NEEDLING

I would like to re-vamp my web “look” and possibly change blog server. I don’t know how. Blogger.com was being really uncooperative a few weeks ago, but it is now working fine. I’d like to have my own URL name / web-site and such, where I could do more than just a blog. I don’t know anything about it all. Soon, I’m going to be publishing single poems on poster-like paper with simple minimalist design, and I will try to sell them for a small fee here on this site, as well as at other physical places. For this, I need a pay-pal account and all that which goes along with it. I also know nothing about such things. The money raised within this enterprise will help towards a publication of my short book of poems called “Beer Songs For The Lonely” which Claire in Paris is going to send to the press sometimes after September 7th of this very year. She’s poor, I’m poor. We need money. Any help is welcomed.

Here's one of the poems I will do in single page format:


FAST-ORDER CHEF

Louis the Fish was his name
why he was called that
nobody ever knew
but that's the name he answered to
and that's the name he wanted to hear
whenever anybody
uttered his name and he heard it.

Louis the Fish worked his grill
down in a burger joint
across the street
from my dad's mechanic.

He didn't talk much
being too busy most the time
either flipping burgers
or smoking a cigarette
or remembering
the orders he kept in his head.

He worked his grill
like a love song
to the only woman
he could ever think of loving
who had gone
and left him one night long ago
and his masterpiece
was the Philly cheese steak
though he'd hardly ever been out
of his trailer park
and definitely nowhere out of Texas
it was the best damn Philly
outside of Philly.

Nobody touched his grill
he'd light her up in the morning
and scrub her down at night
and nobody would ever have dared
to take that away from him
because he had talent
slithering like his namesake
and he had scales
from head to toe.

He'd fry you some onions and cheese
like a man desperate for something
like a man trying to prove something
like a man figuring on a joker
he swam in heat
which mattered none to him
like a fish and water
he swam in grease and tattered his grill
like a lost child he'd found
one night
and loved her since
brought her to three hundred degrees
lovingly
every day just to repeat himself
again and again.

One night
after he'd washed and scrubbed his grill
he stepped into the grease bin
underneath
and slide inside till he was gone.

Louis the Fish is gone.
Louis the Fish is gone.