Scooter Tale

It's a cruel economy, and this pedestrian is in a pecuniary nose dive. My last car got hauled to recycling glory a couple years ago, and ever since, each day has been visited with dreams of transportation less depressing than a city bus. So I've been exploring some options of the two wheeled kind.

Sure it all looks easy, breezy and cute. A nice looking guy or gal zipping down Penn Avenue on a mod looking Vespa or Honda motor scooter. Looks like a charming little way to get around. Well, there's a grim subset of factors that may determine just how easy, just how breezy one of those motor vehicles truly is. I'm working on the problem, right now, having bought one of the very dirt cheapest imported bikes available by mail order.

" Why doesn't he join a support group and leave hard, greasy, hairy chested work to people who are playing with a full deck?" a burly biker might interject. That is how an experienced motorcycle personage may well respond. "Why should I care what a misguided novice learns from his own poor judgement?" some heartless, illiterate gear head might add. But for people who value the process more so than the outcome, my experience buying a motorscooter off the Internet has been a newsworthy farrago of steel parts and poor communications.

I know you will like hearing that it took over two months to assemble the 50cc scooter, and I could have done it in eight hours if the instructions had been written by someone both familiar with the bike and fluent in English. To further the insult, a sane engine mechanic can put the things together in one hour. If you're planning on doing something theraputic, don't get a cheap-o ride mail order.

Like trying to find your ass in the dark. Unless the project is a total failure, there is a moment of clarity when, like in Come Back Little Sheba, a big gluteus comes bounding over the horrizon. I got the scooter to work, but arrived at it worse for wear. It was mostly the abysmal instuctions. Here are some of the things that went terribly wrong.

I hadn't planned on breaking some dainty cuticles removing it from the package it came in. The thing weighs more than I do. It's jangling, greasy parts were bolted to a steel frame inside a cardboard box as thick, tough and cheerful as a brig in the Somolian Navy. While the thing was delivered nice enough by truck to my dystopian hovel, there was no way possible to get it up the two flights of concrete steps between it and the front door. Don't mind that it had been raining all day, so there was no good option of putting it together road side. The best kind of muscular pain was in the works, but first I had to chew through the box and unbolt a metal fixture. Once that ordeal, pain of a thousand stubby bolts, was complete, I had to drag the heavy parts up the steps, to the kitchen, which is the only room in the house that's suitable. Note that no one comes here for dinner. The heavy lifing act was well in the hernia/heart attack zone. Soon false hope arrived when I managed to get the front wheel on.

What happened next caused me to think that it's clutch lever was some sort of Flying Dutchman, or else someone in the Smiling Happy Communist Motorcycle Factory #6 forgot to put one in the package. It said in the instructions that it had one. It doesn't. The wispy motorcylcle was manuactured in China, and has no brand name. It's a generic imported bike. The political prisoner who wrote the instructions seemed to wish the thing had a clutch lever, or he hates Americans, and is laughing at the thought of guys like me taking it the hard way. It took over a week to acertain that it has some sort of hybrid clutch, not quite an automatic, but made for people with miminal riding skill. This was worse than The Manchurian Candidate for the way it disolved ordinary cognition.

The battery was scary because you have to pour a sinister plastic package, like a cross between a bladder implant and a part of the space shuttle, into six or eight matching holes, all eager as puppies for a nice drink of sulfuric acid. There was no way of knowing exaclty how to do it without getting third degree burns, suffice I got through that part, but then came the next thing someone in the imported bike biz should have known. It said in the instructions that the battery had an overflow tube. It didn't, so the time spent looking for it was both frustrating and pretty as meat packing. Motorcycles are called, on the street, a 'crotch rocket,' which caused worry about an explosion.

I won't continue to cry over everything that destroyed my nerves, but by the time I got the engine running and ajusted, it was nearer to the Second Coming than hoped. I haven't learned, yet, how to ride it, that will start in a week or so, when I fully recover from stress injuries and a nervous breakdown. Shouldn't be a problem. I'm a quick study.

Poems Wrote This Morning

Conscience

not guilty of rain
mayhaps
or of causing pain
or perhaps
destroying grain
maybe

having too many babies
rabies, scabies
men and ladies
guilty
maybe
guilt
in the air
like a dragonfly
and I've done nothing


Lassitude



with lips parted
I'm running fingers through four day stubble
makes an ocharina sound
can't make a tune of it
just one odd tone
the head
a piano
sinus strung for music
I am hollow
tonal
alive
but not moving

La Stradaroo

On a typical day banks get robbed and buildings get surounded. One time I was down town, walking near Fifth Avenue Plaza, when first two and then, like stern rabbits, dozens of cops plowed into the perimenter, cop cars accumulating in a dense formation around busy Penn and Liberty Avenues. It looked wonderfully organized, with police storming into a branch office bank, all in all, size of a Kinko's copy store, all happening half a block or less from me.



Heading to my bus stop like normal, I just happened to be coming toward the incident, walking at my normal clip along the flank of Fifth Avenue Plaza on a gorgeous summer day.



