Wednesday, January 29, 2014

taxes were being levied
against anyone on welfare
who had more bedrooms
than officially reported dependents

"these idle freeloaders are living the life and sucking up hard earned tax money"
grumbled a junior congressman to his aide

"well they'll all be conscripted soon enough." Replied the aide. "Anyone with a net worth under $50k shall be conscripted... HB11123."

"go get me my hemmorhoid medicine"

The congessman was cleaning his new government issue Glock G 197 when it went off barely missing the returning aide.

"holy shit I thought it wasn't loaded!"

"Are you okay?"

the aide had passed out still holding the hemmorhoid medicine

On the television government funding of corporate buy out strategies were being rated by
insurance analysts. It looked like a good time to invest in the depreciation of drop dead bonds funded by the tech sector. Or for something safer foreign aide to warlords seemed a promising shorts option.


Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Merciful TECATE
joyful

archangel of piss
beer
of the downtrodden

we shall give our blood
for your corporate gain
Trans-National passion
of the
wheat or rice or who knows what
chalice of
giving
of drinking

ye martyrs of belief
die before us
and after

turn the soil
turn the tide

to our TRUTH
and mark this day
above all others
when The Makers
(those who provideth jobs)

recognize Lord as

TECATE

His gift
for blood
for the love
of days

(hand written prayer found on soldier 9177636-jos/ndez at the battle of Santa Clarita)




at the front 
there was
a battle raging

an abandoned strip mall
was in no man's land
and was taking a pounding

Dr. Buckley Fuller had all the work he could handle
he was working 
eighteen hour days patching bodies back together
finally he snapped
and they found him writing a
600 page letter
analyzing the various themes and iconic
symbology
found in the 1939 John Ford movie "Stagecoach"

The section on the banker who was on the run with the payroll
and his diatribe against governmental
intrusion and regulation was paralleled in at least two hundred
pages with references to modern
events as well as historical banking fiascos such as the S&L scandal, the mortgage and bond bubble
and the corporate eminent domain investiture.

The movie's recurring themes of class and stratification were woven into a
hundred and seven page poem called "Aces & Eights; Luke Plummer's Last Hand"
The vision of an early American sense of justice and equality was a theme throughout the letter culminating in the release by the sheriff and stagecoach driver of the Ringo Kid and his bride to be, Dallas, on a buggy to his ranch "down in Mexico".

The last hundred pages of the letter however were just the words "All work and dead bodies make Buck Fuller a round headed mis-hap" over and over.






The sign was full of bullet
holes
a wretched dog was sitting in the middle of the road
scratching a pesky flea
behind his ear

A large billboard was stuck
the video endlessly repeating in
twelve foot letters

TECATE
TECATE
TECATE
TECATE
TECATE
TECATE
TECATE
TECATE
TECATE
TECATE
TECATE
TECATE
TECATE
TECATE

 he stopped at a local mini-casino
and started playing blackjack
he played for seven hours
and won 163 dollars
they stopped giving him
bad gin and tonics
after the third hour

when he pulled himself away from the table 
he was reasonably sober
and very hungry
he tipped the dealer ten bucks
and asked where he could get a good steak
"not around here"
was all she said

he got in his car and decided to go into Reno proper
"time to get out of this shit hole and go to another shit hole"
he hummed a little tune
Supertramp's
Take the Long Way Home
it had been playing in the mini-casino
when he left



the General knew
things were bad
but he wasn't really sure how bad
Clarise had a bug that was
going around
and was on leave
a replacement had been procured
named Corporal Roy
Roi in French means king
it was the kind of stupid thing that
amused the general
until he realized the "king"wouldn't
be happy until he ruined everything
to quote Bruce Springsteen

On his first day Corporal Roy
drove the car into a ditch where they were
resolutely stuck

