RSS SPIRIT

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2008-09-12T07:30:00.000-07:00

Your man about town Hank "Jumbo" Syrah

2006-10-02T13:20:00.000-07:00

Dateline: Nautical themed bar with hot wings special

Why are gay guys better waitrons than other people? Here is a delightful young man, our waiter who lets us know he is gay in the first 20 seconds and proceeds to become our best friend in the next three hours. He also tells us how many wings to order. The hot wings arrive delightfully debauched in a frisky batter. Served with both ranch and blue cheese dipping sauces, as is only proper.

Fact: Advances in dipping sauce technology will boost hotwings over pizza as America's most loved food within the next 5 years.

Do you know who is intimidating? A hot Russian female bartender. These cosmologists are not for your average man. Do not try and win their favor unless you are prepared to give it up 'crime and punishment' style.

Dateline: Upscale burger joint

The history of this establishment, tastefully retold on the menu, is one of a Wisconsin German-American woman who knew her way around a hamburger. She went to New York to seek fame and fortune by selling hamburgers in a street cart. Her genius was rewarded and hamburgers like only she can make are now dispensed around the country in eponymous restaurants.

To not get their burger after that heartwarming tale would be a crime. Do you know what? Sometimes the legend and the burger do match, because it is delicious chopped cow with melted butter, raw onions and a squeeze of ketchup.

Our waitress is lovely and trashy, heavy makeup and cold eyes make us shiver with notions of nibbling her in the alley later. Instead we play bar shuffleboard - perhaps the funnest bar game out there.

Dateline: Dollar burger with beer purchase

This is what it says on the large sign affixed to the corner joint. Is it true? Can it be true? A stern South American waitress (but a beauty) assures us, "Yes, eet come with cheeze, onion, tomato, fries."

What a delightful concept, perfectly complimenting this 'deshabille chic' joint. It contains a drunk, a conspiring couple, a hipster couple, a slutty couple, an African-American couple and us. One of them turns red from laughter, one sneaks bits of bread from a brown paper bag, another smokes like you used to remember people smoking. The whole skull, sinuses and lungs imbued with thick grey smoke.

The waitress misunderstands and brings out another dollar burger and fries. She offers to take it back, but no, why waste? And so another plate is consumed, perhaps with deleterious consequences to the entrails, but for right now it feels like serendipity.

Dateline: Starbucks rush hour line

You circle around at 7:53 to 7:56 each morning. Everyone in line tries to get caffeinated, get going and maybe show off their asses on another daily Starbucks shuffle.

Why else have an ass if you cannot whip it out for the idle diversion of others while waiting to get a Venti?

Please do tip your Starbucks people. They work hard for the money and they know how to keep that line moving, god bless.

But what about the freaks who sit in the Starbucks and look at you while you are in line trying to check out somebody's ass except you have to keep worrying about the lunatic with stern haircut speedily pretending not to look at you as if you are the person who is finally visiting from the vintage jump-ropes chat room?

Hold on a minute now, look at the ass that pulled into the back of line. A real 'chitty chitty bang bang' caboose.

But you cannot get a good glimpse. The caffeinated cashier signals the end of the trip. Cash proffered, caffeine bomb sequestered, you retire to the dairy canister and achieve resurrection with the Ethiopian blend.

#

Oh the Grand Avenue Bus Humanity

2006-09-26T15:06:00.000-07:00

They might as well just let everybody start smoking on the Grand Avenue bus. The humanity moving up this commercial avenue to downtown is resolutely unrepentant. There are the dumb pretty girls dumbly talking in the back. The small foreigner with tucked in shirt. The old man who enters by the industrial railroad tracks, no buildings near here. A foreign couple with big feet cuddle against the pungency. When they get off she has to catch her breath while he comforts her. There is a certain insouciance in this particular run of the "Dirty Six Five." It might have something to do with the pile of tobacco behind a seat in the back (discarded in order to make a blunt.)

The crazy bearded hobo arrives at the edge of downtown. He wants to say hi to everybody. The drifter with the long matted hair looks down. Crazy does not like to deal with crazy.

The pretty dumb girls prattle on. Huge racked hipster chick gets on by the college. Pretty dumb girls get off. We should all light up on the Grand Avenue bus. For at the end of the line we have been through something. Something that is not easy articulated but marks us indelibly with its insights into humanity from which we are normally shielded.

Hank "Jumbo" Sryah's About Town

2006-09-25T12:58:00.000-07:00

Dateline: Eastern European country's cultural pride street festival

People from the homeland do not look like you are me. They are more rugged, more sly, more white-socked and pony-tailed. They enjoy hearty life affirming activities like cigarettes, meaty dumplings and pina coladas made using the whole pineapple as the cup. Needless to say there is dancing of a mating-ritual and amazing-dream-coat nature. Not bad looking youth go through their paces in the Sunday afternoon sun. Dare I say I have found the best place to be at this given moment? Happens so often.

Real traveling carnival carneys are at the helm of a frankly terrifying whirlybird ride that takes you 360 degrees in all directions. The carneys look authentically felonious. The screams reach out over the apartment buildings. This festival has had some bad luck the last few days due to rain, so it is nice that the street is swarming with ticket buyers. I see the priest, collar unbuttoned ebullient drinking a caffeinated beverage. So I think the situation has been saved for this Eastern European country's cultural pride festival and local church fundraiser.

But how many tickets for that bewitching bescarved lass who dances in medieval costume? Forthwith to squire her behind the diesel generator for what diversions we may find. I fear it will take a large roll of tickets to win the heart of that enchanted becheeked embodiment of all that is good in this world.

But we must go. The fair ends abruptly at a sleepy Sunday side street.

Dateline: Baby teen whispers under a pine tree.

I sit at a high window enjoying a filament filled sunset, electric lips of clouds. A pine tree between me and the porch next door. These kids are horsing around down below. It winnows to three girls and a guy. They are around 12, 13 years old. I can hear them flirt and banter and see through the obscuring pine boughs that they are unable to sit still. It is funny to remember when stupidity, sex and screaming were all mixed up into that ferocious state called innocence.

The girls did take pictures of their underwear for a cell phone camera while the guy watched. Parents - Tell your kids not to undress for cell phone camera phones. You never know where those things end up.

Dateline: Greek luncheonette run by Mexicans on that busy corner.

What can a well-run lunch cafe do for the soul? Enlighten it. Ennoble it. Nourish it along with stomach. What must go in a turkey, ham, bacon and cheese club panini? The answer is bacon - a firm (but not overwhelming) layer of crispy bacon. Then add ham, turkey and cheese on grilled sour dough with ramikans of barbecue and mayo on the side. Fries come with a spray starch coating that tastes like you just made love to a foreigner for the first time - dirty yet liberated for the first time in your life.

