Luck and Slack

The town has finally dealt a truly devastating blow and I dodged another bullet. I feel the guilt of being passed-over whilst others get the axe, and wonder how I managed to fake it this long. The strange thing is that I am more optimistic now than during the most manic of lusty booze fueled rages, whence I bounded higher than Falkor with no regard for the ground below. The page I have turned is a blank one, and I still have not fully burned the previous chapters, but things are looking up. My routine is simple and needs to be tweaked a bit in order to account for creativity as well as self-improvement. I need to make these repairs before I can be of any use to others. Ah, first world problems, how you blind me to the suffering of anyone but myself. I will now be off to the thrift stores to find my slack. Maybe I will find the next love-of-my-life digging trough the dusty boxes of Xmas albums. I hope she doesn't smell like an ashtray.

poor dog.

You know her's a sad specimen, but she depends upon you. Her also don't ever smile, but to laugh she needs you. You can never hold Gracie too tight. Her will squish the wurms out. She just wants a mother's warmth and some ants or beetles. Everyone will declare their love, But she won't do it. She can't even reach for a hug. Being quite the shortest. Gracie wont give up her trust, And who can blame her.

Smoke Pony

Twister return this house that hill without pony she swills outside the chamber in the crowd. They smite her house-fire to the foundation with red scabbed finger-bones, helmet gleam above that house-fire or finger-bones, higher above her velveteen widow moan. Else a wind-chime ain't breezy, An acrid chimney brick then twists slightly crumbly. Trolls toll that bell outside a bellows erect under a cape, her jagged fallen aerials spanning through faint smog- disavowed bowstrings will spring from anger or her pony from her hill.

Food

Elaborate flavors are created by a broad range of ingredients in exotic ways around the world. Many things that my culture would never consider eating are thought of as food elsewhere. Lizards, insects, amphibians, and even waste products like nests and dung are used as staples or delicacies. In China they love their bird-nest soup and harvest it from limestone caves. The peasants who climb the walls must be oblivious to the dangers they face. The nests are made of spit, and whatever debris exists in the stomach of these creatures. One would think it would be a good way to catch SARS or bird-flu or something. Another danger could be the half naked peasant grappling the cave walls without a harness, oblivious that in the US, OSHA would be cracking down; also the FDA, because birds nests as food seems like a good target. The climber' foot slips on some slick guano, and the hand that grasped for the delicate nest involuntarily crushes it to powder. Tumbling midair, he hits the bottom, 40 feet down without a scream. Only his legs and some ribs are broken. He came alone today.

Memorial Day Weekend

I was tasked with the honer to dispose of my nation's banners in the proscribed method. I dug a shallow grave and attempted immolation But the fabric was not cotton, nor linen or hemp; Some artificial fabric made of plasticine fibers, They smoldered like Gary, Indiana, and melted like American cheese, Ronnie Wax, it was called in the 1980's. But a government job was a boon for us now, in the 90's, If only seasonal. Hoarse mewling caught my attention, and I tracked the source next door, to Vector Control. The deformed creature, was barely a mouse, What should have been kitten, Perversely wounded with opaque, matter framed eyes. It squawked between the most hollow and hopeless Drone of the summer. Chain crusted with precious, unfortunate detritus Was wrapped round it's neck and bolted to the dog house Outside of that Dachau for meaty cast-offs. The guards had gone home for long Independence weekend, And I, on the night shift, was alone with my duty. I closed off the part that nurtures the sick, and switched to the role: The firing squad loner, the hooded axe-wielder, My shovel, a stand-in for swift tang and chop; The hopeless little wretch was buried with honers befitting a hero.

8 Lives

Filthy city tried to put a rope around my neck; But I loosed the noose, I cheated death. Evil spirits tried to grab the wheel and make my car and me a wreck; So I split the tree, and I cheated death. Silas Cool shot the driver and my bus flew off the bridge; But I called in sick, and I cheated death. Depression sent me out to throw my body off a ridge, Then I stubbed my toe, and I cheated death. Freshwater sharks were stalking, flipped my little boat, But I held my breath and I cheated death. CO2 filled up my room and made me really choke; Next, sirens woke me up and I cheated death. Wheel snakebit by pothole, on my skull, potential scars. I cracked my clavicle, but I cheated death. Saw my fate in crackled faces of the buddies at the bars, But I sobered up and I cheated death. And I could not find a reason why; No Devils, grinning, pulled me down, No gods chucked rocks from on-high.