Two days later the General abandoned ship

"Take some time off son, I'll see you when I get back"
he gave orders to have Corporal Roy
sent to Copperopolis to work the recently discovered uranium vein
The General boarded the next dispatch to San Juan taking Clarise
with him
she was almost better and he reasoned the
hot weather would do her good.
"This rain will rot your soul my dear"
"and the light is beautiful there, you can work on your
ambrotypes"




Sunday, January 26, 2014

He had three
days to get to the rendezvous
and it was 373 miles away
'why the fuck are they sending me up there?'

he went back online and snoped the
coordinates
Hetch Hetchy dam
main water and electricity source
for the city
there was a huge amount of grunts up there
probably at least a battalion

he was in no mood to get battalioned-
bad food, horrible sanitation, and the stupidity
of the grunts 

He sent a cypherloq redirect request
using the code given to him by the general
that should be worth something he thought

two hours later
the buzzing
this time the cannister
hit him in the head
FUCK!

the contents this time
was just the standard paper
no getting high now
coordinates were for Reno

Nice I can do a little gambling
he packed his bags
and started the car





he woke up to to
a buzzing noise
through his bleary vision
he made out the drone
it was a CenturionAir RS series
he could tell it was
watching him
he opened his skeye
and the drone made contact
almost instantly jettisoning
the cannister
at his side
when he picked up the
cannister
the drone was long gone
he opened the cannister
and dropped out the contents
a handwritten note and
a flattened beer cap;
Lowenbrau
someone had written
smoke me
above the printed coordinates
he put the numbers into the
gps and the paper
into his pipe
and lit it.
yes it was old grandpa hempboldt paper
he felt his toes tickling
he patched together
a network and connected via
a star-connect
it was definitely
traceable but that
didn't matter
the userface
was
recently lifted and he had traded
5 boxes of .32 shells
for it.

Ghost sites lingered on the network
he could order a complete barbecue
backyard kitchen
if BBQ.com
was actually connected to anything
he found the site
that he was looking for and
entered
the passcode via
cypherloq

he put in his coordinates
and then sat down and waited.
The travelers
were id'd by their patched together
clothes
mobs
of them were hiding in the
abandoned suburbs
around Foster City
they built vehicles like their
clothes patched and dirty
and smelling like
ass weed
fuel was a problem
they had tried to build a hemp fuel processing center
but something went
wrong and the whole thing blew up
killing 4 guys and a dog
named Woozy
that had been a dividing point in the
clan
The Kellyburners
left after killing three
MOOGLES
One snooter said he thought they were in the
remains of the San Mateo fairgrounds
it would remain to be seen
which faction either would join




The tv was kocked over
and all it showed was white static
the volume was on loud
and someone had been eating DQ

down the hall a large dog was chained
to the bannister
and was barking incesssantly

the ice machine was not working
It was 103 in the shade

Traffic on the highway
was still normal
but not normal for
2 in the morning

there were no clouds
and no moon
the neon sign was blinking
and an oil car on the railroad was burning
all night long

Some said the Tecate wars
were a misnomer
that they should have been
called crystalmeth invasion
or The BathSalts revolt
or just Where did I park my car?



Wednesday, January 22, 2014

he was riding his bike
when somebody threw an apple core at him
from a passing car
he heard them laughing
it him in the back of the head

another time he was waving to
his friends across a busy street when
he ran into the back of a parked car
he racked himself pretty good
and his friends were laughing

this happened in front of the cemetery
the administrative building for the cemetery was right there where
he ran into the car
somebody heard him crash and yelled out
WHATS GOING ON OUT THERE?!
"I ran into your car."
WHAT?!
"On my bike."
OH OKAY

One time he road his bike way out
on the road to the mines
this was in the country
the road intersected a wooded area
that a creek ran through
he stopped to eat his lunch at the creek
he met some Mexican kids who were living in a trailer
by the creek
they hung out and played for a while
they didn't speak any English

He had a red one speed Schwinn
it was called "The Speedster"
he took the fenders off because he thought
they were dorky

