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Monthly Archives: September 2011
A New Wave of Truth Telling w/ Cornel West
Professor Trust Fund
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One afternoon, Professor Trust Fund interrupted my writing class—just swung open the door and interjected himself: a chance for collaborative pedagogy, he announced, haha!
His outfit could pay my rent for three months, I thought, as he strolled across my classroom. Camel skin trench. Tailored pants. Armani. Leather shoes. The smug, rich prick was well-rested, well-fed, and ready to mold young minds, or some such shit. He’d just finished up at the gym, had some time to kill before Badminton practice…
So, we will teach together, he concluded as he barged in. This is Great!
Perhaps he’s this pushy because he’s a competitive athlete, I thought. That’s what he once scoffed, squatting in his designer chair, his gut hanging out, drinking overpriced wine.
We were at Trust Fund’s party. He invited us all—everyone in the program—to the apartment his parents paid for. It was a nice place. Yeah, the interior decorator did a nice job. Don’t you think?
At some point another colleague—Norm—made a high school crack about Trust Fund’s sexual stamina, or something, to which Trust Fund rolled his eyes and replied: Um, Norm. I’m a competitive Badminton player. I’m an athlete. ::scoff::
So, what are we teaching today, Charles?
He plopped his ass on my desk, dangled his feet, smiled, and said hi, one at a time, to each of my students. Then he looked back at me for his answer. I was just stunned silent.
Um, dude? He snapped his fingers. What are we teaching?
Well, I stammered, I was just explaining the ad hominem fallacy and… Trust fund quickly jumped in:
Oh! That’s when you attack or belittle someone personally, instead of sticking to their claim or argument.
A student raised her hand. Trust fund acknowledged her with a nod and a grin. Can you give us an example? she asked.
Surely! Trust Fund smiled, and pointed at me. It would be like if I told you not to listen to Charles here, because he’s dressed like a fucking bum.
Thank you for reading along.
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How to Work Yourself to Death for Freedom
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She said she heard about two people, locally, who just dropped dead at their desks.
In New Jersey! she screamed. This happened in New Jersey!
She stood before me, exasperated, exhausted. She’s been pushed to the brink, her eyes are always swollen. Her once perfect posture, destroyed. But she’s still gorgeous. She still makes me smile. I still love her more than poetry.
They said the one guy had a massive heart attack, she continued, sitting back on the bed, and the other guy just had a stroke and dropped.
Bullshit, I said. They worked themselves to death, they never stopped and their bodies finally gave out. And if you kill yourself over a fucking job, I added, I will never forgive you. I’ll fucking haunt you from life. She started crying. I gave her a sedative, and put her to bed. Rest. You have to rest, please, I said. Now I was crying.
Stop trying to kill the woman I love, America. What the fuck?
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Dean Ken Doll: a prose #poem
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The rumor around campus was that Dean Ken Doll tried really super duper hard to fuck some blonde student. I only stress the blonde part because whenever the rumor floated past my ears that detail was highlighted: some blonde student that Dean Ken Doll tried to seduce for six months finally had some kind of breakdown and complained. But Dean Ken Doll had connections, and pulled strings, and blah blah blah. This story surprised me for two reasons. First because, what the fuck?! And second, I thought Dean Ken Doll was gay, mostly because of the way he would look me up and down, eye fucked me, really. He did this whenever he saw me. And hey, I was kinda flattered. But the drunken asshole who told me to fuck my boss for a promotion, also told me that Dean Ken Doll didn’t like me at all: because I wore cheap looking clothes.
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Maybe I should have:
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See the point is, I can do this all day. I can sit at my Macbook—I call him Zed—and tell you what’s on my mind, and you’ll enjoy it. This isn’t a talent. This was taught to me. Correction: I taught this to myself. That’s right, in my thirty plus years of higher education, I had a handful of truly excellent professors. The rest of them, hundreds of them, well…I mean, think about it, we all know American Universities are corporate pieces of shit, don’t we? And if you don’t, holy fucktards! Do I have some stories to tell you! Like the time my boss’ assistant told me to fuck her to get a promotion. He was drunk at the party he invited me to. I kept feeding him vodka and asking questions. Oh she’s so fucking hard up, he slurred with his eyes half closed. I’m telling you, CB.. you should fuck her. Just do it and you’ll be full time faculty. But I didn’t: mount her sloppy ass, or get the promotion I applied for. Maybe I shoulda just fucked her.
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disagreeing is the new faux pas: a freewritten prose poem
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It’s a fucking joke really. This person everyone knows as Charles Bivona, poetic writer, retired ass model blah blah blah. This fool @CharlesBivona contains less than a pubic hair of the real me. It’s a limitation of language, really. You don’t realize how impossible you are put into words until you actually try to do it. But if you work day after day at articulating yourself, and if you post it on the internet, everywhere on the internet, crazy shit starts to happen, once others finally notice you. At first, no one noticed me. I used to tweet poems and random thoughts, but really, I could have announced that I was poisoned, and needed help, and no one would have noticed back then. I’m not sure anyone would notice now. How can they? The world has become a mass of noise. There are too many minds with untrained, frantic voices−insane outbursts. I can’t even manage a conversation anymore. Disagreeing is the new faux pas. One must simply nod in agreement and say empty shit like, “Unbelievable…” or “What happened to this country?” and then shake one’s head, look sad, shut the fuck up and buy groceries. I radically disagreed with a few people in public, just last week, at some store, and was threatened and shouted down for it. This is American, motherfucker! If you don’t like it here, get the fuck out! But where can I go to escape this American dominance? I asked the frothing New Jersey cowboy hat. And how the hell can I afford to get there?
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And So: a new beginning poem
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And so I’ll just sit here in my apartment I can no longer afford, unemployed for a year, while everyone around me tells me to lower my standards and scoffs at the fucking nerve of me: Why did you stay in school so long? You shoulda gotten a job and made money, had a fucked up little family—like us! You coulda bought two story prison on a criminal mortgage and worked yourself to death paying for it—like us! Why, Charlie? Why did you read and write and study and question and ponder so long?! instead of, rather than, I mean, you shoulda been making money, money, money—like us! these fuckin cretins squawk in my brain. So, an answer: because I didn’t want to be an ignorant sack of inarticulate wage slave shit and caffeine and alcohol—like all of you. I’ll be evicted from my bare bones apartment very soon: because no one, no one, no one is hiring. And by the way, fuck you all.
Welcome to my NEW “Blog Strategy”
Like it. Or don’t.
This video is dedicated to my ex-friend Jeff:
“you coffee shop revolutionary son of a bitch.”
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What They Say in the USA
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1.
They say I suffer from major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and post traumatic stress disorder. They say the car accident in 2006 re-ignited the symptoms I’d beaten back in my 20s. They say the shock of the accident forced out repressed memories: a sadistic father, psychological torture, attempted murders. They say the pills that their pens advertise will really help. But the pills are too expensive. Not to worry! They say these older, cheaper pills will probably work just as well.
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They say the car accident left me with chronic pain—muscle spasms like marbles from the base of my spine to my head, and migraine headaches: pain shooting from the back of my scalp into my palate, my gums and my teeth. They say deep tissue massage therapy could really help. BUT it’s very expensive, they say, with a polished compassion. But not to worry! They say I can take this pain medication that their pens advertise—the same drug that killed my friend Brian.
