Fictions from the Dead Machine

Another Coffee Shop Poem

2012-01-26T09:41:00.000-06:00

[Dedicated to Lou Schau. Also to John Briscoe, Tim, Steve, Ed, and Vaughn (aka The Graybeard Round Table). Also to Heather Houzenga.

I amnot pretty enough for this place.

Thecut of my clothes or my weeks old beard

givesme away. If I didn't have money for coffee

theywould shoo me away in spite of the rain.

Itdoesn't take long for those urbane airs

torub off; only two and half years

incorn and god country where they do not tolerate

toomuch polish (except for Sundays,

andeven that must be the right kind and cut)

andthey do not trust urban attitudes

andthey do not forgive when you are not smart enough

tonotice the difference.

Twopeople in line ahead of me.

Mostof the tables are occupied

and Ispy one empty seat:

oneof the coffee leather chairs

inthe corner. A business man

withnext generation's iphone

anddesigner eye wear takes it first...

layingclaim to it by laying his

expensivelooking brief case

(alsoleather) before he

takesa place behind me in line.

If Iam very lucky,

thebarista will get his order wrong.

But Iam not lucky, since she is too perky

to beincompetent.

Thefirst one, a large woman in stretch pants,

paysin cash

exact change –

Theskinny bitch in designer shoes behind her

tapsher foot impatiently. When it's her turn, she steps up

quicklyorders coffees with too many qualifiers

(halfcaf decaf slim skin super latte with a mother fuckin' twist)

payswith plastic, then moves forward. We have learned, have we not,

theway the conveyor belt works...

Istep up, order a medium coffee

withan espresso shot, pay, step to the right. Skinny Designer Bitch

iswaiting on a multiple order and his hogging the small round counter

withthe cardboard coffee cup cozies.

Mycoffee is done before her order.

Sothat I do not burn my fingers,

I amforced to growl “Excuse me”

beforeI reach in front of her

to grab a cozy. (She looks up horrified,

brieflygrabs her expensive purse

forfear I might steal it, use her

husband'scredit cards

toorder a breakfast sandwich.

Shestorms out not long after.

Bythe time I turn around,

atable has opened up,

and Isit down, trying to avoid eye contact.

There'sonly so much I can put up with

beforethe coffee kicks in.

A Meditation on Nature and Experience

2012-01-22T09:17:00.000-06:00

After so many days,

the ring cuts

into the skin. Or,

the finger grows

around it. Like saplings

grow round twine,

twisting naturally

unnatural. Let it grow

long enough, the two

are indistinguishable.

No one wonders

whether it

hurts the tree.

No one asks

whether the finger

will recover.

Ahead of the Storm

2012-01-21T08:32:00.000-06:00

Shadows pass on the other side

of frosted glasses. I can make out

trees, the shapes of hills, traces

of Interstate 74. 45 minutes out

I know intuitively where we are,

silently lip the names of the places

like a prayer: a mantra meant

to keep myself focused.

Shadows punctuated

by glaring fast food signs. Rolling

down the hill, I start counting

the minutes until the cityscape

will come into view. Shadows

surrounding the lights of houses,

street lights. Anonymous beacons

for other weary travelers.

Shadows engulfing what I leave

behind me. Seven hours north, echoes

of tears where once there were kisses

the warmth of your eyes

the inadequacy of it all

the absurdity of it all. I let

the shadows wrap themselves around me

as the city comes into full view.

Last Full Day

2012-01-19T07:02:00.000-06:00

The taste of last night's beer lingered this morning.

Three in the morning, I can't sleep. That voice

in my head, the one that's been telling me

This is not your home woke me

thumping like a timpani drum. The cats

are calm. The walls are thin

and, even with the plastic on the windows

lets the arctic weather in. Ice glazed

like thousand year old donuts

covering everything. Small tectonic glaciers

in the shape of tire tread and work boots

gray from the grating of the plow

and car exhaust line the streets. The voice,

it tells me, Wild birds know when to fly.

It's the caged ones that die. It's too early

for riddled wisdom, and I'm out of coffee.

Cold feet, bad TV, the memory of another

December fresh like the snow was

two days ago casts long shadows in fast dreams

in which the faces belong to strangers

and they all have something to tell me,

something I must remember,

something that is the piece to a puzzle

with the picture worn off. All that remains

is a sense memory and the voice in my head

No feeling lasts, it says. So it's better to feel it all.

Two Days Past (Winter 2012)

2012-01-18T16:02:00.000-06:00

Thestreets have been cleared

andthe previous night's freeze

packedthe last snow fall,

eliminatingthe drifts covering

Illinois64 that are impossible

toplan for and more dangerous

even,than the ice that may

ormay be underneath.

Thewind is blowing,

butthe sun is shining

andpeople are out

andabout because no one

expectsit to last. Shopkeepers

keepthe windows clear,

spruceup last month's goods,

becausethey know

anothersunny day

maynot come again

andit's the early bird

whogets the worm –

sosaid the preacher on Sunday.

Orwas it that self help book on the bed side table?

Thesidewalks are cleared –

exceptfor in front of the houses

wherethe grandchildren

aretoo preoccupied to endure

10minutes of the tundra.

Pilesof the white stuff

aroundthe bottom of street signs

andat cross walk corners

arethere to remind us –

asif the arctic chill

andfrozen snot weren't enough –

morewinter is coming.

Day After Snow, 2012

2012-01-13T10:02:00.000-06:00

Snow covers all our petty arguments

silences our numerous indiscretions

and turns our thoughts, once again,

towards warmth. Overcast morning

the color of gray slush on the streets,

and the rumble of the village trucks

scraping what remains off the streetoutside

shakes the entire house.

[I am the only oneawake to notice this.

Even the cats havelearned to ignore

the intrusion. AndI have learned

to pay it littlemind.]

The ground shakes all the time, now.

Trucks or now trucks.

News channel talking heads dismiss

the phenomenon, focus instead

on election year gaffs and movie startcleavage.

(They learned their lesson inVietnam. Had they sent

strippers with the reporters, wecould've won the war.)

[I don't watch thenews, anymore

before three cupsof coffee, a smoke

and a good healthyshit.]

Forecast calls for partly sunny skies

bone cracking arthritic cold. Thosebits

of remaining pristine snow willglisten

and the slush will shine gray

and the footprints will stick

until Spring erases all immediatetraces;

there will be no path to follow

and there will be no proof

that anyone was ever here.

Rosetta Stone Autopsy

2012-01-12T11:26:00.002-06:00

Two days ago it was warm enough to wakethe flies. Now

it's snowing, light dusting likepowdered sugar

over the gray and brown post-harvestlandscape.

A spoonful of sugar, or so they say,though

as the barometer drops there's notenough sweetness

to go around. The blood slows,thickens, settles

into the veins …

geologic sediment

that will, in the later years after mydeath,

be excavated when theexplanations

(eventually) become important. Therewill be rings

in the bones – evidence of warmth andcold that,

over the years spread to the vitalorgans:

the heart,

the liver,

the spleen.

The story spun by inexperiencednecrophiliac historians

will be one in which they are heroes

and in which the corpse on the slab

is nothing more than an anonymouspreamble

to an inevitable greatness they will copiously describe

using strip mine style explanations,

and retrofitted possibilities limitedby statistical models

that are inadequate to the taxonomictask

of reconstructing a memory...

because they lack the hieroglyphic key

they themselves destroyed when,

upon finding flies the belly,

they slaughtered them without a secondthought.

Winter Fruit

2012-01-03T10:47:00.000-06:00

The tangerines are surprisingly good

and the apples will stew up nicely.

Christmas was mild this year

and though the local children

were sad there was no white Christmas,

the parents who handle the snow shovel

breathed in a sigh of relief.

They know it will not last for long.

Subdued, we sit -- waiting out the day

waiting for the store boughtsatisfaction

to wear off everyone's face and

get back to normal. The mask is thin,

but effective and I am sick to mystomach

of all the fake piety. Throw somepennies on the drum.

Santa is a drunken bum wielding a bell

and a hangover.

We have enough channels on television

to avoid the Christmas shows

and the pre-emptive strike

of the day after sale commercials.

I drink cold beer.

You drink wine.

The sun is shining.

The lawn is still dying.

Must be global warming. Maybe

the ice caps are melted

and Santa's out of on the streets

with the rest of those red suited

pick pockets.

Too much to hope for, I know.

At least the stewed apples

are good and warm.

It Breaks the Heart

2011-12-30T11:18:00.000-06:00

I talk local politics

over beer at the bar.

Issues so important.

Issues not so important.

Issues that never change.

You, at home.

Living your life

in my absence.

Issues so important.

Issues that never change.

I come home.

You are on the phone,

laughing the way you did –

(do you remember?)

– that way you laughed

once upon a time

with me:

spring days by the river,

summers at the spillway.

Kites flying around us

bits of laughter

caught in the wind.

It breaks the heart.

So much silence.

So much lost.

So much.

Not enough.

You hang up the phone,

and the laughter stops.

I mention my conversation.

You nod out of habit

and ask, nonchalantly,

if I'm drunk.

I can not answer

because all the air

has left my lungs.

I can not breathe

without your air,

filling me.

Buk Notes: John Fante

2011-12-26T14:29:00.000-06:00

It'snot necessary to read John Fante in order to understand what Bukowskiwas shooting for; one of the nice things about Buk is that even ifyou don't really get it – and most people don't – there's stillsomething to enjoy. Readers of Bukowski who dream of being writershave tried – without success – to repeat what he did; generally,they begin with the notion, not without reason, that in order towrite like Bukowski one has to live like Bukowski. The first mistakecomes, however, in thinking that any form of emulation is the same asart. The second mistake is in looking at his body of work and seeingonly “a drinker with a writing problem” as a writerly friend ofmine once proclaimed him to be.

Althoughhe openly balks at influence in his later work, Charles Bukowski doesgive one writer credit. And no, it wasn't Hemingway. And no it wasn'tany of the Beats, with whom Bukowski is often mistakenly categorized.The writer that he credits the most – beyond the French writerCéline– is John Fante.

Fanteis the author of Ask theDust,Dago Red, West ofRome, The Road to Los Angeles,Brotherhood of theGrape,and others. In the Black Sparrow edition of Ask the Dust,there's a short preface by – you guessed, Charles Bukowski – inwhich he claims that Fante's work was the only work he found in thelibrary that seemed like it was written for him. Fante wrote aboutgrowing up in a poor blue collar family in Colorado, about beingItalian-American, about being Catholic, about being a writer, aboutbeing a writer and selling out to write movies, about his troubles athome, about his combative relationship with his children (includingthe writer Dan Fante), and about his own feelings of inadequacy.Fante was one more in a slew of West Coast writers – that includeNathanael West and John Steinbeck – who had trouble making it inthe East Coast / NewYorker stylecontrolled world of literary publishing.

Whenyou read Fante, you begin to hear the echo that drew Bukowski in andthat echoed in his work as well. As a matter of fact, you hear thesame thing when you read Céline,or Steinbeck, for that matter, though they are as stylisticallyremoved from Fante and Bukowski as Mahler is from Metallica. You seemore of Buk's style in Fante – but of course, it's not the same,either, any more than Hemingway wrote like Sherwood Anderson. Fante'ssense of hyper-drama is different from Bukowski. With Bukowski, thetone is more acerbic, and even at his raunchiest, more judgmental.Fante's hyper-drama is comically inflated:

“Soit happened at last: I was about to become a thief, a cheapmilk-stealer. Here was your flash-in-the-pan genius, yourone-story-writer: a thief. I held my head in my hands and rocked backand forth. Mother of God. Headlines in the papers, promising writercaught stealing milk, famous protégéof J.C. Hackmuth haled into court on petty thief charge, reportersswarming around me, flashlights popping, give us a statement.”

Askthe Dust is about getting published... the hunger, the failure, and even inface of potential success, the inevitable failure. Fante's world isone in which there is always moral balance: something good must beaccompanied with something bad. The protagonist, Arturo Bandini, is ayoung writer living on nothing but good will and stolen oranges inDepression-Era downtown LA. His one credit is a short story, “TheLittle Dog Laughed” published in a magazine edited by J.C.Hackmuth,his literary hero. He carries copies of the magazine around, passingautographed copies to people who aren't really impressed. And as ifthe comic hubris and ego-crushing wasn't enough, Bandini then meetsCamilla, a waitress, and falls in love with her. But she's in lovewith the bartender Sam, and Sam despises her. The only way Bandiniwill win Camilla over, Sam tells him, is to treat her badly.

Thebook is poignant in it's descriptions day to day living, love andloss and failure, Catholic guilt, and the self-doubt every writerexperiences. Camilla is impressed with him at first, but only comesaround when he's abusive. She spends time in an asylum, goes back andfor the between Arturo and Sam. She ends up throwing Bandini over forSam, who wants to be a writer – he writes westerns – and who isalso dying of cancer. Bandini ends up dedicating a copy of his book –which he finally writes and is finally published by J.C. Hackmuth –to Camilla and throwing into the desert.

Inthe messy business that fiction writing has become – or maybe, thatit's always been – there's always been the question as to whetherwhat a writer writes in fiction bears any resemblance to real life.And with a pop culture that has both hyper-reality television andfantasy laden tomes, both of which serve as escape hatches ratherthan magnifying glasses of contemporary life, there's even moresuspicion of writers who want to write something real. Fante wasroundly criticized for this in his non-screenplay work. Bukowski wascritisized for it too, though mostly by academic critics who didn'tacknowledge anything after the Modernists.

Theart in Bukowski is something you have to read with a knowing eye tocatch. He had no intention of pointing it out, because he believed (Ithink correctly) that it wasn't his job to spoon feed infantilereaders.

Theart in Fante is a lot like that. It's easy to dismiss it as maskedautobiography, or – the gods help us all – “creativenon-fiction” (the bane of literary trends over the past 20 years). The point isn't whether the story is about a struggling young writeror a struggling young wizard. Literature isn't meant to be anescape... though it often can be. Literature – especially fiction –is a lens that brings life into hyper-focus. Fante accomplishes thisin a grand tradition that he picked up from writers like Knut Hamsun,and which can also be seen in Eurpoean writers like French writer Céline,Italian writer Curzio Malaparte, and German writer GünterGrass. For that matter, the mantle was also picked up by writers likeStephen Crane and Nelson Algren. And maybe part of the true art isthat while most readers look at Fante and see a Catholic writingabout Catholic guilt – and at Bukowski and see a drunk writingabout drinking – there's something else happening that you only seeif you bother to pay attention.

[This was written, primarily to continue a discussion that Kaplowitz and I have had on Grindbone Radio, as well as off air. I also wrote it because, well, I wanted to add my thoughts to his well written piece here.]

Two Short Seasonal Poems and An Unrelated Bit

2011-12-23T12:40:00.000-06:00

1.

December early morning sunshine
it fools me into believing
the earth is warm. But one step
outdoors and the cold wind
rippling my bearded cheeks reminds me
the tree limbs aren't bare
for no reason. Christ, I think
why can't they stick to
warm weather holidays?

2.

This season of fat men with a penchant
for breaking and entering leaves me
odd, at the bottom of empty scotch bottle
searching the chair cushions for loose change
to put towards a pack of smokes or a cheap 40
that will help me stay warm. Winter has a way
of seeping into my bones; and it will not depart
no matter what prayers and hymns I sing.

3.

Souls, like old wool socks, wear thin at the points of heaviest wear.
The difference is, you can always buy a new pair of socks.

One Man's Hyde / Another Man's Savior

2011-12-22T12:52:00.000-06:00

The monster awoke this morning:

broke loose from the cage

and is wandering the streets

of some anonymous small town

in Northwest Illinois.

And I will not chase him down again.

He and I and the world are all better

when he is not knocked out, stowedaway,

forgotten in some dark corner of my Id

left to languish in some gray dream.

You cannot starve / what does notsurvive / on bread alone.

He greeted me in the mirror, wildhaired

monstrously bushy eyebrows, deep setunrelenting eyes,

the face of someone who might appearfamiliar

if anyone has been paying any attention

at all. Have you been paying attention?At all?

You've all gone and done it, hesays. / Waited one day too many / and now, and now

and now...

It'sthe anticipation that makes him pause

becausehe knows, lumbering the street,

lookingoddly like a baboon on the hunt,

hewill attract stares, and gasps,

and hewill, undoubtedly, offend some

oldfarmer's wife or another

whodoes not understand there is more

to manthan the collected hours he works

andwhittles and the little bit he dies

eachand every day. And some farmer

oranother will be offended, too – because

theywill never know the freedom

ofwalking through the world

withoutcarrying the fear

thatsomeone, somewhere

hasfound the secret to happiness

withoutwaiting on god, on grace,

or onsome nicely written obituary

outliningthe predetermined brevity

of hislong laborious days.

It'sthe anticipation that draws him out

andinto the street – coming soon

to astore front, coffee shop, bar, or street corner near you.

Hecarries doom in one pocket / salvation in another

andyou will not know

whichhe might be inclined to share

untilyou look him in the eye

andshow him the the glimmering seat

ofyour soul, share the warmth of your heart

andaccept without question –

eventhough you might find his grin

just atad disconcerting.

One Man's Hyde / Another Man's Savior by Mick Parsons

Straight Off The Wire

2011-12-19T08:10:00.000-06:00

1^stcup of java (early in the A.M):

thecity budget's busted

thestreets are full of pot holes,

thewater tastes like rust and

andinsecticide. Everyone blames the mayor.

Thestate is behind on its bills. But no one

willturn their water off

ifthey don't pay. Oh yeah, and fuck the poor.

Theydon't need water anyway.

2^ndcup of java / first smoke of the day:

thecounty's controlled by a dictator

witha bigger Napoleon complex

thanKim Jong Il. God Save the Chairman.

LongLive the Chairman. There's no money

forveterans. Plenty for lowering tax rates

onrich lake side property. Oh yeah, and

fuckthe renters. They're just white trash.

3^rd cupof java / first shot of bourbon

It's too cold to go fishing. Too hot

to build a snow man. No money

to pay city workers overtime
if we get a white Christmas.

Fuck Santa Claus. He was laid off

and is now wanted for a string of burglaries.

He should've had the stamina

to make it on his own at the North Pole

rather than illegally crossing the border. And

for all we know, he's a terrorist, since

he never files a flight plan.

Ain't It Grand, These Culture Wars?

2011-12-18T23:25:00.000-06:00

There's no subtlety to any of it.

Grand circle jerk symmetry

internet artists (not) extraordinaire.

