NEEDLING

It’s the last day
of the shortest month
this must mean
something

FUCK

It’s the last day
of the shortest month
this must mean
something

FUCK

It’s...

(Eventually
he stuck a gun to his face
and pulled the trigger
thinking about
a greasy cheeseburger
with bacon
and tomatoes.)

I got some food
fixed up
Then I got around
to laying about
sleeping straddled on my couch
with some food
on the coffee table
I’d forgot about
before I clamored upwards
and remembered
the hours spent
making it

and I ate it.

Red it is
like a splitting head-ache
split right in half
in the middle
letting the Egyptian army through
half way
and drown in good form
evenly
split down the middle.

picking up some words from Buddy Guy’s playing on kut.org tonight. These are just parts of his song and not the whole song... just some words that caught my mind...


The night my baby left me
I walked back
straight back home.

But when I woke up
this morning
I didn’t know right from wrong.

You don’t have to worry about me
when I’m gone.

Baby you don’t have to worry
about me
when I’m gone.

Yeah.

Cycling news
in my Texas home
is where I am
venturing capital
inexistent guitar blues
is where I stand
sundown uptown midtown
got a hernia
frowned upon by the militia
lifting cases
of booze.

That’s where my blues
in my Texas home
is like a weasel
sliding past the home town
news
playing the guitar strings
standing down
looking uptown
for some clues.

Where’s my bicycle?

I can’t believe I used the word ‘peddling’ instead of the word ‘pedaling’ in my post loosely wet-dreaming about owning a bicycle. I’m not gonna edit it. Or should I? Uhm... ? A Freudian slip? As in I subconsciously feel as if I’m a peddler? And that no amount of pedaling – if ever I can afford to purchase a bicycle with which to pedal – will help me out of this peddling predicament?

Was laying on the couch watching a movie. First, I prepared myself some diner. Some fish, of which I’ve forgotten the name, I bought at the Korean market. I rolled it around in wheat flour, like it said on the instructions, and pan-fried it for less than ten minutes. To go along with that, I had some rice all ready done – all I have is basmati rice, I know that’s not good enough for Korean food, but that’s all I got in my pantry – and I steamed myself some garlic and some Brussels sprouts. I committed another crime when, to make my basmati rice a little stickier, I added some olive oil, and mixed in the sprouts and the garlic. Still, it was too loose, and I couldn’t use my fried seaweed paper to make tiny little rolls. I ate the seaweed by itself as a digestive.

It was all excellent. Brutus loved it even. He sat by me the whole time asking for some. He licked the rice the minute it hit the floor, and finally I gave him a piece of fried fish thinking that would calm him down a bit, that he’d eat it and go lay down and snore a little bit somewhere else... not at all. He loved it and if I ignored him for more than two minutes, he’d scratch my forearm with his paw. Gently so as not to hurt me, but persistently enough so that I wouldn’t misunderstand his demand. I gave him a couple more pieces of fish. He loved it. Then, when I was through, I made sure there was no fish bones on the plate and gave it to him. He licked it for several minutes.

The movie: Elling. The best thing I’ve seen since I’ve moved back to Texas. And last night I was watching Last Tango in Paris, through which I fell asleep. Both me and Brutus were snoring laying on the couch. On the other hand, Brutus was the only one sleeping during Elling.

Today is the last day of February. Yeep Yeep Houray! (Not sure why I should be happy about this, except that it’s been raining all night again, and this morning the sky is so blue you’d think some big fellow just sprayed the whole thing with a bomb of bright blue paint.)

Hot darn! I was in a bad mood all day yesterday. Ruined my day, didn’t even make it out of the house till after 17h00. I drove to a couple of bike shops looking to see what I'll have to put out to purchase a descent ride. It’s now official, as soon as I’m out of debt, I’m going back under, to come out hopefully – and before drowning, cross my fingers et cetera – with a brand spanking new – at least to me – road bike. Nothing perfect, it doesn’t have to be the best one in town, not even on the block, but it has to start getting me out of the house and peddling once again. I’m looking at something under 600 bucks. I won’t get much for that, but enough to get me on the road hoping for better. Too much drinking time on my hand stuck behind my computer doing nothing more than surfing and reading the newspapers. With a bike, maybe I’d get that heart of mine beating a little on the fast side for half an hour or so every other day. That couldn’t be anything but good, right? Was surfing Big Fellow, and fell upon the construction and mounting of his road bike made just for him... and I almost wet my pants. Gotta get in shape. Previous dreams of taking a year out and riding from Paris to Moscow are coming back to me. Not that I would ever do anything so silly and as physically difficult, but daydreaming about things I'll never do is fun to me. Go figure.