One night he left the bike on
the front yard and
the next morning it was gone
this was when his mom had the grey Datsun hatchback
she was a music teacher and there were always
papers she used in class in boxes in the back seat
she used the Kodaly method to teach
Kodaly was a Hungarian composer who
created a method of teaching that involved saying
ta ta tee tee ta

He had some money saved from birthdays
so they went down to the bicycle shop and he
bought a brand new Schwinn ten speed
He picked out a brown one
it was called the "Varsity"
he would go out to the garage just to look at it
it was brand new

He never got the Stingray he wanted
but he did buy a knockoff for fifteen dollars, I think it was the
Sears brand, Huffy.
it had a regular bike seat instead of a banana seat
he and his friends would do motocross in the pit behind
the middle school
one time they built a ramp to
do jumps over
he let his friend do a jump on the Huffy
but when his friend hit the ramp the bike frame broke
and his friend and the bike crashed onto the dirt road

This was way before the Tecate wars began

Friday, January 17, 2014

something banged in the
night which was strange for there was
no wind
just the damn moonlight
maybe a raccoon
in the garbage cans
but not with that dog down there

He wanted a cigarette so he lighted one
it didn't matter that he was laying in bed
Reuben Kincaid and the Professor had
died on the same fateful day
truly an era was stomped to death

The cigarette reminded him
of a microwave burrito
maybe he was hungry
it was worth noting on his blog
so he did

the craptacular no longer interested him
sleep that was another story
he had bargained with sleep
and the deal had not been without it's
rewards

Now he just he noticed sounds in the
night
the floating bed boat spaceship
was docked
if there were stars
still somewhere
they might be shining
he closed his eyes and
stamped out the butt
The Tecate wars raged on
whether
we noticed or not
it wasn't even a story in the media hardly anymore
but then there would be an
article
and we would remember
oh yeah
that shit is still going on

Down on the Biloxi coast
the water was still bath temperature

in New England covered bridges were
bathed in leaves red orange and yellow
burnished with the decay of Fall

near a hand built stone wall in Vermont
a poet not related to Robert Frost
would be drinking his first Tecate
and wondering
about the significance

in the hills of Appalachia
a malnourished young girl would
order from the brightly lit menu at
KFC
but not Tecate

yes the wars continued mostly out of sight
and out of mind
somewhere back behind the front
behind the eastern seaboard
echoing in a digital guitar echo pedal
the plans were still being carried out
booby traps were still being set
MRE 's were tossed into lakes unopened
Hershey bars were traded for nugs of the
finest kine bud
it was every day type of school bus
harrassment that
caused several Nicaraguans
to wonder wtf these assholes are talking about

The General would not take notice or
be swayed from the trajectory of Victory

He unbuttoned the top button of his uniform and
studied the maps spread out before him

Thursday, January 16, 2014

I was trying to write a novel
at the time
that the Tecate wars were going on
about a guy who worked in a photo lab
he was a custom photo printer
and the lab specialized in wedding photos
one of the specials the lab would offer was to vignette the couple
in the middle of a songsheet
the couple or photographer could choose from a number of
song titles
The Carpenters' We've Only Just Begun was very popular.
Another special was like this: the photographer would photograph the groom unzipping the brides dress. Then using fancy darkroom techniques the custom printer would make the image keyhole shaped with red all around it. Seeing red!
This was about the time that music videos were first being produced. The Eighties. The guy in the novel had an idea to make a music video using the J. Geils song Freezeframe!
It would be a video of a photo worker working in a photo lab. The photo worker would be working late into the night printing 4x6 photos at an automated printer and he would fall asleep while he was working and then a bunch of crazy people would come into the photolab, like midgets and dwarves and hot girls in bikinis and guys on motorcycles and they would all party and dance and have a good time. And the photo worker would meet a beautiful girl and fall in love. But then he would wake up to his fat boss yelling at him.

