the fool’s back pocket…

Why are the top search terms for this wonderful little shit-press “Porsche” and “carerra”? What sense does that make? I don’t care about cars. Stop that, whoever the fuck you are that is doing that. (Though I’m not sure even how or why, so actually, let me know. That’s pretty fucking funny.

Various portents of salubrious consternation. There isn’t much too it, not like fancy words and facile logic was really ever that useful for anything that important. The Fool was traveling in the limited manner he often enjoys, and it brought to mind trips to far off beaches, like Ocean City of VaBeach, where there is a skein of mud covering everything the eye can see. Still, good memories all around, at least to whatever extent the memory remains. Short term is not my strong suit. There used to be a real good reason to go to one of those beaches, but like all real good reasons, this one ain’t good anymore. It happens, and it’s not much of a surprise as to why. The only real question is why it took as long as it did. Fuck it, this is no night to be looking back. That seems so boring and cliche.

Tonight’s trip was one of those enjoyable traditions that intense and repetitive pain can’t stop. The mind gets limber after recreational exercise provided by the good people of Consolidated Industries, Inc. If they only knew how much it helps. Still, that’s why they’re in business, to help seekers like myself. That deserves a coke and a smile. Only you older fuckers will pick up on that. Pity you can’t join me. This droll pretense of reserved laughter and the quiet pin prick of my assertions of petty dominance are quite the show. So much the better with an appreciative audience. Then again, there’s always a table for one. Cheaper that way too.

Little bit of everything on the drive. The near miss of a few hundred pounds of steel hurtling across three lanes of traffic is always enjoyable. Like I am forced to keep repeating; almost getting into an accident is the same as not getting into an accident. Fear not the unknown…it can’t possibly be any worse than the known.

This was meant to be short, so let’s agree to keep it that way. Rest assured I am as filled with the same vitriolic and often petty hatreds as usual, but am too far gone to make any sport of it tonight. Some nights are good enough without adding anything else, and lucky for this son of a bitch, tonight is one of them. No running into walls or playing with scissors for this kid, there’s more enjoyable pastimes to fill the void. Like Eleanor of Aquitane;

“Come, stickpins. We can do it all again tomorrow.”

Actually that wasn’t it at all, but seems like it will work well enough for tonight. Me? I’m gonna go jerk off to the box score and think about next weekend, when we clash with evil for the second to last time this season. Until then it’s going to be a long, long week ahead. Could be worse, tomorrow could be lorded over by some dickhead sky pilot. Better not.

The animals. I’ve never in my life seen them smile while changing colors. Big bubble jets flew bubble missions in crafts made of bubbles that accelerated through the use of sophisticated bubble technolpgy only rumoreed ot exist. The screaming fast bubble planes fired ream after ream after ream of smaller bubbles that could strike of varying colored bubbles on ever conceivable shape and size in the battle for the mountain of ice cream. There bubbles in places that the scientists swore to us no bubble could go. So far, appeals to the bubble gods have proven fruitless. “I can’t see us waiting around here to do nothing with all this ice cream still possible ot eat.” roared one balloon, instantly surrounded by the more militant balloons.

Now Now, you balloons should have stayed calm, and we we would have gotten out in one peiece. Instead, MechaBalloon will round you up and hand you up from the balloon walls to be shot. Just possessing the parts of a balloon will get you thrown off the vehicle minus any Balloon Company Flair gear and without any and all of your balloons. You’er jus wind now, bitches, The true balloons were pushed every which way but balloon as blasts of air moved in ways that would have made Eve blush. Some true balloons perished when they hit sharp rocks and stick not mad e of balloon. The rest spent the rest of the morning that half of the balloon battery had been KIA due to loss of unit cohesion. That night, the balloon King in Queen would play rock balloon sciccors gambling on the future of the balloon battle crews. Pop them won the best two out of three, and commenced The species died out to a few remaining baloon line. Some say they’re long dead but for the ones who stabbed in less the incapacitating places. To this day, nobody knows for sure, but that I why I theorize the human race hasn’t been ripped to shreds by ballooncrews holding balloon bombs ready for a first assault. Can’t’ happen now. Every last balloon was dead or turned into eunachs. No worry there.

I once knew a man named Farfoon the Wise. Everybody loved Farfoon. He drove an Chevy Caprice. It was black and blue, looked like a side of beef after training with Rocky Balboa. Farfoon would pick me up in the Caprice with a bottle of hobo wine between his legs. It was never more than half full by the time I climbed in, and I never hesitated to climb in.