Also, a little diddle found on wfmu.org's blog on one recent post by station manager Ken Freedman. The diddle in question: 45 second ditty by Monty Python.

Doing better. Re-reading this morning’s “dog” post and realizing how badly written it is. I don’t make much of anything clear. For example, unless you know I live in a duplex house and that my friends and direct neighbors have two dogs, that I have one dog, that the new neighbors next door have at least three dogs, then you didn’t get from what I wrote earlier there are six dogs involved – though for once Brutus was mostly innocent since he was inside snoring away, except for once when he followed me outside on one of my anti-barking expedition at which point he joyfully got involved in the barking match. I also got some of the chronology wrong, the email service stopped working before I went out for the last and final time and understood the two-missing-water-buckets mystery, which explains but doesn’t excuse some of my anger. From reading this last post, one would never guess that I’ve been re-reading “The Elements of Style” recently. I change tense randomly, my style isn’t style but rather the lack of it, or a complete lack of grammatical capacities, and I didn’t even manage to capture the humor of me walking around in my shorts mostly naked in my muddy backyard early in the morning half awake and pissed off chasing after my neighbor’s dog!

The dogs were at it this morning. They started before seven this morning. Our new neighbors just moved into the house next doors, their backyard gives right onto my bedroom window. They apparently enjoy getting up very early on Sunday mornings, at which point they like to play with their two or three dogs in their backyard. This excites the two outside dogs – Brutus sleeps inside next to my bed or on the couch – and our courtyard becomes a singing canine paradise.

Mostly, this happens right under my window where, on the other side of the two inch cheap wooden walls, I lay my head on my pillow cursing both in French and in English. Should I get out of bed? Should I go outside without putting my pants on so as to get rid of one small step in this annoying enchainment of events forcing me out of bed and thus bringing me back to bed faster... even by a couple of seconds?

The powers that be forced me out of bed and outside several times. The first time, I ventured to my front gate with only my boxers on, but it’s cold this morning, I have holes in my shorts, and it was all ready quite daylight, people have started to stroll and get out of bed. Do I really want to be seen by my neighbors like this? The second time, I put on some sweat pants and I lock to backyard up, wanting to put Little Bear in the front yard except I can’t find their water buckets, which have mysteriously disappeared. I’m pissed at them, but I’m not going to lock them up without a water bucket. At least I can keep Little Bear out of the backyard, but that’s it.

I try to go back to sleep, I don’t even bother to take my sweat pants back off. I only manage to get more pissed off. I give up trying to sleep and go to my computer to answer some backlogged email. I’m doing fine, doing better, the dogs have calmed down...

After barely twenty minutes, there they go again, so I step back outside desperately looking for the two water buckets when Kari steps out of her place and says good morning. By this time, I’ve put on a pair of clean pants.

“Have you seen the two blue water buckets?” I say, “I can’t find them and I want to separate the dogs, they’re driving me fucking nuts.”
“Yeah, I’ve got them inside, I popped them in last night to give them a wash.”
“...”
“I’ll get them for you.”

I fill the water bucket and grab Little Bear by his collar to lead him to the front yard. He doesn’t like to go to the front yard because there he can’t go to my window and bark to drive me bonkers. So he lays down on the cement and plays dead. This is his favorite trick when you’re trying to get him to do something he doesn’t want to do. He plays dead. He becomes dead mass. I have to pick him up, and since it’s been raining for twenty four hours – the sun at least is out today – his paws are wet and full of mud, which get all over my beige flannel pants.

By now, it’s all ready ten in the morning and I’m livid, so I go back inside to finish my email when my email service decides to break down. It’s been one hour now, and no way of logging on.

I think I’m going to put some music on, go soak in the bathtub, and come back to it a little later. I have to calm down before I can do anything.

