November 15, 2012

Oklahoma City 1982


Before I heard the band The Flaming Lips 
There was another band called Hostages 
out of Spencer Oklahoma.
I wore out the only cassette tape
I bought of their music.
So glad to have found them on you tube
I'd drive a day and a half to see them boys punk it up!
This little known anti Reagan 
'Two Hundred Dollar Panties'  punk song 
still blisters my brain with it's down and dirty 
hick punk sound.



November 13, 2012

The Laundry Room





I am a breathing time machine.
I believe the words this man sings with his brother.
The Avett Brothers make me happy when they sing.
Raw, honest, emotional vocals fill me with the power of being alive.
This is one of my favorite songs.


October 20, 2012

The Lobe Goes Giddy


In my youth there were not many occasions that allowed for me to be outright giddy. When I turned seventeen I was granted full custody of myself in a court of law. I left the courthouse that day giddy as hell in a pair of wooden shoes. The clump of there weight echoed a giddy jig through the halls as I made my way towards the exit.

Exiting the courthouse my eyes filled with cloudless blue skies. My head raced with the possibilities of my new found freedom.

I quicken my step and begin to skip down the street. My heart is pounding as loud in my chest as the wooden shoes are pounding the pavement under my skipping feet. I stop and kick my foot up in sheer happiness of being alive.

My wooden shoe slips from my foot in mid-air and flies high in an arch before soaring downward onto a bums head. I cannot yell in time. The wooden shoe crashes down onto the bums head with a loud thud.

The bum doubled over with his head in his hands. He’s old and mentally ill. He is a local bum with a buzz haircut who is always bent forward looking for cigarette butts on the ground. The locals call him Buzz.

I once watched Buzz knock over a bunch of freshly planted baby palm trees on the main street of our town. And now I am forced to retrieve my wooden shoe from him. I hope Buzz does not head butt me to the ground the way he did those freshly planted baby palm trees.

With his hands still on his head Buzz turns his eyes towards the tops of the buildings. He is scanning to see who is throwing things down onto his head. Slowly I walk closer to him. He turns as he hears the clump of my remaining wooden shoe on the pavement behind him.

I am sorry that my shoe hit you Sir. I was so giddy just a moment ago that I kicked my foot up in the air and it flew off and hit you in the head. I really do hope it did not hurt you too much.

I take out a fresh pack of smokes and hold them out as a peace offering.
Buzz hands me my shoe with one hand and takes the full pack of smokes with his other hand.

Turning to make his get away he snarls at me; “Don’t be so fucking careless with your giddiness in the future dip shit”

Striking a match to a cigarette Buzz slowly fades behind a puff of smoke. I clump away on my heavy wooden shoes ready to take on the rest of the world.

Monsoon and Then Some







Monsoon is here.

With a sickly thick heat that’s threatening to pry wide open the dent in my head.
The dent you gave me all those years ago.
Your words were like fists to my mind.
You were always first in line to flick away my innocence like a pest on your shoulder.
I know you think I hate you more than I hate him.
Truth is I do not hate either of you.
I fight hard everyday to never let your bad out weigh your good.


I understand that not all the misery the two of you allowed to manifest in my life was of your own making.
I understand that you crawled out of a dirt poor life of humility on a belly full of stolen food and desert grass. Silently following on the heels of a nineteen year old alcoholic savior who filled your womb with my life under heavens stars on the backside of the killer kern river.
It was you who first pressed my new born mouth to your unyielding seventeen year old breast

It was you who placed the tiny garments on my body that my nineteen year old father stole from a rich mans house.
It was you who walked the floors of the second story garage apartment with me at night while an old retired movie lion wept in his cage beneath our feet.




It was you who stood watch over me while I recovered from losing a husband to insanity, my womb six months gone with his seed.



It was you who gave me the same tiny stolen garments to place upon my own first born child.



I understand all too well that life's spell is not always at our command.








Mucking Up The Tweed



The boat builder settles next to me in the sand. Stars are falling in clusters across the sky. He’s been furthering my limited education with a short lecture on meteor rite showers. I’d seen a few before, but could never fully grasp what was happening. The boat builder is not vain or cocky. For the most part he’s quiet like me.

His words when spoken, never prod my insides like a sharp stick. I can tell he is curious about me. I speak with a slight hick accent. He’s seen me at the break-water near the pier and on the main street of our little town. He has seen me walk the long roads above the city in the early evenings. He’s passed by as I stood on a freeway 101 overpass and watched the cars flash past below me.