It's all too easy.

Buy into the myth wholesale.

Pretend, for moment, maybe two,

maybe thirty, that you're running

a pirate radio, pushing out

incendiary prose the way they used to

“back in the day” when

all our giants were still alive.

There are no more 3 AM saints,

standing over mimeograph machines,

living in the basement with

an abandoned AB Dick printing press

typesetting and publishing words

sacred enough to offend yourgrandmother.

But please. buy into the myth.

It helps pass the days. Days spent

whiling away in some institution

or another... proprietary pretense

awkward hipster princesses

read a few lines of Kerouac

and learn to drink like

(you think) Bukowski did

and a few young girls

will think you're a true original

because they've never seen

anything like you on Jersey Shore.

It'sall too easy. / Scratch that.

It'sall too hard. And you make it harder.

Andnot in that good way

youthink Bukowski meant

whenhe wrote about whores.

It'stoo damn hard.

Andyou make it harder.

Becauseyou think

drinkingthe right cheap beer

andwearing the right retro clothes

haveanything to do

withanything. Schtick will

getyou laid. But it won't

makeyou into the giant

youtell yourself you are

inyour day job

wherethe boss

neverseems to call you

byyour real name.

Tuesday / Truck Day / Spreading The News

2011-12-08T07:44:00.001-06:00

The sun is dead fish's eye buried undera cloudy sky

the color of poisoned water. On a roadtwisting through

several of several hundred thousandforgettable towns,

I am in awe of the optimism of childrenwaiting for snow

and believing in Santa Claus; they areroaming in groups

along broken up pieces of sidewalk andgravel side streets.

In another life, I imagine I am a lipreader and as I drive by,

I try to find out what they are saying–

it may make a difference later.

The farmers say this winter will beworse than the last two;

but farmers are cynics and have grownused to complaining

about things they have no control over.They will prepare

and they will pray, and they will watchthe price of corn

and soy. I have nothing to offer them –

not even the secrets their childrendiscuss

while they're cutting school andimagining for a moment

that they're really getting away withsomething.

When I step down from the cab of thetruck

I can feel the ground freezing throughthe soles

of my shoes; the next snow will stick,

I think. Walk into a gas station,trying to ignore

the soreness of my feet that give me

preternatural age. There's a line

and the woman behind the counter isbusy flirting

with the boy in front her who isclearly trying

to buy cigarettes withoutidentification –

in spite of all the commercials thatecho in my head

I hope he succeeds. In the back of theline,

there is a young woman crying. No oneis paying attention.

All women look like little girls whenthey cry

and they all remind me of my daughter.

I can only allow myself to cry when I'mdrunk;

at least then, no one will think it'sgenuine. Leaving town

a black cat crosses my path. And I am alittle surprised

that I find it comforting.

Untitled 12/1/11*

2011-12-03T16:02:00.001-06:00

We are erasing ourselves from theground up.

Libraries fall into decline (Echoes ofAlexandria)

are sold and converted into five starno-tell motels

for the discerning Wall Streetexecutive who wants

to treat his mistress with a touch ofclass (Clean Sheets!)

Art auctions and book burnings andbotox infused architecture

to appease upper echelon donors withdeep pockets

and a penchant for self-aggrandizingand culture wide immolation.

The post-modern critics who have beenprophesying

culture decay for years from high atopivory towers

ensconced in institutions long bereftof education,

smiling and satisfied, fat cat content,

not yet acknowledging the first drypanic

lumped in the back of their throats –

any good prophet will tell you beingright

only puts you out of a job in the longrun.

Meanwhile in the Big Empty,artists hidein small towns,

dawdle in coffee shops, seek companionswith above average

vocabularies to trade stories about thehigh times

when it was still possible to be anartist in America.

Farms feed lazy cows geneticallymodified grain,

slaughter and cut them into over-pricedsteaks

for a genetically modified consumerbase.

We are out in the world, seekingpicturesque back drops

to sit in front of and wait to die –

or for the rapture. Whichever comesfirst.

*written in response to an articlein The Nation about the wholesale desecration of the New York PublicLibrary system

[Singularity]

2011-12-02T11:34:00.001-06:00

Law of Entropy dictates

inorder for something

to beborn, some

other thing, first,

mustdie.

Processas natural as grass grows.

Processas natural as dying.

Scientiststheorize time stops

atthe event horizon; that we will hover

atthe edge of the super nova suspended

(paradox)

timespace but still, in reality

(paradox),

moving.

Theuniverse is not silent

butresonates a song

theeffect of gravity

andof time

andof space.

(Paradox)

Allthings, I am told, end up one thing –

ashes,dust, vacuum, song.

Atthe center of the galaxy, there is a black hole

andwe are dancing on the edge

ofthe event horizon.

Wewill never know

if weever really arrive.

From: Three Crow Suite

2011-11-28T10:49:00.001-06:00

Three fat crows were sitting in myneighbor's driveway

when I walked out the door this morningto go

to the coffee shop. “Christ,” Ithought

“not three. Not again.” Then theyhopped,

syncopated, up on a low lying branch,

paying no attention to me

and (just my luck!)

didn't even turn my direction.

It's cold this morning – feels likewinter

one week before Thanksgiving.

Even the stalwart gray haired men

who huddle under stoops outside of thecoffee shop

to smoke cigarettes and curse the young

rush back inside,

rather than settle in to solve

the problems of the world

between cups of coffee,

and stories of girls they may haveknown

once, years ago,

before they achieved the wisdom require

to come in from the cold

and seek good company.

Three crows perched

on an dead November tree branch

have as much a chance

as old men sipping coffee

and telling tales, dreaming

of a summer

when the skirts will be shorter

and the lies will be more interesting.

The only difference between theirstories

is the point of view.

A Salvation Cool as Morning Porcelain [from The Muckraker's Chronicle]

2011-11-21T21:45:00.001-06:00

Lord, help me make it through themorning.

Maybe it was thewine. Whenever I drink white wine, I end up with a Class A mind fuckhangover. And that's if I can manage to keep it down. White wine –even the more expensive ones – turn my stomach like sour milk. Theonly thing I can do to keep from puking up whine wine and stomachacid is to throw some beer on top of it.

I could tell by theway she was talking to me that she knew I felt like shit. There was atime, not so long ago, when she probably would have given me a hardtime about it; she would've made some comment about the mandatoryAlka Seltzer cocktail , or the fact that even my sweat smells likebooze. Or, she would've just given me that look she used to give me –the expression of her deep disappointment in my lack of impulsecontrol. And there was a time, even before that, when she would'vetried to exploit my frail condition by trying to say things thatwould make me throw up. She never did understand why I consideredlosing my lunch to be a mark against my manhood; and for that matter,I never understood it either, other than the fact that every man'sman I ever knew thought of it the same way.

Some might considerher relative acceptance of my condition as something resemblingprogress, and I know more than a few old drunks who might say I haveit good and that I shouldn't bitch about it too much. And if I didn'tknow better, I'd think that maybe she had achieved some level ofenlightenment about the general condition I would prefer to be in.

But then I'd haveto forget what she told me. Maude told me last week that she had cometo terms with the fact that I was going to end up killing myself.

And the part of itthat really fucked with me – as if such a statement in and ofitself wasn't enough – was that there was no hint of attempting toguilt me into changing. No manipulative tone. No sidelong glance. Noheavy sigh. Not even a qualifying remark about how, if I cared abouther at all, I'd try and go more than a day without a drink. There wasnone of that then. And none of it this morning, when I was clearlyhung over and trying to put myself together so I could go cover themonthly county board meeting. I desperately wanted to avoid themeeting – being locked up in a small, inadequately ventilated backroom of a dilapidated county courthouse that's built like a goblin'slabyrinth with 15 county board members, two other reporters, theCounty Clerk, and whoever else decided to sit in the peanut gallery. Didn't want to go and listen to the posturing and the pandering.Arliss County is a decidedly conservative county; but like moststaunchly conservative corners of the country, there's always thatfreak underbelly. It's the physics of political karma. For each asstight narrow-minded stooge there is a direct and opposite versionwithin a three mile radius. Maybe that's how the world keeps fromimploding on itself, collapsing like a burned out star. And as ithappens, I'm always more comfortable with the freak contingent. Idon't know why; I think maybe it just helps me maintain some sense ofbalance.

There's also alwaysthat sense that the uptight crowd is just as fucked in the head asthe freaks and lunatics are, except that freaks and lunatics are abit more at home with themselves and with the world. Total apathycome with a certain freedom; I think of it as something similar tothe Buddhist concept of enlightenment. Attachment causes suffering.Complete detachment causes Enlightenment. Beautiful. Simple. Next toimpossible.

“Where are yougoing today?” She was standing in front of the bathroom mirror,checking her hair. She must have to be somewhere, or have to talk tosomebody. Did she mention it to me? Was it something I needed toremember?

“County board.”

My stomach turnedjust a little. Maybe from the wine. Maybe from talking out loud.Maybe from the thought of having to deal with the county boardmeeting. Sometimes I missed having a bullshit 8-5 straight job...some anonymous cubicle to hide in and nurse my hangover until lunch.It had been so easy. But I had long ago proven to myself that I hadneither the prerequisite personality of a domestic abuse victim northe overwhelming fear drive that kept most people in jobs they hated.

At that moment, Ichose to blame the wine.

“What about afterthat?”

“I don't know.The usual. Probably come back here and work on the story.”

“Okay.”

No indication thatI was supposed to remember anything. Anniversary? Nope. Still had afew months. Birthday? Nope. That'll come in the summer. I tried tothink of all the dates on the calendar that I was supposed toremember. Nothing stuck out as likely. It was Thursday. Was thisThursday any special day in particular?

Thinking was makingmy head swim and my stomach swim. “Fucking wine,” I muttered.“That's the last time.”

“What'd you say,Jay?”

“Huh? Nothing.”

“Do you want meto drop you off by the courthouse?”

“Sure. Thanks.”

“I'm going to beready to go in a second.”

“'Kay.” Ilooked down to make sure I had all the usual requirements. Shoes,check. Socks, check. Pants, check. T-shirt, button down, sweater,check. All I needed to do was grab my coat. I'd have to walk back,though, so grabbed an extra layer. Old habits die hard. You'd thinkfor as much walking as I do, I'd be a skinny little son of a bitch.Maude says I would be if I drank less. Ah, sweet irony. That karmicbalance that keeps all fools in line. My sluggish Germanic bloodfighting my Irish liver. Every single time.

I sat down andwaited for Maude to finish. She wasn't much of primper, not likeother women I'd known. But she did have her morning ritual. Iwondered sometimes if she was even aware of how consistent she was. Isuppose I'm the same, and I suppose that most people are. Mygrandfather on my mother's side always took a cup of coffee and thenewspaper to the bathroom and didn't leave for a half hour. He drank,he read, he shat, he smoked. And that was the start of his day. Hewas a carpenter and could work 12 or 15 hours straight with barely abreak for lunch as long as he had that uninterrupted half hour in thejohn.

Nothing happens forme until I have the first sip of coffee. And that, was another partof the problem. My stomach was so turned around that I didn't think Icould keep coffee down. And without coffee I'd melt into a puddle ofa remanded bridge troll within a 10 minutes of getting to my meeting.

The solution was aneasy one. All I had to do was puke. But I didn't dare do it in frontof Maude.

For some reasoneven the shortest ride seems longer when you're trying desperately tohold your stomach in. You start to notice every pothole, crack oruneven space in the street. You begin to notice which side of thestreet slopes more than the other. You begin to take notice of theexcessive number of stop signs and the unreasonable amount oftraffic. Everything conspires against you. It's almost like having totake a shit in the worst way but you're nowhere near a bathroom.Pressure builds up in your body; muscles tighten; heart startspounding; if it's warm enough, or you're in bad enough shape, youbegin to sweat profusely. There's a point – right before your gutstell you you're going to be losing what ever passes for the contentsof your stomach – that you consider stepping in front of anoncoming car. Avoidance through pain has a long and heralded history.Not familiar? It's the idea that if your head really hurts thesolution is to smash your thumb. Then you're not thinking about yourhead anymore.

Hangovers are yourbody's way of telling you that sobriety is overrated. It's a built incaution sign of what the world will feel like if you never takeanother drink. This, in those abominable 12 step programs, is oftenreferred to as a moment of clarity: that moment when you realize thatthe Buddhists and the Baptists had it right. That life really isabout suffering.

Maude stopped atthe corner. The jolt made me nearly lose it on the passenger sidedash.

“Thanks,” Isaid, trying to sound genuine. “Have a good day.”

“You, too.”

“I'll try.”

I opened the doorand got one foot out the door when she said “I have a board meetingtonight.”

Shit.

“Okay.”

“Doyou remember me telling you about it?”

Fuuuck me. “Sure. Of course.”

“Soyou remember that there's a dinner thing before and that you promisedyou'd come with me, right?”

No. “Sure,baby sure. No problem.”

“Youneed to wear something nice.”

“Ok,”I said. “I will.”

Ialmost made it out of the car. I was reaching a crisis point andwasn't even sure that I'd make it much farther than the sidewalk.

“Whatare you going to wear?”

Christ!Why did she have to pick that exact moment to micro-manage mywardrobe. “I don't know. Something nice. I promise. I'll try andmatch and everything.”

“Ok...”She didn't sound convinced. “I'll have to change at the office andthen come pick you up.”

Great.“Okay, babe. Gotta go.”

“6o'clock,” she said.

“Ok.6 o'clock.”

Bothof my feet made it to the side walk. Surprisingly enough, somethingabout being outside settled my stomach. I made it up the steps fineand walked carefully towards the County Court House. I'd be a littleearly... plenty of time to splash some cold water on my face, settledown. It would give me time to hurl in the downstairs bathroom justinside the door if I needed to. I was starting to feel a littlebetter about my prospects and my day.

Thatwas when I ran into Johnny Franz, the County Board Chairman. We hadsized one another up several months before. He thought I was aliberal stooge and I knew he was a Class A Prick. He was one of therichest farmers in the county and he stayed on the county board tomake sure it stayed that way. I'd been trying, bit by bit, to eataway at his Napoleonic control. It was probably all but pointless.But it was something to do. And he made it easy. Whenever he openedhis mouth and said something stupid – which he did often – I putit in the paper. Last month during the Zoning Appeals Committeereport he made a comment about how he dealt with undesirableneighbors. “If I don't like somebody who's living around me,” hesaid, “I just buy them out and knock down the house.”

Wearrived at the door at the same time, briefly made eye contact. Couldhe tell I was hungover? He always looked slightly stoned anyway, soit was difficult to tell whether he was paying attention or not. Hewas dressed the way he always dressed – jeans, a button down workshirt, and dirty cowboy boots. I tried to imagine how those worked ina corn field; but then I reminded myself that men like Johnny Franzdidn't work in the field; men like Franz underpaid hundreds of otherpeople to do that for him while he fucked the secretary and playedthe commodities exchange in an attempt to manipulate the price ofcorn.

“Rafferty,”he said as cordially as I'd ever heard him speak to me.

Hereached for the door, maybe to let me walk through first. And I wasabout to say something... didn't know exactly what... but instead ofwords, I puked all over his cowboy boots.

Andyou know, there's never quite an appropriate apology when you needone.

Essay on Religion and Profanity (A Poem)

2011-11-12T13:01:00.001-06:00

The room was crowded and most of thechairs

in front of the make shift stage werefull.

You'd think after spending so much time

in front of people that I'd be morecomfortable;

but I still need my two shots and twobeers

(minimum) just to think about reading

in front of any crowd. The musicians,at least

have a guitar to hide behind. I get upthere

I'm naked

and all my inadequacies are hanging out

for the old women and their knitting

to take note of, measure, and judge meon

accordingly.

The old men are worse. Propriety

seems to mean more to them... they'llhave

no dangerous dangling in front of theirwomen folk –

though I haven't met a an old farmer'swife yet

who would blush. (Animal husbandry

and male inadequacy have taken

more of their years than they want

to worry about.)

Try to put it all in context, mention

the French root of the word “essay”

hoping they will then forgive

the profanity that is sure to come.

I can't help but cuss in prose;

it's as natural as breathing

and comes twice as fast.

My only hope lies

in tone; will they pick up

the humor, the dry sarcasm

the self-deprecating way

I am always apologizing

for myself?

I stand and read. It's worse

than that naked dream. Remember

not to read too fast but try

not to read too slow. SometimesI hear

what sounds like light laughter

which makes me feel better

and I push forward

building steam –

until the last three sentences

in which I unveil “... where

there is nothing to do

but drink, get fucked up, and fuck.”

The post coital silence is staggering.

Two old men in the third row glare

shake their heads. Later, they get up

sing five gospel tunes, hoping to erase

the poor sinner

for whom their christ

was supposed to have died

in the first place.

Revisions of a Not Very Fairy Tale

2011-11-09T22:08:00.001-06:00

The story might go a littlesomething like this:

Once there was man who lived in alittle town.

As a young man, he had left that verytown,

the town of his birth, because therewere

no stories to tell, no songs to sing,and

everyone had fallen into a kind of

forgetful fog. This bothered him –

he saw the lives they weren't living

and the only thing that bothered himmore

was the the thought that if he stayed,

the forgetful fog would overtake him,too.

But that had been many, many years ago,

and eventually he felt like he had done

what he had set out to do, traveled andseen

all he wanted to see, learned storiesand songs

that he had wanted to learn from places

no one had ever heard of, and hedecided

to go home.

But by the time he returned,

the stories he had gone off to collect

were no longer needed and he had no one

who would sit and listen.

No one except for one small childe,

a little girl named Matilde

who was very precocious

and who could be seen

talking and laughing to herself

in her mother's flower garden. She

was seven years old. Her favorite color

was purple.

Early For The Fall - A Piece of Flash Fiction (written at ArtWerks)

2011-11-03T10:46:00.001-05:00

Early For The Fall by Mick Parsons

Sketch of The 21st Century Underground Man

2011-11-02T11:17:00.000-05:00

Chuck woke up in the morning resolvedto do something entirely different and new from the entirely new andprevious he had attempted to do on the previous day. It was, perhaps,a miscalculated attempt; not to mention a bit rash. The new thing –which consisted of Chuck trying to push his pinky fingers intoelectric pencil sharpeners – proved disastrous... though not forany of the reasons that he had anticipated.

