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Alternative Reel Poets Corner
Dan Fante was born and raised in Los Angeles. At nineteen he flunked out of school and hit the road, winding up in New York City for twelve years where he worked at a hundred shit jobs and drank himself into numerous arrests and bad marriages. Once sober he began to walk on water and write insane, first-person novels and plays. Today he lives in Arizona with his wife Ayrin and five year old son, Michelangelo Giovanni Fante. Fante hopes one day to learn to play the harmonica. Dan Fante's Website: www.danfante.net For Mark Walk with only words and books as your friend Dream the dreams of deviant dead writer saints who coming before you drowned the pain of their purest hearts in vats of gin like a flailing unloved cat Embrace selfishness and joblessness And glue your ass hopelessly to the evilest drunken crack whore Who’d trade your balls in a second For the guy at the end of the bar With the pitted face And a fifty-dollar bill Do not be courageous remember that all men are fools and liars soulless captives of their own blood-stained necessity And forgive nothing Then maybe one day Like me Your feet aching and your skull still raw From last nights festivities You’ll kick over a box Or turn a page And finds yourself Face to face With the blurry eyes of God Parrots Broke again and car-less and hoping to mooch a free month in Malibu I discovered that now there are wild parrots breeding on Point Dume In Malibu Big loud noisy green fuckers laughing in the high trees - following me up the road in the afternoon sun from the highway chattering their non-sense like a orchestra in warm-up chaos This time I'm coming home with all that I own in a plastic bag along with my typewriter and my taste for gin Mom opened the door and smiled when she saw me and that night we laughed about the parrots and talked on endlessly about Dickens and Rupert Brooke and Mallay and that jerk T.S. Elliot And I went off to the spare bedroom drunk on free gin sad for my old man's fading ghost and thanking Jesus there was one person left alive who'd still listen to my bullshit MOM AT EIGHTY NINE Today at the home I read her some of my new stuff while she squinted at me – straining to hear My savvy mouth sputtering out chain-saw syllables beneath those perfect and unspoiled steel-blue eyes This ancient ex-editor who’s read more and knows more about writing and poetry than I’ll ever hope to know Five minutes into it – looking up – I said, “Well whaddya think?” She seemed distracted ten thousand brow wrinkles – flattened out – then returned “Do you still have that phones sales job,” she said “No Ma, I don’t have a day gig anymore – writing is all I do now” “Well, get one, for chrissake,” she hissed – “and help me up – I need to get to the bathroom” Saturday I met the meanest bastard starving cat while sitting with a book, on a bench at Venice Beach He saw me and came up white with one green eye and one yellow eye and a fresh slash on his scarred ear Angry as a wounded wolf he kept his distance and his look said feed me or fuck off that bench you’re on ins my territory What he didn’t know is that I know desperate too and crazy and what emptiness and aloneness and rage can to when you’ve got nothing but your own pain in your pockets and your home is a busted-out 1978 Pontiac parked in and alley in West L.A. and the voice in your mind is carving you up and killing more of you off each day and you wake up and drink more rat-piss wine and God becomes a guy coming out of the 7-11 handing you chump change toward another fucking jug and fear is your finest feeling and all love is dead and all time is dead and even your eyes stink and your gut is bloated with the screaming voices of those you hate and the only real sanity there is can be found in the small miracle of sucking back one more drink That mean white cat didn’t know that I’ve been cut too from the same cloth the only difference between us is twenty years and my typewriter 2002 Now that I’ve written ten years worth of books and plays and given up booze and filthy glorious pornography and my clothes don’t stink from booze from sleeping in my car last night and my hair is thinner and I’m twenty pounds to fat and deep in my fifties with return calls to make and responsibilities and the arguments I have with cops are no longer about bail or unpaid warrants or where I hid my gun I now feel qualified to testify that nothing has changes that this thing that all my life within me has ticked and squirmed this unfilled hole - this need to yell out and change things and never be satisfied this voice that has survived jails and three divorces and frequent attempted suicide and bankruptcy and dozens of self-improvement weekends This rage still guides my vision and demands that I go head first against my life like a fool in search of a pure white flame About POET'S CORNER: Charles Bukowski once remarked, “I have just read the immortal poems of the ages and come away dull. I don’t know who’s at fault; maybe it’s the weather, but I sense a lot of pretense and poesy footwork: I am writing a poem, they seem to say, look at me! Poetry must be forgotten; we must get down to raw paint, splatter...” The highly talented writers featured in Alternative Reel’s Poets Corner share Bukowski’s vision as their writing seeks out new literary frontiers, exploring the raw underbelly of modern society in the process. Eclectic, offbeat, humorous and often disturbing, the poetry collected here is not for the squeamish, so if you were actually expecting Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost or Emily Dickinson, please exit now. Everyone else, we suggest that you open up a bottle of cheap red wine and explore Poets Corner! Interested in featuring your poetry in Poets Corner? Just email us at altreel@gmail.com with some samples of your work. Dedicated to Ray Bremser [1934-98]Dan Fante
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