Overtip lunch waiters who are good. An extra couple buck to you does not make much difference but to him they can make his day, both emotionally and romantically because think about it, he wants to go squire his lady about the town and later insert his hot refried beans into her supple tortilla refulgence, and that requires some dinero, no senor?

Dateline: Family owned Italian joint in a rainstorm.

Drink blue martinis during a deluge. As the tropical low has made us a bit unformed. Sit with the smokers by the front window. The skylight overhead rumbles with sheets of rain. Here you can sometimes make a rash decision that ends up with sour cream wedges and bemeated meat based sandwiches. Because your ass will wake up in the middle of the night going, "I can't believe I ate the whole thing and drank that blue martini, not to mention bread and hot marinara sauce before the meal."

Can you once take something home you filthy animal?

About Town With Hank "Jumbo" Syrah

2006-09-23T07:47:00.000-07:00

Dateline: Dirty drunkard Sunday

In a most frightful Irish establishment at a six way intersection. Bartender nice guy, about to go to a party celebrating his sister's acceptance into the police academy. Large girls drink tall beers. A most motley assortment wearing football jerseys yells at a standup table.

A guy walks in, says he just beat up his friend. He has a bloody hand to prove it. He is most offputting, as are all those who have recently scuffled. He shakes and quivers and text messages insults to his friend. Then he eats a shepard's pie and calms down. This place is quite frisky this wet afternoon.

A lurking lurcher sits nearby, guy in a cap. He wastes no time but rather flings himself upon the large girls. He goes from "how are you" to "yeah right there" faster than seemingly humanly possible. More people in football uniforms arrive and are soaked. A drenched Michigan apple comes over for a chat. She cannot stay alas because she is "chafing."

Bluejeans, no underwear and getting drenched can result in painful itching and burning.

Dateline: Rib shack next to movie theater.

Beef briscuit sandwiches and a well built bloody mary go together like a cock and a comb. The secret is a good sauce on the briscuit and brined vegetables in the bloody. Remember when good hearted waitresses made you think just maybe "everything's going to be alright?" The waitress here makes one feel nourished spiritually as well as calorically with the massive cow sandwich she delivers to our faces.

"Talladega Nights" is the movie. It is no "Ron Burgundy" but provides mild divertisement on $5 ghetto Tuesdays which yes, include movie, small popcorn and parking for five dollah to make you hollah. Is America at the "cusp of heretofore unknown glory" or falling into a "puddle of its own sick?" "Talladega Nights" seems to offer evidence for both scenarios.

Dateline: Backyard barbecue with artists.

Skinny types insert encased meat into lubricated mouths. There are two grills, so sickly vegans do not have to touch meat. Strange characters introduce themselves near the ravaged homemade "margarita bar." Critically requiring: a quality shaker, homemade ice cubes and kosher salt. Artists are always a dizzying assortment of pouting and conspiring but occasionally they pull out the good stuff late at night – like an old handwritten young magician's notebook. Obsession it is said is the mark of a future great magician. And this drawing filled notebook displays it in spades.

One strange character turns out later to have an art show with lots of white teddy bears that weeks later still has the power to frighten just by thinking about those god forsaken bears piled face down in the middle of the floor.

Dateline: TV sodden sports bar

Always bring a gay guy to a sports bar – something to shake away the clodden dumbassery eating chicken wings and staring at screens. This bar though is different in that a magician comes up to us. A big guy but smooth, he asks us politely to do some tricks and turns out to be real good. Cards, coins, even a little chemical explosion in his palm. Magic goes by many names - sometimes even "John for Events and Parties."

How much do you tip your tableside magician? Our table overtips. The magician moves on. Our group leaves the barrage of TVs and walks into a quiet treelit night.

To fight, fornicate or get enlightened we know not whither or whether we stagger.

VIP Only Insider's Update

2006-09-21T13:23:00.000-07:00

I took a tumbler on the bike the other day. Drunk of course, I blame it on Jamison's. Now I sport an encapsulating yellow bruise on my left shoulder. I should get it sponsored by that fine Irish whisky. It was wet out when I spilled, so at least I got that going for me, excuse-wise.

Stress finally swamped me this week. To the point where I was bobbing in rage, could not help wading in it if I wanted. That is life for you on the dirty city streets whilst chasing after that paper. People be nickel and diming the crap out of you in the asphalt jungle. I wish I could stick a fork in this one client's head. Skinny little dickweed, possesses the power to nauseate. Alas, I heard an instructive song in my head, the gist of which - let it go.

I wander forlornly in search of eldorado. Or at least a moment of repose, even a lurching bemusement. Not finding it, I find a friend who takes me out and lets me babble. Misery is such a bore. A chore not worth accomplishing but of course there is no choice.

In my dreams enter frightening and ferocious characters, demanding and entrancing. I wake up gasping, elated or terrified. One dream in particular in which the original 'dream wanderer' appeared, or he advertised himself as such. He bent reality in the most unbelievable way; promised he would show me things.

I drive a lot lately. I went from "Let it be" to "Toss my salad bitch" in 5 days. Now I know how to intimidate. Because otherwise you get your ass run over on these streets. There is so much godawful traffic that not one smiling scrap of humanity remains. I mean, I still let people go in front of me occasionally. But only when they rush ahead to a traffic jam 100 feet in front of us.

Do I also mention the sex dream so consuming I woke up sweating? My dreams are knocking me silly lately.

I listen to Rhymefest's new CD and seethe. "Blue Collar" is the name. Quite good. I cannot read anymore so I watch bad network TV and rest because stress knocks my ass out. I watch old sitcoms, sports and the first Chucky movie in Espanol. I also watch a serial killer show, sadly because there should be better things to do with my life.

I walked around a nice park yesterday. A bright afternoon wind blew on moms, kids, high school soccer players, sexy Ukrainian nannies, loners on benches and overweight people waddling laps. There was no nostalgia, no enlightenment, no feelings really other than an immediate sensory perception. I was too tired for anything conceptual. I walked 4 times around, stiffly, because I still am injured from my drunken wipeout. And it was good still, life. Even beat up, burnt out, mumbling to myself - I was happy to be alive in the park

Magic and mundanity simultaneously torture me. I wander lonely as a cloud. Stars explode above me while hungry worms squiggle below. I create life with a ferocity I have not much control over and try to find places where life grows. Then spew love on it and hope for the best. Oddly it feels like a strange position to be in, but I suppose that feeling is natural.

I am 14

2006-09-08T10:03:00.000-07:00

I am 14, it is a miserable year. I am depressed. I am filled with anxiety. I masturbate daily and enjoy playing violent sports. Girls will not give me much in the way of sex. It is the suburbs of Chicago after all. Nice midwestern girls and all that. A couple guys I know are getting it all the time. I enjoy immensely listening to lengthy and surely embellished tales of doing local sluts at our school. Oh if only the lord would see fit to deliver upon me, your pockmarked servant, a nice piece of love in tight blue jeans.

