Noodles, Ramon and I sat at the cable spool in the house he and his had acquired through mortgage failure. We took turns pouring Cuervo and biting the lemon, while off to the side all the kittens were eating sweetly around the carcus of a fresh woodchuck. For the grown-ups the birds, tar tar, fluttered inside us all like birds drinking tequilla. Ramon can make robins into anchovies, or bacon to garnish his wonderful ground hog serviche.
"You might say that cats are, in some respects, like your fundamentalists," Ramon said as he looked at the thousand kittens. Noodles doesn't laugh out loud, or even move much once she settles in, but she registered that funny thought. "We're not very good ones," she commented.
"That's religeon, from the vantage point of sex" I said. "I think sex is better when it's used to influence politics."
"Was her name, 'Lewinski,'" Ramon dropped in. He was able to keep abreast of current events.
"Yes, Ramon. She influnenced politics a little bit by making Bill Clinton look like a jerk."
"It didn't make much difference," said Noodles, dryly.
As Ramon poured another round of tequilla, he sagely added, "No, but we should know that indiscretions are worse for people who are rich than for us."
Some people regard cats as thankless creatures, but that is because they are in the dark.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Gangle
I'm dying my hair to black. It's a dollar job, buck a pop at the store, and it's soaking into my head right now like uranium. It really really helps to keep it dark on top. But there is a problem.
Earlier today I tested my new electric power assist bicycle on a long run. Mission sucked, it was as strenous as riding a road bike the same distance. Laws of physics, blow me. As soon as I got my wind back from taking the trip, I looked in the mirror, saw how under-the-bridge my hair looked, and went for my hair dye pack like a spawning salmon.
The skull cap of sludge is turning colder, but I don't put that in front of my dog sled of misery. Just a second ago, I got an excruciating spasm. I'm in screaming pain, and the shit on top of my head, last I checked the mirror, has me looking like an undesirable. I am going to have amble to the kitchen sink to hose the shit out of my hair. Will soon be hiking like the Hunchback, swearing and screaming. Can't fucking wait.
I got another ten minutes before the hose, so here's the special thing that happened on the bike trip. Most of the way home, the battery was showing near discharged. The bike weighs 75 badly placed pounds, hills here are steep, spires you might say. To discharge completely would hurt.
Like now.
A few blocks from home, working the last volts the battery liked to donate, like corporate America, I decided to rest near the high rise. There's a double lot where two crack houses used to compete like Sears and Monkey Wards. The demolition squad left some of the cinderblocks from the basents, providing a cozy cold corner, minus the rest of the room, to scrooch up in. Corners were made for cowering in. There I was, perfect.
This gangle of cut and dragged morning glory vines tied the room together, like a tall house plant.
It looked more like a hybrid tumbleweed and crown of thorne. This area has a lot of Catholics, so you get that sort of effect in shit that blows in and out of here. My cinder block corner had an open view of the first floor of the highrise, beehive of dysfunction and ease, illness and freedom from hard labor. I get a Harriet Tubman vibe. There was a bureaucratic set of tunnels and trails to arrive at the current state of liberation,but I had my own free piece of concrete basement floor to enjoy.
The words, 'hi there, hi there' started flying like crows and doves in the air. At first I tried to ignore it, since I wasn't aware I was being spoken to. I'm good about cleaning my plate when you have me over for dinner, might even fold the napkin. Whatever. You don't go looking to see who it is that's talking, unless you know them, and their doe eyes are meeting yours, absent of malice. Otherwise, you pretend people aren't there.
'Hi there' kept flapping its blowsy heather wings. The flesh is weak. I started to look around.
"Look up higher." she said. First I looked at the fifth floor of the highrise, and it was its usual row of vacant unseasoned concrete balconies. I looked at my bike like it was half guilty for what was happening. It's fucking near time to rinse the liquid plutonium gell that will soon fix my repulsive grey hair. Presto change-o, it will be black. I might look young again when this is over.
On the seventh floor. "When the moon is in the seventh house."
Soon as I looked up there she entered my life with all the familiarity that modern times lack. I'm a lucky piece of shit with a not too successful electric bike.
A huge woman in a night gown was talking to me from on high. Shit like this happened in the Bible, but things were more substantive in those days.
She seemed to like me. "And Mercury alines with Mars." A song from the rock musical 'Hair' started up in my head, like a juke box.
This isn't the age of Aquarius. This was not the sort of woman that gives me the big hard one. The batteries 'down there' have been running lower than in years past, but there is still a supply of juice. The visage above didn't help. But damn it all, she was friendly.
