my first real love, before women, before movies, before poetry, is the martial arts.  i was a rabid practitioner of karate, shotokan style, long before i could shave.  i read black belt magazine as if it were the bible.  no, i don't have a black belt

[while writing the above we heard what sounded like several gunshots nearby.  don't know what they were.  social media lit up a couple minutes after hearing these alleged gunshots.  i am sitting with the windows open and i don't hear police sirens.  could be firecrackers.  could be a lot of things.  could be a gun.  now there is a police helicopter hovering about the neighborhood.  now the chopper has left.  i'm listening to the police scanner via the internet.  oh, life in the digital age!]

 i dropped out long before i could attain such a rank.  but my love of karate, the martial arts, has not abated.  and i sit here with the TV on watching the rio olympics waiting for the judo matches.  i have been waiting to watch judo on TV since 1976, the montreal games!  sure, we live in the digital epoch but i would like, once in my life, to watch judo on broadcast on TV.

brazilian poet, and hardcore drinker, paulo leminski, was also a hardcore practitioneer of judo.  sort of appropriate for these games, now, right.  i mean for a california poet who is also drinking a couple of beers and who is also a lover of the martial arts.  

[as for the gunshots, there is nothing happening.  no police, no police helicopter, no chatter on the police scanner.  in fact, the scanner is the typical noise on saturday night, complaints about loud music, etc. etc. and nothing about violent crime.]
 
as for the broadcast of the 31st olympiad i am still waiting to watch judo.