The parents are fighting again. The parents are drinking again. The parents are encountering their own turbulence in our little shack in the suburbs of Chicago. God bless them I say, but they are a bit dull. Sunday dinners are predictably on a spring loaded timer. Who will detonate it and hoist the whole table by its petard across the living room toward the nearest TV? Mother, typically. But father too. Sometimes a kid gets in the act. My big brother or little sister or even myself (but like a diplomatic middle child rarely) exhibits such a petulance that 'Sunday Family' dinner is wrapped up in under ten minutes.

"You children," Mother says and lights a cigarette. She is a smart woman, a creative woman, but her generation all became suburban housewives. Father puts his head into his hand and with the other finishes a last bite before fleeing to the basement. He is a smart man, a creative man, but his generation all became executives, in his case advertising.

Us children watch television. We can usually agree on a program. Sit-coms, dramedies, cop shows, monster movies – we are a very receptive and generous television audience. The kids' TV is upstairs. It is old, heavy. The cat comes in and out through the window in the TV room. It seeks to subdue birds and bring them into the house. Father has put a bell on it, but it has not had much effect on how many birds father must capture with the net specially purchased for the task.

Of course there is a dog. A fat dachshund with a German name. Liebschen sometimes comes upstairs with the kids, but most times she waits for a handout in the kitchen then sleeps by the exhaust vent of the refrigerator. My first memory is when I am a baby and Liebschen came up and we French kissed each other. A huge uproar ensued thereafter, which is why I think it is my first memory.

I am 14 now. Not little anymore. Brother has gone to college and I have assumed his room. Sister has moved to my room, which when we were little was the kids' TV room. Now we each have our own TVs. I do not watch much TV anymore. I am into music and listen a lot to the high school radio station. I am a freshman at this high school. You know the one, the one in that John Hughes movie with the hot girl with big lips. Music and girls are my obsession. Violence and getting wasted close behind.

The music I am into: punk, funk, metal, rock from when I was little, rap and when nobody is around, pop. When I was little I listened to the pop station but now I do only in the shower before school. I put in an old clock radio that turns on whenever you turn on the bathroom light switch. Very convenient.

I smoke about three cigarettes a day and have a recurring rape fantasy I find worrisome. I should not be having masturbation fantasies about raping neighbors right? But that does not stop me from doing it. I feel sick afterwards. I am depressed. Like I said, I am miserable.

When I was little I could pretend to be happy. When I am little I am like 7 and if you have TV and your friends and the weather is good and maybe your friend has gotten ahold of some incendiary devices and you can explode them in dirt mounds as a part of a military action figure scenario. Outside is most important. You have to be able to go outside.

But I am in high school now. I have pubic hair, zits and desire to cum every three hours. Only guilt that I might get addicted keep me from beating the meat 5 times a day. I have been touching myself since I was 8 or so. When I was 12 I tried to stop myself because I felt it was dirty. Now at 14 I now that is hopeless and try to keep the fantasies to nonrape ones.

I wet my bed too. I have done this also since I was little. Now I only do it once in awhile. Especially if I drink too many beers the night before. I guess I am frontloading the bad stuff about me, get that out of the way, then maybe you will feel sorry for me and be generous in your judgement.

High school sucks. I hate it. I cannot get any girls to do stuff with me and I hate every single class I am in. Almost. I like art a little bit, english sometimes, P.E. is not bad because you might get to hit somebody with a stick. Why not go through a typical school day real fast, get you up to speed.

Homeroom: I had to fight my way in to sit with the football players. One of the boys ran away. Our adviser has tepid interest in our futures at best. Tits and where the hell did Muntz go are the hot topics in the beginning of the year.

1st Period: Art. The teacher hates me. I suck at art. I hang out with this guy who is this amazing artist. I am in constant amazement at what he can do with paper and pencil. He also brings in booze occasionally that he steals from his parents. This we drink out of small Tupperware containers in the kiln room.

2nd Period: Radio Communications. A woman teacher and the class is all boys because girls have no interest. The teacher yells at us everday.

3rd Period: Algebra. Christ do I hate math. The teacher hates the whole class. I stare out the window sometimes and get real nostalgic for when I was little.

4th Period: English. Alright sometimes when Shakespeare tells dick jokes.

5th Period: P.E. Thank god. I love going outside and running around.

6th Period: Lunch. A cesspool of social hierarchy. But I am trying to social climb from my geek table to the cool kids because there go all the hot girls.

7th Period: History. Old teacher who is not bad. Fun to learn about Sumeria and human sacrifice.

8th Period: German. Do not fuck around with German teachers. They are some of the toughest people on the planet.

9th Period: Study Hall. Here is where the wags have figure out how to smoke weed in the library and get away with it.

After School: This first semester it is soccer. I am the goalie on the Freshman team. Goalie is a good position because you get to punch, kick and knee people and balls and if you time it right people in the balls. On the downside you do get balls kicked at you from extremely short distances and occasionally you get elbowed or kicked in the head.

There is my fall semester curriculum. School has been going on about a month now. How am I doing in my classes? Badly. I hate school. I hate it. It is so frigging boring. I am not trying to be one of those whiny bitches who complain all the time because they can. I am trying to explain my circumstances. I am not cut out for school. I need to be outside more, or shooting guns or groping a hot girl all night long.

Instead I come home from soccer practice and pretend to do my homework. I hate homework as you might guess. I go down into the basement after dinner, turn on our high school radio station and think about girls.

Love Sauce Lost

2006-08-29T11:07:00.000-07:00

Hot City Mystery Adventure:

"Where you are the star."

chapter 1:

You are walking down the hot sidewalk. An itch lingers in your loins as a bus spews hot diesel on you. Tormented by lust, terrified of love, yet for no good reason convinced you are entitled to happiness. Contemplating your lack of happiness you stop at a red light. Traffic waits next to you idling and stinky.

The city has not been kind lately. In fact the city has kicked your ass and left you reeling in the gutter for the indigent to consume. Maybe not that bad. But this fact is true: seething and fuming are your primary oxygen absorption methods.

On the ground before you is city trash – a menthol cigarette pack and an electric orange snack food wrapper. It occurs to you that menthol cigarette smokers and bright orange food snackers are some of the littering-est dirtbags around.

A nanny walks by with a kid. A grandma is leaning by her front door. Your favorite tree in the city droops lazily in the hot sun. A dead relative appears thinly in your mind. Do dead relatives still care for you after death? You pray to your dead relative in case. A hello, a plea, an unanswered question about what the afterlife is like.