Today: I need to do the first lesson of my whisky course – the course I’m taking through Moray College.

Twenty minutes before I closed, this cowboy with a greasy hat walks in. He’s one of my regulars and he usually comes in late at night. He’s always wearing washed downed blue jeans, a tucked in button-up shirt, and one greasy cowboy hat. He’s probably in his late forties or early fifties. He never gives me trouble. His face is worn and his skin is tight, folded, sun burnt, and weathered. He likes to laugh, and he likes to tell stories.

“What’s this stuff you’re listening to again tonight?”
“Louis Armstrong.”
“I thought I was in Texas!”
“...” I said nothing, last night I was listening to Argentinean Tango when he came in.
“I figured on some country music, you know, what the hell... some good ol’ American country music, man?”
“What, you don’t like Louis Armstrong or something?” I said jokingly.
“No, man, it’s not that... you know... I was figuring... you know, I’m from Oklahoma and all – don’t tell nobody, you hear – and I figured you could play some Hank Williams or something... something cool...”
“I like this stuff, man.”
“I know... but...”
“Hey, man, he’s an American, as fucking American as it gets!”
“Yeah... yeah, you got that right! Abso-fuckin-lutely! That’s right, man, he’s an American!”
“That’s right!”
“Hell yeah!”

He bought half a gallon of real cheap vodka and half a pint of cheap tequila.

“Man,” he says, “last night I celebrated my anniversary with the wife.”
“Happy Anniversary, man.”
“Thanks... that’s nine years!”
“Shit, that’s good.”
“That’s the fourth one, brother, and I tell you, I don’t know if it’s gonna be the last.”
“...”
“We went to Red Lobster. I tell you what, that’s a once a year thing.”
“Yeah...”
“Eighty Nine dollars and thirty nine cents! That’s what it cost me!”
“Oh, man, that’s all right for an anniversary, specially the ninth one!”
“Fuck. The wife, I take her out and she goes straight for the thirty one dollar lobster and steak menu! SHiIte, who the hell does she think she is! But I don’t say nothing, while I’m ordering myself the twenty one dollar special, she’s going all out for the big bucks.”
“Hey, come on man, it’s your anniversary!”
“Once a year, you know it, and she better not s’pect it more than that.”

“The little lady had to have her lobster all figured out for her. Now, me, I asked for a bib and she asked me why I put that on, and I says just watch. I got me the lobster with the claws the head and the eyes, nothing missing from mine. I live here now, and I’m from Oklahoma – don’t tell nobody – but I’ve lived twenty years in California, that’s right buddy, I have. I done used to be a diver. Now here in Texas, it’s a bit hard to continue, but down that way, I’d go for my own lobster...

“That tale is all muscles and shit, what’s the best is what you find in them claws...”
“Hey man, I’ve lived in Maine a lot, so I know.”
“So you know! You know what I’m talking about. I don’t have to tell you what’s what! Right? There’s some shit going on in them claws! Am I lying or not?”
“You’re right, there’s some good eating there... not much of it, but damn it’s good.”
“Well, you can get a good bite and a half from each claw.”
“If you’re lucky.”
“Nothing like it, it’s the best part of the lobster, so when all you order is the tale and stuff, you miss out on all the fun stuff.”

This keeps on for a while.

“She’s my fourth, and this was my ninth anniversary. EIGHTY NINE BUCKS, man, can you believe it?”
“It’s all good, man, for your ninth! It’s worth it.”
“She better not expect it more than once a year.”
“Oh, come on, next year it’ll be ten years, and you’ll really have to go over board.”
“Ten years! Are you kidding? I told her all ready, be happy with what you gots, cuz it might not last long.”
“Ten years, man, come on...”
“Hell no... no ten years for me, I done told her, she better get herself ready, I said. Shit! Ten years! Are you kidding? I told her I might not last that long and she better enjoy what she’s got while she’s got it, because next year is one different story all together!”

“All right, man.”
“See ya later.”
“Yeah.”

“But hell... that was damn good lobster.”