The little bell on my clock spring timer just went 'ding,' and I must get this shit out of hair, so I am going to leave off at how I conversed with the huge woman, she waving her arms in the air like a big bird, her too transparent nightie doing a dance to the bounding flesh. We conversed, about nothing but the weather, fine as could be asked for, and maybe how sweet it is to have such a fine resting spot right where I was. She was right, I had my own corner of a demolished basement to hang in till both legs got half back to normal. Damn like the ending in The Yearling.
Maybe it's a hamstring. Something cord-like and imperative feels like it is tearing loose from the trailer hitch nearest my ass. This bullshit has to mean something, or else something else would have happened. I know per usual that after the hair dye rinses out, the skin on my forehead and face will have on it embarrassing stains that take about a day or two to wear off.
Earlier today I tested my new electric power assist bicycle on a long run. Mission sucked, it was as strenous as riding a road bike the same distance. Laws of physics, blow me. As soon as I got my wind back from taking the trip, I looked in the mirror, saw how under-the-bridge my hair looked, and went for my hair dye pack like a spawning salmon.
The skull cap of sludge is turning colder, but I don't put that in front of my dog sled of misery. Just a second ago, I got an excruciating spasm. I'm in screaming pain, and the shit on top of my head, last I checked the mirror, has me looking like an undesirable. I am going to have amble to the kitchen sink to hose the shit out of my hair. Will soon be hiking like the Hunchback, swearing and screaming. Can't fucking wait.
I got another ten minutes before the hose, so here's the special thing that happened on the bike trip. Most of the way home, the battery was showing near discharged. The bike weighs 75 badly placed pounds, hills here are steep, spires you might say. To discharge completely would hurt.
Like now.
A few blocks from home, working the last volts the battery liked to donate, like corporate America, I decided to rest near the high rise. There's a double lot where two crack houses used to compete like Sears and Monkey Wards. The demolition squad left some of the cinderblocks from the basents, providing a cozy cold corner, minus the rest of the room, to scrooch up in. Corners were made for cowering in. There I was, perfect.
This gangle of cut and dragged morning glory vines tied the room together, like a tall house plant.
It looked more like a hybrid tumbleweed and crown of thorne. This area has a lot of Catholics, so you get that sort of effect in shit that blows in and out of here. My cinder block corner had an open view of the first floor of the highrise, beehive of dysfunction and ease, illness and freedom from hard labor. I get a Harriet Tubman vibe. There was a bureaucratic set of tunnels and trails to arrive at the current state of liberation,but I had my own free piece of concrete basement floor to enjoy.
The words, 'hi there, hi there' started flying like crows and doves in the air. At first I tried to ignore it, since I wasn't aware I was being spoken to. I'm good about cleaning my plate when you have me over for dinner, might even fold the napkin. Whatever. You don't go looking to see who it is that's talking, unless you know them, and their doe eyes are meeting yours, absent of malice. Otherwise, you pretend people aren't there.
'Hi there' kept flapping its blowsy heather wings. The flesh is weak. I started to look around.
"Look up higher." she said. First I looked at the fifth floor of the highrise, and it was its usual row of vacant unseasoned concrete balconies. I looked at my bike like it was half guilty for what was happening. It's fucking near time to rinse the liquid plutonium gell that will soon fix my repulsive grey hair. Presto change-o, it will be black. I might look young again when this is over.
On the seventh floor. "When the moon is in the seventh house."
Soon as I looked up there she entered my life with all the familiarity that modern times lack. I'm a lucky piece of shit with a not too successful electric bike.
A huge woman in a night gown was talking to me from on high. Shit like this happened in the Bible, but things were more substantive in those days.
She seemed to like me. "And Mercury alines with Mars." A song from the rock musical 'Hair' started up in my head, like a juke box.
This isn't the age of Aquarius. This was not the sort of woman that gives me the big hard one. The batteries 'down there' have been running lower than in years past, but there is still a supply of juice. The visage above didn't help. But damn it all, she was friendly.
The little bell on my clock spring timer just went 'ding,' and I must get this shit out of hair, so I am going to leave off at how I conversed with the huge woman, she waving her arms in the air like a big bird, her too transparent nightie doing a dance to the bounding flesh. We conversed, about nothing but the weather, fine as could be asked for, and maybe how sweet it is to have such a fine resting spot right where I was. She was right, I had my own corner of a demolished basement to hang in till both legs got half back to normal. Damn like the ending in The Yearling.