Roaches

Nearer swept the voice, croaking down the hall, Coco roaches waved, his wind shoved them to the cracks; And closer in the dark, thump creak on tread and wall: Lumens snake under door, as the switch clicks! And spark behind eyes with no cypher from him, Inside grizzled drummer breaths the rhythm. (Wishing me back to my sleep, the flying swim). He shouted my name! Though not without kindness, “Did ya find a job?”, half joint pinch-pushed to sleepy hand; He passes it off and “no” I must confess; I drag on the short, “things didn't go as planned”; He turns on heals whilst he speaks, I hoarsely thank him for the sluggish treat. “You need to move out within two weeks.” Freshly clouded mind, makes crooked sense of this mess: Flophouse door slams and I retreat to unearned sleep; He was not cruel, he was not kidding, and he meant the best; Thudding, knocking on the stairs that he built too steep; My scumbag squat since before last Fall, I'm asthmatic and spotty and built too small, Choked by skunk, and puzzling paint upon the wall. I'm fading fast at nineteen, and twenty-seven is all I hope: Looking forward to fuck-all, far too young for these regrets; Ain't switched to whiskey, still counting on the dope; Decades later he's still there, with his pets. Like rats like roaches, how've we survived? I've fallen to pieces, Still I'm revived: (Knowing so much less than at twenty-five).