And now Freeze!
from our campground
in Nebraska we knew nothing about the
pending wars
an older guy talked to us of knowing "Jack Guthrie"
I thought it was Woody Guthrie's brother or cousin or something
my guitar only had five strings on it
I was one string short of a full set


TECATE WARS Part VII

On the Northwestern front
it was rain
rain rain and more rain
no one even wanted to drink Tecate
plus it was warm
they had no ice
and the reefer trucks were out of diesel

footrot was one of many complaints
from the grunts in the trenches
the latrines were continually over flowing and the stench
was inexorable
several corporals had been caught deserting and were
now working the "night shift at the tastee freeze"

a commemorative Lewis and Clark insignia patch
had been issued but the excitement was short lived

Those that had been drafted had it the worst

Around Christmas the rain had ceased but then with January
it returned with renewed vigor.
the men complained unceasingly and talk of rebellion was in the air

The General made a a command decision and was sending whole platoons
to Baja for R&R for an entire month.
This had an incredible effect on morale and the fighting was once again showing
noticeable progress
the Home Office sent a communique commending the General's action and his personal
stipend was once again increased.
"Sometimes I think the Tecate wars were the best thing to ever happen to me"
The General mused.




Mid-battle of course, things
were different
the General was fighting both the enemy
at hand,
the political maelstrom behind him,
the inexorable humidity
and a bad case of shingles

he rolled down the window of the car
and surveyed the landscape
there was peanut butter in
one of the eyepieces of his binoculars
"Dammit, Dwight Eisenhower gave me those."
he tossed them in the back seat

his aide de camp Clarise
positioned the car on a North South trajectory
she had been a driver for Edward Weston years before
as well as his lover
she understood light
but this was war
and she was prepared to die
in service of the good

The General however had one eye
on his retirement fund
and was not wholly above scheming a
financial incentive for his contribution

thousand of cases of Tecate
had been secured in a warehouse in Roswell New Mexico
under the guise of an alien spaceship or some such dither
the general had also managed to send a DC-4 to Burma
and the generals there had assured him of remuneration
the pilots and navigator were said to be
working the Golden Triangle connection
and were being rewarded in both bhats and heroin
The General had spoken to the navigator the week before
and he had been told they were all hopelessly addicted
Tecate would no longer suffice

"Fuck em' they made their bed
I told them not to go that route."
the General blurted out.
"Sir?"
Clarise thought she had taken the wrong road.
"Let's go back to the hotel Clarise. I need an antihistamine."
To the east the Tecate wars raged on.








There was a girl we met
at the pueblo
she said her name was Tech Kate

there was no way we could have put two and two together
it wasn't even two and two
it was more like twelve billion and six (seriously)

if I knew what gingham was
I'd say her brain was made of it
but she was selling peyote buttons

and the General was curious

maybe it did lead to one of the first battles
or maybe that was a pre-legend
an exercise unbeknownst
to the players
(exercisors) (excorcists?)
somehow it mattered
The General however just puked his guts out and
hallucinated the fire engine peyote god
screaming on the hot Santa Fe night
He ended the night drinking cold cans of
generic beer
like in REPO MAN
BEER
 they certainly helped
and he fell asleep
most dreamily

Part Nothing

There was an episode of Gilligan's Island that
was never aired
Gilligan "invented" a biofuel using composted coconut shells and shrimp husks
as well as a variety of other leaves and grasses
the fuel worked amazingly well in the Minnow's diesel engine
and they made it back to civilization handily
The professor and the millionaire however conspired against Gilligan
they stole the biofuel formula and made millions
Gilligan became a real estate agent in Boca Raton
and once sold a house to
Carol Burnett's niece. True story.