The possibility that his pinky fingerswould not fit proved to be a useless concern; as he was naturallyslim and boney, and his fingers were feminine to the point of lookingalmost skeletal, his pinky fingers fit snugly, but easily. He hadmentally prepared himself (as best he could) for the pain and theloss of blood, which the shock of both would most likely push himinto unconsciousness – an unconsciousness that would leave himunable to explain himself. He had even prepared himself for themessy splatter by wearing his least favorite work attire – a babyblue button down with pleated khakis and the ugly tie he'd gottenfrom his the office Secret Santa two years ago. The shirt was baggyand uncomfortable and the pants made him feel like he was walkinginside a mostly deflated balloon. The tie was particularlydistasteful and nothing like he would buy himself. It was brash, withrace car red and brash yellow stripes. In the middle of the tie therewas a smiley face with a bullet hole in its forehead and a smallcaption underneath that read “Have A Splendid Day!”

He hated the tie, but kept it becauseit HAD been a present and he might be called upon to prove he stillhad it. His Secret Santa that year had been Chuck Wassermann. Hehated that he had a name in common with someone who's sense of humorcould be summed up by such an ugly tie. He'd even tried to get peopleto call him Charles – but that did absolutely no good. He had beena Chuck his entire life and he would remain a Chuck forever.

Having considered all reasonablepossibilities, it was the one problem he hadn't counted on – theone that, in retrospect, seemed the most obvious – that led to hisfailure.

None of the pencil sharpeners worked.Not a single one.

He checked the plugs; some of them wereunplugged, but most were. They just didn't work. No one used pencilsanymore, but no one thought to get rid of the pencil sharpeners. Itwas as if they were there, but they didn't exist.

At the end of the day, still wearingthe powder blue shirt, khaki pants and Wassermann's ugly tie, Chuckleft at his usual time, making sure to take one of the pencilsharpeners with him. He was not usually a thief; but he also knewthat the only thing worse than being useless was to be ignored.

He made sure to hide just howdisappointed he was that his plan didn't work out and that his pinkyfingers were both intact. In the absence of a grand and ironic (as hesaw it) act, Chuck saw no alternative but to walk in front of the 43bus – a bus, which, if he hurried, he would be able to catch oneblock south from the office building, right in front of that afterwork bar where Wassermann drank martinis and flirted with women.

He caught the elevator down, sharingwith a woman in Wassermann's department. She was new. Her name wasDelores. Chuck had only marginally noticed her since she was tooattractive to pay him any attention, and women never liked himanyway. He stood next to her in the elevator, breathing in the scentof her perfume – which was an unusually pleasant experience, sincehe was allergic to most perfumes. He took notice of her withouttrying to be obvious. Well kept, conservative looking. Light make-up.Shoulder length red hair. But he didn't speak to her. As the elevatorhit the Lobby Floor and the doors wooshed open in mechanical silence,she turned, smiled, and spoke.

“That's a funny tie,” she said.Then she walked out of the elevator and into the Lobby and away.

Chuck was shocked out his plan to stepin front of the 43 bus by his interaction. He spent the rest of theevening thinking about her and tinkering with the pencil sharpener.

By morning he knew what he was going todo.

2011-10-28T20:51:00.001-05:00

Boomtown - A Poem by Mick Parsons

Two More From ArtWërks

2011-10-26T14:05:00.001-05:00

The streets have been full forcenturies.

Even if the buildings were to disappear

tomorrow, these streets would remain

filled end to end and side to side

with memories and with ghosts

and with the specters of memories.

In the dirt between the bricks

there is a memory

locked in stone and pebble

rubble and rabble

memory that filters down

and into the water

and from the water

into the dirt

and from the dirt,

it is rubbed into the soles of ourshoes

and we remember again

all the things we didn't know

that we didn't know – comes to us

in dreams and in visions

and in visitations that,

if we're paying attention

will tell us the way

we are to go.

So sit down here

and tell me a story

and make it a good 'un

like the one you told me

yesterday. Tell me

about one of the places

you frequented when you were

young, and fresh the fruit was

and how the women were sweet and ripe

and how clear and how cool

the water was and what it

felt like to really sleep,

to sleep out in the open

under the stars and what it felt like

to feel safe and to feel free

to feel something different

before all the fences and wires

and wireless was all built up

back before there were gate keepers

and invisible gates

back when you were my age

and the world was something more

beautiful than it seems today.

It Goes Without Saying

2011-10-22T15:46:00.001-05:00

You'rein a meeting

you'drather not be in

and Iam at the bar –

drinkingdollar beer,

thinkingabout the bars

incollege when

ThirstyThursday meant

dimedrafts all night.

Myfriends and I, we'd

eachwalk in with 2 or 3 bucks,

filla table with plastic cups of

cheapwarm beer,

andwatch the frat boys

strikeout, stumble out

tothe sidewalk to puke,

leavingbehind tables

ofuntouched beer. After

wewere sure they were

gone,we'd drink their beer,

andmy friends,

whowere better with girls

thanme, would try

andpick up the girls.

(Drunksorority girls

willsometimes dumpster fuck

sothey can later claim

to beculturally well rounded.)

Tradingshots with

twolocal musicians

and awell-endowed

bartenderfour years older

thanmy daughter,

Ithink about

thenight they raised

dimedrafts

to aquarter, and how,

wefelt like we'd been

robbedand drank anyway.

Somewherearound the third hour

youstopped by the bar

topick up the car

andeveryone was surprised

whenyou left me there

withoutgiving me a hard time

orseeming to judge me at all

oreven the casual

“Don'tget arrested”

commentthat even

tolerantwives will tell

waywardhusbands

whostill insist

onkeeping up

drinkfor drink

withthe crusty old bastards

withthe souls of fallen gods

evenas the world outside

slipsinto another winter

fromwhich

itmay not return

andfrom which

wemight not

havethe will

tosave it.

A Sketch of Division Street

2011-10-19T11:03:00.003-05:00

The trailer court was up on the hilland off to the left at the end of Division Street. You have to drivepast the cemetery on Bone Hill and the St. Alice Home for the Aged tofind it. When it snows bad, sometimes the plows don't make that farup the hill until well after 10 in the morning, which means the kidswho live there either have to trudge down the hill to an availablebus stop, or – since the drivers on those routes aren't supposed tolet kids on the bus who aren't on their regular route – trudge theextra couple of miles across town and out to the highway bypass,where the new high school is. The smaller kids don't have as far towalk, since the intermediate school is in the center of town.

But none of them walk down the hill togo to school when the snow plows haven't cleared the way for the bus.And the parents don't call to complain. And the school doesn't callto ask if something is wrong. And a truant officer never shows up toquestion why – except in the spring, of course. They do takespecial care to make sure the wild kids from Barrett’s TrailerCourt aren't out enjoying the day when they could be in school beingignored by the teachers and judged by their fellow students.

And although there has been some talkabout “what to do” about the trailer park and the unwantedminions who reside there – the basic premise being that trailersare dirty no-good places, and that poor people have poor habits andthat because of those two unrelated axioms … unrelated except forthe fact that they are both applied to the people who live at thetrailer park – there isn't enough consensus to get anything done.Whenever there's a break in or something is stolen, the first thingthat Police Chief Dolarhyde does is roust the trailer park kids,since they're the most obvious suspects. That it rarely ever comes toanything doesn't matter; one of the ways the chief is able to keephis job is by sticking to the obvious. When nothing is found, thegeneral assumption is that those white trash sons and daughters ofwhores simply sold it to someone from out of town for drug money orthrew it away.

The only time the trailer park kids get a break fromChief Dolarhyde's program of perpetual harassment is when the gypsiescome through the area. And since the gypsies never stay in town, butfind places to camp outside the town limits, they're considered acounty problem, not a town one.

The Problem: A Poem by Mick Parsons

2011-10-15T16:46:00.000-05:00

The Problem - A Poem by Papa Mick

Random Unlabeled Photos (From Artwërks)

2011-10-10T20:34:00.000-05:00

Paint the bodyelectric

hip hop bee bop –

O, let us sing thesongs of ourselves

electric slide

run and hide

safe and sound

sunbathing beneatha blue sun

illuminated forthe body

and the electricfunk

born out of a needto dance

and a desire tostay

a little whilelonger.

Let us go then,you and I

and wander silentempty streets

like drunkards,lovers, and reprobates.

Let us imagineourselves ghosts

materialimmaterial

substancetransubstantiated

wandering thebric-a-brac

counting theminutes of the witching hour

when even the copshave the sense

to go home andleave this place

to the rest of usthat neither

need their rulesnor

care to understandthem.

Counting down thehours til dawn

all the midnightshadows are drawn

in, tied up, andstowed away

in anticipation ofan approaching day

that most peoplewill not notice

because they'retoo busy

being respectable,worrying

about what shoesto wear

on Sunday morningand whether

the sermon will golong

making kick off

one more missedopportunity.

The lines aredrawing

themselves on myface –

deep lines around

the corners of myeyes

drawn around

the edges of mymouth.

They each tell atale

geologic inproportion,

private in scale.The old men,

they like toremind me

I am still young.And while

I cannot argue

I cannot acquiesce

to theirinsistence

that it's alldownhill

from here.

This is the otherside of night

that place Célinedreamed of

but never found;that steady peace

that comes withthe meditation

of one paintedline and the poetry

of coffee at 3 AM.Counting down

the hours til dawnand the cats are yowling

or maybe

just another bunchof bums

the cops will later blame

for various and unrelated pettythefts.

RE: Procrastinating the Night Before Deadline

2011-10-03T14:29:00.000-05:00

Burned pipe tobacco and spent tealeaves

look amazing similar when combined

in the ash tray. I'm trying to chase astory

and chasing my apathy with scotch

and Earl Grey tea. Maybe if

that voodoo queen was correct, one ofthem

will tell me the future and the other

will describe the manner of my death.

I'm far less interested in the former

than I am the latter; but I have found

I have no say in the message –

merely the form in which

the message is transmitted.

And either, really would be a welcome

excuse, since writing about politicians

doesn't change the fact that they'rejust

politicians; small town boys and girls

who grew up and into old men and oldwomen

who fear the future that does notinclude them

and who want everything to be

exactly as it was the last time theyremember being

truly happy. And if I could I'd writeone long article,

laying out all of their sins, and allof my sins, as if to say,

in some imperfect but decidedlyspecific way,

that I am tired of their games, theirpetty insults,

their petty behavior, and then I wouldjust

turn my back on them let them rot onthe vine

and die as the world moves on into afuture that will not

include them and into a future thatwill someday

not include me.

But the tea leaves will not have it;

the pipe tobacco needs replenishing,the scotch bottle is handy

the music makes my mind drift, and Iknow that even

if I were to quit, if I were to godownstairs

the scribbled notes and the paranoia ofnews paper

without my byline in it would induce meback

because it is here, and only here,

that I am sure I exist.

The Shady Side of The Street

2011-09-26T12:29:00.000-05:00

Inthe winter, the ice builds up

onthe north side of the street

andsnow trucks, somehow,

manageto miss it... every

singletime. Shop owners

armedto the denture with

cheapplastic snow shovels,

rocksalt, and hot coffee

pushthe snow away from the door

asbest they can, scrape and chip

awayat the ice underneath –

allthe result of several hundred

silentprayers by school age children

tryingto avoid another math test

andthe sour mood of a teacher

whois too underpaid

toafford four wheel drive.

Inthe Spring, the flower boxes do well

becauseeven flowers need shade,

andthe rain runs off and down to Carroll Street

unabated. Sometimes the rain comes so fast

bothsides of the street look like

duelingtributaries fighting for the same river,

a sadamusement park ride

forthe dirt and weeds and cigarette butts

stuckin the sidewalk cracks,

forcritters so small our eyes don't see them,

eventuallyuncovering the unmarked graves

ofstray cats left out to die the previous winter.

Theywash away, too: the dead cats, the dirt,

theweeds, the cigarette butts, little chunks

ofthe sidewalk that avoided repair

becausehenpecked city work crews

couldn'tget to them.

(Thisis not an age

whereneighbors help

neighbors.This is an age

ofpaperwork – left behind

asthe digital age takes

everywhereelse. More

paperworkmeans more

industry,more to justify

somesmall town middle

manager'sfutile existence,

somethingto merit

thatsmall plaque

placedin some ignored corner

ofthe old city hall building.)

Thesunny side boils in the summer

andevent he gadflies have sense enough

tostay away and loaf

onthe shady side of the street. People

walkslow, clutch their purses and wallets

Thesetimes are tough, and the only

businessesthat boom are the bars

atthe bottom of the hill... the only

hidingplaces left. The talk on the bar stools

isthe same on either side:

toomuch rain / too little rain

theprice of corn /soy

machineryrepairs / foreclosures

cynicalwhispers about

newbusinesses / new faces

laxschool teachers / lazy parents

thePresident / the cost of milk.

Inthe Fall we all breathe a sigh of relief

atthe break in the humidity

andthe prospect of not having to mow the yard.

Nightair cools. Days are warm.

Andeven storm cloud don't bother anyone.

Thisis the time of year

thatmakes people want to move back

tothe Midwest, to the place of their birth,

tosee the leaves and to loaf for no particular purpose

onthe cozy stoop in front of the old barber shop

onthe shady side of the street –

theone the old men used for that purpose

inthat Once Upon A Time

timeour grandparents used to

reminisceabout and that we only

pretendedto listen to

beforewe discovered the glory found

ona simple stoop, a cool spot on the sidewalk

ina town getting in its final stretch

beforeanother long and buried winter.

Renunciation / Present Tense

2011-09-22T08:20:00.001-05:00

There is nothing to be done.

The Earth is dying – again.

We scurry, wait to die

and the clock watchers think

they're doing us a favor

keeping us distracted

with reality television,

sappy sci-fi creationism

and nostalgic throw backs

to 1970's television shows

to a time outside and before

people took seriously the idea

that we may not survive

the next quarter decade

no matter what we do. The

worst part of the Mayan

calender is that if the world

does end, all those annoying

religious freaks will still

feel justified... event though

we will all be just as dead

and if there is a Heaven

it will be nothing like

any of us might hope for.

Lilliputian Defense

2011-09-18T11:10:00.000-05:00

He is a giant in a world that no longerbelieves

In giants. There is nothing here thathe has not seen

Before, and nothing that he has notheard before;

But he has learned the fine art oflistening

And of faking interest because he knows

This is what the world needs from him –

Cynicism will simply not do in these

Wilted salad days. Children run amok,

Pulling the heads off abandoned Barbiedolls

While their parents drink skunk beer

Out of fine crystal glasses,reminiscing

About a past they neither remember

Nor understand. They find his house,

Catch him in the kitchen brewing tea,and

Ask him to give them a reading

From yesterday's tired leaves.

The women gaze longingly at his largefeet.

The men are jealous of his lusciousbeard,

And ask what kind of conditioner heuses.

They leave the children outside toravage the garden

And ask about the absence of his wife –

Not because they care, but because theyknow

The subject makes him weepy and proneto drink

And they want a taste of the sacredwine

He keeps stored in the cellar

With her ashes.

Poem - A Statement on Spirits and Spirituality

2011-09-12T07:24:00.000-05:00

I am more likely

to trust a drunk

who tells me

There is a God

than I am someone

who has never

suffered the indignity

of being looked

down upon by

people who are

too blind

to notice

they are just

one pink slip away

from asking me

to buy them

a beer.

Tongues

2011-09-11T19:31:00.000-05:00

Onemorning we woke up,

rolledover to greet each other

andthe day, and the words

thatleft your mouth

werenothing more

thana series of syllables

Icould neither interpret

norunderstand. At first

Ithought it was

oneof my fucked up dreams

and Itried to talk back

thinking,maybe,

onceI opened my mouth

thosesame sounds

wouldfall from my lips

and Iwould be granted --

the way fire falls on an apostle--

theability to understand.

Butyou looked at me

firstconfused, then annoyed

likethe way you do

whenyou think

I'mbeing an ass

orplaying some joke

noone but me will

ever get. We roll out of bed,

gothrough the ablutions

andrituals of our morning:

coffeebrewing, finding clothes

feedingthe cats. You

arestressed and I am

waitingon caffeine

that (I hope) will lend clarity.

Youwalked out the door,

mutteringin your muted dialect

afterblowing a kiss at me

andlighting your second cigarette

ofthe day. The scent of them

stillgets me; and I am reminded

oflate nights when we would

situp and talk because
each moment meantsomething sacred,

because ourtongues were
something sacred, andwe somehow felt
like itwould never come again

andhow the scent of you

andthe taste of you
would linger whenI would have to
sneak outof your dorm room

earlyin the morning

toescape detection.

Summer Kings

2011-09-06T12:00:00.000-05:00

Turned on the television – no news.Not now.

No where to put it it, all the pain andmisery

from the past 6 hours

while I was dreaming.

(Sleeping is a form of meditation

and I know when I wake

whether I ought to go back

and finish.

Sometimes I can't, though.

Damned Adulthood.)

Turn on the television. No Coffee. Notyet.

Will buy it on Main Street. Caught thelast part

of a movie about Allen Ginsberg

and I remembered where I was

when I heard he died.

It was Spring.

I was the ghost of a former self,

wandering the streets of Cincinnati:

divorced, college drop out, drunk,

and broke – which is to say

broken – broken like

the lines of a poem

writ on narrow onion paper.

Slept on couches

curled up in doorways

aged my mother

disappointed the ghost of my father.

He died in the Fall.

(Druids used to call them SummerKings –

when a man in his prime

died, was sacrificed in the Fall

so the crops would be fertile

the following year.)

Sitwells, the coffee shop I used tohide in

when I could afford coffee

was going to have a memorial reading.

Legions of Ginsberg lovers

reading lines inspired by the man

William F. Buckley called “naive

when it comes to politics.”

I signed up but did not read. I did notattend

because I couldn't find the words

in the doorway where I shared cheapwine

with an old man named Clancy

who would not go to the shelter

even when it was cold.

Turn on the television. Bad realityshows

and even worse news. At least Ginsberg

left poems behind. Fathers

leave sons and daughters behind.

Turn off the television

wishing for a bottle of wine

a comfortable tree,

and the final resting

of all the old ghosts

who haunt me

when I first wake

from dreaming.

Quatrain #1

2011-09-02T11:17:00.000-05:00

Life is an sojourn best experienced

in the absence of planning – all

action deliberate and liberated

free from fear and fully whimsical.

Monday Morning

2011-08-29T07:19:00.000-05:00

You only know

who you are

early in the morning –

first thing, before

the daily news

distracts you

from facing

the reflection you see

when you close your eyes

and see yourself

etched on the insides

of your eyelids

as nature made you

not necessarily

as you and the world

would intend you to be.