(I didn't do such a good job of relating this conversation. I actually like this guy. He's got a good heart, as hard as he's trying to prove others otherwise. He's a rough fellow. In the same conversation, he told me that for a living to earn his money he’s a brick layer profession-wise... The weather being what it's been for the last few weeks, it’s been all wet and humid meaning no work and thus no money for him as of late... which explains his crisis over 89 bucks for his 9th anniversary. He did seem to know what was what when it came to lobsters, which I don’t think translated very well.)

Got it all wrong
the ideas.

Thick velvety red
liquid glass on a tray
bottles emptied
backwards
nothing’s left for that time
the last minute
the one before midnight
before going to bed
before becoming a pumpkin
with lights on
and rats
metamorphosed into princely horsemen.

The parable the one
about two brothers
and their father
that’s the one I was thinking of
this morning.

The difference
between saying yes and no
to your father
when he asks you to perform
a chore
unpleasant probably.

One says Yes.
The other says No.

The one who says Yes
is the one who
around your father
always says Yes
and helps him out holding his arms
stepping down the curb
or running to get him a drink
in the fridge
telling him not to worry about a thing
just to sit down
relax.

The one who says No
is the one who
around your father
always says No
and argues every point talking back
going too far most of the time
or running around bitching with a drink
about how things are
yelling this is not fair and must be changed
just to sit down
and listen.

And the father asks
the two brothers
to do his will
and do him this last chore
and the one who says Yes
says Yes
and the one who says No
says No.

The father gives
the one who says Yes
a present as usual.

The father gives
the one who says No
reprimand a usual.

When all is said
and done
and they all go their respective way
the one who says Yes
goes home
forgets about his father
and shows off to his wife
the present
telling her all about how
he tricked his father
once more.

He does nothing
of what his father
had asked him
to do.

The one who says No
goes home
and thinks all about his father
and tells his wife
his sadness
and what his father had asked
of him
which he refused.

After much thought
he does
what his father had asked.

The next time they see
their father
he praises the one
who says Yes
and reprimands the one
who says No
and the one who says Yes
makes fun
of the one who says No
who
looks down at his feet
and says nothing.

(In the dark
the one who says No
follows
the one who says Yes
follows him
into a dark alleyway
and stabs him
the one who says Yes
till he cries out
the one who says Yes
till he cries out
and expires
and the one who says No
goes home
to his wife
and says Yes.)

I got most my dishes washed, the floors of the kitchen and the living room swept... well, I didn’t pull the couch from the wall, but who’s checking? Right. I mopped the kitchen floor and not the living room floor. I haven’t folded the clothes I've washed the last couple of weeks. There’s a pile on the couch. I’ve been meaning to move that pile to my two closets after folding its various pieces and categorizing them respectively in t-shirt, boxers, sox, button-up shirts, pants, and miscellaneous sections... but I haven’t mustered enough energy this morning... yet. I did look at the mountain several times. I even stopped a couple of times and starred at it for several seconds thinking about the prospect of dealing with it. It might be easier just to shove the whole mess back in the washing machine. This way I won’t have to fold it till later, and the couch will once again – after several weeks of growth slowly climbing along the orange velvet upholstery of the couch, reaching the stained yellow walls, and eventually hiding all hints of a couch – the couch will once again be visible to the naked eye. There’s one small free spot on the right side of the couch if you’re facing the couch looking at it, the side which is the closest to the front door. Usually, that spot is covered with a big chocolate colored slab of pelt, about sixty pounds worth. If you look close enough, you'll notice that this is a labrador, which happens to be my dog and whose name is Brutus. This leaves no couch for me.

Repotted my mint shoots
doing real good
inside a little circle of stones
inside which
I dug the dirt deep
and turned it around
to let air in
breathing in that dampness
we have right now.

Found a couple of worms
gave them to my dog
and he relished them
turning around on his back
if he'd been a cat
he’d a purred
from the pleasure he found
in those worms.

This morning
walking out into my garden
I see the mint’s doing just fine
as mint usually does
it’s no gardening secret
that mint will pretty much
grow
anywhere
and it doesn’t take no genius
to get a good bunch
going.

And boy does it smell good.

I can all ready taste
some dark mint tea
sweetened with thick yellow honey
I can just taste some lamb
roasting just barely
with whole branches
of mint
and some flat white beans
cooked over night.

Do you think the sports-fan talked about in the article linked further down had a couple too many pints?