I see you alone the boat builder says to me, all over town. I’ve also noticed that I’ve never seen you at any beach parties, or concerts, or house parties. Why is that? I work a lot.

I spend all my free time learning how to take care of people. Like a nurse? No, nothing that fancy. I mostly look after grannies. I show up and get paid to let them boss me around. I iron shirts in exchange for fresh eggs every Saturday morning for old lady Garcia. I get ten dollars for pulling weeds a couple hours a week with an 80 year old Greek woman, who doesn’t speak a word of English.

Right now my main job is taking care of three old English sisters five days a week for seven hours a day. One of the three sisters is the widow of a musician from the early years of jazz. The eldest of the three sisters is starting to have long term problems with her balance.

I spend a lot of my time trying to keep up with her in the garden. On some mornings after I serve them tea and toast in bed, they let me iron rolls of linen table clothes hanging in the hall pantry all day. On days when I clean the pool for them, the middle sister will sit and read poetry from old books. Sometimes she just sits and watches birds in the trees through binoculars.

How the hell do you get all of these crazy jobs taking care of people?
I get most of them from my grandmother’s friends.
I get some of them from an older friend who works as a nurse. Those are mostly just errand runs for people who are wealthy, and old with colds.
Those jobs pay really well. I shop for them and piddle around making soup and straightening up the place for them, while they ride out their colds.
Easy money.

In a few weeks I will be leaving for Oregon to take care of a Russian mans grandmother for a year. It will be that long until his sister can come back from Russia to help take care of their grandmother. Who knows where I will be after that.

The boat builder tells me that he is leaving as well in a few weeks. He tells me that he and his family will be traveling to his father’s homeland for 6 months. The boat builder notices that I have caught a chill. He drapes his fine tweed jacket over my shoulders as we walk the short mile from the beach to the long hill.

At the stop sign at the bottom of the long hill, the petite brunette is shifting her car to second as she slowly passes us, glaring at the boat builder as we walk toward the long hill, side by side. Wow, I say as she finally takes off hurling her car towards third gear before disappearing up the hwy 101 on ramp.
What kind-o-hex does that little brunette foresee in your future?
She seems to have you on a shit list of some sort?

Exhaling a deep sigh, the boat builder tells me about an episode that happened between them a few months before. She had verbally abused him and went to great lengths to humiliate him publicly. She liked the things they did in private. Together in public was a whole other story. Seems behind the scenes of their closeted love affair, a new wealthy foreign cock with enough cash to bathe in nightly while coked up, had cast his eye in her direction.

The petite brunette would flaunt herself at the wealthy foreign cock in front of the boat builder. So finally one night, he quit being her fuck toy and wouldn’t take her calls. I know she’s going to come to my house later tonight. She’ll come to see if you’re there with me. Would you like me to be there when she comes to see you? I’d like for you to come over and have a coffee with me and maybe listen to some music, but I don’t want to have to deal with her while I am in the middle of trying to spend time with you.

I’d like a chance to befriend you before we both leave on our journeys. She knows I’m going out of the country and she wants me to fuck her before I go. I don’t want to fuck her ever again. I don’t want to see, feel, hear or smell her. Well if you really never want to see her again and you do want to spend time with me, then you should invite me over and we’ll ignore the door when she shows up.

The boat builder agrees that we should just ignore her if she shows up. We cross the road to the long drive at the top of the long hill and I trip in the dark. My foot gets tangled in overgrown vines, landing me face first into a dark patch of thistles. I’ve covered the boat builder’s lovely tweed coat in prickly thistles. I am in a panic. The boat builder hauls me up out of the dark. I laugh and apologize for getting thistles in his good coat. The boat builder says to hell with the coat are you ok?!

We make our way down the long drive to his front door. We enter into his private yard thru a gate hidden by a large arched wisteria branch. Just inside the door of the boat builders house is a large kitchenette area. He walks me to the main living area thru a wide doorway.

To the left is a heavy oak door slung slightly open by the boat builder as he passes it, explaining that the bathroom is behind this door, when and if I need it. The west wall is filled with large windows that roll open in the main room. They are framed with old wisteria trees groomed to perfection by his mother for the last twenty something years.

I settle myself in a large arm chair and look over the stack of books strewn at the foot of the chair. The boat builder goes back into the kitchen area and puts on a pot of coffee, pulling out a bottle of Grand Mariner, two large cups, setting them on a large wooden tray. Beneath the large rolling windows are oversized drawers in a wooden shelving unit that runs the length of the windows into large closets on each end of the windows. I pull the sheer curtains on the windows and light the candles along the shelf top.