Daguerreotypes:Leon and Delilah's Night Out

2011-08-28T16:16:00.003-05:00

Leon wandered the dark narrow bar,telling people who didn't know him he just got out of prison – 5months – and would they buy him a drink. Underage Delilah hobbledaround on crutches, sneaking pity beers from men old enough to be herfather but young enough to appreciate her cleavage. One drunk couple,slopping all over the floor, stumbled out to the parking lot, fuckedin the back seat of an '95 Oldsmobile, and returned. After two moreshots, she started rubbing up on a woman playing darts and beforelong, they were dancing. Leon managed a few drinks before UnderageDelilah ratted him out for a beer and a menthol cigarette.

“I hurt my leg in the river,” shesaid. “I'd show you my scars, but haven't been able to shave mylegs.”

The Transfiguration of Rufus Skeen, Chapter 2, Part 1

2011-08-25T12:28:00.002-05:00

Hisfamily's farm was part of the most fertile section of Seven HillsValley. His father often sat around after supper was finished,puffed on his pipe and recited the family history, which, he said,could be traced back to the first arrival of white men to the region– the original trek led by Baptist minister Obadiah Blight and theProtestant faithful who set out from Boston in search of the landspoken of in the Great Book. The Skeen family was one of theoriginal 77 families who set out with little more than faith to carrythem across the heathen lands and were, by the grace of heaven one ofthe 12 surviving families who arrived and cut up the fertile valleyinto farms and into the central village of Blighton.

Rufusknew this history intimately because, besides the rain, the crops,and the Great Book, his father talked of little else. “It'simportant,” he'd say... and say... and say. “It's important toknow your roots, where you're from. It's the only you have to know ifyou're acting like a man.”

Hewas sick of hearing his father talk about it and sick of having tothink about it. All of it. Sick of hearing his father talk about it.Sick of having to recite it back at randomly. He could be working inthe barn and his father would walk in and make him recite the entirelineage to present, with correct birth and (when applicable) deathdates. Sometimes he would make Rufus recite the names of the theoriginal 77 families. Rufus felt as if he were living in the pastwhen the entire world around him was pushing its self into thefuture. The Village of Blighton was growing, and the people wholived there were growing with it. There was talk of a new dam andhydroelectric plant that would turn Apple Fork River into a lake, andthere was talk of turning the area around the lake into a state park.So not only would Blighton benefit from newer and cheaperelectricity, but it would create a destination, make it a PlacePeople Go instead of A Place People Escape.

Butthat was the future and Rufus's father, Aloysius, would have none ofit. The Skeen farm was the only farm in the valley not to sell out tothe newly formed Seven Hills Energy Cooperative. More people weremoving into the valley, trying to escape the city, and new houses hadto be built. The other farmers sold out at healthy profit, becamepartners in the new energy cooperative, and were opening businessesin town to cater to the new arrivals. Restaurants and rooming housesand clothing stores. Old man Fettierre was opening a ladies' shoestore.

Everynight Rufus went to bed praying his father would wake up and decideto sell the farm. After all, the phone calls and visits fromcooperative representatives were almost a daily occurrence. And evenas he prayed every night to leave, he dreamed each night of theplaces he read about in books and saw on television. All he wanted todo was escape. He wanted to live someplace with publictransportation. Someplace that didn't require him to get his handsdirty when he worked. Someplace where people didn't look at youcross-eyed if they didn't see you walking into church on Sundaymorning. He dreamed of moving to the city and changing his name toLuke or Robert or Stanley – a name that had nothing to do theSkeens, with the 12 families, with Blighton, or with Apple Valley.

Yetevery morning when Rufus woke up to complete his chores, Aloysius wasas intractable as ever. “Our family has always been provided for,”he'd say. “And that's more than most people will everbe able to say.”

WheneverAloysius lit the burned bowl of his briar pipe after clearing hissupper plate – the cue that he would once again begin to talk aboutthe family and the Great Book – Rufus and his twin sister Selmawould lock their eyes on one another and simultaneously roll them.They knew better than to interrupt or allow their lack of interest toshow because their father believed deeply in the idea that sparingthe rod spoiled the child; and no child of his would spoil on hiswatch. No sir.

ThoughRufus saw the rod much more often than his sister. And every time hedid, for whatever infraction Aloysius chose to punish him for, Rufussaw with increasing clarity that someday he would get out of AppleFork, away from Blighton, and into the larger world.

Andhe also saw with increasing clarity – and no small bit ofsatisfaction – that it would break his father's heart.

The Rose Tattoo (Or, Sketch of One of God's Little Left Overs)

2011-08-19T10:34:00.000-05:00

Strictly speaking,Simpson was not a complicated person. He woke up each day ten minutesbefore his alarm clock sounded. He showered quickly and efficientlyand shaved whether he really needed to or not. He liked his coffeeblack, but not too strong and his white toast lightly buttered with a minuscule dusting of cinnamon and sugar. Simpson left his home everyworkday at precisely 7:01 a.m. and arrived at Meladon Ficus andAssociates, his place of employment for the past 10 years, exactly 45minutes later. (Sometimes there was an accident or delay on theinterstate that caused him to be late by five or ten minutes; but hewas so punctual otherwise that everyone assumed he possessed somepreternatural sense of traffic patterns and was in his corner cubicleby ten minutes until eight – whether he actually was or not.)

While at work hewas focused and professional. His job was not a complicated one andit was not one that provided him with much power, affluence, ornotice from his superiors. Fifty or sixty years ago, he would havebeen called a paper pusher. Now there's very little paper and most ofwhat he does is transfer files from one folder on the server toanother folder on the same server so that someone else can look at itafter he goes over it. His job is to make sure that the person whosaved the document in the file Simpson pulled it from didn't make anymistakes. The person who looked at it after him made sure thatSimpson didn't miss anything. Eventually the files made their way tothe Executive Board, where they were glanced over as visuals for apresentation that someone else – who had no part in putting thedocuments together – was giving. And it was that person who wouldget the credit for the hard work of all the invisible people whotouched up document along the way. Simpson didn't mind this; losingout on the credit also meant that he lost out on the blame, too. Andthis was primarily where he drew satisfaction from his job.

OnWednesdays – which happened to be this particular day – Simpsonate his lunch at half past 12 instead of at noon. No one cared. Noteven the the office manager Delores Filtcher. Delores spent most ofher days fawning over the young delivery boy who brought FEDEXpackages to the 15^thfloor office and talking to the small circle of women she drank withafter work. Simpson knew the only reason she sexually harassed theFEDEX delivery man was because she didn't want it to get out that sheand her was having an affair with one of the other telephone servicespecialists, a meek little mouse of a woman named Mildred.

Simpson alsothought that maybe Delores was a little scared of him – though hecouldn't really understand why.

He sat and ate hislunch – usually a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on white bread(with the crusts cut off, the way his mom used to give them to himwhen he was bedridden and ill as a child), an apple, and a bottle oflemon flavored iced tea from the vending machine (Simpson didn't likethe tarty flavor of real lemon, but he liked the saccharine taste offake lemon flavoring. ) He said very little to anyone beyond vaguepleasantries.

Wednesday was theday he allowed himself to watch Penelope. Penelope had the same jobhe had, but in another department. On Wednesdays she always wore herback in a pony tail. And while Penelope was a beautiful woman everyother day of the week, long auburn hair, hazel eyes, and a well caredfor physique. Simpson imaged by the sculpted curvature of her rearand the flatness of her stomach that she worked out at least two tothree times a week. (Simpson himself did not.) And while that was anespecially pleasant bonus, it wasn't those things about her thatattracted his attention.

It was the tattoo.

A small rosetattoo, to be exact, just below her hair line on the back of herneck. It was small, ornate. Against her pale winter skin it lookedlike etching on fine porcelain. There was no indication that therewere tattoos anywhere else on her body; Simpson had seen her in avariety of sleeveless, short, and long-sleeved professional outfitsand there was nothing on her arms. She sometimes wore a skirt whenthe weather was warm and there was no ink marring her perfectlyshaped legs. He supposed she could have tattoos other places; but hedidn't like to think of her abdomen being marred with ink... oranywhere else, either.

No, it was just asmall, single tattoo. He liked to sit and imagine the story of it ashe ate his peanut butter and jelly sandwich with the crusts cut off.He liked to imagine it was some brief bout of college indiscretion;in his more imaginative moments, he imagined that it wasn't a tattooat all, but a rare birthmark. Something that made her precious. Rare.Distinct. But maybe she was unaware of what it really meant, andmaybe she had always wanted to know... that thing that only he couldtell her because it was knowledge that he was born with, something hehad known his entire, dull existence, without even knowing WHY heknew it. But it had been there. Waiting. Waiting for the moment whenthe two of them would occupy the same space at the same time. Waitingso that he could tell her his secret knowledge... and in the knowing,together they would both be free.

He timed eatinghis sandwich to coincide with her finishing her egg salad croissantand stood so that he would reach the door before she did. He did thisevery Wednesday, so it required almost no thought. When they mettogether at the door, each and every Wednesday, Simpson thought thatmight be the moment he could tell her the meaning of the rose tattooand free them both. He imagined the moment over and over again: theexpression on her face as he mouthed the words that she had beenneeding to hear her entire life – words that she was unaware of,except for the great emptiness of their absence. He imagined hersmiling, maybe touching the rose lightly, and a slight tear rollingdown her otherwise perfect face. “Thank you,” she would say. “Ialways hoped it would be you.”

As he approachedher, reaching for the door in order to open it, he prepared. Thewords, he knew were on his lips. He had only to speak. Then he openedthe door, and she looked up at him and smiled a glorious smile.

Then her cellphone rang.

“Oh!” shesaid, hurrying through the open door and answering her phone.“Thanks, Simmons,” she hissed quickly over her shoulder.

Simpson stoodthere for a moment, then walked through himself. He didn't follow herdown the hall. Instead he went back to his office and went about therest of his day, wondering whether Penelope was aware of the companypolicy regarding cell phone usage during work hours.

Sketch of One of Life's Great Middle Managers

2011-08-05T12:55:00.002-05:00

Whenhis alarm clock sounded promptly at six in the morning on thisparticular Thursday morning – like it did every Monday throughFriday morning at six – Lawrence Fitzpickle met the day with theusual resignation that gave him no options and nothing to thinkabout. Delores, his wife of more than 25 years, lay on her side,snoring and drooling onto the pillow. She didn't have to wake up asearly and as a rule, she didn't because she worked 2^ndshift at the Juvenile Women's Correctional Facility located one townover. Lawrence sat up gingerly and slid off the bed; he was sore...more sore than usual. The only reason he budged at all was becausethe alarm was blaring and because after spending several hours beingthe bottom in Delores' Wednesday Night Strap-On Fantasy, his bowelswere about to release a movement of semi-biblical proportions.

Afterhe was finished on the toilet, and after making sure there were nomore open wounds, Lawrence the hall towards the kitchen. He walkedinto the kitchen and was greeted by Tumbles the cat ,sitting on thekitchen counter in front of the coffee pot, staring at him. Waiting.There had been a time when Lawrence tried to make his coffee beforeletting the cat out; but over the years the two of them had developeda sort of détente.Lawrence had agreed to let the cat out first and the cat agreed –in as much as cats can agree to anything – not to piss on hispillow.

Lawrenceconsidered this one of his more successful negotiations, and tried toapply its lessons to other parts of his life. He especially likedthat it required no words, no confrontation, no listing of demands.

Tumblesthe cat, seeing that Lawrence was indeed going to continue to abideby their silent agreement, he jumped off the counter and flouncedtowards the back door. Lawrence followed him, unlocked the door,opened it, and stood there as the cat stepped grandly out into theday.

Closingthe door behind Tumbles, Lawrence set about making coffee. When helooked in the cabinet, he noticed they were out of the coffee heliked; he'd forgotten to buy some on the way home the day before. Theonly coffee there was the hazelnut flavored kind Delores likedsometimes. He didn't like hazelnut coffee; it left an after taste inhis mouth that he found unpleasant and reminded him of dirty socks.He put enough water and grounds in the coffee maker to brew a fullpot even though he knew Delores would only drink half of one cup.

Whilehe was in the shower, Lawrence thought about his day. Today would belike yesterday and like tomorrow. Even though the weekend wasapproaching, there was nothing exciting to look forward to, exceptfor the extra two hours of sleep he would get. As the water trickleddown from his balding scalp down his puffy frame, Lawrence lookeddown at himself and wondered what his life might have been like if hehad been bolder. It wasn't that he didn't love his wife; it wasn'teven that he hated his job, particularly. His job was a job like mostothers and he was sure Delores was a wife like most others. He feltlike the people under him in his department liked him. He felt likethe executive managers liked him. He hadn't been offered a promotionever since he'd been the youngest employee to be made DepartmentManager. The trajectory had been clear, then; he had been sure he wasthe fast track. But the next bump never came; after a while, whenhis bosses were younger men than he was, Lawrence stopped hoping forthat next promotion.

Theonly thing that was going to make his day bearable was the cup ofcoffee he planned to stop and get on the way to work. He'd have tostop at the coffee shop and stand in line; but it was Thursday, whichmeant that pretty young girl... the one who always smiled and whoalways remembered what kind of coffee he wanted … would be working.Lora. Her name was Lora. Lora with the long red hair, shiny eyes, andpuffy lips. Lora who was working her way through college to be anelementary school teacher. Lora with the nose ring and tiny startattoo on her neck. He often wondered if she had other tattoos andwhere they were. It would be improper to ask, of course. But he likedto imagine them, highlights on her young body, stories of a lifestill fresh with possibilities. He thought about her and he felthimself come alive. Just a little. But then Lawrence's excitementturned to sadness, then resignation when he realized he'd gotten toomuch soap in an open cut left behind by Delores' new strap-onmonster, the Majestic 7000.

It's Not Easy

2011-08-03T11:23:00.000-05:00

Looking for a place,

a place to hide

a place to revive

where strong words

are not reviled,

where open eyes

are not swollen shut,

where we really are

the image of ourselves

we sell to our children

like desperate used car

salesmen.

Looking for a place

a place to hide

a place that is more

than escape,

more than existing

than just out of spite,

more than the afterbirth

of a world politicians

and preachers and

blind optimists say

was simply

never meant to be.

Looking for a place,

but sometimes

it's just not easy.

There's no Home

for me to go to

though I dream of one.

Every place my feet

have carried me disappears

the moment my foot moves forward

and I am in the world

looking back,

seeing nothing,

remembering everything,

filled to the gills

with the memories of things

most people think

isn't worth the space.

Looking for a place

knowing it's ahead of me

knowing the map etched

in the memories

of things behind me

knowing I may not know

when I find it

because all the signs

have been worn away

destroyed by cement mixers,

buried under rusted machines,

erased by digitalized visions

of megalomaniacs

and mad men

with their finger on the button

and their boot heals

on each of our throats.

Daguerreotypes II

2011-07-31T08:12:00.000-05:00

Small townlaundromat Saturday morning:

me and the onesober resident

of a depopulated300 resident town

who, undoubtedly,just got off work

an hour or so agoand is completing

one moreunpleasant chore

so he can fallasleep

unencumbered byProtestant Guilt.

He looks as tiredas I have felt.

He will feel thesame way

tomorrow.

He carries in thebachelor's load--

two pairs of jeans(he's wearing his third pair)

four shirts, fourstained once-white t-shirts,

socks, underwear.I caught him

looking amused

as I hung mywife's dress clothes

(she hateswrinkles) and I wonder

if he wonders

why she isn'tdoing laundry. Maybe

he wonders what'sit's like

to have to figureout

who has more timeto kill

sitting in anunair-conditioned laundromat

on a Saturdaymorning

as the humidsummer weather

is settling in.

The Transfiguration of Rufus Skeen I: Rufus Recalls His First Baptism

2011-07-22T10:30:00.003-05:00

Rufus recalled his baptism. He had been9 years old.

It felt like the right thing to do –to stand up in front of his father, his mother, his sister Selma, andthe entire congregation to proclaim that he believed and that hewished to be saved.

He had watched people go through theceremony before; the petitioner stood during the Call, which usuallycame after the sermon. Mr. Lancette, the preacher, stood in front ofthe alter, leading the congregation in the call hymn. Behind him onthe alter, the communion service sat, shining gold and glimmering inthe sunlight that shone through the stained glass windows. The wholeof the sanctuary was washed in this light, and the gold plating ofthe communion service glowed like a new sun, infinite, ethereal, andeternal.

When Rufus was 9, he believed in Godbecause his father told him that God existed, that Jesus lived, died,and rose again. Rufus could never imagine what God looked like, orsounded like, so he imagined that God looked and sounded like hisDad. Rufus couldn't imagine heaven, either, despite all the talkabout houses with many rooms and streets paved in gold with pearlgates and jewel encrusted walls; he had never seen gold, except forthe communion service, and the only thing he knew about pearls wasthat they were found in oysters, deep in the ocean. He learned thatin school. Since he couldn't imagine heaven, he imagined that God –the God who looked and talked like his dad – lived in the spaceabove the sanctuary. Heaven was a crawl space. He knew about crawlspaces because his house had a crawl space where his mother kept allthe Christmas decorations, boxes full of old pictures that were toofragile to hang on the walls, and miscellaneous junk no one wanted tothrow away. To Rufus, Heaven was that place people put things theydidn't need very often or didn't know what to do with, and God wasthe guy on the ladder who brought the decorations down the day afterThanksgiving.

What Rufus did know, and didunderstand, and didn't need to visualize, was how his father feltabout religion. The only thing his father read besides the newspaperwas the family bible. When Rufus was small and learning to read, hismother read to him from the Old Testament. Genesis. Joseph and thecoat of many colors; David and Goliath. He didn't understand how Godcould be a burning bush, a column of fire, and a column of smoke, buthe understood that his father would be proud of him if he decided tobe baptized, to be saved, to take Jesus into his heart.

Rufus did it without warning. He madesure he sat on the end of the pew before church started, so hewouldn't have to ask permission to get by anybody. When the Callcame, Rufus closed his hymnal and, while his sister, mother, andfather looked on, shocked, he walked with what he thought wasdetermination and maturity up to the front of the sanctuary, whereMr. Lancette was bellowing out the first verse of He Walks withMe. Everyone was surprised to see him up there, people mutteredand pointed. Rufus didn't look back to see the look on his dad'sface, but he imagined that his father was smiling the smile hegenerally reserved for when Selma did something cute, or when sheacted in the Christmas pageant, or when she got good grades, whichshe always did.