I was reading Waiter Rant. From his Comments page, I ended up here: Way down in the hole, and found this link: One soccer ball for a couple of Testicles.

Ouch.

Doing a bbq later this afternoon with the normal bunch in honor of Brian's birthday. Yesterday morning, I got some venison shoulder meat I had in the freezer, and put it in the fridge to thaw out. Today, I placed it in olive oil, crushed garlic, some rosemary and the juice of a lemon. The blood, the oil and the lemon have coagulated, and by the time I get to slapping those little beauties on the hot grill, we'll be in for some fine dinning. Glenn's got three thick steak he's getting ready as well, and I've gone to the supermarket, after Kari said Brad and JK were also coming, to purchase some more meat... just in case. I bought a two inch thick beef roast I've got macerating in onions and olive oil and some more lemon juice. We got loads of corn on the cob, a couple batches of asparagus - I just LOVE asparagus - two thick loaves of so-called French bread, and a bunch of green salad and tomatoes. We'll accompany that with some mash potatoes. Hope we'll have enough to eat. Hope we don't wait till late tonight to start because I'm all ready getting hungry.

Rick in Paris sent me the link to this site: Large fella. I like it, and it makes me want to go buy me a brand new bike and start riding again. No problem, once that maxed-out credit card is paid off, I can max it out again. What are credit cards for anyway?

Openning his Selected Poems, as published by Faber and Faber, at random, I pick out this section of The Man With The Blue Guitar:

XII

Tom-tom, c’est moi. The blue guitar
And I are one. The orchestra

Fills the high hall with shuffling men
High as the hall. The whirling noise

Of a multitude dwindles, all said,
To his breath that lies awake at night.

I know that timid breathing. Where
Do I begin and end? And where,

As I strum the thing, do I pick up
That which momentously declares

Itself not to be I and yet
Must be. It could be nothing else.

Wasn’t feeling so good for various boring reasons I won't bore anybody with, that I decided to take the bull by the horns, so to say, and get on out here to MAKE myself feel good. I saddled my little Mazda and rode on down to Howard’s Nursery where I strolled around their plants. I ended walking away with one Star Jasmine plant about a foot and a half tall, two Persian Shield, two St. John’s Wort, one Italian Oregano, and one large bag of Texas dark Pine mulch. From there - all ready feeling much better - I rode to my local H.E.B and bought a twelve pack of beer for 10.99 Dollars. I also grabbed a little bottle of Kava Kava plant extract. I squirted my last two beer with it. A white creamy cloud forms in the beer and slowly dissipates throughout the whole bottle after a minute or so. I paid the cashier, a cute young girl in her mid twenties.

“How you doing,” I said as I walked up. The girl behind the counter wasn’t paying me any attention. She was busy looking for some piece of paper or something in her register, in her drawer, through her papers, and not finding whatever she was looking for.
I repeated myself after half a minute waiting for her.
“How you doing?”
“All right, I guess,” and she scanned my beers and my plant extract.
“My knees hurt,” she said leaning down on the conveyer belt and sighing as I ran my debit card through the machine.
She had real light brown colored skin. She was real thin with a cocky smile.
“It’s from standing on your legs all day long,” I answered stupidly, not knowing what else to say, nor how to flirt with her, though I wanted to.
“It’s all right, I got the day off tomorrow.”
“Yeah... I’m off today... man it’s nice just to hang out and enjoy this sun,” I was sounding stupider by the minute.
“Well, I got so many appointments and stuff tomorrow, it’s not like I’ll be able to enjoy it much.”
“At least you won’t be here.”
“That’s true.”
“Well you have a good day.”
“You too... b-bye.”

Back home, I’ve been planting my new plants, watering them, stuffing their soil with loads of good thick mulch. And drinking beer.

It’s a damn good day after all.

Attention must be paid, by David Mamet in the NYTimes.