As he enters the room with the coffee tray the boat builder explains to me that the house used to be an old hunting compound built by a group of retired doctors who came to this part of the coast in the late 1920's to hunt pheasant and fish for trout in the springs up the ridge past his family’s property.

We have been settled in talking and drinking coffee for about an hour, when we hear a knock at the door. The boat builder is in the middle of a story about learning to sail when the knocks interrupt his story, making his face turn sour. Neither of us says a word. The knocking continues. I watch as the boat builders face churns with all kinds of emotion. He is uneasy.

I lean toward the boat builder and whisper, are you certain that you never want to see her again? Because if you are, I’d be happy to answer that knocking door for you and send her on her way so you can finish telling me your story about sailing. I mean, it's the least I can do after mucking up your tweed coat the way I did. I won’t do anything to intimidate her at all. I will be very polite, but I can almost guarantee you that she will never again knock on your door looking for cock in the middle of the night. I tip the large coffee cup to my lips and drink the last gulp.

I stand up and begin to remove my clothes while walking towards the door. The boat
builder is stunned silent. I take a candle from the shelf and make my way to the glass entry door being knocked upon.

I stand in front of the door holding out the candle from my naked body and let the words can I help you leave my lips as I twist the door knob opening the door. The petite brunette is shocked by my naked candle wielding body. She steps back a step to take in the full view of my glorious being and asks me in a shocked mutter if the boat builders was home?

I explained to her that the boat builder was in fact at home, but was rather busy at the moment and then asked her if there was anything that I could assist her with? No she stammered, turning she disappeared into the dark. I shut the door and walk back into the boat builder’s main living area.

The boat builder stood speechless with my clothes in his hand. I redress myself and settle back into the boat builder’s chair and remind him of where he left off in his story about sailing. The boat builder looks unsteady for a second. He settles onto the other over stuffed chair across from me and pours more coffee and grand mariner into our cups.
We talk until dawn.
The petite brunette never knocks on his door again.

Bohemian Sundays


On Sunday afternoons

I crank the Victrola
To perfection

Sergi Rachmaninoffs
Dark whispers
Fill the room.

Into my body flows
Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No.2

Gentle are the fingers
That bring my toes
To point

I must concede
To the music’s full need
Of my passion

My grandmother yells
In broken English

“You should not valtz on your toes that vay”!

I pay no heed
To her words

Mephistopheles has offered
To be my waltz partner
Later I will pay
For youths passionate sins

Until then
I shall read Nietzsche
Whilst unsupervised

And dream of passions golden embers

Sleeping deep within me
Seething to come undone

I shall waltz with Mephistopheles whole-heartedly
To Hungarian Rhapsody No.2

I am after all
Nearly fourteen
and
Part Bohemian

*

The Boat Builders Party





The boat builder has the hips of a woman.
Gentle slopes that curve, waist to thigh.
On top of his head spring fine tuned curls.

From a lush green corner I watch the boat builder being read, a riot act of some sort, by a petite brunette. I watch as the pressure of her words, land blow after blow, on the boat builder’s chin.

Suddenly, I feel a strong urge to take the mounting pressure off of the boat builder’s chin. For a second I entertain the thought of plucking a leaf off of the vine hanging over my head. To use as a mustache, While goose stepping,’ Monty Python style All over the lush green corner I had tucked myself away in.

I decide to go with my second urge. Dropping to a squat, gently pounding my chest Sailing plucked green grass in a shower over my head. I do this several times before the boat builder catches a glimpse of my antics, taking place, in the distance behind the petite brunettes head. He cracks a huge smile. I spring to my feet and claim innocents, dancing a half hearted jig.

The petite brunette does not care for the sudden smile, across the boat builders face. I can tell by the sharp movement of her petite frame, that she’s really letting him have it. I imagine her eye’s shooting darts Into a target on his forehead. An older female version, of the boat builder Appears from the far side of the main house. She has the same fine tuned curls And sharp, picture perfect profile.



She smiles broadly as she walks up to her boat building brother.
Their father has sent her to collect him.
He is being summoned to give a toast, To his families success.

The boat builder turns away from the petite brunette In the arm of his sister.
He glances back over his shoulder at me.
I smile and give him, my best spirit fingers goodbye wave.

October 15, 2012

The Ghost Stories of Another man.

I loves these songs.

Hurtling Towards Death
Til The Stars Burn Out
Ghetto Chicken
Me Versus You

http://www.shootistmusic.com/music1.html