Sleepaway Cramp

Sometimes the microwave wind of a nacho supreme is a comfort. It drowns out the wistful stench of booze right outside the kitchen door. The night bartenders stopped offering me a shift drink after Dylan, my non-drinking buddy, and their boss, gave them a dressing down concerning their tendency to over-pour or give away drinks. He never mentioned that I could be inches away from falling into an Irish haze that I spent 25 of my 40 years in. I am sure they already know. They can smell a drunk from a mile away. It was their bread and butter. Dylan kept me straight and I trusted him as much as I could; as much as someone who has been turned on or rejected by every family member and confidante. He was the only one in this Winter-dead resort town who knew my story. With him I enjoyed the confessional privilege that I rejected as a youth. My shriving pew was in a moldy church basement 40 miles away from here. The others at the group did not comment or judge, but they thanked me for sharing, as is custom, and went on to the next sad sack with a tale of woe and tequila. There were at least two AA groups right here in Glen Arbor, behind the Sleeping Bear, but their 12 steps, I could not stomach. Higher powers, letting go, and atonement put a repulsive taste in my mouth. That religious style hokum was partially responsible for my hugging of the bottle for so long. This group was a lot different from the “I am powerless”, maxim chanting, Saint Francis spewing, state mandated violation of the establishment clause that is Alcoholics Anonymous. Most of us were fuck-ups, but we didn't let the booze define us. I had had enough misplaced blame in my life and I was not going to beat myself up for what the world did to me and what I did to myself. Dylan was the perfect sponsor. There is nothing like a former drunk and current bar manager to inspire one to keep one's promises to himself. It had honestly never even occurred to me that he might have a problem in the two years I had worked with him. Dylan picked me out of the line-up at my first meeting. I know him as a stoic, no-bullshit guy who was surprisingly well read for the country fried hoss. Dylan was only a couple years older than me, but hard traveling and harder drinking had turned his face as gray, pitted and rut filled as the back-roads, out here in God's country. His face was as gravelly as an unimproved two-track. The very same two-tracks that contrasted the ones in our town, which were pristine blacktop for the benefit of rich invaders who acted the fool, vomited, and fought in our authentic little country bar and grill every Memorial Day. The story that I told the group was not the usual, “I got drunk and beat the wife, crashed the truck and got in jail,” variety. Mine was a little weirder and a lot more uncomfortable to retell, I imagined. Unlike the other hard luck stories that drove many of the others to drink, mine was hardly my fault. Maybe sleep-away camp was different two decades ago, with less state regulation. I am pretty sure mine was quite atypical. Our small throwback denomination rented cabins and kitchen space from a much larger Presbyterian summer camp. There was very little resemblance to the typical Meatballs or even Camp Crystal Lake. At 14 I hated it all, from volleyball to capture-the-flag. I hated 7 AM mass and 11:30 bible study. There were none of the silly camp songs or even a respectable Kumbaya. All of our music came from 19th century hymnals. We had two priests to look after our souls, who while in their robes, had the cruel eyes of angry money-changer-in-the-temple Jesus. For Contrast, In their T-shirts and shorts (or speedos at the pool, for Christ sake!) they told inappropriate jokes and gave and enjoyed back-rubs from the more eager to please, naively pious kids. And if you thought being an alter boy was embarrassing at your home congregation, being one here, although a so-called privilege, was 19 times more embarrassing. Instead of old people and extended family as parishioners, you had fifty of your peers from the extended diocese, from 9 to 19, staring at you over folded hands. Funny thing is, there was no giggling or monkey business. This was a brand of Catholicism that held the modernization of Vatican II as heresy. To say it was old fashioned is not nearly descriptive enough. The Priests faced the alter with their back to an unworthy and shameful congregation while incense, pleased God and masked the sweat of mere humans. Latin was the only language pleasing to God's ears. When I got the call I was miffed. That part of my life was so far removed from who I was now. I thought I had finally lived it down, drowned it and filed it so permanently away that I could scarcely remember the people involved, or how out of the ordinary it all seemed. But she had a kind voice and said her name was Sharon Quincy. I vaguely remembered the name as someone I had crushed on hard at camp in my unsteady, fourteen year old way. “Hi, Marshall, you probably don't..remember me?” Everything she said sounded like a question. “We met at Man-I-Too by the River...when we were kids...my little brother was the one that went missing..?” ...Long pause. The words faded in and out. My face began to burn and neck got prickly. I thought I would remember it as the best night of camp. We were free from the priests disproving, yet creepily interested gaze, with just the 18 year old counselors for guides. All of us hiked a quarter mile into the woods, to the flat by the river. The clearing was wide and tree lined. It felt a million miles from civilization, even though there was a road a hundred paces north. There was a berm in the center, piled with field stones from some abandoned farmer's field. It looked like a druid cairn or something out of Stonehenge. When the moon rose there was an otherworldly aura from mist and fireflies. I don't remember much that makes sense anymore. I was made to retell the story under duress so many times by police, and family and church officials that it seemed like someone else' memory, overheard, with the juicy parts left out. I was feeling smiling eyes on me from my peers for the first time. I swore that it was