The sun has come out for the first time in a couple of weeks. This might incite me to actually go take a walk outside. First I’m going to drive out to my folks who live a few miles out of the great metropolis of Liberty Hill. It’s an hour’s drive from here, and lets all hope my car makes it as it has given signs of not wanting to move anymore... not good for an automobile, and I currently am not in a financial position to replace said automobile with another. I did take a trip to a dealership the other day, and found that for me to purchase the kind of vehicle I’d like to own, I’d have to be a richer man than I am. Though, like going to a doctor who gives you not-so-good news, it’s always better to go search for a second, and even a third opinion, somewhere's else. And I might just do that in the weeks to come. Anyway, I didn’t particularly care for the car salesman I had a meeting with last week, as in when he finally got around to putting numbers down on a piece of paper, they didn’t reflect what he had been alluding to during our talk, and when I went home, studied those numbers, found them askew, did not understand them entirely, and called him on that, or rather sent him an email with the numbers laid out as I understood them, reiterating some of what had been said during our meeting, he simply wrote back and told me those things had not been said and that they were incorrect, and thus calling ME a liar. I hear this is a common practice among the tradesmen who sale automobiles new or used for a living. Just goes to show it’s not good to sign anything until you’ve taken it home, slept on it, studied it with a clear mind, reflected upon every word and number, and then taken the decision to sign or not to sign.

(Check out Confessions of a Car Salesman found on Edmunds.com. A little long, but good reading, especially if you're in the market for a new car.)

All right. Time to get in my car and bubble on out of here.

You’ve reached the stone wall grilling peanuts
Amerika
Frozen supermarket mini tacos in the conventional oven
Added some tomatoes and some sour white cheese
The Mexican kind I like

Nothing’s missing

You’ve reached the stone wall grilling peanuts
Armorika
Speak the Brezoneg cooking cheese at five hundred degrees
Loaded drinking the fermented malt the liquid bread sour
The German kind I like

Cobbling the coast is clear

You’ve breached the wallpaper carbonizing peanuts
Bazooka
Peanut farmer peanut farmer feed your goats some nuts
Added some love and some bitter milk
The Texas kind I like

Choosing’s are tight.

We can spot the guys just out of seeing the movie Sideways. We can spot them a mile away. They walk into the liquor store looking for wine for the first time in their lives. They might never even have ever bought liquor or stepped into a liquor store before. But they just saw the movie Sideways, they’re in their late thirties early forties, they’re ex-Young Urban Professional slightly effeminate – still holding on to that early nineties Sensitive Man thing – haven’t got an ounce of original personality to them and are REALLY WANTING TO IMPRESS YOU – or rather ME the wine merchant – with their knowledge of WINE TALK.

“I’m looking for a soft wine. I don’t want any of that harsh really dry complicated wine, you know?”
“What Andrew is saying, is that he’d like something soft.”
“Something,” I try to conjure up a word for them, “something easy? Something you can simply enjoy without having to think about it?” I say without a slight bit of irony or sarcasm.
“Yeah... you know, I’m not a wine drinker, I’ve never drank a wine I liked, really... so I’d like something Soft...” He repeats the word soft several times over and over again...
“I’m not exactly sure what you mean by soft? Do you mean something light, something fruity, something sweeter, something not too tannic, or too full?”
“Yeah... I guess I don’t want none of that red wine that’s so dry it... you know... it... it leaves you icky all over you can’t even drink it... you know...”
“You’d like to go fruity... possibly on the sweet side?”
“I’d like it soft, that’s what I want.”

But I’m not transliterating very well. There were the hand gestures as well, to go along with their non-descriptions of what they were looking for. They knew wine came in grape variety, but they couldn’t get the concept of varietals, wines made from several grapes. I sold them a bottle of overly fruity sweet red wine we just got in the store. I would never buy this wine for myself, as I don’t like fruity wines, and I don’t particularly care for wine which taste like bad liquid candy with absolutely no body or anything. I got a dollar fifty commission on that bottle.

I much prefer the forty or the fifty something single or unhappily married professional woman buying her bi-weekly half gallon of vodka / rum and the occasional bottle of red wine. At least we can joke together. THEY know where THEY stand and THEY know who THEY are and I like them for that. There’s usually a little flirt or joking going around. They’re usually a smart bunch with a sense of humor, though often on the cynical side. We have fun together. A small exchange lasting a few seconds or a couple of minutes the time it takes to run their credit card through the machine.

