Rattlesnake blues.  Car keys shoes.  Use and reuse and abuse a masseuse for personal use

for private parts couth

for manly manes wounded

flowing in the northern breeze

It is a car wash.  It is the car wash.  Scrubbing and scratching and not scratching and not scratching in that way and…

drinking vermouth on a cool autumn afternoon in my friend’s courrtyard

like a vampire.

Sire, do you desire..

to wisp away your cape and fool those with a metallic metal wire

that you place around your hip and do the fandango ‘til you’re tired?

Wile away the hours

While away from pliars.

Wile E. Coyote

never smoked peyote

That’s reserved for the Navajo

Didncha know?

Ho?

I am immeasurably sad

and will lay

with my hand on my heart

as i fall asleep tonight

There seems to be something

That trembles at my glance

That shakes in furious matrimony

In a wide mouthed open stance

Poised and fixed for fighting

Ready to draw it’s sword

To slice my eyeballs open

At the hint of my dropping discourse

Dischordinating feeling

Flocks into the path

It is a gaping wound of holes

That shudders in tattered gasps

I am alone

Utterly.  That much is true

And I beat on silver wings

To convey that much to you

If a bird flocks out into the open

From its broken telephone pole, will you

Then see a new sight

In the absence of that bird

Will you

Will you

It’s not so far

From the boardwalk

Take these boots from off your unbridled uncommunicating path

Walk with these rocks on

For a spell

Hmm..

It seems to me

That something is worth fighting for

Though it’s name escapes me.  It’s a

New war, a dirty jock strap, a shitting pidgeon, a paradigm, a lack of

New words, a crowded new york shopping mall, a

Belligerently insightful killer as he holds his

Plastic water bottle full of booze up

To toast the moon retreating, beaming

Where have all the saxophonists gone to play?

It seems like it was just yesterday

I saw Charlie Parker crumble

Into a brown paper sack

Am I a nostalgic homo sapien

Running from the future

Of wit, of money

Of my lack of sexual frustration

Of my crumbling back, breaking

With each turn of the page

Do I have a mind?

Do I embody a person?

Do I sit in front of a hearth

And read

With my mearle at my feet

With my mearle at my feet

With my mearle at my feet

What is this stupid illusion of mystery

That has the whole world up in arms

It’s not that hard to just love

Just love

In constant beratement I find

That most nickels are actually dimes

That most churchbells can only chime

In the hour of..

In the hour of…

Our state of awakening?

Our crumbling absence of feeling?

Our tattered aimless gaze at the ceiling

Of stars? Did god make those free willingly?

Did god fix your ceiling?

Can I love a feeling?

Can the killer have a meaning?

Where does Whitman get off saying

All things are love and he’s a homo dealing

Love in the first degree

Dolphins and pines

They both sign

Their lives off to the us army

Fine.

That’s fine, I can wield my shovel in between

Those locks of craters

Those abstinence waiters

Those traveling salesmen catering

Buying jewels out the horses mouth

And selling them into the bourgeous south

Reeling

And where to go to from here?

And where to buy my next beer

If I’ve looked hard enough

Then Jesus will swoop me off of my ever failing feet

Take me away

And say

Eat

This cornmeal that was made in my image

Cornwallis has nothing on my spotted owl

But that’s just it son.

It’s just an owl

And you are just a fancy

Floating free

An electron

How can it be?

That you haven’t offed yourself yet

That you can keep going

With this tumor I’ve planted in your head

It’s cool jesus

I’ll just do what I do

Drink the juice down slow

And swallow all at once

At once

At once I’m.

Alone

And alone I’m at once

Alone

In the absence of tricks

Alone

In the abscess of itches

Alone alone

Alone

I found my soul in an old growth forest just north or Portland

It was

Rotting on some fern covered fallen log

It was

A beating exposed heart

Escaping into the thick foliage

Jumping beside tree frogs

It was

jerking off.

The semen stains

The sap and trickles

And trickles

Into one unmuteable destiny of unforgiveness

Falling

The nervous anxiety I don’t want to see

skins my hands and bleeds my knees

this d.h. lawrence in my lap

is a name i’ve said over and over in fact

and my bulbous waist is waiting for

the right moment to expel its contents galore

but it’s true, i can’t think and i can’t even do

anything i’ve set my mind to do

for want of a piece of relaxing fodder

to shake my temple into a coma.

Where? where? is my solitude

that divinity solace that will break in two

my puny struggles; put them to bed

wring my heart out onto sourdough bread

and i’d know in a deep deep sense of that verb

that i am safe, that i am heard

that my muscles will quit their heavenly battle

and return to camp unharmed and unarmed

will my inner soul save me will my inner soul save me will my inner soul save me will my inner soul save me will my inner soul save me will my inner soul save me will my inner soul save me will my inner soul will it will it will it will it save me?? will my inner soul save me???? will my inner soul save ME???????? will my inner soul save me will my inner soul save me will my inner soul save me will my inner soul save me will my inner soul save me will my inner soul save me will my inner soul save me will my inner soul save me will my inner soul save me will my inner soul save me will my inner soul save me??