After the call, the preacher tookRufus's hand and shook it. It was a hearty, adult handshake. Then,like all the people who had come before him, like he had seencountless times, Rufus was asked to confirm what he believed.

"I believe that Jesus is theChrist, the Son of the Living God."

The congregation collectively intoned,"Amen!"

Then two women, wives of two of theelders, came up to take Rufus in the back, to show him where toprepare for baptism. One of the women led him by the shoulders,behind the organ, back into the hallway behind the sanctuary. Therewere stalls there, like the ones in department stores to try onclothes in. The women showed him where the white baptismal gownswere, and picked one out that would fit him fine. They also showedhim where to put his church clothes, where the underwear was, (so thepetitioner wouldn't get their own underwear wet; Rufus thought thiswas a particularly well thought out idea) and where to put the wetunderwear after it was over. He changed into the gown the women gavehim; it was long and white, like the ones angels wore in the pictureshe had seen in Sunday School. After he changed, one of the women,smiling, proud, told him where to stand.

The communion service was over. Thecurtains in front of the baptismal pool were drawn. The familiarorgan music began, and he saw the preacher come around the other sidewearing on along white coat and wading boots like his father used forfly fishing. He went up the steps on the right side of the pool whileRufus waited on the left side. He wasn't thinking about anything.Time was agonizingly slow.

Finally, it was his turn. One of thechurch wives helped him up the first step, then disappeared –probably to go back around and watch with the rest of congregationand his family.

The pool was nothing more than an extralarge bathtub. The floor and sides were covered with small squaretiles – the kind found in locker room showers and public restrooms.The water in the baptismal pool was clear and smelled like chlorine.It was also was warm – warm like spit, or urine.

He took the minister's hand, and waitedfor him to finish talking. "Rufus Aloysius Skeen, in as much asyou have confirmed your belief, and in as much as you seek theforgiveness of Jesus Christ and the redemption of your sins, I nowbaptize you…"

Rufus was underwater for only aninstant, and when Mr. Lancette brought him back up, the water left aweird film all over him. The congregation started singing a hymn ofpraise, and the preacher led Rufus out of the water. As he started upthe stairs, Rufus looked out to where his father sat, expecting tosee him smiling, see him proud.

Instead, his father sat stone-faced andsilent as everyone else sang.

By and By

2011-07-21T13:29:00.001-05:00

I wish I believed.

I know the songs

the ones that sound

so so wrong

when I sing them.

How great thou love lifted

me in the garden by

and by. Drinking

another cup of coffee

staring into the blackness –

communion with a bean –

which is as close to god

as I feel most days,

not being a farmer

or a builder of mighty things

The book it says

Jesus was a carpenter

and Peter was a fisherman,

and I find myself wondering

whether the apostles drank

import or domestic beer

while they threw out their nets

the way I did

when I first believed.

I wish the stories spoke

the same way silence does

first thing in the morning

or late into the night

when insomnia or bad dreams

strike. God, I suppose, exists

between the tick tocks

of a grandfather clock.

The ghost of the old man

who shuffles on the porch

smoking his restless pipe

knows this and together

we commune between

the sweeping of the second hand

pacing the same creaky floorboards

and scratching pen to paper

lines and endless groans

and poems no one will hear

and no one will read.

Daguerreotypes

2011-07-05T14:22:00.000-05:00

Neighborhoodkids shooting off fireworks

illuminatingthe tired smiling faces of distracted elders

castinglong shadows that pop, sparkle and fizzle.

Dullfire. Vast dreams. The colors fade like

oldflag fabric – the flag of our fathers' forefathers,

burieda top their sons and daughters.

Inthe humid, moonless, starless night,

bloodshines black

likeobsessively polished dress shoes.

Huddling 'roundthe campfire,

drinking beer as warm as tears,

old men and womenrecount stories of their America:

the one fed to usin digestible textbook morsels

long amputatedfrom the The Long Memory. Stories

cast off likemoldy bread on forgotten trails that have

long since beenwidened, flattened and paved over

in the name ofprogress.

Thesenarratives

are not told invideo games

or on standardizedtests; not mentioned

in hyper-real 3Dmovies

meant to titillate and to tax and to strangle

the imagination,to erase the collective unconscious.

They are not foundin the long shadows

and short light ofsparklers,

nor in the ghostsliving the cellars

and sleepingporches of houses

older than thedirt under a

gravedigger'sfingernails.

When the beer is gone and the stories

are finished and the sparklers

are spentabandoned sticks in the neighbor's lawn

we will notremember them and will not be aware

that somethingsacred, something soul-tied

has been stolenand forever lost.

Where We Left Off

2011-07-02T20:54:00.000-05:00

This conversation has strung itself out

over months, over years, overcenturies.

Echoes of eons in every word,

the cadence of memory buried

in each and every syllable. In spite ofmyself

you make my words vibrate and sing;

in spite of yourself, you still find

the soft heart that has driven thisworld

from it's primordial birthing to date;

it beats within your chest, heaves

like oceans under a quixotic moon,

reverberates in your bones and exits

with just the faintest smile. We speak

like old soldiers. We dream likelovers.

We live and we talk, and it is intalking

that we will live on. You and I,

we will duel on like this.

Forever.

Daily Reappraisal

2011-06-26T13:04:00.000-05:00

This morning, I made the coffee strong

and I checked off my mental list

of obligations. Three days of rain made

the grass grow something awful

and thought I know the neighbors

and the old biddies on the town council

object, I do not care if the grassgrows.

The grass has done nothing to me.

You cannot call me Ishmael;

call me House Hubby instead.

My endless ocean is a carpet

that never looks clean; my dark grimyabyss

the dishes piled in the sink.

And hidden in the thick weeds

that choked out the orange poppies,

there be monsters. Upstairs,

there are stories and poems to bewritten;

there are newspaper articles to writethat someone

somewhere will not like and will

cause others to wonder whether I'mworried

that my address is in the phonebook.
There be monsters out there, too,

not so hidden, lurking in front of cityhall

like wounded wild boars

that would eat their young

rather than wander off to die. Theyhuff

and they puff like some children'sstory villain;

but it's all for naught; because theycannot stop

the turning of the world. And thatturning

is the only obligation I carry with me

into the rest of the day.

Oompa: Part, The 3rd

2011-06-13T13:26:00.010-05:00

After a considerable amount of groaning and several severely patronizing chastising remarks from Shakir, Stanley led the Westerner off to the left – he could not tell the direction because dark rain clouds were covering the sky and, in spite of what his new employer insisted, Stanley did not have an animal's natural sense of direction. He chose the left because his left testicle itched and turning that direction gave him a chance to scratch without having to endure more of Shakir's attempts at “civilizing” him.

The way next to the river was relatively clear of brush and weeds and there was very little grass to speak of; mostly it was tiny pebbles, all of which he felt through the thin soles of his expensive patent leather shoes. They were shoes made to look good, not be comfortable or to hike soon to be 50 foot deep lakes in the middle of nowhere. His blisters had popped and formed new blisters. He could feel the leather starting to crack from exposure and abuse. As they neared what turned out to be the southern wall of the canyon the clouds let loose a torrential rain that turned every bit of dirt around them to mud and made the pebble-like rocks under Stanley's feet slick like marbles. Halfway to the rock face, he slipped and fell in the mud screaming an obscenity, causing him to swallow a mouthful of mud that smelled like animal shit.

“MOTHER FUCKER!” He screamed and wallowed and could not – or maybe his body simply wouldn't let him – get out of the mud. J. Paddington Shakir, holding his nose with the dainty forefinger and thumb of his left hand, tried to pull Stanley up with his right; and were it not for the fact that Stanley was more afraid of walling in animal shit with Shakir than he was of wallowing alone, Shakir would have pulled himself in and they both would have been covered in whatever the foul stench was. Needless to say, when Stanley stood up, the remnants of his suit were ruined.

“It's a shame Oompa,” Shakir said shaking his head, “that all you know of the King's English are crude obscenities.”

“It's YOUR fault!” he snapped back, giving in momentarily to the shock to his pride. He was typically a very particular about his dress and groom habits. Now he felt as dirty inside as he did outside and as much as he spit and vomited, he could not get the taste of excrement out of his mouth; it lingered like bad mouth wash.

Shakir frowned and shook his head. “This is unacceptable, Oompa.” His tone was sharp and whiny. “We must find shelter, and we must find it soon. We simply don't have time for another one of your primitive culture's superstitions; wallowing in animal feces won't protect you from some non-existent thunder god. Hold yourself together for God's sake, man!”

I don't know if I'll make it out this giant fucking hole in the ground alive, Stanley thought. But one way or another, I'm going to get that son of a bitch.

The rain was steady and picking up pace; at first, Stanley appreciated the rain because it at least washed off some the mud and shit that was caked into his clothes and into every pore of his body. The muddy water was seeping into his shoes, soaking through his silk socks and squishing between his toes. He thought he could feel the rot growing between his toes and imagined what he would look like if he were rescued; his wife would come to the hospital (after she dismounted that fucking sumo-wrestler downstairs) and see him there, with all of his toes amputated from some rare wilderness rot. Of course, by then he would be insane and not notice the absence of his toes, and his wife and father-in-law could institutionalize him somewhere and forget about him. Stanley found the thought somewhat comforting; sure, he'd have no toes. But he'd have no cheating wife, no bastard of a father-in-law who enjoyed making midget jokes at his expense – like the time he paid to have kiddie urinal installed in the Executive bathroom with Stanley's name engraved on it. Or the time he insisted that Stanley dress as an elf for the office Christmas party and made him sit on everyone's lap. Or at their wedding when he locked Stanley in the empty wine refrigerator.

“Look there, Oompa!” Shakir was shrieking like a little girl. “A cave! I see a cave!”

“What good does that do us?” Stanley asked. “Then this giant mud puddle floods, the cave will flood too. We're better off trying to climb out.”

“We'll never make it up in this downpour,” Shakir said like he briefly considered it as an option. “Besides, I bet that the cave we're looking for; and if that's the case, we won't have to worry about anything. Come!”

“I'm not your fucking dog!” Stanley spit between his teeth.

“What's that, Oompa?”

“I said, I'm your willing cog!”

“Your attempts at English are improving yet, my little friend. Let us get out of this torrent and dry off.”

“You bet!” I'll play along, Stanley thought. Just until I eat your goddamn eyeballs.

[Be sure to check out Grindbone, too, for more work by Mick Parsons, as well as work by Kaplowitz and Brent Allard!]

Of Thee I Sing

2011-06-10T15:18:00.001-05:00

The corn is planted and that rain has come

and the river has done it's flooding

and receding. This isn't Huck Finn's river –

not the place of promises and dreams

not that boyhood freedom. There is no freedom now;

the corporate oligarchs have taken it

turned it into pre-career testing... gotta know,

don't ya know, what Slot B your A'll fit into...

the future of America is dependent on

all those tax dollars our kids will pay.

They may as well start chipping away

now.

A year ago this summer

two boys died who should not have

working a grain bin

they had no business working; but the old men

said they did it when they were young

and that's the problem with kids these days,

no backbone, no work ethic.

The corn is planted and growing

and the boys are planted, too.

But nothing grows on Bone Hill

but plastic flowers

and crab grass.

I hear the trains come through at night

and even now, the sound is still a comfort.

I love the sound of trains... some boyhood thing,

some dream I had once

of wearing a striped conductor's hat,

keeping time with a pocket watch

in the breast pocket of my overalls,

the miles of track stretching ahead and falling behind

relentless and forward. There aren't as many trains

as there were, and the interstates

have replaced the rail

and we are too busy

trying to make Exit 17

to slow down and see

the small towns slowing dying,

buried on Bone Hill

recorded in State Historical Society Notes,

and left to rot.

I dream of an America I have never seen,

one I recall in the songs of men wiser and more stalwart,

the memories of those who tell the stories

to keep that world alive. Miles and miles

of corn rows, miles of train track,

all disappearing like the small towns around them,

the histories locked away

in the forgotten back room

of a Carnegie Library Building

like some badly organized time capsule... after all,

if it ain't on Google, it ain't worth knowing.

A life unscanned and undigitized

is no life at all.

And the little that remains

is parceled out by angry old men

in the back rooms of dilapidated court houses...

decisions made to today, regretted tomorrow,

then forgotten in the name of expediency.

The memories lack resonance

and are not as important

as the price of corn,

the cost of fuel,

and the number of boys willing to work

so that some migrant won't get the job

and destroy our Way Of Life;

better 1000 dead children in grain bins

than one Mexican feeds his family.

Better 10,000 dead soldiers

than 536 out of work politicians.

I dream of an America

I have never seen; the one I first imagined

staring at the names of 52,000 dead men

on a marble wall in Washington D.C. I am told

the men died for me; I am told

students who marched off to war

are there for me. But I never asked them

to give up their childhoods. I never asked

for caskets draped in flags. I never asked

for Memorial Day cemeteries.

The corn is growing

but there are no young men in the fields,

only old men in large machines,

kicking up pesticide dust that kills honey bees.

I dream of an America I have never seen

and it is of thee I sing.

[Scratch]: Palm Poem #7

2011-06-06T13:27:00.002-05:00

Palm Poem #7

I've had my gutful of somber
And my heart can't take it anymore.
My heart beats in common time
And when I close my eyes
I feel the Earth move symmetrical
And when I breathe
It comes out my lungs
Hot like coal fire
Cool like the wind
From a late Spring storm.
All the words are my words;
None of the blessings belong to me.
In the beginning of the words
I found the beginning of me,
Moving symmetrical,
Lumbering over the thin skin of this tired world,
Seeing the new world coming
Popping up through the dead dirt
Plate tectonics, igneous shoulder blades
Born into the Sisyphus stone.

Keep to the Shaded Side of the Hill

2011-06-04T18:00:00.000-05:00

You find out who you are in bus depots.

In the downtown Chicago Station,

late at night, there are times

when a hard floor is preferable

to yet another chair and you find

yourself eavesdropping on the tidbits

of several dozen conversations

that are all pretty much about the same thing.

Dreams take on a delusional quality

at 3 in the morning crammed in

next to a Taiwanese foreign exchange student

who asks everyone he sees what it must be like

to see a tornado. Pure thought percolated

into direct action-- words transubstantiate

into solid forms hanging listless on the heat

that bounces back up from the cement floor

and lingers like an the odor of moldy cheese.

You know the better class of mad men

because they are more eloquent

when describing their particular delusions;

and somehow when they tire of you

and find some other soul to preach at

their absence is palpable.

6 Repetitive Lines

2011-06-04T17:40:00.006-05:00

The truth of a man is somewhere between

all the definitions foisted upon him:

brother /father/son/husband/uncle/man.

The truth of a man is somewhere beyond

all the obligations he bears uponhimself:

brother/father/son/husband/uncle/man.

Open Letter to the Alumni Association

2011-05-18T09:57:00.003-05:00

Dear SanctimoniousLeeches and Intellectual Parasites:

I would very muchlike to thank you for the glossy quarterly publication in which youhighlight the accomplishments of those past, present, and futuregraduates who you feel distinguish the grand Alma Mater in this ageof for-profit degree mills and economic and educational disparity. Ihave always felt especially grateful to have attended because of thepeople I met there, student and faculty alike, who encouraged me togrow and to think and have helped me to become the fully realizedhuman being I am in the process of becoming.

Among them, oneteacher stands out more than most. And I would mention his name, butsince you have never mentioned him in the aforementioned glossypublication you insist on mailing me every three months, I can onlyconclude that he continues to toil in the shadow of an institutionthat neither notices nor cares that he has set upon the world moreartists and free thinkers than your College of Business has loosedsuccessful entrepreneurs. As a matter of fact, I'm fairly certainthat your College of Business – which, allowed by your Presidentand Board of Regents, and in a premeditated and unholy fashion,swallowed whole the English Department from which I managed tograduate … twice … – has done little more for the world thanset upon it an army of mediocre middle managers, all of whom weremade to retrain their replacements when the companies they worked forsent all the jobs overseas.

Now, this teacherI speak of is a great poet and an amazing human being – and thoughthat statement is a bit repetitive, I feel, nonetheless, obliged tomention both since you may not have yet made the connection. He haddone none of the things that merit attention from the College ofBusiness graduates who have risen to offices of institutional powerand affluence... the poetry haters who used to pass out ruffies tosorority girls at parties the way priests hand out wafers of bread onSunday. As a related aside, consider this: people who claim to hatepoetry or to not understand it have clearly missed the point.Granted, the Modernists – Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, and the like –sort screwed over those of who came after because they removed poetryfrom the trust of the people and deposited it in the sorry Savingsand Loan otherwise known as the modern college and university system.And because of those dead sorry bastards there's a lot of evensorrier living ones who have never known that poetry is a more potentaphrodisiac than chocolate.

But this does notexcuse you, leeches and parasites, from the guilt you share in thewhole sale theft of the American Dream. Whole generations have comeup believing they need you to succeed, and if they can't afford youthat they aren't worthy. And if by success they mean living the halflife of a cubicle caught middle manager, techie toiler, tax payer,and amasser of debt, then your Ponzi scheme has succeeded. You rottensons of bitches.

Along with theglossy magazine you send me every three months with the pictures ofthe unknowing poster children of the apocalypse, you often send meletters asking for money... a tithe, no doubt from the income youfeel like you have helped me to earn. And while I would gladly spendthat $25 on beer for the teacher to whom I owe so much, or for anyone of the people– poets and artists all – who have graced mewith their friendship, there is very little you can do, either inyour form letters or in your glossy magazine to convince me that Iought to contribute to your war coffers.

If,after receiving this letter, you still feel the need to send me theglossy magazine every three months, it's your postage, not mine; thesame goes for the letters you send that have gone unanswered untilnow and will again after I finish. But if you have any respect –scratch that – you are at all concerned about the time wasted bythe poor dumb kids you put on the phone to call and try and talk meout of the little bit of money I manage to gather up, remove my phonenumber from your rolls; because not only will I try and convince themthey need to drop out and go find themselves, I will also try andtalk them into setting the the Administration building on fire beforethey leave under cover of night.

You are weasels ofthe lowest order, the spoilers of healthy minds and rapists of goodsolid souls. You will get no more of me.