The capitalist in training
watched his master act
and stood by
listless
wondering what he’ll do
when that time comes
and he’ll be himself
a full pledged capitalist
by himself having to make that decision
of stamping on
to move on
of squeezing out
to expand upon
of annihilating
to build from
to step forward
to more profitable
and more interesting problems
which might profit
the profit margin
a little better
even if only by a few pennies
rather than standing around
listening
to some non-entity’s problems.

I am a workhorse. I plow the fields of others. I do not know them though I have seen them in their castle. Sometimes, when they ride in their fancy horse buggies by the field which I am plowing, they stop and push away the curtains with their clean hands, and they look at me. I look at them. They smile at me. I smile at them. They can evict me from this land with merely a movement of their hand. I could poison their fields and the food which they reap. They mistake my smile for contentment. I mistake theirs for gratitude. We are both fools in our own right.

Fiddle man
Irish brogue
Sea fearer

Black coffee
Echinacea
Onion bagel

Morning list
Fried bacon
Celtic folklore

Writing about writing, about writers, about not writing enough, or too much of not enough... poems about poems and poetry, short stories about short-story writers living a boring short-story writer life, stage-plays about the inner-thoughts of a stage-writer having second thoughts about being a stage-writer, et cetera... are BORING! It is the proof of a lack of imagination. And I’ve been guilty of it recently.

Time for a shower.

Unhappy with my situation these days, I’m trying to think of ways to move things around, to substitute X with Y or Z. My task at hand this morning, is to identify X – the problem(s) – and to ponder what Y or Z could be, and their viability.

One possibility would be to quit everything, get in my car, and start driving somewhere OTHER THAN HERE for example – as I’ve done in the past – but then I would simply end up SOMEWHERE ELSE, which albeit would not be HERE, but would not be much better than HERE, as in it probably wouldn’t be any different and pretty much SAME SHIT DIFFERENT SPOT type of situation. And once the ILLUSION of change would have dissipated into thin air, I would find that THERE, or the new HERE isn’t much better than HERE, the would be EX-HERE. No great discovery: Running away, though sometimes full of great adventures, doesn’t solve the problem(s) – whether said problem(s) have been identified or not – it usually creates new problems to identify, categorize, find a solution to, learn to live with and/ or eliminate.

Back to X which I’ve partly identified as the LACK OF INDEPENDENCE, as in my daily activities are overwhelmingly controlled and directed by people OTHER than myself. And this makes me unhappy. Since these people are the ones who bring me a paycheck every other week, and thus allow me to pay rent, bills, and purchase food and drink, I need to either replace them with OTHER people who would do the same for me yet ask me less of my personal time in exchange, or find a way to bring that paycheck to myself all by myself. What I need is FINANCIAL independence. No great discovery here either.

I am banality. Just an everyday chap trying to make ends meet, all in trying to keep a small fraction of free-thought and free-thinking time while doing it. Not being very SUCCESSFUL at it, as in none of what I’ve just said is very original, though I’ve gotten up at an ungodly early hour so that I might have all this time to myself before going to my place of employment and perform my: working, thinking, being for THEM, the ones who send me a paycheck every other week – a very small paycheck I might add, numerically speaking.

What have I solved? Nothing. And I love to run away. That feeling – that wind in my face as I’m running / driving to unknown places. It’s a good feeling to not solve a darn thing and to just pick up and get out of dodge. I’m attempting something NEW. To face the demons, the capitalists, the communists, the priests, the city which is not my city but which is the city I currently live in, one I left years ago in very much the same manner I’d like to leave it once again, one which I’ve returned to... to what? Ten years have gone by and I feel as if I’m back at the starting block.

I better get my thinking cap on and solve whatever it is that needs solving because I got the traveling bug.

WHAT are Y and Z? Are they a solution to X, a replacement, an on-going process, a growing-up evolution of me, an illusion... how can I resolve X, move on towards the un-identified Y and Z without falling further into depression? How can I go on my next trip – wherever that might be – and do it in a spirit of GOING TOWARDS rather than RUNNING FROM?

Going from space
to grace
from comma
to period
the looser adjusted himself
and smoked himself
a year’s stash.

Going from word
to music
from syllables
to notes
the poet drank one instant
and chanted for a year
the last second.