Farfoon had come to this town from somewhere else. I always assumed it had to be somewhere far away, but maybe he just moved down from a town a couple of miles away. It wouldn’t make a bit of difference, but there is something fine and liberating about hanging out with an escaped convict from a country a thousand miles away. I’d just rather it be that way.

Farfoon was wise, but never smart. He could tell you what Democritus might have said about seeking gold or social status, but he couldn’t tell you where to go to get away from a cop sniffing around your car. One time we were making a run just over the county line to pick up some finery and what-not and the dumb fuck got pulled over with and ounce and a half sitting on the seat next to me. Luckily for us, as soon as the cop walked up Farfoon started to puke out the window of the Caprice. The liquor on his breath induced the cop to get his breathe-right adaptable esophageal tubes out of the car, giving me just enough time to hide the stash. It’s true. Always better lucky than good.

Sometimes me and Farfoon would sit around my kitchen flicking beer caps at the windows. The window would chip and crack, but never break. We’d sit around and shoot the shit about books or philosophy or just get shit faced and not say a goddamned thing. It was sometimes quiet but never silent, and we liked it that way. Occasionally, another straggler would darken the door to my house and sit down. We’d wait for him to speak, then pass the wine across the table. The bottle would be passed until it was time to open a new one. The bills were pretty high, but Farfoon knew a guy at a local convenience store who let him have a few cases at cut rate prices each week. I never once paid.

Some mornings I would wake up and think to myself “You got it coming in spades.” I knew exactly what it meant, but I kept it to myself. There was no time for a warning, only condolences when Farfoon crashed his car into a highway overpass late one night. I heard it took the fire department a couple of hours to get the body out of hte twisted steel. That was Farfoon, fuck you until the end of time. I’m a lot better at smiling while I cry than I used to be, but someone has to put on a brave face when it comes time to sit around my table with a bottle of cheap wine and the laughter of Farfoon.

Now I don’t flick bottle caps at the kitchen window. Instead I toss small gray stones that I picked up in the yard. The window is about to go, all cracked to fuck and back. I don’t want to be the one to break the window, but I know it has to be me. I’m the only one left over from all those nights out hell-raising. Everyone else is married, or moved on, or dead. The only one who still demands a toast is Farfoon the Wise. He just wasn’t so smart.

I feel so uneducated. Not exactly stupid, just lost. After spending six days actually building a better mouse-trap, there’s nothing left to say. The pieces that were hacked off in the process will grow back, and while the process isn’t exactly “painful,” I wouldn’t recommend it as a regular activity. Tons of editing still to do, a few other tweaks and what not, but if I die tomorrow, I’ll have a book length manuscript to my credit. Working on an idea for a poetry book, but still don’t know how many poems go in 1 book. Hard to build an arc around that, but I’m willing to try anything at this point.

Thanks for all the kind words and what not, it is most appreciated. Will be posting more soon, perhaps tonight if the insomnia returns.

cleaning up salt

she’s probably almost finished
cleaning up the salt
from when the little plastic oval
fell out and let the salt
spill across the table like summer snow

she’s probably cursing and looking at the
trail of spilt beer
when the shaken bottle opened
and the fizz and beer drizzled
all over the floor
that still needs cleaning

she’s probably thinking
“now where did we go wrong”
and making plaintative stares
out the window
waiting for an answer
but the beer doesn’t clean itself

she’s probably worried
because she didn’t ask why
i’d rather starve,
than beg or borrow
and she never asked
if i still wrote
——————————-

memories of a departed muse

i miss the muse that used
to turn on christmas lights
in her window
to let me know we were safe

and when we’d run from
some dull neighborhoods
in a quiet part of town
we’d laugh and play
that game about pretending to
be something you’re not

i miss the muse because she never knew
that though i wanted
to slip inside her,
this was better. this was real
somehow, even if she fled
a long time ago,
i still get word
every now and again.
—————————————

Yeah, I heard the stories about people way out West, always quitting something and starting something else like an apoplectic eel. That’s no way to go through life. The only real alternative is to be willing to place all that you own in some metaphorical box and leave it for the homeless out on the street at night. It’s only when you come to from that plaintive coma that you are ready to admit all your faults, all your miserable decisions, all of the shit you swore you’d never ever fuck up, then went ahead and did anyway. There is something lovable about that misguided attempt at vain expression. Where is the imagination?