Regards,

Mick Parsons

Mount Carroll, IL

Shit Happens (Declaration of Sloth and Indolence)

2011-05-04T14:57:00.003-05:00

“Infamy lastlonger than fame and is much more fun.” J. Bob Friendly

I probably shouldn't be surprised thatI'm not wealthy, powerful, and affluent since I have never engaged inany activity that might lead to any of those ends. That's not to sayI haven't tried to do The Right Thing from time to time. I haveworked, paid taxes, joined committees. (Okay... I tend to avoidcommittees simply because I have never seen one do anything they wereorganized to accomplish, other than the over all goal of givingpeople something to do.) I have tried to save money, lived life onthe installment plan, accrued debt like a good American. At thispoint, I probably have more debt than I will ever be able to payback; and I would just like to say – to those suffering under thedelusion that I am spending my entire life breaking my back andwasting my mind on paying it all back before I'm dead – that once Iam dead and before I'm cremated, you're welcome to whatever I have inmy pockets. By the time I die, lint and matches might actually havemarket value.

Hope that helps.

My wife tells me I'm ornery. And ofcourse, she's right. I suspect this has always been the case... it'sjust that over the last two years I finally lost the last vestige ofmy failing attempts to be a respectable member of society. Walkingaway from teaching was probably one of the most difficult things Ihave ever done... if only because it was The Thing That Defined Me. This isn't so unusual either. Growing up in the grand capitalisttradition, we often end up being shaped by occupation the way jello'sshaped by a mold – unless, of course, you're one of those who canafford to be defined by other things – like wealth, power, andaffluence. I always know when I'm speaking to someone from the uppereconomic class because at some point in the conversation they willassure me that they are NOT defined by their occupation... rather,it's something they use in order to define themselves by some otherset of standards. They become patrons and philanthropists. Theydevelop interests in esoteric topics, start scrap-booking clubs, takedancing lessons, cooking classes. They travel, take Carnival Cruises,in order to broaden their horizons in the way that only tourists canbroaden themselves, and return convinced that there is nothinggrander than a Big Mac since McDonald's is everywhere.

Probably the thing that makes me orneryis that while I do like nice things, I'm not one to attach muchsignificance to them. There are certain creature comforts that Iprefer, but I have found that these are fairly easy to find if youlook hard enough and are persistent enough. Life is as easy or asdifficult as you want it to be, as long as you recognize thatsometimes the universe smiles on you and sometimes it laughs at you.I recently had a discussion with a good friend of mine – who I willsave from the shame of being recognized as my friend by not naminghim – and one of the things he mentioned was that it seemed likekids today didn't understand this aforementioned fundamental truth ofthe universe, often expressed by the phrase “Shit Happens.”

(It should also be noted that whilethis friend of mine has a couple of years and a few gray hairs on me,he in no way holds what others might perceive as my youth andinexperience against me. A circus fortune teller named Zelda theThree-Eyed Mystic once told me this is because I have an old soul...though this was the same fortune teller who assured me that I wouldsomeday find all of the wealth, power, and affluence that I deserved.Either her Magic 8 Ball told her something right, or she was thinkingabout somebody else... I haven't decided yet.)

Teaching is not the only job whosecategorization I have excised myself from. Among the highlights:

I've been a factory worker, such things as computer printers, 3-D Styrofoam deer targets, Totes Slipper socks, doors for storage and transportation cubes used by the U.S. Navy, feather pillows and down filled comforters.
I've also worked in a soap warehouse, been a file clerk for a bank, and held various day labor jobs so numerous that I don't remember them all. I was also a receptionist in a dentist office.
I've been unemployed, under-employed, and have, from time to time, drawn unemployment. I see no shame in any those things... though the later does, from time to time, cause people to suspect that I'm some shiftless communist. (I have actually been called that before, as well as a host of other names I won't list here because 1. They would take up too much space, and 2. Generally the people who sling those kinds of names around are never really sure of their precise definition.)

Being the thoughtful, often ponderousperson I am, I have always tried to learn something. Life is the bestschooling, after all. I've learned that most people, down deep, hatetheir jobs. I've learned a significant number of those ended up inthe jobs they have because they simply ended up there; and of thosethat remain, there's a startling majority who started out lovingtheir jobs but came to hate it over time. They stay because of debt,because of the health benefits, because it's predictable, and becausethey don't want to have to worry about rolling over their 401K. I'vealso learned that my time is too valuable to me to waste on work thatnourishes my body but not my mind or my soul. I like the work I'mdoing now... most of the time... but that's only because I'm gettingpaid to write – sort of. Journalism is a form of writing that has,over the years, been much degraded; not only by a public that doesn'tread, but by a corporate owned media that sees it's mission as lessto inform than to give people something to chat about in the breakroom and to pass as viral bits on social networks.

It's a form I'm coming to enjoy verymuch, actually. It's not poetry, but it keeps the lights on and Ilike the fluidity of my schedule and the freedom I have in exploreslocal and regional issues of interest. It's taken me almost a yearof word slinging, but I'm starting to see what drew writers likeTwain, Bierce, and Hemingway to this line of work. You see the bestand the worst of people up close – when you're doing the job andfollowing the story the way it ought to be followed. To be ajournalist is to be loved, hated, feared, and despised – all at thesame time, and often by the same person at the same time.

But since I have no interest in movingup the media ladder and working for a corporate news machine, I'mmore or less stuck being one of the least respected people in thecounty I currently live in, until I move or until something elsecomes along. But, being the word obsessed person I am, I have beenstruggling to find the correct terminology to describe what it isthat I do. The truth is, other than write, talk to people, and hangaround trying to find things to write about, there's very little thatI do. I'd like to think ofmyself as a poet, because I see poetry as having the power of all theother forms; but we aren't a culture that appreciates poetry. Andwhile I do write poetry... it is, after all my First Form... I findthat I am writing other things, and I have an interest in writingpretty much anything that holds my interest. I am leaning towardsJourneyman Writer.

I have also often considered a nomde plume to save my few closerelatives the stigma... but around here the greatest sympathy has togo out for my wife, who, while she loves that I'm ornery, has tooccasionally remind people that she has absolutely no control overwhat I write, what I say, or who I offend. Though it sounds likehyperbole, I know she's nothing short of a saint, and might be theonly reason I'm still alive... much to the disappointment of certainarea political figures who's ire I tend to inspire. I'm also fairlycertain that nothing I am currently doing will ever lead me to thepath of wealth, power, and affluence that Zelda the Three-Eyed Mystictold me was waiting for me.

Ohwell. I'd rather be happy than respected, and I'd rather becomfortable than well-off.

Excerpt From The Muckraker's Chronicle: It's Hard To Be Humble

2011-04-27T15:54:00.000-05:00

Denise. That was her name. It stuck with me. It woke me up at night. Denise Gunnersaun, the woman who hanged herself in the Arliss County Jail rather than stand trial for defending herself. I had a girlfriend once named Denise. She was Denise the amazonian from the wrong side of town. None of the popular boys would admit they liked her, but they all stared at her boobs. We were in 7^th grade. I was too timid to do anything but hold hands. Denise, who liked me because was I gentle and kind and because I wasn't mean to her the way the rest of the kids were. Denise who broke up with me using a note she had her best friend Becky give me in Ms. Algers math class. Denise Riddley. I didn't like her enough to be broken up about it. I was more annoyed that Becky got caught passing me the note; we both ended up getting detention for it. Becky spent the entire hour after school giving me dirty looks. To this day I'm still not sure what it was I did wrong.

That wasn't the only reason Denise Gunnersaun stuck in my mind; the whole story seemed absurd. Drunken asshole of a husband comes home, wants to take his bad mood out on his high school sweet heart and mother of his sons. She has enough, swings at his bloated head with a frying pan. Yet she's the one that gets arrested. She's the one that's left alone, deserted by her few friends and the community of women who have been turning a blind eye to the suffering of their own gender for years... decades, maybe even longer. I sit in on town council and county board committee meetings where they complain about drug traffic and the riff raff and how people are poor because they're not willing to work. Mothers will gossip about the alleged sins of other mother's sons but defend their own children's obvious improprieties with a “boys will be boys” attitude. Better to marry an abusive asshole if you get knocked up rather than take on the stigma of being an unwed mother in a town that prizes the appearance of things over their content. Of course, the church matrons will never forgive you anyway and still think you're a dirty whore... but as long as you seem willing to not ever forgive yourself either, it makes the whole thing go a bit easier.

The article was a short one; took me less than a half hour to write, including interviews. The coroner and the sheriff both made statements, I typed the story up, turned it in. It was one of the easiest articles I'd ever written. Ever.

And then the old men at the Moose Head started talking about it. Don Parton was the most vocal. He was vocal about his support of Daniel, the husband. The poor guy who now had to raise his two sons alone after that psycho bitch of a wife did herself in. It was maybe the best thing for everyone, though; after all, Parton said, the negative effect she was having on those boys might have ruined them. Of course, that Daniel married her at all amazed everyone; when the oldest boy, Jesse, was born, there was no way of knowing whether Daniel was even the father, Parton said. “The way SHE got around,” he said, shaking his head. Judgment. It's so much easier to judge the dead since they're not around to defend themselves. Not that anyone waited that long to judge Denise Gunnersaun.

And of course, no one other than Sheriff Cleary – who was actually pretty broken up about it – and the coroner – who was annoyed that her death interrupted his golf game – would talk to me on the record. I tried talking to her friends … the few that would claim to be, anyway … and while I heard several ear fulls of information, the only way any of them agreed to talk to me was if I left their name out of the paper. Great. “An unidentified friend of the deceased claims...” Right. Or maybe I could go all Woodward and Bernstein and give each of them code names. Flappy Jaws, Trailer Queen, and Stovepipe. The three of them still lived in Denise's Gunnersaun's old stomping ground: the trailer park at the end of Wakarusa Road. For many of the the upstanding citizens of Mount Arliss the trailer park was a symbol of the epidemic of laziness, communism, and liberalism that was spreading like a virus across the nation... leaching out from Chicago like some hideous kudzu like weed, taking over everything. Southern farmers hate kudzu because once it takes up residence in a field, it's almost impossible to kill. And it takes over everything. Entire hill sides in Eastern Kentucky are eaten up with the stuff... it kills everything else by using up every bit of nutrient in the soil and propagating. It grows the way cancer grows.

Which is how people who didn't live in the trailer park saw the trailer park. In one trailer alone, they would say, the (unmarried, of course) woman had seven kids. And she wasn't even 30. Seven kids, seven different fathers. Hers and the bastard children of the other trailer park whores running around town like a plague, destroying things, taking up room the schools that should have been saved for upstanding children from good families. Not that many of the good families were staying, since there were no jobs to had in Arliss County that didn't include underpaid menial labor or seasonal farm work – and the seasonal farm work inevitably went to the migrant workers pouring over the Mexican border like a punishment from Heaven. Naturally people made biblical parallels. How could they not? It was so easy. The entire world was going to shit. Gays wanting to get married, Mexicans taking American jobs, and the whores in the Wakarusa Trailer Court. And Denise Gunnersaun, for the sin of trying to get out the only way she knew how – which was admittedly not the best or smartest of ways – was symbolic of Heaven's judgment against the whole country.

Or so Don Parton thought and said. And when Parton talked people tended to listen... mostly because he never let anyone else talk that didn't agree with him.

Her friends... the ones that wouldn't talk to me on the record... gave their point of view on Daniel Gunnersaun. He'd been the favored son of a well known and respected property owner... which in Mount Arliss meant a farmer. A favored son, a farmer's son, and the star Varsity quarterback... which put him somewhere on the same level as God for most of the adults in town. He always had the prettiest girl on his arm – never the same one for very long and almost always a cheerleader. Always won the crucial football game. Always managed to get by in his classes. A 4-H award winner. President of the Mount Arliss Future Farmers of America, and the youngest member of the county's chapter of the NRA. He was actively recruited by Illinois State University and Michigan State; he was a hometown boy with a bright future.

And then he met Denise Favre.

Her mother had lived in the trailer park for years and before that she had lived above the laundromat on the corner. The only thing certain about Denise Favre's parentage was that Rachel Favre was her mother; who her father was had only been the the topic of idle gossip and conversation. The upright uptight church matrons called her the Whore of Babylon and every man in town, married or single, had at some point walked through her door and laid down in her bed. Who her parents had been, no one knew; she wasn't from Mount Arliss; Rachel had simply appeared in town one day and proceeded, to hear the God-fearing women tell it, to dig her claws into their husbands and sons. The less than God-fearing women didn't especially like her either. And each and all of them passed on their dislike to her only daughter.

How's that song go? Same old story, same old song and dance. Being from the wrong family in a small town is like being the middle child; no matter what you do, you always lose. And when you're from the right family, no matter what you do, your shit doesn't stink.

“Why are you letting this bother you?” Maude asked me when one of my insomnia nights woke her up. “Why do you let any of this bother you?”

I told her I didn't know. “It just doesn't seem fair. Or something.”

“You get too involved,” she said. “And it ends up keeping you up at night; or it gives you another excuse to get drunk and pissy.”

“I don't recall ever needing an excuse,” I said. “And I'm never pissy.”

“If it bothers you,” she said, sitting down in her chair and lighting up a cigarette, “why didn't you write a longer article on it?”

She's right, of course. But there's no point in saying that out loud. I didn't write the longer article... the one I should have written … because I waited until the last minute to write it. Squeezed it in right over deadline.

“I was working on other stuff,” I said. “That was a busy week. I wish I COULD just focus on one story at a time. I'd have been awarded a Pulitzer by now.”

“And yet,” she said, “you're still so humble.”

She loves me. I know she loves me because she picks on me. Most of the time it makes me laugh. It did this time, too. “I know, I know,” I said. “It's a burden being this brilliant still be an everyday normal guy.”

“You've never been normal.”

“Thanks.”

“What about this is bothering you, though? I mean it's not like you knew her.” She looked over at me with that inquisitive look she used to give me a lot more when we first got together and I still had more women friends than she thought was normal. It's probably not fair to say she was jealous; but whenever she saw me with one of them, she would still give me these looks from time to time that said “Are you sure you're not fucking this chick?”

I ignored the look on her face. “It's the situation, maybe,” I said. “Everybody in town is glad she's dead for the sake of the asshole who abused her.”

“And?”

“Isn't that enough?”

“Enough to complain about? Yes. Enough to be indignant about? Yes. But why is it bothering you?”

“Did I tell you that Don Parton tried to get Sam to fire me?”

“Why?”

“Because I've been asking around about Daniel Gunnersaun's background, his history around here.”

“And what's the point in that?”

“I don't know. Not really.”

“And what did Sam say?”

“Sam told him to take a flying leap.”

“Really?”

“Not in so many words. Sam has more tact.”

“Is this story worth losing your job over?”

“I'm not going to lose my job; it's barely a job as it is. I probably would've written a bigger article if I hadn't needed to write five other ones that week just to make a decent check.”

“You could do something else.”

“Like what?”

“You could teach,” she said. “You said you almost became a teacher.”

“I almost became a fire watcher, too,” I said, “except that they don't use fire watchers anymore. Guess I missed out.”

“What's that have to do with teaching?”

“They don't need real teachers anymore, either.”

She sighed. Maude's exhaustion was getting the better of her. My absence from bed woke her up, but she needed more sleep than I did. “Let's go to bed,” she yawned.

“You go ahead. I'll be there in a bit. Save me some room.”

She sighed again, but she was too tired to argue; she stood up and shuffled back to bed. After I heard her settle in and fall back asleep, I thought again about Denise Gunnersaun and her three friends who wouldn't come to the defense of her memory. And it still didn't sit right.

Harvey Nada

2011-04-22T08:41:00.002-05:00

When is it time to walk away? There is no walking away, no escape. Nada. When Harvey thought about the concept of nothing, he preferred to think of it in Spanish terms. Nada. Nothing seemed like much more finite term. A term with limitations. A Beginning. A Middle. An End. Nada seemed more eternal; he didn't know why. He didn't really understand what it was about the word that appealed to him, either. It wasn't as if he were fluent in Spanish; the only other Spanish words he knew were taco, burrito, and cervasa. Other than that, he was shit out of luck. Nada.

The clock on the wall was old. Certainly older than him. Maybe not as old as the room he was currently sitting in. The paint on the walls was mint hospital green and peeling the way that only lead paint can peel. The furniture was old, too... what little there was. A small wooden table and chair.A light hung fromt the ceiling over the table and provided the small room's only light; he had been in jail cells that were bigger. A small sink so dirty the white porcelain was stained beyond redemption and so old that the water coming out of the tap was spit warm and so metallic tasting it was virtually undrinkable. The toilet worked, but didn't have a sear. There was a narrow bed with a thin mattress that smelled of mothballs, bed bugs, and old sex. He didn't sleep on it, even though he had been waiting for more than 72 hours.

He hated these kind of deals. Sitting and waiting. Waiting and sitting. Sometimes he checked the time on his cell. He tried not to do this often because it only reminded him how slow the time was passing.

Harvey didn't have the personality for intrigue; so the longer he sat, the more he thought about walking out the door. He was starting to smell himself, and he wanted a shower, a good meal, and to get laid. It all seemed so pointless... all this waiting around. Waiting for what? He thought. Nada. But he sat anyway, rapping his swollen knuckles on the old wooden table and staring at the door. Sometimes he dosed off; but he slept the way his grandfather's hound dog used to sleep – aware and half awake. Sometimes he occupied his mind by imagining what he was going to do to Sanford when ran into that son of a bitch again. Sanford was the reason Harvey was sitting in a shit hole room for 3 days. Sanford was the go between. The messenger. The goddamned gopher. Sanford who said it was a sweet and easy deal, so long as he played along.

He was in the process of imagining the exhileration of breaking Sanford's bones one at a time – starting with the pinky because it hurts and because it never really heals right no matter what you do – when there was a knock at the door. Harvey instantly focused on the door, waiting for it to open. He stood up, prepared to meet whoever was going to walk through it. He thought of what he would say, what his offer was. He thought of Matilde, waiting for him, and thought of the way her body had felt the last time he touched it. He thought of the last hamburger he had eaten. Focus, he thought. Focus. Harvey focused on the door knob, waiting for it to turn.

The door knob never turned and the door never opened. Instead, a note was slipped under the door. A note and then nothing. Not event he sound of foot steps walking away. He walked over, bent down, and picked up the note. It was written in a neat, flowing script that reminded him of a woman's handwriting.

It read “Three days.”