Going from story
to thought
from novel
to image
the writer paused one second
and described a drop
of water.

Time for bed
I think
I am the end of time
At least the end of my own

[destiny]

I am breath and flesh
ready to be savaged
and to be plowed
under and over
the seed which grows in spite

will spit.

Merde,
he says.

Looking for sugar peels
orange escapes
the CD skips keeping

it’s annoying
it’s never done that before
like sugar spleens
high on a kite
looking down

orange inmates
high on skipping keeps
looking for sugar peels

it’s annoying
it’s never done that before
like angular flights
steaming high grounds
looking up taking turn
taking turn

gasket
blown high on flight
skipping spleens
looking down
looking for sugar peels
we skip keeping skips
skipping keeps
high on kite
keeping keeps and skips
orange sugar peels
frosted corner flakes
skipping turns.

The answer isn’t clear
I must admit
it is there though I assure you
in there hidden
as if it wasn’t an answer
but a plain statement we make
like small talk.

I’ve just recently learnt
what ‘mellow yellow’ meant
smoking banana peals
never knew that before

No it ain’t nothing like it was
with the coal workers last century

but what does that mean
I mean
it ain’t nothing like it was No
with the Krols
and their knights
enslaving you all around
at the beginning of this era

Smoking banana peals
burning lavender incense
and cooking my new cast iron pot
my mom gave me for Christmas
seasoning it
with olive oil for tomorrow
getting ourselves ready
burning cheese

Yes there’s nothing as bad as I’ve read
but that don’t mean it is as it should be yet
as in we’re at the place we want to be
knowing that all is in place for good
there’s
No moving ahead now
because we’ve firgured this game out

I forgot what I meant to say
here
nothing probably
except it wasn’t what I wanted to talk about
so as not to ruin my diner tomorrow
as all thoughts of work
and paychecks
and especially thoughts of money
must go

Bought all this food
at the Mexican market after I left my work

“Scuse me, d’you know where
I can find some dry prunes?”
I asked this older fellow working there
turning over the yellow onions
throwing away the bad ones
and cleaning off
some flaky skins

“Uhm... habla espagnole... ?”

“Nada...” I said
we both looking at each other
in that way people have
when they’d like to understand each other
but know they won’t
however hard they try

And we smiled at each other understandingly

“No entiende espagnole,” I reiterated apologically
“dry prunes?” I tried again

He shrugged his shoulders and motioned me
to follow him
apparently to get help
on the way there
as a way of making conversation
I said

“Yo hablo Frances?” I said as an apology

He put his arm around me for a second
like I understand you
and we both laughed
a good one
we were friends now
and he introduced me to an even older man
in his late sixties
also with a brown apron on
working for minimum wage
going through the relleno peppers
who spoke three more words
of English
and who was also the nicest man
trying to understand me
not knowing what to say
except send me off to the dry figs
and raisins

I said thank you
“Gracias”
and pushed my cart towards the potatoes
when this younger fellow
came over to me

“You’re looking for something?”

“Dry prunes.”

“Isle three.”

“Thank you.”

And I went there only to find out
they weren’t dry prunes
I wanted
but Dry Plums

And what's the difference?

Lambic beer might convince me to move to Belgium. Lindemans Cassis Lambic is a little heaven in a glass. Dark reddish in color, fruity without being sweet... I'm pinching myself for having only bought one - because I'm cheap and because they're so darn expensive here - and I'm wondering what if anything could I drink next to follow up such a savory trip? Whatever it is, it's not going to be good enough. Yikes...

Why don’t they call them SLOW BUMPS, or ANTI-SPEED BUMPS, or NOT FOR SPEEDING BUMPS?

Other than that, I’m off today, this being my NO SELLING BOOZE day, so I went for a little trip to the drag where I stopped once at Half Price Books to purchase... yes, you figured it out... books! Three to be exact. I then took my Mazda down a couple blocks to my favorite head shop, into which I had never entered until today and thus it only recently became my favorite head shop, and bought two more books about subjects often talked about in head shops, and some lavender incense.

Coming back home, I have been surfing on the internet reading about this subject. Very interesting.

Now it's off to the post office where I should have gone yesterday but somehow didn't wake up in time to do so. I have to post a little package to gay Pareeeee.