Maybe it's a hamstring. Something cord-like and imperative feels like it is tearing loose from the trailer hitch nearest my ass. This bullshit has to mean something, or else something else would have happened. I know per usual that after the hair dye rinses out, the skin on my forehead and face will have on it embarrassing stains that take about a day or two to wear off.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Winter Manifesto of 2010
Winter Manifesto of 2010
nigh on twenty years
the twenty four hour bug flies away
people begin to tell the truth
that trophy shelf of bum steers and slanders
happy collecting dust behind a sacred cow
won't fall off the brackets
this long here
the tin throne begins to answer
cronies quit giving you the run around
they drop the tools of graft
and shift to dull resistance
it's a chilly place to work into
hip deep in snow
the plow milles distant
nigh on twenty years
the twenty four hour bug flies away
people begin to tell the truth
that trophy shelf of bum steers and slanders
happy collecting dust behind a sacred cow
won't fall off the brackets
this long here
the tin throne begins to answer
cronies quit giving you the run around
they drop the tools of graft
and shift to dull resistance
it's a chilly place to work into
hip deep in snow
the plow milles distant
Friday, February 5, 2010
Buddy Film
peroxide blond has my back
up the row of gyroscopic stainless steel stools
got bullet warts in my back from standing up
patella wedges in slug frappe
got the riteous limp while rousting
blue plate specials that need their ass cooked
a row of them in watch caps and CPOs
you know I haved to jack on the wharf rats
Fake Yellow pathologically quiet and cruel
futzes in the passenger seat
the Slumlon scrap leather trench coat
a million scars to the yard
covers the hoary brute
up the row of gyroscopic stainless steel stools
got bullet warts in my back from standing up
patella wedges in slug frappe
got the riteous limp while rousting
blue plate specials that need their ass cooked
a row of them in watch caps and CPOs
you know I haved to jack on the wharf rats
Fake Yellow pathologically quiet and cruel
futzes in the passenger seat
the Slumlon scrap leather trench coat
a million scars to the yard
covers the hoary brute
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Class of '75
In a town that saw the rabbit run
those first two decades of fun
were blocks of ice in the sun
twelve years of school
jerkwater town and the fool
remorsing at home on a stool
steeped in hair and bone
thirty years alone
airs out the hemp cologne
those first two decades of fun
were blocks of ice in the sun
twelve years of school
jerkwater town and the fool
remorsing at home on a stool
steeped in hair and bone
thirty years alone
airs out the hemp cologne
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Singing At Night
I'm waiting for the 11D, it was later than usual for one of my trips downtown, hence ranker desert for a trip home, and my nerves, my nerves were not the steel thread they can be earlier in the day in a less ugly spot on the map . The police don't cruize past Heinz Hall quite as often after 11 pm. The duplication of '11' is bad for people with superstitions. It is only suprising how fast secular humanism can run from danger, and the cultural district starts to look bowery. This evening I was only one of two people waiting for the bus on Penn like two live chickens waiting for Colonel Sanders. And in the nervous fearful minutes, passing like heavy dumplings in rank stew, it seemed good, at first, that the the other guy struck up a conversation. He was working on his career in music. Country western.
The number '11' is never good, and the letter 'D' reminds me of a report card. The hopeful musician beside me asked if I knew when the bus was coming. This caused me to trip up. I have this thing I call the "Fred Rogers Reflex," which is an irrational need to sustain middle class courtesies while standing in a hell hole. I fished my bus schedule out, so to give a neighbor the exact time the bus probably won't arrive. I could see for myself the hollowness, since the bus is never on time, and the act of pulling out the paper schedule was an autonomic beourgoise ritual. People are supposed to be helpful, my ass. It was late, and the grunting of 'it's supposed to be here' would have been sufficient.
The musician warmed up immediately. The deceptive nature of common courtesy had been a regular tool in bag for people like Ted Bundy and Albert Desalvo, and less catastrophically, the pimply, sandy haired man nearest me launched into his recent past. "I just come up here from Nashville. Music industry in Nashville is all fucked up. I hear the music industry up here'll at least give a man a chance."
Going play by play, I was unaware that there was a country western music industry in Pittsburgh. A church or two got converted to recording studios a few miles out of town, and the outfits don't bring in much with the collection plate. The fact that this was happening against the humorless flanks of Heinz Hall brought optimism down a couple notches.
"Just bought this guitar at a pawn shop" He had his ax in a cheap boogie bag, like a body bag for a crumby instrument.