Brief Introduction to A Biography of Ill-Fate: Gibbleflugen's Gambit, by Halstead Mamby, PhD

2011-04-18T15:38:00.000-05:00

Professor Wilhelm Gibbleflugen (1849-1920?) was an obscure German Historian who lived during the later part of the 19^th and early part of the 20^th Century. His influences were next to non-existent, and his theories half-baked. For example, rather than seeing history as a continuum of progress towards inevitable Platonic perfection – which was (and still is in most 1^st world nations around the world) the generally accepted view of world history –Gibbleflugen saw history... best described in his own words (from his one and only book length work, Zivilisierung Kaput or The Fit and Failure of The Civilized World, published in 1919 at his own expense) as: “a series of random and largely forgettable events given meaning without cause, importance without reason, and weight without consideration.” He went to explain in great length what he meant by this cryptic statement; but like all German intellectuals, Gibbleflugen was much enamored by the flow of words rather than the message they were intended to convey.

To condense for the benefit of a contemporary readership, Gibbleflugen's stance on history was this: people only remember what they want to remember anyway, so there's little point in writing any of it down or even discussing it other than during party games or in the process of trying to impress an attractive girl.

This made him no friends among his professional colleagues, who saw his hypothesis as nothing short of professional and cultural abortion. He rarely attended conferences or read the papers of other historians, and was only given tenure at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin because he was immensely popular with students who didn't want to study history anyway. In fact, Gibbleflugen's seminars were legendary for their brevity; the class would meet only once, on the first day of the term. On that day, Professor Gibbleflugen stalked into the seminar room, carrying nothing in his hand but his walking stick made from the shaft of an American Buffalo topped with a large white pearl that he was sometimes fond of using to hit people on the head with, causing horrible concussions. Once at the lectern, he made each student stand up and say his (and later her) own name. When that was complete, he informed his students that they had just demonstrated all the knowledge he could possible give them... and would they please just leave him alone, for Christ's sake? He would be found later at his favorite tavern, drinking and arguing about the size of the barmaid's breasts or sitting in with the band playing his harpsichord.

Gibbleflugen himself had an encyclopedic memory for world historical events, even though no one ever saw him even pick up a book. A student, convinced that the Professor was a fraud, once cornered him in his favorite tavern. Once the professor was good and rotten drunk, the student began to whisper in his ear, attempting to draw the the scholar into a debate about some particulars of medieval European history. After five minutes of the student's incessant talking, Gibbleflugen could stand it no more, took his pearl tipped bull shaft walking stick and lightly. popped the young man on the top of his head. “The problem with your argument,” he said, calmly, returning to his mug of beer, “is that you're forgetting that the King was really a woman in drag.” To what king the professor was referring, no one heard; and the student, upon waking in an alley, promptly left college in disgrace and was never heard from again.

That he only used his powerful knowledge of history to get laid eventually led to his downfall; he was caught in bed with the twin daughters of a member of the German government, Gretchen and Gröten von Haasenhaber. Their father, a powerful diplomat and distant 7^th cousin to Wilhelm II, the last German monarch, had Gibbleflugen arrested for contributing to the delinquency of children. (It was later discovered, through the long, laborious, and detailed testimonies of their many paramours that the von Haasenhaber sisters were as easily gotten as a village bicycle, and ridden just as often.) The Professor, who refused to defend himself or even to testify, spent the entire proceeding laughing to himself – at some times laughing so long that he was crying. The case was eventually dismissed when it was discovered that the high court judge deciding the case had deflowered both girls when they reached breeding age and had, over the years, visited them when their father was away on government business.

That the case was dismissed meant nothing, however. Professor Gibbleflugen was drummed out of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in what everyone thought was relative disgrace. He seemed none of the worse for wear, however; he could be found at his favorite tavern most nights, flirting with women and playing his harpsichord.

It was during this time of decline and increased debauchery that Gibbleflugen wrote what has become his seminal work. Zivilisierung Kaput (or The Fit and Failure of The Civilized World) was published in 1919 by an obscure publisher of exquisite pornography whom the Professor knew from the tavern. He would sometimes give copies of the book to women he wanted to woo, or leave them in public bathrooms. When critics and his former colleagues got wind of the publication, they asked him for copies to review, intending to rip it to pieces; the Professor responded by paying prostitutes to used the book as toilet paper before sending them to his would-be critics. If anyone asked him what his intention was in writing it, he would either ignore them, hit them on the head with his pearl topped bull shaft walking stick, or – if the person asking was a particularly attractive woman – he would ask her to bed. (Though he was not an attractive man by the standards of his day, this ploy worked more often than anyone wanted to admit.)

The (supposed) death of Professor Wilhelm Gibbleflugen was as mysterious and odd as the man. The night prior to his death, he had gone home with an especially pliable barmaid named Mable. The following morning, he was gone from her bed. His clothes and shoes were there; but his walking stick was missing. When interrogated by the authorities, Mable confessed that he had spent the night with her; and while she was a bit sad that he was gone, she was supposed to have said that she had rather he'd left behind his fine and useful walking stick instead of his clothes.

Flood Stage Rising

2011-04-15T15:59:00.002-05:00

Up and down these days. Rain comes down,

river goes up, sand bags soaked in the sweat

and in brown river water. Grain elevators, basements,

railroad tracks, all succumb eventually. Up and down

these days, all days. I want to hibernate

listen to the wind howl against the roof shingles,

listen to the storm windows rattling

in a strange organic rhythm. The song is one

we have all heard before; rain against the windows,

against the siding, bouncing off the mail boxes

and against car windshields, creating tone,

measured sounds that, strung together

like the popcorn 'round grandma's old Christmas tree,

make measures, make songs. Songs waiting for words,

songs that need no words.

I want to hibernate and feel my heartbeat,

up and down these days, thumping in my ears

like great big giant timpani drums,

the sound of thunder in my chest

bouncing off my bones my heart, my liver,

my spleen, coiling 'round my small and large

intestines, rattling inside my skull –

creating music, music calling for words,

music that does not need my words,

the music that has reverberated for centuries

from the bones of children, whistled through leaves

ebbed and flowed through rocks in rivers –

rivers that flood because that is what rivers do.

It is what the river has done for eons.

It is what the river will do for eons more,

solar flares counting time different

the same way we count time different

than fruit flies... our fractured eyes

counting time in infinitesimal increments

little notes of larger music,

the music that mothers hum

when no one is paying attention

that fathers tap their feet to

when no one is paying attention

that daughters and sons sing

when no one is paying attention...

singing up and down, these and every day ever

and every day ever since

and every day we will not remember

because the sounds will find

new bones to reverberate against –

new railroad tracks, new windows,

new hearts, new livers, new spleens,

new brains to interpret, new skulls to augment.

Up and down these and all the days to come,

long after I am long beyond

long after I am down

and have no need to get up

and I am far beyond

my need to hibernate.

Doc Gimley's Contribution, Part 4

2011-04-11T16:28:00.002-05:00

Ardena's nerves were frazzled and Shirley was being himself – which meant he was aloof, spiteful, and when he did speak to her, he was mean. Her talk with Doc Gimley proved successful, though she still wished that she had not been the one to go. But what choice did she have? If she had not gone herself, that awful Sally Forth would have gone and ended up taking credit for everything. She found it difficult to talk to Doc Gimley – especially in the examination room. Naturally, he was the town's doctor, the closest thing to a medical man in the whole county, unless you counted that old witch Hilda Boykin … which Ardena did not. That old woman was crazy... prescribing herbs for cramps and selling abortion elixirs to the whores out at Chapel's Farm. If Ardena could have run Hilda Boykin and those harlots out of the county, she would have. As it was, she got them out of town limits. But what was it about Doc Grimley that made so nervous? For all of his pomp and circumstance, he was as much a man as the others in town – even her own husband Shirley. When that horrible whore house was still in the middle of town, he went there as much as the others. There had been a time, and she thought about it often, when her husband's dalliances hurt her. He had been so helpless and so sweet when she first knew him; so gentle. So quiet and peaceful that more than a gentle breeze would have pushed him over. She had seen something in him then; something that could be brought out, polished and refined. Refined by the right woman. Refined by a strong woman. Refined by someone like her.

It seemed to fall upon him like a sickness after Junior was born – this common manliness. Maybe it was because she had given him a son, or maybe it was because he finally found acceptance among the men in town. Ardena had wanted him to be a community leader; she imagined herself as being the mayor's wife. Well, the mayor's wife... at first. And then wife to the county board member. And then the State Representative's wife. And then Mrs. Governor, or maybe Mrs. Senator.

But Shirley reached a certain point and seemed to just stop. He won the leadership of the RTPSA easily and he just stopped. When Ardena prodded him to run for mayor, he laughed at her and said the mayor was nothing but a rag doll. “Why should I be mayor?” he asked her. “Everybody watching when you go to church or if you drink before 4 in the afternoon. What's the point?”

Two months after that was when she first went to see Doc Gimley. He had seemed so... not like everyone else. Refined. Educated. Traveled. Gentile. He belonged in some grand place like New York City, not San Grila. He was amazing; made her feel amazing. Took all of her anxiety away. In her mind, he was the genius that she was a perfect match for her.

And then she found out he was going to That Place. And it hurt her more than when Shirley went there.

So she started with the women. The wives. The daughters. The mothers. Men didn't move until the women on the pressure. And while the men enjoyed the whores at the Gentleman’s Supper Club, they enjoyed peace and quiet and home even more. When the whores were burned out of town and moved to Chapel Farm, all that happened was that the men drove out there.

Except for Doc Gimley. He didn't go out to Chapel Farm. And while she never quite looked at him the same way again, Ardena felt a small victory that almost replaced the feeling she had felt after seeing him as a patient.

[Scratch]: Poetry Month Palm Poem #t

2011-04-10T23:35:00.000-05:00

Poetry Month Palm Poem #t

The potential for storms

Keeps me awake. Temperature

Rising. Thunder rolls overhead.

The short haired cat yeowls

Softly on the guest bed.

I watch the clock, flip

Through channels of late

Night insomnia shows...

Waiting for the wind to subside

As it lulls me into bed.

[Scratch]: Poetry Month Palm Poem # 2

2011-04-10T10:23:00.001-05:00

Poetry Month Palm Poem # 2

It's done, she said.

And I thought

I heard her smile.

We can open all

The windows, and

Breathe and smell

And smile again.

I smiled, nodded

And did not mention

That there was more

Than a better chance

For rain.

untitled poem draft (Poetry Month 2011)

2011-04-08T09:46:00.000-05:00

Like all worthy dreams,

the peace I crave is as far

from me as sun is from

the center of the universe,

and I, too am floating,

holding my elliptical pattern

because this is where I was placed.

I do not remember the exact moment –

the day I opened my eyes

the day I first felt the sensation

of I am me and you are you

and everything else is what it is.

Profane scriptures tell us

there is no peace in our time

and the news plays this out

in not so graphic detail. The trick,

like all good producers will tell you,

is to keep the body counts low

and keep the tension high.

We like our violence like we like

our romance– soft core porn innuendo

all skin and no penetration,

the illusion of the desire

we have lost the ability to articulate.

There's no rest, and no time--

not for the necessary reflections

and pesky considerations of conscious

when we are left to watch

while the world gradually pulls itself

apart. There will be wars and

there will be rumors of wars; but

that does not prophesy the end –

that will come upon us as we are laughing

in that moment when we think we have

escaped the impossible gravity of dreams.

And when the sky opens up,

it will not be God,

it will not be the Devil,

but an intolerably wretched acid rain

burning out our eyes

leaving us muddling

in puddles of our former selves

in the middle of the street.

Doc Gimley's Contribution: Part 2

2011-04-07T13:02:00.000-05:00

He watched Ardena Guntersaun scurry across the street, being careful not to look back. Stupid woman, he thought. And then, as if he decided to let the empty room in on his thoughts, he said, “Stupid woman.”

Doc Gimley was familiar with Mrs. Guntersaun, in the same way he was familiar with many of San Grila's leading women... if you could call them that. None of them had accomplished much in this world except marry the right men. Men with the right combination of money, ambition, and sheer stupidity who were foolish enough to assume they were the ones running everything. Not the old doctor really cared WHO was running things, since anyone would, in all likelihood run with the same level of ineptitude. San Grila had a municipal government, of course... a town council, aldermen, and the like … but it was the various cadres and cabals of Women's Committees that really got things done. The Women's Temperance League – which was, to a member, the same group as the 75^th Anniversary Committee – had managed, though scraping and scrapping and yelling and drum thumping and brow beating, to clean away the “rude and rustic country elements” in San Grila and had an eye on making it the next New York of the Midwest. They imagined themselves cosmopolitan, though none of them had ever gone to a real city, not even Chicago; the farmers in the unincorporated parts of the county would have none of it, of course. But that didn't matter. Mrs. Guntersaun would have her way. She always got her way.

So they want to rename the town, he thought. “What do you think of that?” he asked the empty room. “They want to rename the town in time for the new century.” He laughed and shook his head. Then he turned and walked out of the examination room and into the small sitting room that also served as his bedroom. The room was narrow and sparsely furnished – a single bed, a wash table with his meticulously clean and sharp shaving blade, soap, and a simple bowl and pitcher; a comfortable red padded high back chair, worn from years of use, sat facing the window that looked down on the same street as the windows in his examination room. There was a small mirror hanging on the wall above the wash table, and a picture of the Thames River in London hanging over his bed. Off to the left, there was a wardrobe where he kept his clothes, and beyond that, the water closet – which he had paid to have installed. (That had caused no small amount of commotion in town and cemented his favor among the local busybodies as a man of culture.) On the second shelf under of the small bedside table that was also within reach of the chair – on which was an oil lamp and an ash tray with a half spent 50 cent cigar – was a photo album. He sat in the red chair, put the cigar in his mouth and carefully lit it. After extinguishing the match, he took in a mouthful of smoke, exhaled, then reached down and pulled the photo album off the small shelf.

If anyone in town – especially a busybody like Ardena Guntersaun – saw the contents of the album, it would create a scandal. The album was full of pictures of nude women. Well, one woman to be precise. Her name was Rachel.

Doc Gimley first met Rachel about month after he had settled in his rooms above the barber shop overlooking Main Street. She was a regular girl at the Mandarin Supper Club for Men, San Grila's brothel and the meeting places for every prominent and not-so-prominent man in town. Rachel had been young, maybe 18, when he met her. At first, the age difference made him nervous. He was nearly 40 when he first went to see her; he had moved to San Grila more than a decade ago to get set up his office because he wanted to get away from the memory of his dead wife in Chicago. She was trampled by the police and a mob during a labor protest in Haymarket Square; Gimley himself, who leaned sympathetically towards the Haymarket 7, could not reconcile his grief, the outcome of the trials, and the listing of his wife – who was perhaps the only perfect person he had ever met – among the trouble makers.

Going to the brothel was only his way of dealing with his occasional need to feel a woman's touch. He had no illusions about falling in love again; for Gimley, there was one person for everyone and his was gone. Rachel made no demands, had no expectations, and was, like the preeminent among her trade, very professional. And she didn't mind if he wanted to talk. She was beautiful – long auburn hair, deep blue eyes, with spatterings of ginger freckles at different places around her body. He was surprised to find that, in addition to her supreme professional talents, she was also an avid reader of Jules Verne. Sometimes when he visited her, he took books for her to borrow: Emerson, Shakespeare, Spenser, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Dickens. She liked Doyle, but preferred Mark Twain to Spenser and Thoreau to Emerson. It was all fun and games, and never did Gimley think it was much more than a young prostitute preening the ego of an old man.

Eventually she expressed an interest in another one of Gimley's hobbies – photography. She poured over his picture books full of nudes, nature scenes, men on the street.

“These are dirty pictures,” she teased him, pointing to a particularly stunning nude wearing an Indian head dress and moccasins.

“They are not,” he tried explaining to her. “They are art, my dear. Artists have been drawing and painting nudes for centuries.”

“Then why is she wearing them shoes?”

“I don't know,” he said, getting a little impatient. “I suppose they go with the head dress.”

Rachel laughed. “It's to remind people she ought to have clothes on.”

Gimley offered to take pictures of her to prove that it was art. At first she objected, saying that people wouldn't pay for the real thing if they could get a picture of it for free. He assured her he would share them with no one but her – and he offered pay her usual fee plus a small gratuity.

It wasn't until he saw her on film that he felt himself falling in love with her.

Just a little. And it wasn't the same love he'd felt for his wife; he knew there was no spiritual connection, no exclusivity to his relationship (He wasn't sure when he started to think of it in those terms) with Rachel. She was a beautiful girl in person; but the camera did something to her that, for the doctor, bordered on transubstantiation. Rachel seemed to notice it too, and she started looking forward to the sessions as much as he did. He always gave her copies of the pictures to keep, and put a copy in the photo album for himself. And he never showed the pictures to anybody. Not ever.

Things went on this for months. Gimley had established a routine. He saw patients in the morning and into the late afternoon, and he saw Rachel twice a week before supper. The fog he had been in was starting to lift. He was starting to feel... well... happy again. He never asked for more from Rachel, and she never seemed to want more. There was a balance and symmetry to it. He knew that she had other clients, but it never bothered him. How many of his female patients did he ask to disrobe? It would have been foolish of him to feel jealous and he didn't.

And then the night of the fires happened. The RTPSA – undoubtedly being prodded by their wives – set fire to the Supper Club, burned out the girls, and forced them out of town. The ones that survived, anyway. The ones who did took over a deserted farm 10 miles out of town and set up shop there; but Rachel was not among them. She died in the fire, after the customer she was with that November night had punched her out in order to keep her from telling anyone he was there. The customer in question had been Shirley Guntersaun, Junior – the only and very spoiled son of Shirley and Ardena. Gimley knew it was him because he stopped by offering to selling him a photo album full of “anatomical” pictures. They were the pictures Gimley himself had taken of her.

He bought them so that no one else would see them. It was bad enough that young Guntersaun had had his fingers all over them.

Doc smoked his cigar and looked at the pictures of Rachel, thinking. He sat until nearly 4 in the afternoon.

The Problem -Draft 1

2011-04-06T10:36:00.000-05:00

[Last year at this time, I wrote a poem a day for 30 days. This year I'm working on one long poem. This is Draft 1. I will post revisions and additions throughout the month, ending in a final (if there is such thing) draft.]

I am a poet and I have known

it for a long time. I was a poet

before I read poetry

before I learned the jargon

poets learn: rhythm and rhyme

alliteration and assonance and

foot and meter. My feet –

my feet have carried me a top

the thin skull of this planet Earth

to and fro the way my father's feet

carried him and the his father's feet

carried him. Most days my feet

hurt and I still insist on walking

because I am a poet and I know

there is wisdom is slowing down

and in taking in all the details.

