“The moon’s still up. I think I’ll go back out”. He had just
put his rifle in the rear-window rack of his truck. “A winter travel advisory is
in effect,” he says. How does he know that the moon is still out, the fog is so
thick? Be sure to wear orange. It’s permit
season. “Yep, if the moon’s up the cattle graze and the fish bite,” he
continues. “That’s when you find the deer. They’re usually all over the place
but I haven’t seen any in the last few days”. Deer don’t wear orange but they
know. Ah the old coggers. They’ve been at
it a while and your just passing thorugh (and aren’t we all – ain’t your home over yonder, too?)
Red’s Java Hut –a Prohibition Ale and double cheeseburger with
fires. I go out into the sun on the patio over the bay. I knew that I liked
this place when I peeled back the bun and saw that they had put big gob of
mustard on my burger and no ketchup. God, I hate katchup on my burger, but it’s
not as bad as having it on you hotdog. I took out my copy of Bukowski’s
Hollywood and began reading. Have you noticed that people who dine alone often
read? It’s their version of a conversation. I write in the margins of my book.
I’m not taking notes That’s what you did in school. I hadn’t been in a
classroom in years. I’m jotting down ideas that come to me as I read. I think
that’s what the critiques call deep reading, writing stimulated by another
writer – all books are compliations of other books (that’s one theory). And you didn’t so much take notes in school as
you highlighted what might have to be regurgatated on a test. Everything has
already been gurgitated, one only has to regurgitate. There is a new shingle
above the bar – ‘Lotta’s Larger’. Josh says that it is a dark beer with the
look of a light and he is right. “Yes,” I say, “Lotta Crabtree, you know who
she was, don’t you?” “I got the printout,” he replies. “No need to read it,” I
tell him, and I proceed to give him Lotta’s background – from Grass Valley,
protégée of Lola Montez, a child start of the stage. There’s a pioneer monument
to her down by the ferry building. “History in a glass,” he says.
I want to know
Not just to learn
I want to belong
Not just observe
I want to participate
If I applaude
Will you applaud me too
Can’t we all just get along
Pablo says that you can take a habanera and dice it real
fine then you whip your eyes. “Better yet,” I say, “scratch your balls”. “Or
take a piss,” he adds. And I realize that we have all been there. We are all
members. Empoyees must wash their hands before retuning to work.
If they [the Hell’s Angels] wanted to be artful about
bugging the squares they would drop the swastika and decorate their bikes with
hammer and sickles. That would raise hell on the freeways.. hundreds of
Communists thugs roaming the country on big motorcycles looking for trouble –
Hunter S Thompson – The Hells Angels
Walter has brought in eleven books to add to our coffee shop
library. I had brought in ten. We have a competition going to see who’s books
disappeared the fastest. One of his books is entitled “Ladies on the Loose”. I
don’t stand a chance. I’m watching the tv across the room, celebrity news. Cher
sings. Do you believe in love? God I hate her whine. His title was catchy, but
it was not that racy. It was about women travel writters.
I look at the anthologies in the big chains and campus
bookstores, even the small press opium dens, all those stanzas against that
white space – they just look like the models in catalogs. The models have arms
and legs and a head, the poems mostly don’t, but other than that it’s hard –
for me anyway – to tell them apart – Bob Perelman – The Future of Memory
Al is complaining about always winding up with crazy women.
“Who else would have us”, I reply. “I guess you’re right”, he said. “Your
friend gone”, Dave asks? “Yeah he’s moved on.” “He reminds me of Charlie
Manson,” Dave says. “Yeah,” I said, “I can see a resemblance.” “I think that
you think I can’t play the guitar,” Charlie had said as he did an air guitar.
“I have no reason to believe that you can’t,” I reply. “Yeah,” he says, ‘Its
because I’m not famous.” Charlie was trying to drink my beer. I reclaimed it
from him. It may have been a hazardous move on my part but he only slunk away.
The bartender, had given me a wink, “Is he bothering you? Do you want me to
take car of him,” he asked? “No, that’s not necessary,” but it was good to know
that if things got out of hand, I had backup. With some people you don’t want
to get too friendly. He was one of them. The line between friendly and
unfriendly is sometimes razor thin. He had said that some people liked him and
that others couldn’t stand him. And then he asked what I thought. I knew I
should have keep my mouth shut but I
didn’t. “Well, I said, at one moment you are charming and then at the next you
are obnoxious.” “Well,” he barks. “that makes me sound like a schizophrenic.”