It's like saying 'that librarian is three inches taller than Roberto Duran.' I lost the rest of my respect for the singer because pawn shops are the outside worst place to buy a used guitar. You can score a good one anywhere, cheaper, unless you are the jerk I met at the bus stop. To strenthen his argument against Nashville, he said he's written more songs than Merl Haggard. Some people have more cavities in their teeth than others. He stepped closer to me and launched into one of his songs. He was smiling out a song he was proud of, and he was standing uncomfortably close. Had the bus come sooner, I would have heard less.
The number '11' is never good, and the letter 'D' reminds me of a report card. The hopeful musician beside me asked if I knew when the bus was coming. This caused me to trip up. I have this thing I call the "Fred Rogers Reflex," which is an irrational need to sustain middle class courtesies while standing in a hell hole. I fished my bus schedule out, so to give a neighbor the exact time the bus probably won't arrive. I could see for myself the hollowness, since the bus is never on time, and the act of pulling out the paper schedule was an autonomic beourgoise ritual. People are supposed to be helpful, my ass. It was late, and the grunting of 'it's supposed to be here' would have been sufficient.
The musician warmed up immediately. The deceptive nature of common courtesy had been a regular tool in bag for people like Ted Bundy and Albert Desalvo, and less catastrophically, the pimply, sandy haired man nearest me launched into his recent past. "I just come up here from Nashville. Music industry in Nashville is all fucked up. I hear the music industry up here'll at least give a man a chance."
Going play by play, I was unaware that there was a country western music industry in Pittsburgh. A church or two got converted to recording studios a few miles out of town, and the outfits don't bring in much with the collection plate. The fact that this was happening against the humorless flanks of Heinz Hall brought optimism down a couple notches.
"Just bought this guitar at a pawn shop" He had his ax in a cheap boogie bag, like a body bag for a crumby instrument.
It's like saying 'that librarian is three inches taller than Roberto Duran.' I lost the rest of my respect for the singer because pawn shops are the outside worst place to buy a used guitar. You can score a good one anywhere, cheaper, unless you are the jerk I met at the bus stop. To strenthen his argument against Nashville, he said he's written more songs than Merl Haggard. Some people have more cavities in their teeth than others. He stepped closer to me and launched into one of his songs. He was smiling out a song he was proud of, and he was standing uncomfortably close. Had the bus come sooner, I would have heard less.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Federal Curling
Played on skates and ice, the sport of curling hasn't caught on in the US as much as it could. I've seen it done on television, and don't get too excited about it, but it's a sight to behold, and I was reminded of the exotic sport just this morning after reading an article about our national economic strategy.
For overview, a burly skater hurls his curling stone, a heavy, burly round stone with convenient handle, forward on the ice, towards a target. As the stone glides to target, two 'sweepers' skate ahead of it, corn brooms in hand, preparing the surface of the ice, both knaves furiously and comically sweeping the ice. Our federal government has taken the role of sweepers in the area of world money management.
This new governmental role as 'sweepers' has emerged because there are relatively few highly profitably large scale corporations. Rather than fostering new corporate development evenly throughout society, the gov is protecting the few, the proud, the really really rich.
There are a lot of too wealthy curling stones, but not enough to help a ten percent unemployment rate and a declining standard of living off the ice.
Curling is a dull sport, and looks like paralysis compared to our glorious and brutal hockey, but it deserves respect in much the way you can't park in front of a fire hyrdrant. Need I say it is loved in places other than my own private state of confusion, and it has provided a model for purposes of greater understanding. Still more convenient, this sport has some of the characteristics of an exotic global dash for the cash. It is unsportsmanly conduct on the part of the Fed, though, to sweep.
For overview, a burly skater hurls his curling stone, a heavy, burly round stone with convenient handle, forward on the ice, towards a target. As the stone glides to target, two 'sweepers' skate ahead of it, corn brooms in hand, preparing the surface of the ice, both knaves furiously and comically sweeping the ice. Our federal government has taken the role of sweepers in the area of world money management.
This new governmental role as 'sweepers' has emerged because there are relatively few highly profitably large scale corporations. Rather than fostering new corporate development evenly throughout society, the gov is protecting the few, the proud, the really really rich.
There are a lot of too wealthy curling stones, but not enough to help a ten percent unemployment rate and a declining standard of living off the ice.
Curling is a dull sport, and looks like paralysis compared to our glorious and brutal hockey, but it deserves respect in much the way you can't park in front of a fire hyrdrant. Need I say it is loved in places other than my own private state of confusion, and it has provided a model for purposes of greater understanding. Still more convenient, this sport has some of the characteristics of an exotic global dash for the cash. It is unsportsmanly conduct on the part of the Fed, though, to sweep.
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