Your internecrocourse is interrupted by a good-looking mail carrier. Some people simply look delightful in a uniform. You experience that itch again, a tickle in the back of your throat - if your throat was in your nether regions.

To force yourself to stop thinking about your depraved lust you look at the sky. Skyscrapers loom on the horizon, a seagull follows the west wind. You hear two pigeons eating gutter dirt, then a car horn. You realize that you might be the most sad and compelling creature on the planet – a lost and haunting spirit in love with the damned and dirty city.

But is it love anymore? Are you not sick of this polluted cement and steel canyon crammed with overcaffeinated annoying types?

Maybe you should go back to getting overwhelmed by your depraved lust. A fantasy about freaky love in a faraway Jamaican resort. Flesh on flesh thrusting like the exotic animal you know you are. One thing you can do in this life – freak it fantastically. To what use when you cannot share it with a willing accomplice? You merely wish to commit crimes against humanity in freak form. You have it within you to open new dimensions through freaktastic ecstasies.

But you are not vain. You are merely another lost soul seeking city salvation. You are trying to make it, whatever it is. You wish you could be a little more smart, a little less crazy, a little something else than what you are.

You think, what the hell is the purpose of all this running around like a spastic monkey anyway? Is there a god who gives a crap about your wretched life? What more, is this god keeping some sort of score? Most important, how is your score? Is there anything left for you to do to pull you sorry ass out of an eternity of torment?

God is such a boring topic. Instead of god or sex or seething about your so called life you peer in the storefronts you walk past. Cellphones, fast food and oddlot storefronts with moldering file boxes under fluorescent lights.

Where are you going? You do not even know. Earlier you had decided to take a walk. You wanted to clear your head. Now your head is filled with god, lust and anguish of a self-loathing nature. You head to the waterfront. You like the waterfront. It is usually empty save for a few confused tourists during a weekday. The sun hits the ripples and you can sometimes see an enormously large tanker ship.

There is a little-used promontory you walk up onto. Its stairs are inscribed with declarations of young love and littered with cigarette butts. It is breezy up here, just ten steps higher than the pier. Toward the horizon you see a water purification pump, an imposing bridge and a bunch of ducks bobbing in the gritty water. They are looking for a handout. When it is apparent that you are not giving it up they bob down toward the waterfront restaurant that feeds mainly tourists.

What the hell is it you are supposed to do, to be, to want to be? Oi. You are confused. You let the sun-glitters in the ripples of the windy water hypnotize you. You notice another person on the promontory. You ignore them, annoyed. This is your private place. Others are not invited.
With questions unanswered as usual you shrug, curse, seethe and stumble back down to the pier. Damn, that person has come down too. You let yourself get annoyed by everything for a second, then force yourself take a big breath. Relax, it is just life. You did not choose to be here, hell most of the things in your life and about you are things you did not choose. Hmm.

You stare at a couple fancy boats docked along the pier. A crew of surely illegal immigrants scrubs, vaccuums and generally bustles. A couple contractor typess unwrap a tall thin cardboard package. You wonder what is in the package. With a razor knife a guy expertly slices down the seams. You slow in anticipation.

Out slides a full length mirror, the frame is gaudy gold, the edges of the glass are beveled. You think, how appropriate for a boat like this to have a mirror like that. You imagine the guys affixing to a closet door of the master cabin below. It reflects geometrical flashes of sun as they examine how they are going to affix it.

As they turn it casts a shadow of reflected light; this hits you in the face, instinctually you flinch, squint. When you open your eyes you see a perfect reflection of yourself from about 30 feet away.

If you see a man in the mirror, go to page X

If you see a woman in the mirror, go to page Y

the sewing machine sweats

2006-08-24T09:12:00.001-07:00

Toiling with scrap and bit,
elemental cobbler concatenates
sensual tactility,
dimensionality and
dulcet variegation.

Revealed - the heretofore hidden thread
between seamstress and sorceress.

"Wall of Sound"
N. Ford - artiste

Uneasy Alliance

2006-08-21T08:36:00.000-07:00

Capital and classical: how we must overcome the romantic to slay fundamentalism.

Secular humanists among us – we grandchildren of the enlightenment – do now truly despair. Whither the value of reason? Wherefore goes liberty from the light of day, she the one we cannot live without? Perhaps she flees the dark matter forces of fundamentalism eating life like an oak devours sun. Fundamentalism that shrieking hag is based upon an disgusting flaw – we should sacrifice life, that most wonderful expression of universal intelligence, for a make believe never never land.

It is the enemy. Or rather will be the enemy for at least as long as I will live, and so cannot worry about much more. Let us say it is a quintessential nemesis for the foreseeable future and figure out how to defeat it. Our rallying cliché: freedom versus fundamentalism.

Fundamentalism has infected the entire globe, ala 'body snatchers.' It is born of the profound emptiness of modernism. Modernism began when Nietzsche said god was dead, but its seeds were sewn in the Italian Rennaissance and the Pandora's box opened along with ancient Greek texts. Modernism is personified in Eliot's hollow man and also in the men who fight battles which kill hundreds of thousands for a hundred yards of corpse-filled trench.

Modernism, although we must flee it, did come about as the result of a good thing. The intellectual achievements of the late 19th century philoligists, scientists, archeologists and others whose roots were found in the ethnographic impulses of missionaries and other monastic types. These scientific and intellectual achievements eventually blew away our perception of ourselves, the world and the universe. End result: thousands of years of cultural intelligence becomes an empty hole.

Here is what Nietzsche teaches us. Man does not need truth to have an utterly fulfilling existence. The willful flights of fancy of man are perfectly in keeping with a healthy existence. Modern man with his truth is a sick man. Our intellectual and scientific achievements come with a perhaps fatal poison pill – man requires fundamental answers to unendurable existential questions. The questions become 're-unanswered' once we discover our religions are made up entirely by us. The comprehensive history of religions (fueled by the scientific method) is a map of human imagination quite clearly. I think here of Eliade's "History of Religions."

Humans do not want to 'live the question.' I know I do not. There are a few rare born souls with the constitution and mutation necessary to endure it. But we are creatures who need answers, true or not, and then we can 'turn on' life and exult.

Fundamentalism has grown Hogweed-like in the emptiness we cannot quite eradicate a hundred plus years later. Fundamentalism is not new, but I think the virulence of its present manifestation and the WMDs we now possess presents a critical case. Fundamentalism has infected all major religions – Judaism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, et al. How does it spread? By offering a way away from the hell of the emptiness that confronts each individual solitarily. Without meaning man is most in tatters. S/he gnashes teeth and cannot think about much else. We ask, why something instead of nothing? What happens after? The most basic, universal questions cannot go without answer. I still vividly remember lying in bed at night contemplating death as a 7 year old. How horrifying it was. How permanent it was. It kept me tossing and turning.

