th....
Mason: Hold still! I bet you worked a job on the Sabbath once, you know you've got this coming, you can't run forever! I am the Hand Of God, get ready for the applause o' God comin' down, bitch!
Mason also read at Westminster College in Salt Lake City to celebrate the release of their Ellipses magazine last April, and he won a competitive poetry reading in Albuquerque. Mason also continues to often win the Border's monthly poetry Slam in Omaha, crushing all comers like they were pyrrhics at a spondee convention (don't you just love poetry-nerd meter jokes?). Mason has also gone international, he had a poem featured on "The Research File," a program of Radio Nederland, Wereldomroep (I'm on a Netherlands Radio, I'm on a Netherlands whoah-oh radio) as well as two poems picked up by a Canadian anthology (Love Poems For The Media Age). He will also have poems in the anthology A Generation Defining Itself: Vol 3 (available soon, check out past editions on Amazon.com). Mason even had an article about him in The Reader, Omaha's weekly news magazine (you can find it at: http://www.thereader.com/a1/803/cu.shtml )
Mason released a new chapbook in November, "A Blessing And A Curse," a kind of journey through the Old Testament, which he's reading for the first time. This first book covers Leviticus through Ruth (6 books in all) as Mason tries to make sense of things like God's disturbing thirst for blood and why bald people are clean. Oddly enough, it made the Omaha World-Herald's list of recommended reading for 2000 (in the December 18th Living section).
His main project, though, was to start the Nebraska Poetry Menu last February, an online listing and emailing of poetry events around Nebraska (at http://here.is/nepoetry).
Chicken Soup For My Ass
"Always look happy and cheerful. Enjoy life with the
woman you love, as long as you live the useless life that God
has given you in this world. Enjoy every useless day of it,
because that is all you will get for all of your trouble."
--Ecclesiastes 9:8-9
And we need to fight that, to figure we can mix more Heaven into Earth instead of
sitting in living rooms waiting to die so we can be carried to Heaven.
And according to the religions, there is a connection in this world, like a chip
in stained glass, a tiny, clear opening to the light.
And nothing against your paperbacks and Bibles, but what have you done for your
universe lately?
And what would you discover if you read your own soul with the Christmas morning
excitement of giddy mathematicians unwrapping a new formula?
And fuck your faith-and-works debate, true faith brings true work, true work
shows true faith; and so few preachers sweat except for show under stage lights;
carve your faith in flesh, not marble; read your Chicken Soup, your Second
Helping, Third Serving, Fourth Course, Sixth Bowl, your Chicken Soup For The
Woman's Soul, the Country Soul, Golfer's Soul, Pet Lover's, Single's, Couple's,
Sopa De Pollo Para El Alma.
And remember to close up other people's stories and open your own, we have
lives of vitality and beauty which will not wait for us.
Flavor
I didn't feel cheap
the time I registered Democrat,
it was just what I felt I should do.
And Reform Party had crunch sometimes
and Green had spice to it
and Independent satisfied
but in a bland sort of way;
so this year I don't give a damn
for John Doe or John Smith or John John,
but there's a Republican who smells
like picante
or maybe bananas foster or
something at least.
So I re-register
Republican.
Now I feel
like I always need a shower.
I don't sleep well. In dreams
the Wizard keeps telling me:
Bring me back her broomstick!
There's always a rock
in my shoe no matter how
I hold it and shake it
and throw it and beat it.
I'm not a bad person.
I'm not a worse person.
I don't want a tax cut or a gun or conversion therapy for gays,
I just want some flavor
and know better
than to hold out for taste.
1 Kings 1:1-4 (Biblical Healing)
"Now king David was old and stricken in years,
and they covered him with clothes, but he gat no heat."
--1 Kings 1:1
Ain't no HMO,
no nursing home or eldercare I ever heard, I mean
ain't no take two aspirin, nothing
to do with seven-syllable words and machines and IV's,
no holistic versus pharmaceutical, it's just:
"Let there be sought for my lord the king
a young virgin." 1 Kings 1:2
Are you listening,
Blue Cross, State Farm, Mutual of Omaha,
have you put down your calculators yet, done choking
on copays and deductibles and seen these health
needs? "And let her stand before the king
and let her cherish him,
and let her lie in thy bosom,
that my lord the king
may get
heat." 1 Kings 1:2
Now that
is healing, that
is medicine, is health
care, it says more than "preferred provider" or "primary care physician"
ever could;
take your palm and feel my chest,
in these brief days of an advancing season,
how the cold grips through us
and sickens us
that we gasp
for heat.
Leviticus
In Leviticus, cleanliness is
close to Godliness in a way
more complicated than showers
or tartar control or dandruff control
or antibacterial soap.
Really,
it's about community,
not grape juice stains on your whites;
it says that it takes effort,
we all need cleaning now and then
and not just a bath on Sunday morning,
not just an aloe facial scrub,
it takes more than a loofah
to get you there sometimes.
And besides seeing fabulous friends, he fit in a few more destinations. Mason saw Yellowstone and Glacier Parks for the first time ever, rolling through in May when it was cold but almost deserted. He toured the wacky Winchester Mystery House with Mori, visited Quirk and Kevin in Portland, saw giant potatoes in Idaho, saw wild mooses, and rolled around New Mexico with Jo, Vic, and Elise.
And sometimes Mason DID stay home and work. Really. But one time he had to be paid to work in DC. It was tough, but Mason managed it, then took several days to recuperate around DC with his friends Lan, Cisco, and Chriss (a State Department agent who gives killer tours of the State Dept. building).
Last month, mason went to Utah to visit Deb Keye and see tons of movies at the Sundance Film Festival. While there, he ran into Lloyd Kaufman, president of Troma Entertainment and director of such classic movies as The Toxic Avenger. Serious talks are now in progress to bring a Tromaha Film Festival to Omaha in May.
Last Update: February 11th, 2001
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