People were at their all out best, just then, as the spectacle with police action went like a rodeo popped up all of a sudden. People who normally walk past each other with polite disregard smiled. "Someone robbed the bank," a tall stunning black woman said to a passerby, who smiled back and said , "Lotta Po-lice." Other people smiled along and shared the words "whole lotta po-lice." Whatever happened in the bank was probably in the can, in one sense or other, within a few seconds, and nobody seemed to be watching. It was something you couldn't miss if you wanted to, and a teaming narrow side street between Penn and Liberty was remarkably cheerful and personable. 'Normal' is a marvelously adaptive word, in these parts.

Squatter Heaven (short fiction)

It gives one an erection long enough to knock the pot of gold out from under the rainbow, like a curling stone. Bing clack, under the prismatic arch.

She's an object of lust. We been seeing each other for about two months now. Together and seperate, we've been testing a series of herbal teas, all used for centuries, to methodically rejuvenate each and every organ and gland, brain and nerves included, like shining all shoes and pressing all seersucker. We've made it a project to fix as many organs as possible, without reserve.

.

The significant other and I have been shacked up in a miniscule one story house, barely more than an elongated shed with pitched roof, set on the mountaintop directly above Route 28. Down below us we have a rock garden composed of basements set deep the whole way down, half a mile, to 28. They picked that side of the hill clean of standing houses years ago, and no one's hot as pepper to build anything on an undermined plunging hill. Damn nice, the cement nooks and crannies cake walking at random down gentle dirt and weeds


A most unfortunately hostile neighbor hates me because one of his people had a motorcycle like mine, and got arrested. Then turned queer. And then he was killed. Killed. And he was riding a motorcycle like mine.
Not certain what to do. Embittered people have this tall trajectory. Always lands near by, damp and unwanted.


This relationship between Lorrie and me is doomed because my new number one has a kid with some tubular bingle-bungle growing out of his head, that being our sweet talk for long bony horns, and I'm affraid I am not prepared to commit to it's upbringing. He's a tiny triceratops. Call me a pig. The saddest thing for me is that my girl's family has high hopes for me and her. They are dazzled into thinking I'm responsible, and I don't mean to do it. I can't help having more personality than the general run. Appalachia. Will have to close the book on this before too much longer.


The new bike that I just got re-opened something that shut down a ways back. I used to be a lounge lizard, sunk to no where, and now that I'm mobile again, albeit on a 50cc generic motorcycle from off the internet, the seeds inside are germinating in the soil of endeavor. Can't make nervous types stay still

Motor Bike

cheap knock-off
she was made
in the silverware thrown down stairwell factory
where labor is so cheap
a laughing boy can have it all
made in China

Recent Poems

Battered

mom had an electric mixer
seemed like an electic insect
with pincers head down in the bowl
with rotating tusks in the batter
spine hunched in the kill
her tea cakes came out like angels
so I grew into this sort of brute
half kind
half brutal
mixed
inclined to use force
inclined to use reason
mixed
mad
common





Pissed

importance, you bastards
I could change to zillion bats
skitter in the falling leaves
make the 17 year locust
sound like harps
I could fill with nitrous oxide
make whipped cream
and torment you
this body is without water
no collogen
no oxygen
bone and titanium screws
from the wreck




Bird

living room
basement apartment
pet rooster perched like buffalo nickel
young lady says she was in jail for stealing cars
getting the keys off close relatives
and passed-out targets at parties
the bird flapped pillow feather wings screaming
converse like a disc jockey
share-crop sight of the giant television
be a family



Rock Slide

I want the pain
won't move
or wince
rain of dust and pebbles for the overture
I won't open the umbella
landslide is big tit nature
sound of scraping and cracking loose
sight of cheap frame houses unmoored
gotta look up to something
gotta give
I'll give a dime
first rock that kills me





Back Woods

grimly he assumes
he has to take control
repetition
has to hear himself belt it out
he had moments full of napalm and laughing gas
there's you like a baby rabbit
he can come at you with a goose gun
leap bow-legged over barb wire
he will repeat the story about inhalents
he savored spray paint
woofed an aggressive kitchen of solvents
mad cow






Renovated Former Dump



they took out the wooden steps
cased the beams in faux aluminum
in dark modern blue
the row of basement doors were cinder blocked
swan sun glass hue to match the siding
secure entrance assured by an autistic engineer
it has some racing goggle replacement windows
tropical insert court yard
I used to study the moon there
shoot the shit with some shit heads
on webbed chaise lounges
when it was a dirt square
been fine somewhere else





Flying Bugs

locust treadmill
rolling black belt to the check out
flying insects a ribbon in clouds
grocery stores on every corner
tire stores
feed mills
weevils dusting the brown air
grasshoppers loaded with radiation
scabies
rabid froth
vermin with lace wings
tinting the air black





