Tuesday, December 16, 2008

diving down deep into the dirty water of your thoughts

It was the third bus to go by.
They were all full.
Bundled up commuters looked up at him from their magazines for a fraction of a second and then back to their magazines.
He flung his lunch sack into the garbage can.
"Fuck it- I'm taking the day off."
He knew his boss would can him. He didn't care. It was his sixth job in as many months.
The first had been as a door to door enumerator. The local Chamber of Commerce had decided to collect information on every house in the city, kind of like a private census. The Chamber had hired a company J.R.PUCHE to gather the data and publish it and PUCHE had hired him to gather the data.
"Kid, don't let 'em scare you off- tell 'em you work for the City and it's required information for police and fire emergency information." His boss wore his life on his shoulder like a dead monkey.

The July sun was beating down on him.
He rang the bell at the first house. Nothing. He rang again. A woman's voice yelled from inside the house.
"Go around to the BACK!"
He walked across the dead grass of the front lawn to the driveway. There was an old Dodge Valiant in the driveway with the hood up. The rest of the driveway was strewn with broken toys and motorcycle parts and a large red tool box.
A woman was on the back step wearing shorts and a Led Zeppelin t-shirt. She was smoking a cigarette. Her hair was brown and dishevelled. Her nipples were pronounced.
"You're here to fix the car right? Jimmy said you'd be coming over. Are you friends with Jimmy? He's my brother but he's such a fucking flake, I haven't heard from him for three days- he said you'd be here on Tuesday. Well, it's right there, take a look."
She slammed the screen door on her way back in.
He stood there for a second.
"Hey lady, I'm..."
His voice trailed off.
"Oh well fuck it."
He walked over to the car and peered under the hood. He knew about cars from when he was in high school. He had fixed flats and done minor repairs at a gas station on North L St.
He got behind the wheel. The key was in it. He tried to start it and it turned over but wouldn't catch.
Okay, he thought, spark plugs. He pulled a couple plugs but they looked fine. The distributor looked okay and he didn't want to open it. He wasn't going to do anything to the points.
He sat down and smoked a cigarette. And then another one.
"What the fuck am I doing here?'
He really didn't want to go door to door asking people stupid questions about their stupid lives. Most people had the brains of a doorstop and they'd as soon piss on you if they thought there was something in it for them.
He got up and looked down at the engine. He took off the air filter and peered down into the carburetor.
"What the fuck?"
The head of small doll was wedged into the intake manifold. One of its eyes was gone.
The other one was blue and stared up at him. He threw the head on the ground.

The car started with a roar.
"Yes!"
The woman came running out.
"YOU FIXED IT!"
She was excited. She flung herself against him. He could feel her breasts pushing against him.
"YOU'RE AMAZING. THANK YOU,THANK YOU,THANK YOU!
He was starting to get a hard on from all the thank you's.
"Okay well, tell Jimmy he owes me one."
"Oh you're not getting away that easy."
She took him by the hand and led him into the house.

She was a screamer.
"YES, YES GOD YES OMIGOD THAT IS OMIGOD HOLY FUCKING OMIGOD."
In the next room the TV was on loud. The Price Is Right was on. Bob Barker was talking to a middle aged woman about whether she wanted to risk it all.
He didn't hear the motorcycle pull up to the house.
He heard a man's voice behind him.
"WHAT THE FUCK?!"
There was a crashing pain on the back of his head and then blackness.

When he woke up it was dark. He hurt in too many places. Then he saw a crack of bright light.
'Where the fuck am I?'
He was laying in a pile of of unidentifiable stuff. He realized he was in a dumpster. He pulled himself up and pushed the dumpster lid open. The searing light hurt his eyes and his head was swimming in pain.
He crawled out of the dumpster and walked home.

snowflake in a well

snowflake
pretty snowflake
trapped in a well
fireman peering down the hole
TV cameramen trying to get close shining their
camera lights in the cold Iowa December night.
"HEY- keep those people out of here!"

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malarkey

sniffle
gristle
blog

blorp
munifications endless

entropy

sad eyed doe
of death

sinking in


measuring
posting

down by law

extremist
candy lipped sugar
eyes

boning a batch
of baked
potatoes

so how are you?
not just hot
sweltering

sinking into it
dripping with
stupidity

seemingly filled with sunshine
yet raining on my shoes

shark bait

sending someone to work
9 am
just lying down
just laying down
just not now

don't even
think about it
don't even wonder
try not to think about it
try to keep a cool head
don't be unreasonable
don't fucking fucking fuck

of the cuff
it's irrelevant
irregardless of
regard
i'm like a feather
i'm not like you
all fat and puffy
damn

i'm a peanut butter sandwich

I'm remorseless
i've seen the seventh coming of the
sun

jimi hendrix
tying his shoe laces

someone is upset outside my
cuticle

just
keep
the
faith
bro

don't get
all balled
up.

be a mountain lion

Monday, December 08, 2008

God existed in the little pouches

She wanted to eat chicken and waffles.
'just like snoop dogg' she said
the car smelled like cinnamon
we drove for an hour and then gave up
snoop dogg couldn't be found.
we stopped halfway and ate at a Taco Bell
'stink outside the butt' she yelled as we drove away
the tacos were good
the hot sauce in the individual plastic pouches
tasted like it had always and always would
taste - we were reassured- God existed in the little pouches- and no longer hungry
let's smoke she said
where's the pipe?
I watched a giant leaf fall to the earth
it was mottled and yellow and red
we bought beer at a gas station
and started listening to the radio very loudly-
'this is the song about the girl who jumped off the building at the University of Florida' she yelled as
Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers bounced around the inside of the car.
'Go Gators!'