Here is where the battle is waged. Those of us who profess the love of liberty, enlightenment and rationality must navigate our way out of modernism. We will need a new name. Like bioclassical or some such. Let us leave that to the folks in the PR department and strategize a power map that will allow humans again to live richly, bravely and in good cheer.

Our first directional device is a simple proposition – Life is a sexy expression of universal intelligence and should be honored highly. Our enemies are those who would sacrifice this most sacred stream of energy at the altar of an ideology worshipping death; loving preposterous lies.

We must have an eschatology that is a common denominator. A nondenominational rallying cry to fire up our inner warriors. Because my brothers and sisters I believe it is time to sew our bloodlust such as we may.

A simple eschatology:

Of course there is a universal intelligence, do not worry about it.

Life is sacred and fantastic and its enjoyment is the point.

Knowledge and reason go a long way.

Nothing is perfect, nothing is promised. We have to fight for our love and life.

"Freedom is a light for which many men have died in darkness."

Upon these points let us rest our spirit, our chi, our holiness. We do not need death-monger religious freaks to sanctify us. Life sanctifies us. "Life is beautiful and terrifying." It is its own evidence.

It can sometimes feel overwhelming in this dark period of murderous events, how do I shine a light? Luckily others have wandered through similar terrain, and we can learn from them. Called classical, these oases of humanity have surpassed the romantic and entered into hallowed ground.

Edith Hamilton is the one I think who coined the classical versus romantic debate. Romantic is the act of overcoming, it is the typical human condition, and we will never fully be able to live without it. For struggle has been a near universal feature of human life the romantic is the natural response to cheer us in our attempt to make dominion over volatile ecologies.

Bloom says modernism is just a late romanticism, and I think there is something to that. I would say that modernism is the last romanticism. We hard new souls of a good morning, bright sunshiny world must deter the last desire to overcome life, and accept all of it, the classical.

Classical in early times was providence of the upper classes because classical requires leisure time. Since most of our ancestors ambled through sustenance level existences, the luxury of time was only afforded to the few. Classical finds those who can think, tinker, scribble and perceive, observe and measure. Similarly that is why the most sophisticated spiritualism grew first in the jungles of Borneo. Born of a people for whom all the needs of life were readily given and so had leisure in which to discover the power of universal intelligence through the "dream wanderer."

Throughout history conditions have commingled to produce an aristocracy who explore the wonders of the world. Chinese classical, for instance, created hundreds year long periods of civilization whose knowledge was the most advanced in the world at the time.

The classical says, "We must accept everything." It shows the romantic for what it is – a filter on a tough reality so that we may retain our ruddiness. The classical says, "We must honor life, but not worship it." For there are dishonorable lives not worth living. The classical says, "We are the value providers of our lives." Values are created, they are protected, they are fought for. We need no higher judge than ourselves to sanctify our values.

We need a new classical movement. A new expression of the religion of the third eye. But we are not getting it. We look to the upper classes for signs of it, and we see nothing enlightened. We see in fact dull selfishness. Profanity. The brahmins among the top class diluted and squishy.

Presently there is an unhealthy friction between capital and classical. You will not find a capitalism bash in this screed. I find America's domestic capital market to be one of the greatest human achievements. Trade and commerce are as universal as the fall of man. Capitalism has its discontents surely, but look at what deplorable alternatives it surpassess. Thing is, capital holders need to shed the aegis of romantic mythology and see themselves for what they are – time tested catalysts for golden ages.

But us more humble souls cannot wait. We too we should cobble a classical without aristocracy. A trade guild of life lovers. A classical that accepts the essential mediocre limitations inherent in democratic social organization and yet "where everything is permitted." We are at the point in our technical achievements where the conditions are ripe for a birth of a new classical, a universal classical (alas but a romantic idea?)

It will require the pitiless revaluation of humanness as prima fasce sacred. Humans will need to accept tougher, less merciful reality. But it will be the one effective deterrent against the hideous forces of death aligning against us. For the fundamenatalist are growing and let us face it, we would rather fight than live under filthy fundamentalists, the most revolting representative of humanness ever?

Capitalism and its symbiotic partner, democracy, do not need to be enemies of classical.

It will require money of course, capitalist tyrants like Buffet and Gates who understand the sacred act of public building as Greeks and Romans did. But I think also we need an organization, a constituency. A cluster of likeminded souls acting. We all need to hug the romantic goodbye each in our own way, like a freshman year lover, and with good cheer and brave heart, embrace the classical. It will make us crueler but critically will 'turn on' in each of us the love and communion necessary to organize into the entity who will defeat the black menace, hungry for murder, now howling at the outposts.

#

construction bubbles blow

2006-08-11T09:30:00.000-07:00

Please shut up. Please. Oh, and please stop making these
crappy profitbox condo crapholes that will blight
the neighborhood evermore.

The cranes downtown claw-like rip out
another crass profitbox highrise, glinting
testimony to cost per square foot.

The last vacant lots are now furiously thrown up on,
in the a last ditch attempt to turn a dollar before
the drywall and cinderblock craphouse goes down in smoke.

The houses though at least are as cheaply made as possible,
so when they house more 'affordable' people after the bust,
it will be a seemless transition from 'the manorside'
to 'disability village.'

No more slavic guys fighting please, no more fork lifts
running down city streets at 40 m.p.h. No more talk
of granite countertops and maple cabinets, or flipping,
or real estate scumbags getting rich by
gladhanding.

The ugliness will be lasting, in the form of lame, soulless
boxes built to enrich offshore mob syndicates. Boxes built
to the property line, to as high and wide as possible.
So that those in them never have to leave.
Until they flip into their suburban McMansion in two years.

One says yes but, men are working, things are bustling,
money is being made, taxes are being paid.
Those of us in the bubble reply, "being built is a house of cards."
Just another hustle on shakedown street,
a tapering type scam that will see much in the way
of cash-stuffed carpet-bags scurrying to their
horrid gated mansions to dine on all the fruit their
unearned money will afford them.

space touch light

2006-08-09T19:59:00.000-07:00

click on art for better view

Dragon Fern

Do you know where you are?

Acid

Breath

Anatomy

J. Haack, artiste, presiding

Bolivian Street Life

2006-08-09T10:23:00.000-07:00

La Paz is the only real city in Bolivia - a busy, sad and bustling bowl in the high Andes. They have oxygen at the airport for when the odd visitor from sea-level inevitably passes out.

I wanted to pass out at the airport, but nervousness and anti-altitude drugs managed to keep me on my feet. The only way to get over it is to slowly acclimatize yourself. Which in my case meant going to the hotel and passing out. After 12 hours of my body desperately trying to manufacture more red blood cells I wandered out into the streets of La Paz.