just a campfire spook story. When I acted out the ritual that I made up in my head, some kids played along and elaborated. I don't remember at all how it went. It was silly playacting and I was coming out of my shell, enjoying the attention that usually took the form of ridicule. It the goof became deflated of fun when a couple of the younger ones started crying. One of them tripped over a log and cracked his skull in all of the mayhem and silliness. A counselor helped him back to the infirmary building. It was not until morning that anyone noticed Scotty Quincy was no longer accounted for. “You remember my brother...right?” It took no seconds. The prickly feeling came back. The unearned guilt taught by Father Sagg. It was the guilt of a 14 year old who has earned eternal torment for putting his hands inside his pj's. The guilt of a 14 year old accused of being a pagan devil worshiper; someone who has called upon Azula-Whateva, from Hell. Someone who must have gifted an innocent to the demon, and who must have spirited the body away with no trace. The Devil evaded the forensics team because no one ever found a trace of her little brother. The only after effect was the inquisition that I endured, and the shunning. I was grilled by police, church officials and my own mother. I was sent North to live with my father because my Christ haunted mother saw a Diablo consorting heathen every time she looked at me. The Church officials fittingly performed the inquisition, alongside the small town cops. The torture, however, was from the other children, who may or may not have believed that I did anything to or with little Scotty, but were still willing to be righteous tormenters for this demon spawn. “Whatever happened to you?..do you remember anything?..the case reopened...no one's interested...I've made phone calls to everyone I can find, and you are the last...? please help find what's his name...Rod...? You probably don't want to hear any of this...?” I didn't and I hung up as politely as I could. Nauseous and detached, I walked into work. Dylan must have noticed how spooked I was and blockaded me in the walk-in cooler. He must have thought I was an excellent prospect for a wagon dive because he wore the look of quizzical concern he reserved for 2AM. hold-outs at his bar. “Hey Devil-boy, let me buy you a cup of coffee.” I did not want to talk about it, and would not for another week. I told the story update to my drunkie support group, and Dylan piped up that maybe I could call Shannon back. Besides, he reasoned, she might be single. When I next spoke to her, I made an uneasy promise that I would track down the last one on her list. Rodrigo had hung up on her when she tried. Rodrigo was the “son” of Father Sagg. In our form of Catholicism priests may marry, and it is conceivable for them to adopt children. Father Sagg never seemed the marrying kind, and Rodrigo, a slender olive skinned Puerto Rican, did appear to interact or respect Father as a “dad”. Roddy did not mix with the other campers, and he projected an air of entitlement with Father. He did not become a counselor like the other seventeen and eighteen-year-olds who had been attending the camp for several years, and he slept in Father's cabin, not with the rest of the boys in their two bunkhouses. When I knocked on his door, downstate, in East Lansing, he did not answer. It appeared that he had adopted his own bleach blond 18 year old Adonis”. To say that they were not happy to see me was an understatement. When Roddy slapped my face it stung just like my mother's blows. When he collapsed on the divan, head in hands, Adonis fled to the unseen rear of the smart little condominium. Roddy tearfully confirmed everything that everyone with eyes suspected about Father Sagg's relationship with him. When I mentioned the missing child, he blanched, and leaped from seat to sideboard which hid a small safe. He extracted a stack of leather bound journals, tied with golden string and wax sealed with the mark, Fr. S., above the impression of an inexplicably smiling lambs face. Roddy put them in my hand. He had sworn to never read them, and to turn them over to the Church, upon Father's death. That would not be long as it turned out. When I went to see that miserable specimen in the old clergy's home, Father was now Bishop, and Bishop was incoherent. Dementia had taken a lot of old drunks that warmed stools next to mine during my quarter decade lost weekend. Bishop Sagg showed all of the signs. He was confined to a reclining wheelchair. Cataract inflicted eyes filled with sparks when I imagined that he recognized me. Next Bishop started shrieking when I mentioned Roddy. The orderlies, two linebacker shaped nuns, hustled me out within 30 seconds. I went to my motel and broke the seal on the stack of journals. Shortly after I stopped sobbing, I found myself at the Green-n-White In-n-Out party store, eyeballing the amber bottle behind the counter. Back at the motel, I kept reading, with the bottle still sealed. I stared at the revelation. I stared at the bottle. I saw the confession. The bottle stared back. I read the description of the old sand trap in an abandoned golf course, 20 minutes from Man-I-Too-By-the-River, with a youthful eternal visitor, rudely buried. The bottle cooled my hot sweaty palms. I picked up the phone and called Sharon Quincy, after emptying my hand of the bottle, across the room, against the wall, seeping into the dirty beige carpet. When the Diocese Synod characterized the evidence in the Bishop's journals as an attempted frame-up by a debouched and disinherited son, I could not leave it alone. The police from Michigan City reluctantly opened the cold case. They only found a jawbone, but nothing more. By that time Bishop Sagg was dead anyway. He slipped in the shower. How he got there, no one knows. His legs hadn't moved in three years. A few weeks later, I received a Christmas card from my mother. A picture of a sleepy lamb with a shepherd's crook propped under it's front hoof. There was no note, but it was signed, “Many Blessings From Our Lord and Savior, Love Mom.” I crumpled it up and threw it and the addressed envelope in the fireplace.