Is that nobody really wants to forgive and forget? I’m included in that… carrying around a few millstones the last couple of years when it would have been easier to let it go wherever all those people that you used to know go when you don’t know them anymore. I don’t feel like it’s a place to visit or anything, more like a place to leave garbage before it starts to smell. That would explain an awful lot. No questions, no questions, I’m on a roll. (But we wanna knooooow…)

But it’s all coming out as anger. Angry with the damn phone for not ringing, then angry at the fucking thing because it won’t stop making noise. These interruptions are driving me up the wall; I’m stalking around the room working up the rage to get over the lonely blasphemy. This puerile reaction makes me sick, wanting to stab the guy in the mirror just to see him bleed and his lungs make that sucking sound when there’s a shiv letting out the air. I heard that if it’s cold enough, steam will come out. I’ve never seen it myself, maybe it’s bullshit. This kind of sick hatred doesn’t answer to any kind of control, only to those moments when clarity breaks through the slick veneer and I notice that I was about to smash the mirror with a hand wrapped in a t-shirt. But why?

Like an elemental mistrust that grows out of long silent talks and mournful glances at the clock on the wall, something doesn’t add up. In my frenzy to attack something, anything, to symbolize the frustrations of being unable to voice this peculiar complaint I’ve forgotten what it was that set me off. Does it even matter? The incidence of almost myopic violence loosened forth by a picture at the bottom of a shoebox makes me laugh then cry in descending order. My troops want to flee the battlefield instead of risking death or dismemberment on such a foolish quest. Nobody ever said liberation comes cheap. Not in this case.

While all of this ramps, declines and undulates, a small quiet voice calls out from the woodwork replete with reminders that nothing will turn back the clock, and if we don’t make it up and over, the wall will still be there tomorrow, and maybe even after that. And without the slightest shudder or tremble, I realize I’ve handcuffed myself again, though not to the radiator, at least not this time. Trying to throw off the shackles is impossible. Looking around the room, I can barely see with the smoke rising and shrinking the room to dimensions just short of livable.

What had happened? From where did these thoughts begin? There was a conspicuous absence of clues. My memory didn’t seem responsive to the shifting scenery… one minute everything in the room seemed haphazardly arranged, and in an instant changed beyond recognition. I felt very strongly that I was thinking about something important, but I’d be dipped in shit if I could figure out what it was. With each passing moment the importance I attached to the whole scene seemed arbitrary and capricious rather than the serious malformation it had been some time past. I stumbled out of the room to smoke a cigarette and consider my options. I’m not looking for any kind of reinforcement. I just really need a smoke. It ain’t up for discussion, and I will spit swear and remonstrate before bending to something as ephemeral as a the ghost of exmiss past.

On the way outside, I’ll stop at the mirror and laugh at what I see. It’s the only way to maintain the farce… and it keeps me humble. You know, those deists are always saying pride cometh before a fall, but I’m only one floor above the ground. I just don’t have that far to fall. It ain’t up for discussion. It never is. Let’s talk.

If it would be possible to sit here and talk about movies and music; and what it means to the rubes and scoundrels then surely we would sit and talk about easy subjects. The crass pleasantries exchanged would situate the rank and file. Everybody would know exactly where to sit. Imprimatur in a manner reminiscent of prayers cast on a dying star, the whole spectrum of fine color is an endemic exchange of motives. That gut feeling that something else is waiting right around the corner (cue West Side Story) leaves the impression that this is a time of preparation. A swath of carpet is visible under the piles of clothes and other assorted shit, and Leonard Cohen’s “The Future” plays over and over, perennially repetitious.

“When they said repent,
I wondered what they meant”

(l. cohen “the future”)

Never better than the kind of phrasing that cuts to the quick without any pretense towards geniality. That is the kind of thought that was worth the Rack centuries ago. I’m sure any budding theologian would be most comfortable cutting down that kind of tree. As the centuries passed by, the shrieking souls encased in sightless oubliettes lower the volume and play nice. It’s harder and harder to get into hell, despite the purported attitude of the man-on-the-street. There’s not a sign of thunder and not the first scent of salt. What does it mean when they say “apostate unbeliever?”