Sunday, August 24, 2008

brunch

he doesn't say much anymore
She said she weighed him -
117 lbs.
he had his Santa Cruz hat on
and a sport coat with the collar turned up
and dark glasses
he didn't know what a waffle is
He stared at a young lady in a dress for at least three minutes
he laughed when I asked my mother 'who's this guy?'.

Monday, July 28, 2008

thats not a depressing story

post-un-remarkable
my friend. the liar
is offering money to those
who will take up his time
and confirm his sense of
benevolent achiever, a Caesar of
small business. helping the needy,
giving small dinner mints of advice,
he is helpful but there's an implicit
understanding to those who know him;
don't believe half of what he says and
the other half is probably a lie

Saturday, July 26, 2008

standing on a wide brimmed hat
in the middle of the parking lot
describing where he thought he left his pipe
maybe it was the library or
the sushi place
something had caused this irreparable damage
we used to buy green and orange jelly candies- orange slices
the green ones were mint
they were covered in sugar

He didn't know if they could still get Lucky Lager
they turned left at the totem pole
and headed down college ave

damn it was fucking hot
he said he'd had sex with the waitress at the sushi place
sometimes i get on top and sometimes she gets on top he said
I didn't know whether to believe him or not
It was a possibility but her husband was the sushi chef and
their daughter was helping set the tables

We decided to go the all you can eat Chinese buffet instead
he remembered how to get there
Fen- Tone street he said
take Fen- Tone

He had a photo of himself when he was a technical sargent in the army.

he was standing over his motorcyle - a 1942 Harley

Saturday, July 12, 2008

last day in vegas chapter 11

He left Houston with no particular destination in mind. He thought he would just head north and see what would happen.
His car was a gray Gran Torino which his stepfather had left him after dying of a combination of heart failure, kidney failure and some horrid skin malfunction. There had been a series of alcoholic episodes as well, after his wife had been killed in a crosswalk by a hit and run driver.
The Torino was in relatively good shape.
His stepfather had lost his license years ago and had parked the car under a huge blue tarp in the garage which also contained a vast collection of stuff from years of a pack rats life.
Both the mother and the stepfather were pack rats. He had come home after being away for several years to find them living in tunnels of boxes. The entire house was filled with stacks of old boxes, stuffed and browned with age, teetering above narrow passageways. He now knew why they had dissuaded him when he said he wanted to come visit.
There were boxes filled with bags, which contained more bags. There were boxes with newspapers, boxes with flattened boxes, boxes with old magazines, boxes of broken china, boxes of odd pieces of wood, boxes with bags of seeds from the trees and plants that were still growing outside the house. There were also odd things tucked away in a box whose contents seemed uniform. In one box of Life magazines he found several pictures of his father. In another, a box of old shoes, he found a box of jewelry including the diamond bracelet his father had given his mother after being awarded the patent for a medical device. There were also mice living in the boxes.
After he left he called the Health Dept and the Fire Dept. and ratted them out. He knew they would live like that forever and they wouldn't listen to him. They didn't even think it was a problem. When he had tried to throw out plastic food containers his mother would pull them out later, wash them and put them in a box with other to go containers. He knew they wouldn't stop on their own.

Saturday, June 28, 2008

I'm eating green things today-an avocado and
green split pea soup with bacon
Andersen's
I don't know what color the
liquid is in the can of
Rockstar energy drink,
could be green, I
don't know.
It was left in the frig by a school teacher
from China
I need the caffeine.

Monday, June 02, 2008

high coup

Breath-o-lyzer
Googley fresh
in absentia
tried and tested
like a tsetse fly

Friday, May 30, 2008

Last Day in Vegas chapter 11

It looked like a clean break. The blood was pooling around his arm.
"I must be in shock" he thought.
"If you are in shock can you be aware of it?" He wasn't sure and he wasn't sure if it mattered.
The front end of the car was steaming or smoking and it sounded like something in the motor was clicking. Other than that it was dead silence.
"FUCK!" He screamed.
The car's front end was in pieces and the tree he hit didn't look much better. There were bits of blue plastic laying all around the car.
He took a pull off the bottle of Bacardi 151 and then let it fall to the floor of the car still open. He could hear the contents draining out.
Glug-glug-glug
He reached behind him and grabbed his sweater from the back seat and wrapped it tight around the broken arm. It didn't hurt. He felt like he was accomplishing something, like he was in control of the situation, like he was responsible.
The driver's side door was stuck so he kicked it open with both feet while laying on the front seat. He stood in the warm sun and pulled a crumpled pack of camels from his jeans pocket. He lit the cigarette with a match while holding the book with the hand on his broken arm. Then he lit the book of matches, reached into the car and dropped the flame onto the spilt Bacardi.
He sat on the ground and watched as a police cruiser rolled slowly toward him.