Book Lover

Mrs. Farwig is a retired spinster cleaning lady with no friends, and no pets. She is dying of cancer in a dingy mid-western hospital after ignoring the pain too long. She has been a life long catholic and her only real contact with others, other than mass two times a week is the weekly trips she makes to the library. She is very worried about returning the library books that she still has out. Her legs felt week and the breeze from behind chilled her. She did not care that she had not paid the gas bill because her Super was a bastard that wouldn't turn up the heat to a reasonable level. It was probably his fault she caught the pneumonia anyway, which put her in this filth hole. She could not make the vapid teenage intern or the penguin RN that doped her understand that the book on the tray-table was due TODAY! There was so much bustle and weeping that she slipped right out the door with her walker and her caddy. She knew the Chester Arthur Public Library was only three blocks from St Jude Thaddeus Memorial, because she had worked in both buildings for forty years, on the graveyard shift, cleaning up after sticky children, perverts and the sloppy-dead, of which she was almost one. (Summery) The policeman who found the blue-grey lady in the ally behind the library assumed that the creature with the blanket around her shoulders was a homeless tramp trying to fish freebies out of the drop box her arm dangled from. He called the coroner and they took her to Mercy General: the morgue that all the transient corpses end up.

It's A Firesale

I am unofficially bankrupt, financially and spiritually. What a bunch of lucky ducks that get to petition a lord with prayer to get them out of any self-imposed mess. They do not have to be remorseful because of course they are already forgiven. If they really screw up, the other American god, the State, will get them out of the jam comfortably, with absolutely no shame, and present them with their very own Obama-phone. I ain't no Casanova as my recent performances have proved. I ain't no Picasso, and haven't twitched a paintbrush in 10 years. My high-school fame cache ran out sometime in the mid 90's. As No one can now see from this example, I never was a Ginsberg or Thompson (Hunter or Jim). Lance Armstrong, I will never be. I am too timid to ride with the pack and could not keep up if I tried. What I am is someone who squandered the best, and potentially most productive years of his life sprinting from reality and wallowing in self delusion. I am a cartoon that got banned for being mildly offensive. I am the band that got signed, opened for the opening band in two cities, and was unceremoniously dropped while somewhere in Wyoming, with an exploded radiator and crabs. All my eclectic collections need to find a new home with dusted shelves and protective glass. I am a lousy papa for my inanimate babies. It is a steal. Cheap enough at twice the price, as I am told my Grandfather used to say between sips of hooch and glances at dirty postcards (two things I also love).

Fun Stung Dung

What a whirlwind of a weekend, interrupted by stints on the couch that would make Roseanne Conner proud. There was music, and cars and booze galore. There were people everywhere, and I walked, peddled, and stumbled through them like a particularly noisy and irritating poltergeist. I tripped the lights with a pretty ginger (stress on the tripped) who ditched me like the unsteady, socially awkward slob that I am. I made a pal (who I am not sure I would ever have let into my house, were I not shit-faced.) I saw three ex-somethings. One brought me flowers for my pathetic little garden. One was charming with her husband, my old running dog. The most recent let me know what a handsome, athletic, and cultured gentleman she had taken up with immediately after moving out of my home. She planted a big wet tongued smooch in my mouth and left to go pick him up at his awesome job. These things do not happen to real people. They are the stuff of a soiled and tipsy imagination. I can barely believe that this is my life at almost 40. Back at work, the green visions attacked me like a particularly strong case of food poisoning coupled with the blackest thoughts possible. It did not help that I spent the day working on the roof, four stories up. I did not want the crowds in the office to see the darkness in my face, and I did not want to once again struggle to answer pleasantly when they asked, "How ya doing?" I have no right to these thoughts, because "Rwanda!", or something. I have no call to question the activities of people I drove away, and I have no right to be jealous. I screwed myself, and the whole world knows it. None of it gets any better. I keep making the same damned mistakes, year after year. I am the most interesting person I know, and yet no one wants anything to do with me. Maybe tomorrow It will be not as nauseating. Maybe I will actually sleep.

This is getting raw. My vision is clear but my traction is for shit. You made me dance and I attempted to. Your hands touched mine and it was nice. I have no reason to think I will ever see you again, but if I do, I would like to dance with you one more time.