Bolivians are mostly indigenous peoples of these arid highlands. The punishing environment has been matched by short, squat people with UV tolerant skin and a third lung. They are shy of foreigners and do not much deal with them unless it is to change dollars into local currency.

La Paz is polluted, the automobile traffic is incessant and emission laws non-existent. The city is at such high altitude that pollution has nowhere to go but remain in the bowl from whence it came.

La Paz and Mt. Illimani

Through the pollution and oxygenlessness I walked. After a week I could get up to multi-hours long walks. In retrospect, it was a nice way to get to know a city, accretively and slowly as scorched lungs would allow.

There is an anachronistic emotion that startles while walking down the colonial rock streets. Pungent and often in shadow, the streets here are built to accommodate medieval era sewage technology and vigorous commerce shielded from that strong sun right above your head. The streets never really die here. Late at night an altitude related headache woke me, and I could still here the thrumming beats of the never-ending evangelical Christian band who played by the fountain.

another La Paz band, not religious

At night it got cold and dark fast. But this being the second poorest place in the western hemisphere, this does not mean people go home. The street stalls remain open, the beggars still speak to themselves and the minivans keep circling old fountains that spoke off down six streets.

A sadness permeates. Saddest of all are the miserable beggar children. I heard the worst stories regarding these raggedy orphans who will shine your shoes (badly). One of those kids had the saddest eyes I have ever seen.

Above ground cemeteries when you live on a rock.

The streets do bustle with commerce. Things I bought that I would recommend:

Popcorn (guy comes afternoons by the fountains)

Breakfast Sandwich (vendors arrive on big streets. They go fast, come early.)

Alpaca sweaters (haggle.)

Coca leaves (get the special activator compound for best result.)

Broasted chicken (just another word for fried here.)

A minibus up the hill (inclines take their toll here.)

Lunch (best value at any restaurant.)

There are a bunch of parks like the one above. Always populuated, you get all sorts, rich to poor. I enjoyed them, but maybe because they are the only flat sanctuaries around.

Usually I found myself up at the top of a severe hill like above. Topography tends to become an obsession in this city, so let us focus on the people who scurry up and down and around. First they are poor. Most of them. The inequality in the country is ridiculous. There is an almost preternatural resignation that equips them to deal tough lives. There is pride, but it is rueful and implicitly acknowledges the severe circumstances with which most must deal.

This is some street performer freak who was sticking nails in his skin. I found him at one of the higher ground market places, generally the higher the poorer. No gringos around but me. I was not quite sure what his act was, but I think he was possessed by some demon who allowed him to feel no pain. Or he was severely mentally ill and should have been institutionalized. I like how the mom brought her baby to the self-mutilation street theater. I tell you, these people are tough.

The Spanish were truly awful colonists and from what you learn, you simply cannot believe the crap they did. What they left is an oligarchic governmental system that is racist and selfish. (addendum: it will be interesting to watch if a 'real' Bolivian recently elected president can make any changes.) They also left some architecture.

And also a military band or two.

Notice the puggy French horn player not quite cutting a martial figure.

But who cares about endemic poverty, pollution and altitude when you there is Del Grand Poder? Luckily I was there for a major street parade and was truly amazed at the level of craft and psychosis that went into the costumes.

I had a real fun time, definitely recommended. But I should warn you, if you attend make sure you do not make indecent propositions that end with tense confrontations with suddenly appearing lovers on high roofs.

La Paz - even after a very long time the city still has a full effect on the mind's eye.

Its streets were an unsettling contrast between light and dark, passive and frenetic.

Years can pass and you will still easily embody the cold stone urban canyons at night, strung bulbs and van lights illuminating curving walls, tropical music on a portable radio, hot dishes of well cooked parts monitored by stolid street vendors.

But avoid the mayonnaise at the street vendors if at all possible.

Bolivian mine tour

2006-08-05T11:11:00.000-07:00

Enter only if you have an extra lung

The mine tour operator is a nice guy, you find him outside the one hotel in the windswept, infinitely sad city of Potosi. It is one of the highest cities in the world, just at the edge where human beings can live without deteriorating rapidly. The sunset brings black stiff winds, and the lights which line the street market stalls are helpless against it.

The tour operator finds the appropriate minibus; he pays for "dos gringos en uno negro." As gringos typically pay higher for everything in this country. You do not go directly to the mine, but into town to the outdoor stalls. You cannot show up at the mine empty handed. The miners require gifts. Primarily dynamite, fuses and coca leaves.

The dynamite is to blow holes in the rock to find more silver. The coca is to numb one's skull in order to work in perhaps one of the most difficult jobs in the world. Coca is what they make cocaine out of. Chewing the leaves gives a milder buzz, numbs up the mouth and provide an inoculation of euphoria against the rigors of a low-oxygen environment.

The guide knows what you should buy. You pinch some of the coca leaves and use the special activator compound that you rub on your gums to get the full extraction.

no permit required

You chew on the coca leaves because you are ascending. The town of Potosi is already high enough for anybody with only two lungs. The minibus climbs quickly into a mountainous wasteland.

The tour guide tells you the basics. Spanish come along raping and pillaging and find huge vein of silver in mine nearby. They try to import African slaves to work the mine but the conditions are too difficult and they die too quickly. So they conscript locals to work the mines, giving them a pittance while shipping most the swag back to fund disastrous religious wars.

The mine has long ago lost its power to make one rich. Now a few short-statured and short-lived locals press on against the rock, finding small pockets here and there. The dynamite is apparently a dangerous mining technique necessitated by the paucity of the good stuff left in the mountain.

Like they used to, with corresponding
high mortality rates

The tour guide operator comes from a family of miners. All the other miners know him and appear to like him. They also like the looks of the 'gifts' you have bought. They seize upon the coca leaves and stick them in already bursting cheeks. You take a little yourself as the altitude up here is ridiculous. You look into the holes, it does not look terribly appealing.

Because you do not act like typical gringos and have brought much coca, the miners take a shine to you. They offer to blow up one of the sticks of dynamite you have brought. You agree that this would be a fun activity.

Men with other men blowing things up

But enough terrestrial fun. Now it is time to go into the hole. You are given filthy hard hats and told to alert the guide if you feel ready to pass out. This is not the first time you have heard this warning in this country.

Is there lunch on this tour?

The tour guide mistakes you for fit. This is no average gringo tour. He takes you deep into the mine, where there you are still 16,000 feet above sea level and also at the bottom of a deep dank hole. You do not feel well from the start. The fumes, the lack of oxygen. How in god's name does anybody go in these holes and pound away at this rock every day?

There are some mechanical tools, but much also is done by hand. Small brown men with sad eyes pound the rock with hammers. The tour guide tells us that it is very much a family business. Sons follow fathers into the mine with a faustian bargain: a little better life than the average desperately poor Bolivian in exchange for an early death due to lung disease.