Japanese woman caught living in man's closet

This sounds like a plot from a japanese novel- murakami?

(05-30) 12:21 PDT TOKYO, Japan (AP) --

A homeless woman who sneaked into a man's house and lived undetected in his closet for a year was arrested in Japan after he became suspicious when food mysteriously began disappearing.

Police found the 58-year-old woman Thursday hiding in the top compartment of the man's closet and arrested her for trespassing, police spokesman Hiroki Itakura from southern Kasuya town said Friday.

The resident of the home installed security cameras that transmitted images to his mobile phone after becoming puzzled by food disappearing from his kitchen over the past several months.

One of the cameras captured someone moving inside his home Thursday after he had left, and he called police believing it was a burglar. However, when they arrived they found the door locked and all windows closed.

"We searched the house ... checking everywhere someone could possibly hide," Itakura said. "When we slid open the shelf closet, there she was, nervously curled up on her side."

The woman told police she had no place to live and first sneaked into the man's house about a year ago when he left it unlocked.

She had moved a mattress into the small closet space and even took showers, Itakura said, calling the woman "neat and clean."

Monday, March 03, 2008

It's not torture it's...motivation

from Democracy Now- Utah Boss Accused of Waterboarding Worker

The Salt Lake Tribune is reporting a supervisor at a motivational coaching business in Utah has been accused of waterboarding an employee in front of his sales team. According to a lawsuit, the supervisor poured water from a gallon jug over the mouth and nostrils of one of his workers. At the conclusion of the waterboarding, the supervisor allegedly told the sales team that he wanted them to work as hard on making sales as their coworker had worked to breathe while he was being waterboarded. David Ellis, the president of the company Prosper, defended his staff. Ellis said, “It was meant to be a team-building exercise. Everybody was . . . involved and enthusiastic.”

Thursday, February 21, 2008

FIfty


From Democracy Now - 'And finally the peace sign turns 50 years old today. Over the past five decades the peace sign has become one of the world’s enduring icons. The original peace sign was developed in1958 by a British textile designer and conscientious objector named Gerald Holtom. He created the symbol by combining the semaphore letters N and D, for nuclear disarmament. On Feb. 21, 1958 the symbol was accepted by the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear war. The symbol soon began to be used in anti-nuclear protests across Britain and then spread across the globe.'

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

1978

stoned
differential buried in oregon sand
music playing from a cassette stereo which is bolted to
the
floor of a '63 Ford
Fairlane, Marantz
with Blaupunkt speakers which
are
hidden under batik back backseat cover
listening to
blood on the tracks and being stoned
in the dripping rain
and the ranger - one of the Fat Cats- leaves a little fold-able shovel and says he'll be back in a few hours- fuck him
don't come back
see if your shovel will still be here
it will

Sunday, February 17, 2008

sunday


silent now
my ears
are bleeding
actually only one - the right
watched Blazing Saddles
today
and slept

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

alphabet city

Separated by time in the form of
an old typewriter key, an H actually,
-just the part you put your finger on-
not the metal part, the little metal letter attached by
by a spindle, like a finger again, reaching out putting
the smack down on your finger again like
no one else, sin tropo, unverified yet regulated.

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

the joy of sex

Like a plastic scissor handle
i- swerve to avoid sleeping sheep
And broken sepulchres- gargoyles frozen cement smile
with tongue
a-hanging in the ninth ward
I’m sweating with the thought
of going underground again
My teeth are numb, I’m still faking it
for your sake but you don’t even care or
acknowledge ANYTHING which means-
What you don’t understand
I’m not trying to relate? Well, drifting around again
isn’t the only way to skin a cat or drink an inkwell with
you just walking and walking and walking. Please
don’t use my stamps anymore I’m so sick of finding packages
for people who don’t live here anymore or are even alive

Chopper Chicks w/Zombietown & Soultaker


What happened to all the funky movie theaters on Market street? Gone. Even the Fascination bowling parlor is history. What about the toy railroad store on upper Market street that was next to the Scandinavian hofbrau? The hofbrau only employed young Swedish, Danish and Norwegian girls and paid them under the table. When you walked in you got hit with the smell of pot roast, overcooked carrots and gravy.
Or Carl's Diabetic Cookie store on 18th street- now it's some schmancy place called Farina. I thought farina was some kind of oatmeal or breakfast mush. Gruel. Swill. Of course I never bought cookies there.