OffBeat Magazine Blogs about the New Orleans Daiquiri Festival

That's it? That's good! Mmm, Daiquiris | Tales of the Cocktail (video)

The 2nd Annual New Orleans Daiquiri Festival, August 18, 2012

 The 2nd Annual New Orleans Daiquiri Festival. RSVP

Parade from Love to Lent Pt. 3 (the Afterbath)

Wash daily, we're told.
But bathing is a dirty trick
to remind us each of how quick
even the hottest bath turns cold.

I sometimes, alone,
soak naked in an empty tub,
a cast iron maiden when she's free of all
our shiny bones & blackened suds.

I'll draw a bath, but not bathe;
just a plug & hot water to the brim.
Moonfaced, I loom over, too much like Li Po,
hunched down to tongue around
the furled brink of that always frigid rim.

Let me back in the bath.
Remember me. Won't you
wrap my face with celluloid film
skinned from the veneer
of our antique bathwater?

Everybody back in the bath!
I will scratch & scrub
the itch on your back,
the filth from our forms;
I will never drain this tub.

Parade from Love to Lent Pt. 2

See my bathwater hotness scale.

Scrub my empty disk.

A Void. People. Life. Style.

Pinned down by the tub's clawed feet.

Ladies in high heels
march plastic pinwheels
across the surface of the bubbled bath.

I'm bailing water back
inside the hull of my bathing boat.

My rubber ducks fly further south,
me at the sink with nothing more to float.

I'm all wet. I guess I blessed myself
with my head in this heat.

I'd like to one day be dirty enough.
Splash. Dry. Repeat.

Parade from Love to Lent Pt. 1

Here I go stretching
the boundaries of credulity,
adolescent cervix,
clenched camel toe to pass through,
eye of a needle. Sew what?

I am living out
of boxes that would make great boxes
if each could be unstuffed
of so much, such large
rubber-ball-gaggery I am giddy
to jettison bounce
out some astrological orifice.

I, believe me,
wanting to push you away,
push you back on your back,
asphalt cradling your rocking roof,
wheels burning while in spin.
Even then I'd pry back my pie hole
hot press my skin to your peeling paint
and suck out your car alarm.

On A Saturday Night Before I Leave My House

Where do you stay?

When all the ticket buyers buying tickets say
I'm gonna go ahead and go. One is more
a destination person. One more like go ahead.
And go. Like say a wheel
or a wing I remember
getting carried away.

The one who does laundry meets the one who does dishes.
Who gets down with your demands,
who's short pennies for wishes.

One with too many choices meets the one who wants more.
Who drains the fuel from jets,
who knows what time is for.

How long do you stay?
One stays away. One stays behind.

I am trying to buy property:
it's a-guy-walks-into-a-house kinda joke.
Some even more real estate,
a jughead believer, I somehow build broke.

With a death grip she comes
down hard with a spike.
Time lived is the sum
of days that I "Like."

HAMMER a way

Shiny rims rolling under such chronic keep-on-truckers:
just jump, get off, or fall.
Drawn back, swing stilted like a stay-at-home sucker
punch potholes in the dry wall.

Where you go won't say where you stay;
I pound the hammer for punching stakes in.
Name a certain place along the way,
live there & wait for leaves to rake in.

That pickaxe you jacked,
I want it back to break ground.
Swing it hard to make place,
call it home, stay in town.

YOU'RE HOME. GET OFF. (for Theo Eliezer, Jac Currie, Aubrey Edwards, Erik Kiesewetter, Katie Darling, & Jamie Chiarello)

I already have everything I want.

Living, now, is for making actual unrelenting joy of circumstances which I have both built and which have been built around me.
I have exaggerated all stereotypes and imagined even more. I, travel agent. Double back time-traveling agent. International travel is not worth the memories. Go home. It takes longer, costs less, and postcards can finally have pictures on both sides. I live the most fierce and turbulent life. A terrible plane ride. I'm on my way to where I can land. Or on my way to when the air might tear my wings off. Either way, I'll dive into a quiet. Kickback like 16-ton, lead eyeballs rolling back into a chicken wire hammock. Have a real hard rest.

I laugh so stupidly while my bicycle goes across town, past midnight, past my home.
I laugh at a world too stupid to know I've been playing marbles with its balls since I was 12.
I get ridiculous. This spectacle of self, diving hard from HA HA OH EM GEE HA HA to golden-studded sunglasses I snivel beneath & sob behind. Original Bawler, bitch. Fake bitch with a mouth full of mad ballers. They're not welling up. I'm swelling up. I come. I come with a soft focus option. Press this button. Not a trick.

I hate playing marbles. I hate life's balls, dropping like lead eyes that roll back inside a chicken wire hammock. I thought you were sexless or hermaphroditic. It's a lie, a smooth plastic mound; no orifice, no mind. You crazy. Tranny on my face while I ride through the dark, everyone will think I love you. Get off.

I love living. I want to live. Just live like an organism. Everyone saying they gonna do this gonna do that gonna do it do it do it to it.

Friends jammed up in internet traffic, I employ you, get off.

I dare you to set your alarm, wake, and spit on your sheets. Put your weight on your feet and make to move out. See if you can carry the weight of being loved by the place around you. Strap an electric collar on your dogged heart and fight the love of anything beyond the city limits.

Crushing. High School Crushing. Crushing like a cemetery dance.

Gravestone carving machines, punch this on a plaque for me: HE GOT OFF HERE.

I'm off to party with folks for the rest of all the years I have left, making friends of all the fish in one net, gutted with the same knife, breaded with the same flour, filleted and fried in the same oil, served up at the same table, smothered in the same sauce. All together consumed. We live this way for you. We have such unreasonable hope. Expectations. When will you come? I love everyone on their way here. I'll help you cut your heart out. I'll walk you to the fryer. Drop it in, and imagine how this ridiculous metaphor works. Home is stuck through with the cross stitch and lace making of good sentiment. I am also sure that Home is a fish fry. I've explained this above. That's why I want your heart in the fryer where my heart has been. Thin tall tongs to hold you under our long boiling oil; we share a fried taste. If you want to love all of us, if you think we should believe you, drop your balls in, let them roll back inside a chicken wire hammock, let them rest.

We wait and watch your plate. You're on your way. I smell it. I've always had that crispy heart-popping scent. Just sit down and drop your heart on the plate. Drop your balls, take the sauce. Drop your hair, drop your legs, it'll fit. I tell you, I invite you, I beg you to just drop your face on the plate and get off. Go home. Where you're special, where everyone wants a taste.