as the sorrow
of resumes
filled
like a hot air balloon
in an Italian neighborhood
he thought of a man he knew
searching for his glasses amongst the papers and
manila folders, handwritten letters and envelopes
and the glasses, smudged and bifocaled
were resting on his forehead
he took a deep breath
knowing that balloons sometimes don't come down
despite the song

I watched a giant leaf fall to the earth it was mottled and yellow and red

and I walked these borrowed
roads diverged with the
baby smell of a yeast-ie
brew pub in my nostrils
counting the old fence posts like Robert Frost
poems

He drank too much
beer
whiskey
vodka
whatever

Hoboken?

it had the feeling of a bad omen(or bad poetry??)
"He moved to Hoboken"
a true life story

he lied

read about it in
in Newsweek another long line
of literary grifters

his hours
was that it?
but it wasn't
what he thought
he didn't know what
he was thinking when he
dropped his oj
and fell down on the sidewalk
he remembered thinking something
is wrong(italics)
I'm not that building
the one
with the sunshine on it
isn't right to my eyes,
my eye
that man
with the brief case
I'm not a shadow of a building
she won't understand
why I have a bullet hole in me

creamora/
Beelzebub
wandering
into
shots/
of jaeger
stoically
smoking
sinsemilla
and boring
us/
with stupid
medical marijuana
polemics/

Iggy Pop working at Gas/Mart

driving around the lake
watching the sky
for aliens or Gargamel
firing at police cars
with their sirens blaring
turning into gin and juice
with my mind on my money
we stop to get coffee
and cigarettes
Iggy pop is working behind the counter
his name badge says Iggy Pop
it really is Iggy Pop
we're embarrased by the whole thing and ask him
if he's ever met Todd Rundgren
He says he did in the mid-eighties in
San Francisco
but now
there's a line behind us so we say good by
"loved the stooges, man"
even though I never really listened to them
and we're back on the road
for some reason we start fighting
"that wasn't really Iggy Pop"
"yes it was!"
we stop talking. We're listening to the radio and suddenly
Lust for life comes on-
bomp bomp bomp bu bomp bomp bu da ba domp

'Here comes johnny yen again
With the liquor and drugs
And the flesh machine
Hes gonna do another strip tease.
Hey man, whered ya get that lotion?
Ive been hurting since Ive bought the gimmick
About something called love
Yeah, something called love.
Well, thats like hypnotizing chickens.'

I say "yes I have had it in the ear before"
I am just a modern guy

the road splits and we go to the
right
grandma's house
she's baking cookies and she has a friend
visiting, Mr Wolff.
He has weird gray hair and very large teeth. My friend notices them as she's taking off her beautiful red cape
What big teeth you have she says smiling
we decide to leave early
Mr Wolff insists we stay and stands in front of the door his eyes gleaming
rubbing his large hands together
I notice his hands have gray hair on them as well
a lot of it
I hit him in the head with one of grandma's lamps
he crumples like a Reeses peanut butter cup wrapper
we leave in a squeal of tires
"what about your grandma? " my friend asks
I start to reply when we hear the report of an automatic rifle.
"grandma used to work running arms to the Zapatistas."

Will the dead walk the earth again?

Bob Wilkins was a huge influence on my psyche as a youth. I watched him regularly on Creature Features and he would be in the studio and would talk about the films at the commercial breaks. He later said it was just him and the camera man in the studio and his goal was to make the camera man crack up. He had a very dry sense of humor -wicked dry. Bob- I hope to see you walking the Earth as the living dead. Moo wah hah ha.

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!"

y with mobile phones used as electronic detonators.

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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

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!'

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?'.

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

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

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.

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.

Onibaba

Onibaba
Kaneto Shindo
1963

high coup

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

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.