The Redness


red roof on the manse
red undies pop out when they dance
red trance

red letter day ahead
red eye gravy on bread
red thread on the rubicund literary bed

red the type of skin blushes
red bush fillling four cubic inches much
my drunk red luck
chance to get fucked
chuckles


Smither


garden of little things
the voice is too soft
makes you step up to the spikey terrarium
captured mantis centaur anemone squid
thornweed timothy asparagus sticks
lettuce moss centipede
ants in a black leather trench coat
once inside
it has you
makes you smither





Turning Cold

been keeping the heart in a Mason jar
it was opined I wear in on the sleeve
that's only whining
I'm inclined to store it in glass
only take it out when desperate
only when praying to the West
for money
or praying to the East
for learning
been burned
then froze
on a shelf with peppers and tomatos

Fear Of Illness

I just got a message on my answering machine, bruiting of disease. The spinach I bought at the grocery store is being recalled because it may have been tainted with salmonella. The automated massage said it was for spinach I bought over a week ago, and had already eaten. They knew I had the spinach because I used my "smart shopper" card at the check out. I trust that a public health robot is examining my medical history right about now, with clinical dispassion. They don't need to get their semiconductors in a knot. I'm fine. Though I may never feel the same about spinach.

You should see my fore arms balloon when I eat some. Haven't sung a sailor's jig all day.


So while I'm recovering from the panic attack, I get a visit from Little D, not his real name. He hasn't been coming around as much since he got hitched. I guess it's safe to tell the weasel that I'm off my graze. Just got a scare. Don't have my sea legs. Should have known all along Little D was a slow acting snake in the grass. All he has to know is that you have a soft spot.

"I know a guy you can talk to," Little D boasted, practically in my face. I used to think of 'a guy you can talk to' as a teacher or responsible small business representative. Maybe I gave the twerp too much information by declining his offer to help me initiate a frivolous law suit. A creep like Little D sees that as an opportunity to twist the purpose of moral scruples. Like it's dumb enough to have them, and a bigger waste not to use the trait, in others, for personal gain.

He moved in next door a few years after I found a two room hell hole in a barny looking wood aparment complex with spindly stair cases. Little D quickly established himself as an indispensible companion. The way an item can. I once had a vacuum black head remover that was so helpful in controlling acne that I thought of the plastic syringe aparatus as a companion.

You can kill a million scabies with a cream, and it's so legal you get the poison from the doctor. People think like this when they are stewing.

Maybe a year before my spinach trauma, Little D hitched himself to the hairy fore arm of fortune. This was about a charter school that didn't allow him and all the other litigants to serve the slum community. They were all veterans with hinky records, and had been supposedly entitled to hiring preferences.

Answering the phone is like drinking from an alien creek. Praise technology for the answering machine. It told me I could have salmonella. So when I decide to just answer the phone, myself, it's Barry Scumbag, attorney at law, wants to talk to me about my experience hearing of the tainted spinach, and more importantly, did I eat some.

"I ate some, Barry. I ate the whole bag of spinach. With some croutons and dressing. No, don't think there was anything special about the toast chunks and salad oil, how can I help you today, Barry."

Barry was trying to get a word past me the whole time I was talking. Couldn't wait to ask Barry if he was the one who told Little D about the class action law suit that he seemed to fit into like, like a hand in a silk glove.

I let Barry get to the point. I fucked up. I should have said I was puking blood.


I'm getting time frames mixed up. I could die of salmonella any minute, and I just got off the phone with Barry Scumbug. Little D tried to shake down a charter school about a year ago. For some reason, he and I are still speaking.

Little D worked like a charity martyr, calling everyone he ever met, asking if they liked spinach, and if so, did they know it could kill them. Barry, the professional, would emerge from the rear, soon as someone said they were sick. Alright, it was a month ago that I ate queer spinach and got an automated warning not to eat it on the answering machine. Getting nearer the present, Little D's new bride has been complaining something awful. Seems she is acutely ill. Symptoms something like salmonella.

Now both Little D and Barry Scumbag have been calling me ten times a day. Seems there's a legal loop hole. Might still be able to sign onto the Spinach Caper. Meantime, a local songstress is rounding up singers who lost their voice from puking real hard after getting sick off the spinach. She's been calling here. Nice voice. A little raspy. From all the puking. I hit the play button on the answering machine, and hear, "This is LaVoris Crackman, and I need you to help me sue."

It's hard to convince people I'm healthy as a horse and happy as a pig. LaVoris was calling from the dressing area at her club, The Pink Camel. It's owned by the gay Libyan cat. They say he's hung like mule.

"Come on sugar. Tell LaVoris what really happened to you. When those bad food handlers made you ralf up blood."

"Well, they scared me, LaVoris. That much is for true."

Somehow, I knew that if I went for this thing, I'd be wearing a hair shirt loaded with Noxema. There would be discomfort, salved with something made for women with bad skin. I'd be wearing the unwashed hair shirt to bed, with people. Other people. Lay down with bad people, wear a greasy hairshirt. No. I'm not waking from this greasy.