Since my own movement is limited by each day’s dose of devil pain shooting into places it’s not supposed to go, I have to rely on the humble effigy swinging from a rope for excitement. In between numbing bouts of disharmony I forswore every vice only to be enveloped in smoke and slapped by the coincidence of symbolic movement. With a running start, you hit the wall even harder. Mechanical observations, the crunch of the gravel under work boots I took off years ago, remaindered scents of November rocks beaten by January waves. Everything goes haywire behind my eyes as the present and past become as interchangeable as a Ford and a Mercury. It is frightening to lose perspective like that. These walls are here for a reason, hopefully. The corner of the room is covered in graffiti lettered in my own hand some time ago. Even now, you can just barely make out…

I used to spit out days like this. Now I chew until the flavor is gone and grimace and swallow. After dining on the scraps from the masters plate for such a long period of time, leftovers remind me of a buffet. Shake and shaken in this pitiful prose of a maddening image of a tiny knife wreaking havoc between my lower vertebrae. From this stalled out spot in the middle of the late early years, all that’s left is to acknowledge the physical limitations and consecrate my deliverance from this holy row. Part of me is still foolish enough to believe what’s coming is an inveterate decision rather than orders handed out from a distant unseen authority. The part of me still unsure is left holding onto the memory of what it felt like to run.

Sacrilegious? Mayhaps, at least with respect to those crazy fuckers running the toll free hot-line to the man upstairs. I heard his name was Paul. I used to know a Paul myself. A true King amongst men. With the right amount of distraction, another day will indeed pass unnoticed. With some luck, we can travel in silence, moving slowly on to whatever the fuck comes next. Hell of an observation that last stanza. Could it be said that the coda kills? No. It couldn’t.

“Your servant here,
he has been told
to say it clear,
to say it cold:
It’s over, it ain’t going
any further
And now the wheels of heaven stop
you feel the devil’s riding crop
Get ready for the future:
it is murder”

(l. cohen “the future”)

It didn’t start anywhere; it just always was. Like nearly everything else in the known world, it evolved in the same creeping manner any large cultural movement eventually obtains, something in the image of an ever-present entity seemingly expanding forever. The actual physics of the movement bore no resemblance to the image presented in every form of media, from thirty second radio ads featuring the most golden voices of the age to the feature films that could craft narrative out of seemingly incongruous experiments with space and time. Eventually, even space and time seemed meaningless in the face of a movement that spread not as a raging inferno, but a smoldering and creeping blaze generating consistent heat.

The movement had constructed itself in the time honored tradition, moving from orthodox dogma to a hypocritical (though largely unnoticed) scramble for positioning that was constrained only by the inability to dictate the terms of reality. This would prove no obstacle, as experiments at all the finer universities would soon prove. Reality for most people came in a bifurcated manner; first hand experience contrasted against expectations and memory (faulty, but tried and true, same as almost everything else) and what they imagined was happening elsewhere. The advent of new technologies didn’t actually change anything except the speed and distance with which an idea could be projected. The rest was window dressing. The cultural movement, which came to be known as (INSERT NAME HERE) came along at a time when both technology and a seemingly endless malaise struck the heart of a great empire. The great questions remaining in the wake of history are not how a benign social movement became an all encompassing weltanschauung, nor the pedantic recreation of an alternate narrative of the rise to power. The most dangerous man in the world solved the riddle when he wondered if it could have been done better. Though still unresolved, the great universities and cultural centers of learning have already begun forming committee’s charged to investigate and identify. Sun rise, sunset. For the moment, that is something best left for later. There is still the past, malleable and dynamic.

I can’t smell a god damned thing. With the music playing in the background turned way up, the sound overcomes every train of thought. Like shattered glass, the whole encumbered moment is in splinters, a little bit of sound, a fragment of light, the reflection of a context, a wisp of smoke the only testimony. Everything was either coming or going with no middle ground. A big-titted anchor on the cable news does the salubrious job of telling the viewer what tales of the past would be told in the soon to be. Spun doesn’t begin to cover it. There was nary an introduction on this tranquil morning, just a meeting between harried winds and my head, swung up from the bed upon waking to the scene.

Late questions spoken in some kind of degraded voice; posture and tone increasingly distant, as if the day that rolls onward to the evening is simply obeying a mechanical structure of a twin mandate to rise and fall each day. What remains from one day to the next is an apparition of unknown origin, metastasizing from single celled beginnings to a complex and vibrant though increasing hard to remember set of fungible stories explaining the why and where of the present. For many of the same reasons, I choose to grow facial hair or perhaps identify my favorite pair of shorts to act as a mnemonic device capable of an instant refresh and keyed in on important narratives that bear constant monitoring.