I am a poet, which means

I was spoiled for most other

occupations. I am a poet

and I understand

there's a difference

between being idle

and standing idly by. People

who are not poets define work

by the amount of time one spends

not being idle, presuming of course,

that there is no purpose in dreaming,

no profit in pondering, no use to

books that are not made into movies

that no one watches because

there are no special effects. I have been,

among other things, a factory work,

an office clerk, a teacher, a preacher,

bum, a student, a father, a husband.

The constant consonants echo

as I think back and the vowels

take shape into words and sounds

that remind me of songs

my mother sang to me before I was born.

I deal in words and I deal honest –

and there is none more hated

than an honest man

with a respectable vocabulary

and the gall to use them. Words have power

in print or spoken – which is something

poets understand intuitively. I am poet

though lately I buy bread with money

made from newspaper print – and though

some may presume to know my meaning,

I suspect some of you are too busy

thinking how best to use

this seemingly idle boy-man

for your own ends and your own agendas.

I care for none of them, and I care for no one

and I care for everyone.

When people hear the word poem,

the first thing they ask is

But Does It Rhyme?

and the next thing they ask is

But What Does it Mean?

A poem is a song –

a song supported by rhyme (sometimes)

but also rhythm and alliteration

and assonance, in the way a song is supported

by notes and and time and measure and beat.

Before there was history, there was a poet

remembering it all, so academes could

write about it later. Poetry and song

have so much in common, the roots

go back primordial... and yet, poets –

ah yes, poets. Poets are quaint

and quiet or disturbed and drunk

or something people become

after they retire from a job

that looks less idle and can be put

in the first line of a well writ

obituary column.

The Problem? I am a poet. But

before you think me arrogant,

I am also a 38 year old boy-man

with a paper route – which is

about as humble as I can be.

I also write for a living, which looks

significantly less idle... though it seems

I will never gain popularity

because I see people's petty secrets,

the scars they hide under long sleeves

and judgment. My father once told me –

you can't please everyone

so you're better off not trying. Life

is too too short

and too too precious

to waste on people

who would wear you down

just to make themselves feel

bigger.My father was a great man

in spite of being a Republican,

and I take this into account

when, in the process of dissecting

badly spliced words each week,

when people tell me one thing

then do something else.

Words are like bullets.

Only better.

A bullet will kill

but a word will

burrow into your brain

and stay and give you

nightmares 30 years hence.

I would rather deal in words

than in bullets because

the former requires deliberation

and the later requires little

except in the inability to listen.

A Baboon Ponders the Spring

2011-04-04T11:15:00.002-05:00

Fish out of water. The river is flooded.

Tornadoes tearing up the plain states

and the cats are fighting and yowling

between lightening strikes. Luckily

we live on a hill and the water

won't reach us, though the wind rattles

the house and shakes the spring birds

and budding leaves out of the not

quite awake magnolia tree. Weatherman

breaks into programing, apologizing

and telling us there's nothing to worry about

nothing at all. Last week,

they had the kids out of school

filling sand bags to hold back

the groaning and the spilling

of the Earth, the cracking and shifting

under trees without deep roots. Asian carp

jumping, breaking records over

the piles of sand bags along the river.

There is no accounting of time

and no reckoning of the river

and no point in waiting

for the magnolia tree to blossom

or for the wind to die down.

These things happen

on their own.

When They Say The Damnedest Things

2011-04-03T14:34:00.002-05:00

People will talk to you like that

just because they assume

you're a relatively new arrival

on Main Street means

you haven't lived anywhere else

and haven't seen anyplace else

and that somehow, the people here

in this particular place, are unique

on a planet harboring 9 billion souls

trampling depleted soil

and fucking like rabbits

to make more people

because children are the future

of social security … in addition to

being the ones who will fix

all of our mistakes, and the ones

who will pay for all of our sins –

unless, of course, they learn from us

and (as we'd prefer) deify us

after we're dead

and absolve us in their memories.

It's not that you're wrong, they say; it's only that

you don't understand (and couldn't possibly

since your parents aren't buried on Boot Hill)

and it might just be better

to leave these things

to the people who know better –

or at the very least, the people

who's families we have known

our entire lives and who

we don't mind belittling since

we knew them when they were in diapers...

which will rob any man of his dignity

whether he deserves it or not. But you,

you see, we don't know

the measure of you and we have nothing

to hold over you and when you speak

you speak like someone

who isn't one of us

and who never will be –

though your kids might have a shot.

[Scratch]: Poetry Month Palm Poem #1

2011-04-02T09:10:00.001-05:00

Poetry Month Palm Poem #1

I wish sometimes I was more nostalgic;

That I could feel misty-eyed

And access some memory

That when I thought

Of the place I ought to

Call home that the feeling

In my gut

Was a bit more

Rockwellian

And that I had

An unquenchable need

To see it again

And to feel

That spent soil

Bewixt my toes.

Doc Gimley's Contribution: Part 1

2011-03-30T13:05:00.002-05:00

It was the 75^th anniversary of the founding of San Grila, Illinois. The town had grown from one grain mill, two houses, a brothel, a church, and one narrow dirt road that was a mud pit in the Spring into a thriving town with a paved main drag, rows of businesses – a candy store, a dress maker and a haberdasher and two general stores among them – on each side of the street, five churches (one of them Catholic), and three taverns. The brothel was gone, but San Grila had its own postmaster. The grain mill was still there and very much in use, though some were afraid that it needed to be replaced and there was some talk of building a newer one ten miles away in New Eustacia; but since San Grila was more central to everyone and it was generally agreed upon that New Eustacia was nothing but a dirty river town, these rumors were more or less dismissed except by the most patriotic of townspeople.

And because the town had grown so much from such humble beginnings, and because everyone agreed that there was nothing but a bright future ahead for the bustling community, and because a new century was dawning, the San Grila 75^th Anniversary Committee decided to make the celebration one that would always be remembered.

Which was why, three months before the town's anniversary celebration – May 21^st, 1899 – Mrs. Ardena Guntersaun, whose husband Shirley was President of the local chapter of the RTPSA – the Right Thinking Patriotic Sons of America – went to one of San Grila's most prominent citizens to ask for his help in what she considered to be a high and holy task.

The citizen in question was Dr. Randolph Gimley. He was an optometrist by training, and the town's only doctor by default. People liked him because he was friendly, liked children, attended the Methodist Church regularly, and was a man of more or less clean habits. He made eye glasses for Old Man Wallace and helped the blacksmith's children through the measles. Doc Gimley was a man generally thought to be one of the smartest men in town, if not in the entire county. His library was full of books, ranging from Jules Verne to The Histories of Herodotus and from Spenser and Shakespeare to O.S. Fowler's Sexual Sciences, Taylor's Medical Jurisprudence, and Eberle's Practice. Doc Gimley was also known as a tinkerer and minor inventor of things; he invented a spring-based contraption that helped the mill wheel turn at a more steady pace and he improved the wagon axles on Lester Morris's milk wagon by making each axle turn able to turn independently. When he wasn't making eye-glasses or pulling teeth (he was also the local dentist) or checking to make sure that the residents washed their hands to avoid the spread of illness, Doc Gimley was tinkering. Rumor had it he was building a horseless carriage in the garage behind his house on Pumpkin Hill.

“What we were wondering, Dr. Gimley,” Mrs. Guntersaun said, taking a seat in his observation room, “is whether you would take on a task to help us make the 75^th anniversary special.”

“Anything I can do, Mrs. Guntersaun,” the old man smiled. “Anything at all.”

“Of course.” Mrs. Guntersaun felt herself blush; whenever she saw the doctor's bookshelf, she couldn't help but blush. So many references to … marital acts. But of course, she assured herself, he was a doctor, after all, and had to be knowledgeable of those things. Her eye had stopped on a title about midwifery when Doc Guntersaun interrupted her thoughts.

“So what is this service I can do for San Grila?”

“Oh! Yes.” Returning to her senses, and reminding herself to pray extra hard that night before bed, Ardena Guntersaun focused on the purpose of her visit. She puffed up and decided to be as direct as decorum would allow. “We, of the 75^th Anniversary Founding Committee, would like for you to decide on a new name for our fair town.”

“A new NAME?” The good doctor was a bit incredulous. “What's wrong with the one it has?”

Again, Mrs. Guntersaun blushed, but only because most men in town were neither incredulous nor prone to expressing it on the rare occasion they were. She also thought that maybe the doctor was kidding around with her – which he was prone to do. It was generally thought that it was time to give San Grila a real name. An American name.

Although no one spoke about it often, the naming of San Grila was one of the more distasteful secrets in the town's generally respectable history. The original settlement was made by a Spanish fur trader named Miguel Santiago. He traveled with one companion – a Manchurian named Zing. While they were camping there, a group of settlers came upon the two men, saying they intended to settle the region and farm. It was near a spur of the great river, but not too close, and the land was thought to be good for tilling. The settlers were Orthodox Lutherans and, not knowing what to make of the two men and having never seen anyone as odd as the pair either separate or together, asked if the place they were all now standing had a name. Zing said a word that no one understood and Santiago, explaining that Zing's English was lacking, said it as San Grila. The Lutherans, afraid of the Spaniard's hot blood and of the Manchurian's evil magic, named the settlement San Grila and blessed it as such as soon as they constructed the first structure – which was their church. And even though Santiago and Zing soon left, never to return, the name stuck until the modern day.

“It's not that there's anything WRONG with it, of course,” Mrs. Guntersaun explained in a nervous chatter. “It's not wrong, so much as we on the committee recognize that we are living in a new era and that the century to come is going to be the American Century, and we believe – that is, the committee believes – that we need a name that reflects this new sense of optimism and freedom.”

“Ah.” Doc Gimley smiled and said nothing. He turned to look out one of the large windows that faced Main Street. He was silent for several minutes.

Ardena Guntersaun hadn't expected this sort of reaction. People generally agreed to whatever she said almost immediately; and if they didn't... well generally they were unsavory to begin with. But if Doc Gimley didn't think changing the town's name was a good idea … especially since it had been HER idea to begin with... then what would she say to the committee? That evil Sally Forth was just LOOKING for a reason to make her look bad. “If you don't have time...”

“No, no, don't be silly,” the doctor turned back to face her and smiled. She felt relief wash over her. “Tell the committee I'd be happy to help out in any way that I can. And if I can, in anyway, make a small suggestion that is taken seriously... then of course, I'm pleased to.”

“Good, good. Thank you SO MUCH Doctor!” She stood to leave. “I won't take up any more of your valuable time...”

“Not at all, Mrs. Guntersaun,” Doc Gimley smiled. “No need to rush off. Tell me: you seem a bit stressed. Have you been having that old problem again? You know that tension isn't healthy Mrs. Guntersaun.” He nodded over to the examination table. “I don't have any appointments this morning. If you want, I can close the blinds and make sure that you're in good shape. After all, we can't have the chairwoman of the 75^th Anniversary Committee falling ill, can we?”

“Oh!” The matron felt herself blush, thinking about Doc Gimley's remedy for her tension. She wasn't sure how she felt about Chinese cures, but the massage – that was what the doctor called it, a massage, from the French – surely did take the tension out of her. She looked at the doctor's strong hands and long fingers... but shook her head. “No, thank you doctor, I am doing quite well... so much to do. But if I start to feel poor, I'll come and see you.” She left quickly and rushed down the stairs and onto the street with a pace she hadn't had since before she married Shirley.

“You be sure and do that Mrs. Guntersaun,” Doc Gimley called after her. He was still smiling.

[Scratch]: Palm Poem #6

2011-03-30T08:31:00.001-05:00

Palm Poem #6

Some days I give into the darkness. Some days I reflect what I hate the most. Some days I fail to live up to my own expectations. (They are higher than yours for me.) Some days I think about using more !!!!!!!! Some days I am afraid of my exuberance. Some days my skin is too thin. Some days other people's feeling are too loud. Some days I wonder if people feel anything at all. Some days I think I never feel enough.

Someday none of it will matter.

Someday I may figure it all out. If I am lucky.

Oompa: Part, The 2nd

2011-03-28T12:18:00.000-05:00

There was nothing at the bottom – at least, nothing that Stanley could see. He was exhausted and he could feel his bad knee swelling up: if felt the size of a softball. Shakir had to stop fifteen times on the way down the steep wall, and nearly fell half a dozen times. And each time he nearly fell, Shakir steadied himself using his trusted guide – nearly causing both of them to tumble to their deaths.

“Well, Oompa,” J. Paddington Shakir panted, looking around the valley. “What do you think?”

“What do I think?” Stanley squinted and looked around just in case he missed something; he hadn't. There was some scrub brush along the edge and rocky sand at the bottom that was cut by a muddy creek bed that hadn't seen a fish or a frog or even a dragonfly in months. The brush that seemed to line the bottom like a ring of hair had nothing on them that looked at all edible – and Shakir had burned through most of the water and the rest of the food on the previous day. “I think I'll be lucky if I don't break my neck walking out of here.”

Shakir laughed – and shook his head. “One of these days you'll learn to trust me, Oompa.”

Stanley shook his head and let himself sit on the sharp, uncomfortable ground. How did he get here? He'd lost his watch some time during the short crossing from the city to the sparse desert they were now in the middle of. He had no idea where they were; and he was pretty damn sure that J. Paddington Shakir didn't know either. He thought of the two dozen times he could've gotten away from his erstwhile “master” in the previous couple of days. I should've just pushed him, Stanley thought. When we were standing at the top of the gorge, I should've just pushed him. He would have fallen and broken his neck and no one would have missed him.

“We ought to find shelter, Oompa,” Shakir said. Stanley knew what that meant; it meant that HE needed to find them shelter. But there was nothing, not even a tall tree to stand under and get out of the hot late afternoon sun. In the three days that Stanley had let himself be led on by Mr. J. Paddington Shakir, he had not really been able to figure out anything about the man who would, in all likelihood, lead Stanley to his death. He gave no indication of who he was or where he was from or what he was looking for; it was as if the man simply thought that Stanley knew exactly where they were heading. If he had been thinking straight, Stanley told himself that he would have led the poor fool back to civilization and deserted him. That was what he SHOULD HAVE done; but he also told himself there was no point in trying to rethink his past mistakes with this man. What mattered, Stanley told himself, was that at some point in the future, when the opportunity presented itself, he would desert this sun-stroked idiot and make his way – somehow – back to his cheating wife, his safe air-conditioned cubicle, and the collection of internet porn that kept him satisfied while his wife fucked Fuji the sumo-wrestler.

“We ought to find shelter, Oompa.” When he repeated himself, it meant that Shakir was getting annoyed at his guide.

“Well I don't see anything,” Stanley said, “that we could use. “No trees. No overhangs. Nothing. You've found us a really good spot to die.”

Shakir shook his head. “You must have faith, pygmy. The Lord will provide. He even provides for pagan pygmies like you.”

“I'm a Lutheran,” Stanley said.

“We don't have time to exchange philosophies,” Shakir said. “We need to find shelter.”

“Why?”

“It's going to rain soon,” Shakir said. “And if we don't do something, the rain will flood this hole and we will drown.”

“If it was going to rain,” Stanley asked through gritted teeth, “then WHY did we come down here?”

Shakir shook his head and smiled. “You must have faith.”

“You must be kidding.”

“No,” Shakir said. “I am not.”

Oompa, Part 1

2011-03-24T22:56:00.000-05:00

J. Paddington Shakir stood on the precipice and looked down, steadying himself on the head of the pygmy midget who had been his guide since the day before yesterday. He thought the pygmy told him his name was Oompa – but that wasn't his name. That was just the name that J. Paddington Shakir had wanted to be his name ever since he left home in search of adventure. He'd always thought that when he went off into the jungle to seek his fame, his fortune, and the love of a beautiful blonde nymphomaniac with large breasts and big blue eyes, that he would have a pygmy guide named Oompa who was absolutely dedicated to him and would – if need be – die for him.

The pygmy's name was Stanley, and no matter how many times he said this to Shakir, he always called the pygmy Oompa. Stanley was not a jungle guide, but an accountant that Shakir had accosted on the street and insisted be his guide. Also, Stanley was not a pygmy; he was just a very short man among men who are generally not tall to being with. At first, Stanley thought he would amuse the dumbass, who he was sure had to be high or one of those western men who travel to the far east in search of young boys. But that had been 10 days ago and Stanley was sure he'd lost his job – which was very lucrative, certainly more than the $2 a day J. Paddington Shakir was paying him and insisting those were the going rates for jungle guides in that part of the world – and he was sure that his wife didn't even notice he was missing since she was having an affair with the sumo-wrestler who lived downstairs and stank like rotten cheese.

Oompa – that is to say, Stanley – absolutely hated J. Paddington Shakir, even more than he hated the sumo-wrestler who had given his wife herpes.

“This is the place, Oompa,” Shakir said using a grand tone. His tone was always grand, even when he told his guide to start a fire or announced that he was going to take a shit.

“You sure?”

Shakir looked down, laughed, and patted his guide on head – which Stanley detested. “Have no fear,” he said – again, grandly – “your crude superstitions hold no sway in this modern world.”

“Are we going down into the canyon or are we going to stay here?” Stanley sounded impatient. His bad knee had been bothering him, which he knew meant rain. He didn't especially want to trek down into the canyon. First of all, it looked really unpleasant; and for another, he knew that Shakir would make his “guide” go first.

J. Paddington Shakir laughed again and (again) patted Stanley on the head. “You're a silly little pygmy, Oompa,” he said. “Of course we're going down there.”

Sometimes She Breaks

2011-03-24T21:00:00.001-05:00

Sometimes she breaks and all the world

breaks with her – though the world will

gimp along a bit better, it will not do so

with the same determination she has

even on the days when it rains

and the bed is more comfortable

than the glare of eyes she must face

on any given day after she walks

out the door and before she comes

again to the same sacred space.

Sometimes she breaks and she breaks

alone; the untidy sum of all our fears

bearing down on her back,

some 21^st Century Atlas with the world

bearing down and breaking her down –

except for her resolve, which people

who do not know better mistake

for blind optimism or naivete. But

what they do not know – and I think

what she does not know either –

is that she silently takes on

their fears and makes them her own.

Sometimes she breaks and when she cries

I am at a loss because I have long since

forgotten how to cry – and there is nothing

I can say, and even my arms

are not strong enough to hold her

and the world of worries she bears

on her back without regret

or the slightest hint

that she will ever learn to simply

let it all fall in pieces to the ground.