There were so many picks of the week condensed into the 3rd of August 2010’s weeks that to choose one seems more arbitrary than turning on the radio in a strange heavenly hallucination of someone else’s favorite experiences. On one hand, M.G. Martin pretty much was the literary scene this week, hosting his first Literary Death Match with Alia Volz, reading at the Tenderloin Reading Series and celebrating the release of his first book of poems, One for None. Also this week was an incredible series of performances by street poets in the city’s oldest private library, from which it was difficult to choose a best but which, ultimately, gave us our pick:

Monica Storss reading “The Punk Rock Marriage”

Full text:

When we are old we will live in a light house. And if not in one, per se, then within driving distance to one. At night we will sneak in and eat the souls of dead babies. We will listen to black metal, slow jams, and klezmer music, and we will waltz on the tiny insufficient platform that circles the crow’s nest. We will mix drug and drink and loll riverside on picnic blankets petting one another’s hair. When our hips need replacing, we’ll use safety pins; they pop out during sex, and we have to replace them often, but shit, they’re cheap enough.

When we are old we will live in a cabin. You’ll chop wood and tend garden and we’ll can our own tomatoes. You’ll brew your own beer and I’ll have a miniature pony that we’ll train as a seeing eye dog. On our cozy walls we’ll have framed posters from ’77—some stolen off of Montreal’s cobbled back alleyways, some we silkscreen ourselves. We’ll let bands sleep on our floor once in a while, and we’ll string up christmas lights regardless of the season, and remember to say please and thank you to each other and to the earth at every opportunity.

When we are old we’ll live in a condo and we will do endless piles of blow and we will go surfing at all hours of the day and night and we will throw money at hookers and spend our Sundays making PB and Js for the homeless and we will walk the boardwalk and hand them out, like probably with clean needles, too. We will make porn of ourselves that we burn in protest before even viewing. We’ll sneak cigarettes when we think the other’s not looking; we will snorkel, we will sleep on beaches. When we are old, we will live on a boat. We will wear heavy sweaters sometimes, and have marathon sex on deck. We will ferry immigrants who deserve to be ferried, and we’ll only come ashore to see movies, to buy beer, or for shows. We’ll fly to Union Jack and fuck up the yachts that drop anchor. We will set fire to the shipping lines, our sextant made from a PBR can and a broken clock.

When we are old we will live in a mansion, with holes cut out to see the stars with. We will have taxidermied animals that come to life, bell jars with orchids, terrariums where we grow the future. We will wear our teeth around our necks and play music that echoes in the rafters, shaking the feathers of the stuffed crow. We will grow grapefruits and moons in an orchard and we will have bushes with seed pods of pills rattling like sabers of the vichodin harvest in autumn. Our children—all accidents—will come to see us on Sundays, and we will ignore them and speak French to the grandbabies. We will serve banquets of weed food, and set up a label exclusively for bands made up out of high school teachers. We’ll give out demos and scholarships anonymously. We will shoot guns an cackle, and nap anywhere we like in sleeve coats and velvet. We will tend and burn. We will fuck and fight. We will yawn and yearn. And there is no one else who I would rather do this with than you.

If you watch this reading or this one or this one or this one or this one or this one, you’ll see why I woke up indecisive today (and you won’t even be able to see some of the footage from the One for None release or from InsideStoryTime, which included a handful of other great gos).

Oh, and this is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen, and thanks to Charles Kruger you can see M.G. play the trumpetless trumpet.

Also this week were Bang Out and Writers With Drinks. You just can’t see it all in this city.

This coming week » Today, you would be wise to check out The Portuguese Artists Colony, and tomorrow if you’re in the East Bay I recommend you spend some time at East Bay Poetry Express (they will have a special guest). On Saturday, both sides of the Bay will tug for attention: East Bay on the Brain returns to the Layover with some favorite readers: Maw Shein Win, Timothy Crandle, Amy Glasenapp, and Jezebel Delilah X, and The Bay Area Poetry Marathon is back to give you a celebrated range of poetics. If you’re greedy, or in for a treat, here’s a bigger scoop.