And to think this guy had onve been a high school band director, Charlie Manson
and Jack Black all rolled up into one. “What are you,” he says “a fucking
genius?” Why is it that psychos are so good at reading other people?
What a sham
The ancient shrines
No longer sit on their
Annointed
sites
And they’re all made
Of concrete
With stone vaneers
Just another locus
Of an ahistorical hustle
So mundane, urbane
Now worldly
Such progress
A commodified heritage
It’s all we’ve got
Get in line, but a ticket
Take a photograph
Share online
Travelers only tell you the picture produced in their own
brain by what they see, otherwise the world would be like a pawn broker’s shop,
where every traveler wears the cast-off clothes of others – Bayard Taylor –
Views-afoot, 1846
There a homeless man sleeping in the back yard. I tell hem
that he can’t sleep here. He’s quite willing to move, go somewhere else but
wants to know where he should go. Hell,
I don’t know, but you can’t sleep here, I tell him. There was another homeless
man sleeping in a tree about ten feet away. I looked around. Every back yard
seems to have its homeless man sleeping in it. I hadn’t noticed this before. It
would selfish of me to insist on having the only back yard without a resident
homeless man. I let him go back to sleep.
The situation is this
The
murderer
Doesn’t anticipate
His/her
crime
Will be subjected
To Miss
Marple
The genre demands
Detection
And form the guilty
Confessions
So when planning
Your crime
Never, never commit it
In St Mary
Mead
Keep your eyes peeled
For old
pussies
I am interested only in helping those who are in thrall to
an individualistic, indifferent and self-centered mortality to be freed from
those unworthy chains and to attain a way of living and thinking which is more
human, noble and fruitful, and which will bring dignity to their presence on
this earth – Pope Francis
The tendency to divide what is indivisible encourages us
likewise to unitize what us un-unitable
Not on the wealthy, who buy only
what they want when they want it, was the vast superstructure of industry
founded and built up, but on those who aching for luxury beyond their reach and
for leisure forever denied them – Dorothy Sayers – Murder Must Advertise, 1933
There was
And had
always been
Those other worlds
The one that exists
In the dark
And that one that comes out
Only in the
light
The world unwanted
The world I wanted
The world unseen now
Do you remember it?
The world unknown
Yet dreamed
of
Suppose we
can still find it?
The world we knew
The world as reproduced
All of it
The worlds secreted
The worlds of secrets
Silent worlds on silent nights
Worlds and words
Words and worlds
To call a cat a quadruped and then
say that because cats and dogs are both quadrupeds, I shall call them all cats,
does not change the nature of cats. Neither does it confuse dogs; it merely
confuses the reader – G Dalton “Bride Wealth” vs. “Bride price”, 1966
Bibliophiles are a peculiar lot. It’s odd. I’m thinking,
that so many cute Asian babes are attracted to the reception at the Center for
the Book. But mostly it’s geeky old white men. A number 22 bus going out of
service dumps every one off where I waiting at the stop. Another goes by, also
headed fro the barn. The old man is cursing. He tries chasing it down. “How can
you pass up nine people waiting for a bus”, he hollers. But another comes by a
minute later and stops and we all board. I count us. We are nine. He got the
number exact. Counted as he lite his cigarette and coughed. Just like an old
bibliophile. Afterwards I had a raspberry herbal tea. A slow lazy jazz number
was playing. One that just mellows you out into an early morning filled with a
smoky, half drunk haze that makes you wonder why you are not at home in bed -
asleep. And you think that you just might be, but somehow know that life is not
that kind. I had heard the first bibliophile praising another bibliophile
saying that he had a better memory than himself. I had had enough of
bibliophiles for one night, but I dreamed of rice dolls all the rest of the night.
One had been wearing a mauve satin skirt and a fuzzy white sweater. She has a squeaky voice. But I like my women with big
noses and at least some ass. My little Minnie mouse didn’t cut any mustard.
The reformist center-left… has enthusiastically rebranded
itself a servant of global capital – Andrew O’Hehir – Salon
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