Utter nonsense and gibberish. I can’t think. Nothing is working the way it’s supposed to, which would usually not matter, except a stunning ignorance slammed down on my memory until all I could think about was a girl who didn’t like clowns. Was it a memory or a hallucination? Hard to tell. It moved like a shadow but spoke like a mute. There is no doubt it doesn’t fit the picture, but no suggestion of malice or even forethought. Like much else here in this happy home, it seems to exist only to remind visitors to adjust expectations accordingly. The whole vibe can manifest itself into a frenzied mass of unmet expectations, and under the wrong circumstances, I have a hunch that things could turn violent. Naturally, as a pacifist, I want nothing to do with any of that madness. Isn’t there someone that deals with that sort of thing?

The key element is that nothing happens. Whatever occurs does so only in relation to the wider background, longer timeline, or murkier light waves. The whole odd deal may (or may not) be related in and of itself to the insightful yet seismic revelations brought on by moments of concentration. I can’t quite imagine what would push a mind in this direction, but have yet to find anything that looks at all like an answer.

It’s been quite a while, but the day is clear and warm while the slow wind blows an experienced summer day across the parking lot and up to the second floor lounge. It feels like the same sunny afternoon I used to get my hands around a few years ago when living a several thousand miles to the left from where I’m sitting right now. This is both discomforting and alluvial, though for different reasons. Imagine looking back only to see the same damn explosion that was in the rear view mirror years ago. Its like it never moved on. Maybe it didn’t, there is no way of knowing sitting this far to the side of all the shit that was. There are stories that I would love to tell, but can’t, because I don’t know the ending. It would be foolhardy to begin a story all the while knowing that the screen would fade to black long before resolution. You wouldn’t like most of the resolution anyway. Too much of a story you can figure out for yourself, but not the ending or where I was going by bringing up a sore subject. If I felt like doing something mean, I would do it, but it is so hard to hurt the ones we hate when the sun lords over the sky here, and far to the left.

Putting on the well spun face to the world for a few moments in a vain attempt to steal whatever isn’t gifted by the morning rains. That’s the long of way of saying that I’m sitting in the middle of a large room on a rainy day, eloquently crafting a narrative that explains disparate data points and a feeling of peace brought on by chemical experimentation. Every once in a while, I laugh out loud for a few seconds before worrying that someone might here my laugh and misinterpret the joy with which air can escape such a meaningless moment. It rapes the mind; it really does. Since there isn’t any kind of agreement to strive for betwixt anything more rapacious than a few molecules playing games in the space between. If there ever was a calm rain falling, you’d be wet.

Bits of picked up themes found scattered in a bunch of different places. While the short term memory required to makes use of the differential is functioning, that is a kind judgment and does not reflect the facts on the ground. You would need a device that could record the practical results of half muttered conversations as well as critique the method and strategy with which they are conducted. That doesn’t even make any sense to end of a cigarette or a brain crippled by under utilization. Just something to consider, not offered or put forth as anything other than an attempt to soothe the fractured time line. Curiosity is a bitch. The exact kind of statement that revels in syllogisms rather than solutions. Selfish to the extent that reason can phase in and out of focus, as well as importance. Could be worse, I guess.

What’s the right reaction to subjectively comparative arguments? Since the very meaning of such an exchange precludes either party from claiming any degree of truth, it seems to be an exercise in futility. This is one of the vexing yet seemingly meaningful questions that somebody should be studying. Grants should be made. Buildings and departments at major universities should be dedicated to helping us all by finally finding the utility in spending increasing amounts of time repeating the phrase “I’m right because.” Speeches will have to be given by personages of some repute, explaining to the multitudes the importance of this undertaking. My assumption is that things will go swimmingly until someone makes the comparison to WW2 mobilization, then everything will fall apart, people will lose faith, and the question that sparked a movement will go unanswered and forgotten. Some will even question whether it was a wise use of resources. From a results based standpoint, it will not have been a wise use of anything. Of course, twenty years later, there will be a small but committed revival movement. Concerts will be held, money donated, more resources consumed, albeit a smaller amount with less national acclaim. This echo movement will also end in failure, but a few of the participants will have the forethought to have a good time and to ride the wave as long as it lasts. At long last, the question will still be unanswered. The formula is adaptable to suit any purpose, to proclaim any movement. And here we were claiming idealism is dead.

When you’re done laughing, stop. Maybe it has something to do with the rising levels of disconnect between the more obvious happenings and the slow devolution of our ability to consider the ramifications of pretense. Maybe that is the long way of saying that there should be no surprise when a system made up of illogical creatures each living according to a slightly different context will be capable of every possible degree of kindness, cruelty, and genius.