Further Proof that Eric Baus is a Master of the Universe from here on known as Bausto

Yesterday, while I was busy pretending to be an attendee, Weird Deer posted a hotline call from Eric Baus titled, "Our Common Cloud," and it, my friends, is good. There are many times that I read a poem and think, "Damn, if only I'd written that first" (In fact, that very thing happened today while I was reading Aaron Fagan's poem about Ben Hecht, whose Chicago home is three houses down from my apartment, and whose name has been floating around my poems for months). Baus' poems, though, are out of this world. His ability to take ideas that bounce in and out of our heads everyday and turn them into quarters freshly pulled from our ears borders on being unfair. We are all quite familiar with the beauty of newly fallen snow and the utter disappointment of that same snow the next morning, but when Baus says, "It hurt to see the same snow twice," we see that it is an experience we undervalue greatly. And so it is with all of Baus' work. His poems are like watching somebody with an acute sense of taste eat, no matter how hard I try, my food will never taste that good.
There is a sense of jealousy and foolishness that come along with reading (or hearing) these poems, and I don't mean that to be seen in a negative light. It's the kind of jealousy and foolishness that makes us admire what has made us feel that way. In a sense, it's our retired farmer grandfathers laughing at us when we tell them we want to be poets...they really don't care if we're poets or not, but they know we have no idea what a luxury that desire is.

A few "One more thing's"

Tonight, my dog disguised herself as a half-eaten pigeon when I wasn't paying attention. I will lie awake dreaming of steaming rectum.

Cat Power's new album good enough to buy, but not her best. Matt Costa's new record is also good enough to buy.

If you want to hear the poem this post was based on click the title, it is linked to the mp3. I suggest you download it and listen to it on repeat about twenty times.