No Mean Feat
Breaking News…
debonairly often from my typing room I step out onto this small balcony
Tortona and there is the night
a cool wash of black air.
I stand in slippers, shorts and undershirt, sucking at a small cigarette,
I can see the curling headlights of the cars on the winding Harbor Freeway.
they come and come,
those lights,
they never stop
and I truly wonder that life is still here after all these centuries,
after the hell of all of our error
and our smallness
and our greed,
our selfishness,
our bitterness,
life is still here
and the thought of that makes me strangely elated,
of course, I am woozy from hours of typing.
and now
again.
the same dog in that yard to the far left barks at me
he should know that old fart standing there in his shorts,
he should know me by now.
I turn and walk back into my typing room.
the typewriter is electric and it is on and it hums hums hums hums.
last night I did something very odd:
after ripping out a few poems
I covered the machine
then bent down and kissed it once,
and said,
“thank you, very much.”
after 50 years in the game
I had finally thanked my typewriter.
now I sit down to it and I BANG IT,
I don’t use the light touch,
I BANG IT,
I want to hear it,
I want it to do its tricks,
it has saved my ass from the worst of women and the worst of men
and the worst of jobs,
it has mellowed my nightmares into a gentle sanity,
it has loved me at my lowest
and it has made me seem to be a greater soul than I ever was.
I BANG IT
I BANG IT
and I know how all of them felt,
all the writers,
when it was going good,
when it was going hot.
death,
I have chopped off your arms
and your legs
and your head.
I am sorry, I
know you just do what you have to do
even to that barking dog
but now
I BANG IT
BANG IT
and wait.
~ Charles Bukowski
The Deliverance’ Ultimately Empty-Handed
“The Deliverance” promises a feast of fear but serves up reheated leftovers. It’s a cinematic bait-and-switch that’ll leave horror fans feeling like they’ve been tricked into attending a PTA meeting.
The film kicks off with a tantalizing appetizer of domestic dread. A fly infestation buzzes with menace, mysterious bruises bloom like sinister flowers, and an oppressive atmosphere oozes from every frame. For a moment, we’re gripped by the terror of the ordinary—a family unit crumbling under supernatural strain.
But faster than you can say “I see dead people,” we’re careening down Cliché Canyon. The scares that follow are as predictable as a calendar and half as exciting. The wall-crawling kid is about as frightening as a six-year-old on a jungle gym and a sugar high.
Lee Daniels, usually a maestro of the macabre human condition, seems to have misplaced his mojo. His direction, once razor-sharp in movies like “Precious” and “The Buler,” now feels as dull as a plastic butter knife. It’s like watching a lion decide to become a housecat—all purr, no roar.
Into this muddled miasma steps Andra Day as Ebony. Her performance crackles with desperate fury, especially during a dinner table confrontation that serves up a main course of raw dysfunction. For a precious few scenes, we glimpse the film that could have been—intense, unsettling, and authentically horrifying.
But even Day’s formidable talents can’t salvage this sinking ship. The demon, meant to be the film’s driving terror, comes off as a B-movie reject—about as frightening as a deflated Halloween decoration.
The finale’s stab at redemption feels more forced than a group hug at a misanthropes’ convention. It’s a Hallmark card stapled to a ouija board—neither convincing nor cathartic.
In the end, “The Deliverance” doesn’t deliver; it disappoints. It’s a magic trick where we can see all the strings, leaving us neither fooled nor amazed—just vaguely irritated at the waste of potential. Horror fans, save yourselves. This is one exorcism that should’ve been left unperformed.