Then the tour operator casually mentions that he already has lung disease from the short time he spent in the mine as a kid.

As dad used to say, "Work a little while in a Bolivan mine and then let me hear you complain."

The Potosi mine tour has everything you might imagine. Filth, murky tunnels, frightening belly-crawls through tiny blown apertures in the rock, a recent dynamite explosion and subsequent poison gasses.

Frankly it is flabbergasting that the miners last as long as they do, working in the conditions they do. The perilous life they lead makes them naturally attracted to divine assistance such as they can get. The tour guide takes you to a rock cul-de-sac where the miners give offerings to an old mountain god. As bad as you feel and as claustrophobic as you are, you do too.

Another coca leaf another day of protection

#

Bolivian mountains through a UV filter

2006-08-04T09:20:00.000-07:00

At 20,000 feet you hear alot of wind and are glad the glasses are 100% UV

The sky blackens at the upper reaches, a little too close to outer space.

At the top of the mountain only a reminder of how many.

The wise climber said, "The mountain will always be there."

another artist life

2006-08-02T05:20:00.000-07:00

So you are in high school, weird girl that guys want to get with
and that is OK, as far as that goes. Except for this overwhelming
emotion and unconcious ferocity - legacy of German ancestry?

So you paint, and paint and paint. Nobody but teachers much care.
Despair and doubt seep in like spilled ink. You go to art school,
you go to New York, you graduate and get a job selling furniture.

A couple people say, yes keep going. Most suggest graduate school
for education. You do teach young freaks how to use a kiln for a bit.
But even in an unlit winter kitchen you stain pulp the shade of joy.

The question, "who cares?" repeats and go unanswered,
except for the wicked confabulations that stand and
deliver.

Lo though do we walk through a death valley or two,
you show us that we can still wade into the mess and subdue
beauty and other wildland creatures.

All paintings by J. Haack
Titles top down:
(click on images for better view)

*Engagement
*Moon Bears Need Technology Too
*Mother and Eggs
*Counting the Days
*The Conversation

What is love?

2006-07-31T12:27:00.000-07:00

Love is nature's way of saying, come on live a little bit. That is, it is the fundamental seduction of life. Love can be called a primary emotion, in that admixtures using it can produce many other emotions. Love is universal and biological in humans, yet so powerful is it that our perceptions of it are frequently myopic and defensive.

Love probably has its roots in the inherent joy of being alive. We want to share this feeling, and also defend it against ever pesky suffering. So many types of love then sprout. Familial, sexual, clan, food, work - early people assumed everything was alive and so could love up all aspects of the physical world.

Love assumes for individual vulnerability. Love requires extending credit to another or something. It requires experience of a kind, and that is why first loves typically end in chaos. Love makes us do what we would never normally do, hence the most devious souls use love to prey upon others.

Easily degradable, love can become thin and malleable in the sweaty fingers of decadents. Yet it is perfectly recyclable and can be regenerated at a potency as ferocious as ever. Love must be reckoned with eventually, or one must face an inevitable crisis.

As a way back into life, love is frequently conflated with redemptions and all sorts of conversions. As grotesque as these may seem to some, all expressions of love are to be assumed positive in that they provide even the most empty and anguished with a method of reseizing life.

Love is the answer, but not to every question. Love is both more shallow and fundamental than most of us would like to admit. It occurs by wanting it and knowing that we want it. It requires conduits and a bit of understanding from its conduits.

Without it there really is not much of a point.

What is beauty?

2006-07-30T08:48:00.000-07:00

Beauty is an expression of health and order. Symmetry is beauty's primary manifestation. Intense organization displays well managed, abundant resources; employed to build and maintain. All sex-having life forms are attracted to beauty as it is probably the most basic display of reproductive fitness.

Because of the emptiness that overwhelms the times, beauty has become paramount. Its status has become unnaturally supreme. Why? Because in times where people existentially are empty, everybody reaches out for the one thing that is healthy and provides order just by existing.

By this reckoning, the more unhealthy and chaotic the society the more it will value beauty. For perhaps beauty stands alone as the one universal unifying element. Its value is self-evident and desired by all in equal measure.

The crisis of our last hundred years or so can be perceived in terms of beauty and horror. The horrors we have wreaked and demanded are perhaps equalled by the beauty created and demanded.

In this light the crisis of aesthetics in the fine arts becomes clear. Why beauty when it is mere impulse away from the horror? No better than a randomly created instinct?

Our culture's incessant instinct toward beauty is a symptom, not a sin in itself. We are but empty primates tearing ourselves to bits, so much about us is chaotic and random. We need a rhythm, a shape, an organization cut from the cold rock.

Healthy cultures can accept ugly, Aristotle's legendary ugliness did not stop the Greeks from absorbing his dialectics. Are ugly people allowed any rights in this culture? Whatever few are surely dwindling.

Beauty is mere manifestation of the universal intelligence, whatever that is. We should properly revere but not worship it, as it is a fickle and shallow energy. Has not every culture a myth that teaches of the perils of those who become entranced by beauty?

Narcissus in the era of mass destruction.

What is metaphor?

2006-07-29T09:41:00.000-07:00

Metaphor is the most potent weapon of emotional intelligence. Metaphor provides perception and depth. It can properly be viewed as the third eye. It equips us with another level of measurement that allows us to sift, apportion and weigh.

Metaphor is most obvious in dreams. Here visual pictures are created from emotional energy to provide metaphorical apparitions of our internal and external worlds. Metaphor probably exists in some form for all mammals. All the ones that can dream anyway.

Things are like other things but not quite like them. One can argue that life is a metaphor, as it is like not-life but not not-life. The primary urge of life then, if it is a metaphor, is expression. To expend energy is the prime motivator. Nietzsche had some rants along these lines.

It is easy to envision all the prosaic but invaluable knowledge metaphor has provided human kind. But equally valuable is the spiritual and social information metaphor delivers.

If you think about it, there is something insidious and beautiful about the power of metaphor. There is that evolutionary sense about it, where something so simple and mindless can create incredible knowledge and power. It is almost mechanical in its universal efficiency, yet what it creates is overwhelming and unsettling.

Surely if one were to ask, what is the meaning of all this, they would do well to begin by mining metaphor, its subconscious and conscious veins. One might argue that all religious and spiritual impulses are born of metaphor.

The new way, if we do not poison ourselves into extinction, will be powered by a metaphorical engine. A rare born soul will use (used by) metaphor to figure it out and soon everybody else will have that same dream. Then we will get on to that stage of development where things not yet imagined will be created.

Until then, before you go to sleep ask your dreams, what does metaphor look like? Sound like? Smell like?

(tip of the pen to Ann Faraday who figured this stuff out before anybody.)