This was definitely a contributing factor
to the beginning of the Tecate Wars
but no one
had the slightest clue
at the time





The Tecate Wars had ended
years ago
but Bosephus,
General Bosephus,
felt the thirst
the thirst for cold cheap piss beer
in aluminum cans


Baja

He remembered a ghost of a plane
beached in Mexicali
and a man with multiple wristwatches

the long concrete roadway
over the swamps of Texas
days driving in
crap ass heat

and the battle of the Kampground parking lot
with a dab of spilled oil
on the white sand drive way
NO REPAIRS
suck it you redneck fat douchebag
back on the road
going 80 if lucky more like 68
if you didn't pass us your car sucked

We avoided Tecate on those miles
like fools
we had no idea of the war to
come
it wasn't even on our radar
finally we did break down
in Albuquerque
I guess everyone does
he said
because of the altitude
changes the ratio of air to fuel
in your carburetor
I thought it was because of the
Indian reservation
we had stayed on the night before
It seemed like we were tripping

The Tecate War revisited Part II
in cerebral texas
funerary ambiguity
we were the desolate cactii
the broken backyard trampoline
the mesmerized deer

there was no Tecate in those days
it was a secret
"did you know?"
WHAT?!
 Shhhhhhhh
don't
 




as if
as if
the mercantile
anxiety workday
stress
bearing down on my
high blood pressure
paying no attention
to it

i'm going away for the weekend
but already feel guilty about leaving
early
and it's not even
tomorrow yet
broken by the page
the window glass is broken and sharp
in the book
in the words
in the letters
smeared from
the sidewalks eyes
you are the words
that ride the bus
you became the screen
that spread
the dream
and on
and on
and on
until you fell face first
in your work clothes
racing to get to the train
but I stopped and got a latte
and then went to work


Wednesday, January 15, 2014

streaming through the broken
the face of the cosmetic
the arm of the branch that electronics
bring
the right arm
of commerce
not Commerce, Texas
or Tennessee
but the right faced
arm
of the what
I don't know
the pressure
that builds and streams
down our austerity
warnings of
banks
stealing from the people

governments

protecting the malfeasants
 so it gets where you can't trust anything except
to not tell anyone anything that isn't somehow wrong or a lie

folks have gotten so used to it that they try it themselves
as rationale for their own fear
hatred and anxiety about
the future of wrecked changes

The Sky is Green because God said so
the poor are poor because they don't want to work
protect the rich
they're the last stinking rotten hope or at least their money is
money that
we shall have when we work hard enough to get gods attention and
Love
and well we want it all to go down the shithole anyway
cuz then Jesus will rise up again
and we'll all be in god tit sucking bliss
I know this

this I know
and ye shall harken unto thee
for our guns are mighty
and our children will wield them




Sunday, January 05, 2014

CAN I GET A "RAMEN" FROM THE CONGREGATION? Behold the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

Thursday, January 02, 2014

New Years Eve

they panned the new years eve bar
360 degrees ending on an open bottle of budweiser by the juke box
we commented on the lighting
gave kudos to the casting director
everyone seemed preternaturally perfect
for their part
then we drifted off
at one point the woodland spirit
left a bunch of branches and tree stump
laying against a modern building
at first I thought it was a person

Fukushima

a trip to a sunny beach
would be different
instead of the cold fog swept
beach
they say the radiation
has made its way
but others say it's diluted
I read about it on
my computer screen
in between watching Zatoichi
cut down the bad henchmen
with his cane-sword
Low caste blind person
wanders through
25 movies
in each of them many of the Bosses men
are cut down
for their bosses greediness
there will be a young woman
who needs this low caste blind person's help
"Ichi!"
When gambling on dice
he can hear how the dice land
so he never loses
the cretin
moves through the
supermarket
with a half full basket
couscous and beer
a bundle of dark green kale
and two yogurts


as the blind japanese
movie star
basks in the sun
flash bulbs brighten
the morning
a crow flies
in a straight line
every time?

O fiery event
dew of morning mattress
sweat from night dream
clouded with sand thoughts
hungry and awake
internet ponderance mistakes
closing on a question
what were the thoughts
that required such wariness?
nothing just nothing