As the days, minutes drift by me, and my inbox remains uncluttered by friendly assurances of my self worth and important status in my friends lives, i am clenched ever more so, my face tightening in the dusty breeze, my chest becoming inscrutably tight and hard, the hairs standing on end as if an electric shock has passed through my upper body.  When I see a new message, it is Marriott, advising me on upcoming deals, or big titted blond cum dumpster taking it in the ass from a donkey, or netflix, offering new enticing deals to win back my retired membership.  I am forced to deal with my insecurities of being isolated in this socially demoralizing poop land.  A far cry from the cold rush of air that flows, fleetingly past my plaid stable writing close to the door, I am nothing more than a timid man, afraid and excited by change.  The duality of life’s most prestigious subjects haunting my clarity, night in and out, the manifestation of which transcribes to a mostly seemingly mad sequence of thoughts turned trivial and easily unnoticeable actions.  It is hard to be so far away, but then it seems I am always so far away.  The proximity to loved ones is thinly veiled lie and if i ever was sober and conscious enough when i am home to listen to it, very obvious.  What are loved ones anyway?  We are all just people.  Are they folks I can connect to more on one or more levels?  My happy smile at work is delirium.  My good natured attitude is my hidden faults bearing their fruit in one smiling factory or another.  I have a good mind that there is something buried but to dig seems unbearably difficult.  

Like most, I assume, I live for the distant dream of a fantasized life doing exactly what I want.  And also like most, actually working towards that goal, so that it may be realized, scares the bejesus out of me.  The fear of rejection looms heavy and large in my bleak and desolate landscape and the fear of the unknown is no slouch either.  Ultimately, in trying times, I look inward and observe the procession of patterns and drawn conclusions of the possibilities of detriment caused by self to my decaying being, dying slowly, one minute at a time.  Alcohol, friends, music, do much to make my landscape seem brighter with a slower shutter speed.  But after 3 tours of abstinence I feel I have learned startlingly little and my faith in my ability to change takes a blow to the head.

Byron Coley, Kurt Cobain, Jim Jarmusch, Tom Waits, John Fahey.  These are people who embody what WIRE magazine’s mission statement tries to accomplish themselves but fail to do so.  Talk about, be inspired, make something unique, in music, literature, poetry, film, criticism, art, and so forth.  To talk about in such a way that it is meaningful, deep, with personal experiences, connotations, emotions, deeply resounding inner psyche touchings, political, historical, economical, humanitarian, relationships, sex, and the ilk.  All these things that the arts conjure up in a person deserve a decent and nourishing forum.  Too often (chicken and/or the egg) these conversations turn pretentious, either because of ill intent of the authors or the outside perceptions of the uninterested.  It really arrests not just a worthwhile activity, but an integral activity to the development of humans to reach their full realization of spiritual fulfillment.  At least for me anyway.  The aforementioned people excel in those stimulating conversations about influential items and people in their lives and explaining artfully and to the best of their ability how their influences have specifically shaped them and what internally happened upon the consumption of art.  All done, tastefully, without the hint of aggressive pretensions.  For that I admire them.

Freakishly in love with the dashboard lights

I make a call to a distant time

Reckless and wild it came in a dream

and left my tattered hand with more of the unseamly

tragically infested roach motel beds

steaming and toppled over their own dead

In a wisp - whiff! bleep -i’m out of here!

free to love the absence of beer

and wade and wallow in the light of the clean

light that’s meant for the unkempt beings

there’s a crumpled bagel bag blocking my view

of the life less ordinary and also the pew

the empowered counter top, gray as its workers

puking up last nights cherry red cough syrup

Where are the facts in the tin tin cup

filling and filling and spilling it up

Stop

and freeze

flip on the breeze

and call and tell me that my face is what it seems to be

It’s another estranged day in this estranged land and the ridiculousness ridicules my face in pouring ash tray movements of resounding clay fixtures brought up to hate their master.  I just learned that the DH Lawrence I brought with me is one of his worst novels and I’m just imaging the confusion on my daughter’s brow when I’m not there for the third consecutive day.  What does mama say?  ”He’s busy reading a shitty novel by a brilliant brit, honey.  He can’t be here with you right now.”  The air is bustling by at 28 knots shattering the port o pot stall door and carrying camels and sheiks and shitty tumbleweeds and turds and other bad things.  My gut hangs over my bulbous belt buckle and hides some of the shiny metal and causes me searing pain.  There is a cute girl here who speaks french and is flirtatious.  So that much is nice.  It’s one of those days.  When your so strung out on fatigue and talkative mexicans that the thought of keeping positive for the sheer sake of embalmed and lasting mental health just doesn’t seem worth it.  8 more months of this shithole and then i’ll have to blame my personal problems on something more accurate.  SO..lets save the antelope, hun!

Don’t cha know they’re dying one by one

and sweaty talkative mexicans are no fun

but my daughter lives in a high rise pun

and plays with thomas the train in the com-

-forting levels of 5 stories high

whistling her dora the explorer in the night

sagging off burdens of mental extremes

of people who come and go like in dreams

Camels and oxen and whole flocks of sheep

are what i’m with instead of watching you sleep

and count livestock in your itty bitty head

I’ll come home soon and i won’t be dead

i’ll read you a book and put you to bed

and so begins the next 3 months of self loathing, depression, isolation, desperate grasping to the hope of new Facebook messages, looking inward, and general uncomfortableness.  I am a very social person and I need to talk to people, to flirt, to be around people.  It’s not the same here.  …..and it kills me to think of the abandonment issues or confusion I may be causing my daughter.  I hate to think how she’s going to be asking where I am for several weeks and then months.  It’s like the world has played a cruel joke on her.  The world has played a cruel joke on me.  I really love that little shit.  I also seemed to break ties with a couple of girls I used to be intimate with so I have the fear of rejection to deal with.  Ultimately what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and I feel more like I am moving towards what I want in life than I ever have.  You gotta take the good with the bad and never give up looking for the answers.  For every problem there is a solution.