Fairfax Avenue Skanktastic

2006-07-28T12:06:00.000-07:00

Get on at Beverly walking up to Melrose,
Mister Pizza, CBS and Jews mingle.
A pedestrian life here, an oasis,
busy, dirty, people brush against.

Where to begin with Freaky Fairfax?
Mister Pizza makes a nice slice,
the sad second hand stores make one pause,
Hollywood wannabe insanity at the Irishman's club.
Fairfax here gives no quarter,
rather many flyers stapled into palm trees.

Back to the secondhand stores, some so sad
enormous piles of crap nobody wants priced to move.
Let us go into Canter's Deli and forget about it.
Go in the back and stare at the autumn lit ceiling,
ordering reuben, matzoh ball soup, cup coffee.

What about the skankhole bar next Canter's?
Go in there only during the day or on drugs.
The tiny bar across the street lets you smoke,
skanky ambitious chicks run it, might do you if you are worthy.
Past the worn down strip mall there is a nice old bookstore,
obsessive, open late, first edition poetry disturbing or delightful.

Something seductive and repulsive runs up and down Fairfax.
Go to the outdoor magazine kiosk and lollygag.
Think about going to the silent movie theater up the street.
Instead go into another sad secondhand store, up the stairs
are piled high under naked bulbs cheap books.
All the stores have something to do with Jews. It is all
rather vague. At night Jewish 13 year old hoodlums will
hassle you for a light for their cigarettes.

Existential crises and other wandering pleas for help
are facilitated nicely up here. For even in the bright light
a natural dimness lurks in the empty bakery and dusty glass coves.

The inklings of a hill fill out the street, up the hill is Melrose and
the promise of snakeskin drinks and other tourist distractions.
Pull up before that tawdry crossroad at Fairfax High.
It boggles the imagination that kids go to school here.
You think, if I had gone to high school here I
would have been eaten alive,
or still wander a strip of Fairfax,
chasing that shiny bit at the edge of vision.

Skakedown Chicago Avenue

2006-07-26T08:29:00.000-07:00

The Jerry Garcia lookalike sells cigars,
corner shop favored by cops. He drinks beer and
he and the dog watch old TV.

Across the way the Polish Deli, get the potato pancakes always.
Chicago Avenue on this bit is retail and ghetto residential
on top of the shops.

Flat and wide, it contain a low sky,
ferocious sun or oppressive clouds.
Always piquant variety of urban perambulator -
crazy cat lady, Hispanic horde, drug addict, hipster chick and
all flavors of anonymity.

Down toward Damen Avenue the businesses cram askew.
Dollar store, ghetto mart, fast food and cell phones for
those who wait for the bus. Always people waiting for the bus,
stoic souls firm against the vortex of trash, mocked
by photoshopped ads pointing from plexiglass.

Junkies like other vermin infest the vacant asphalt,
nobody seems to know how to get rid of them. Watch out
near the ghetto mart, here civilization crumbles into chaotic,
old ladies and rusty sedans will run you down.

Ancient ugly storefronts back up by the Polish deli.
What did travel agencies look like in medieval times?
Look in and find out. Also peek in the ugly tailor shop
and view the most beautiful woman in the world:
a fatigued Ukrainian lass stitching pants.

Turning a corner to this patch of flat asphalt
renders one both wary, nostalgic and happy.
Thin trees shelter lunch eaten in a parked car.
Another hopelessly hopeful storefront opens,
a tattooed woman doggedly arranges a display.

Dirty Chester Avenue

2006-07-24T12:03:00.000-07:00

Roaring trolley rolls past ancient graveyard.
A heat fantastic and wet, a fork in the road
down which track melts into a forgotten concrete
valley. There true torpor lies, and also a
pharmacy college.

One could take this fork less traveled time and again
until one would find a minor paradise albeit ghost haunted.
Are there ghosts in the graveyard? Of course one hears stories,
but all that is verified are beautiful corpse fed azaleas and ferocious
dogs at dusk.
Stay away from the dogs, locals know.

The trollies arrive from multi-pronged forks and combine on one track.
Three routes merge at the cement flatbed trolley depot, all eastbound
cars then enter into what the drivers call 'the hole.'
This is where to get a car late night
when love hunting or seeking emergency temporary shelter.

Chester Avenue sports the old brick sidewalk on the graveyard side.
It frequently floods, but provides an archaic walk under hanging trees.
The VA hospital to the east breaks the bucholic spell. A stern brick building,
rusty metal warnings, sad men in worn coats, kids with missing limbs
and smoking doctors.

Where Chester meets 38th Street they paved paradise, put up a parking lot.
Not the worst thing actually, paradise is not suited for this bit.
It is more a humble hub where various traffic veins converge.
Disconcerting, pedestrian unfriendly, traffic criss-crosses to the college,
the hospitals, the interstate.

There is a nice hidden nature reserve, walk straight east, past
where Chester T-s against 38th Street. If you have not been run over
yet by autos of various decrepitude.

This patch of Chester Avenue gives it up anciently, urbanely.
It is decadent in its deshabille.
Urban urchins run you down in cars, heavy boxes squeal past.
Westbound down Chester Avenue at the fork is wild and uncharted,
forest and ghetto alternately.
The true and rare pioneer spirit might try it, but most should
get their trolley fare together and
ride into the hole of mystery.

dead like me

2006-07-20T11:58:00.000-07:00

This is the metaphor
that had seemed garish, obvious.
A land of ambulatory dead,
alive we pretend, but not well.

And you conceived your demise unique,
how quaint, how demure:
only violence moves us, only friction heats.

The dead are here and now,
not worthy of life, however
meriting versimilitude
in sleepless beds
and trash strewn avenues.

totem built from emotional airwaves

2006-07-18T07:32:00.000-07:00

A road that goes to the sea.
An angry guy spanks with a belt and blocks on top of a hill.
A faux freedom tree in a private mansion.
A dirty cigarette with an emotional friend rolling down a hill.
A mistaken entry into an old house, its history revealed.
Hiding in the house next door where youth was spent.
An old muscle car jutting into the street.
Tires flat, undercarriage cavernous.

mischievous joy

2006-07-17T12:19:00.000-07:00

Undeservingly get it right in the gut,
unwillingly overwhelmed
by joy unrelenting and quite seductive
without even trying.

Dissecting joy is no joy, let's see,
infinite promise, a wonderful reminder,
a laying down of burden, a bright light
which is to despair most caustic.

A burning, an energy, wherefore art thou joy?
The question seems moot when in the throes,
no longer fighting the cascade spirals
into your belly button and pushes the pain
out of your butt.

It is like that light at the edge of eclipse,
furry and ferocious, bubbling and boiling off
spirals which hit the deserving and not
without much care.