Once again, Ron Silliman dons native dress and brings us another story about drinking with the rather infamous and innocuous, Eileen Tabios aka Front Man for the Liberation of the Phillipines, BJ "BJ" Reyes, of "My drink with BJ" famestory of theancients:

Comments section where I am filtered because of my insistence on discussing Zionism:

I've met Eileen Tabios a few times, including a memorable dinner with her and Philip Lamantia one night in North Beach about six years ago. Eileen is so prolific in her poem-writing and publishing that I haven't been able to keep up. I enjoy prose poems, so I have read (and read still) her Reproductions of an Empty Flagpole. Eileen also deserves kudos for bringing through the out-of-print keyhole the work of Jose Garcia Villa, who, had, a, deep, love, for, the, comma (see The Anchored Angel, which she edited and which was published in 1999, reprinted in 2000). I don't know if Villa meets whatever the definition is of "neglectorino" but I sure hadn't read him before the Tabios-edited book. I also tip my reader's cap (my reading glasses, more precisely) to Eileen for publishing in 2002 via her Meritage Press the little chapbook er, um by Garrett Caples, who I think is a terrific poet.


Why yes. I had a drink or two once with the ambassadors of Turkey, Spain and Germany. Charlie, the US attache in Riyadh was Jewish and pretty drunk while his wife did the hoochie coochie for us amazed spectators on the floor of the German Diplomat's digs in the "DQ" which, is not the Dairy Queen mind you, but the much sought after target of Al Qaeda in Riyadh, the Diplomatic Quarter. His wife, a stellar practitioner of what is known as the Belly Flamenco, went down backwards and suspended herself an inch or two above the ground. Charlie was out back under the nice trees in the secluded secludedness of all diplomatic ventures there....chatting up a young Brazilian.

My drink with Charlie is the name of that poem and it will be filed under:

Who gives a damn about this nutcase called a Tabios. I mean, anyone that writes a poem about their lapis lazuli moomoo, is not what I'd call:

Destined to be anything other than a moomoo writer of the calibur of old Mimi of the Purple Emporium where one could go to buy acrylic paints.

Deep love of the comma. Now that is where it's at. Personally, I prefer the tragicomedy of the question mark when it stands next to a capital letter and nothing else. They are like two clowns or rather, what we refer to as the "clown ghost" effect. Is the clown ghost a ghost of the clown or a ghost that is a clown?

Jack Handy probably has the answer to that age old question....among many other answers like that Flamingo story he tells. You see, there is nothing more beautiful than a sunset and a flamingo is flying into the sunset and carrying a beautiful painting in its beak.....and yer drunk. Good ole Jack Handy.