LIFE IN THE TRENCHES: Romance, Rebellion and Running Amok

OIL AND WATER

2010-07-07T01:32:40-07:00

This is what I want.

Soft words spoken. Soft words returned.

Control and grace in times of irritation and crisis.

I want union between what is thought, what is felt,

And what is said.

I do not want any of this to be a competition.

I want to live in a world where people know story but

Do not fall victim to story.

Even the story of living that knows that some people

Fall victim to their pages, in spite of knowing the hazards

Of a strong sense of authorship.

I want to be fed.

I meet the Universe half way.

I am bigger than the Universe.

And as indifferent as the Universe.

Do not be terrified.

This thing of trying to grasp the Universe

Is as great a ghost as Time.

Time is a joke.

Pace is a joke.

The power bill is a joke.

Get used to things getting turned off.

Shut off.

Shut down.

Shut the fuck up.

Then blasted with light.

Keep moving.

Keep trying.

The myth of freedom is a tasty fallacy.

Our bravado.

Our ego.

Our self absorbed narrative.

Our flashes of insight.

Our legacy that is passed down

From one cave dweller to the next.

It should be easier than this.

Boom.

The wheel.

But it isn’t.

Thanks for the wheel.

Thanks for the words you’ve given us.

The science you’ve drawn up.

The experiments you’ve conducted.

The bombs you have made.

The commerce you have created.

The homes you have built.

The toasters and ovens you have

Improved upon.

The conveniences you have given.

The space that you have given both

Name with prayer and praise.

The other day I thought to myself,

“Motherfuckers – figure it out. GTO’s

are beautiful vehicles. We’ve got resources.

Figure it out. I want both. I want it all. I don’t

Want to drive around in a tic-tac. I don’t want

To live in a world without pornography and

Gravy.”

(or something like that)

Oil and water.

One of them is heavier than the other.

There has to be a solution in that somewhere.

I am willing to be an idiot.

Are you?

THE SCRAWL. NOT A PLANET. ISN'T IT.

2010-07-07T01:16:18-07:00

Goodbye, Gracie.

Goodnight, Gracie.

You’re gonna grow up with the stuff you stuff down.

You’re on point, Gracie.

This is progress, Gracie.

Pluto is not a planet.

Vinegar and baking soda is the closest thing

We’ve got to God.

There is a beer by your bed.

Clutch the 24 like the tower that the mystic

Named Josiah spoke about but never took

Down.

Moon.

Meet the Universe Hearse.

These are the days.

These are the times that they warned

Ye about when Ye were a kid.

Where the see seed you spurt took

Root and spawned a know it all little shit

That had plans for drawing up greeting cards that

Hummed with Quality.

Yes, the resonance.

Between what was thought, what was felt,

And what was said.

“Happy Father’s Day. Thanks for pissing away all

You’re conquering years. I couldn’t have made it

Without you.”

Get out.

Go away.

Get behind me, Satan.

Leave me be.

This is weary.

This is the poem.

This is the joke.

This is vigilance.

This is natural.

The scrawl.

None a thought.

Just a moment.

Sloppy.

Like Pluto.

Not a planet.

I’m here.

Always home.

Zefenweissang Diederschnitzel

Gone Bonk With Donk and Harangue.

Not so simple-cult. Isn’t it?

BITCH SLAP AND A HERSHEY KISS.

2010-07-01T22:22:21-07:00

In the Airport Hilton near LAX some people wait for hours; some all night to get a hug and a Hershey Kiss from a brown woman sitting on a brightly lit stage under an umbrella who looks like an electric happy island guru from some Japanese animation character drawing executed by a four year old genius who loves mangos and coconut milk.

They sell little dolls of this brown woman here and there are all types of things going on here as bunch of stressed out happy helpers doing happy work and people who look like Covina, Jersey, The Playa and Venice Beach as well as Watts, The Hamptons, Bangladesh, Texas and Mexico wander around in a vegan daze trying to gleam a taste of the eternal hum.

I saw a guy with tie-die socks, a girl with her tits showing and mysteriously appreciative appreciated guy named Pagan. I saw snappy people of the high and tight variety who looked like they needed to get a little dirty as well as some children of the other polarity who looked like they needed the services of a hazmat team, a hot tub full of 171 proof rum, and a strike anywhere match. I, myself used to go for weeks without a shower and used to get off on the smell of my own asshole. I found the rift fantastic. It was a smorgasbord of weird fucks coming to see a modern day saint.

I approached on my knees like everyone else; dangerously irritated and in great pain. Sweating and suffering to get close to her, I wanted magic and mystery. I wanted her to whisper secrets about me to me.

She will see I’m special. She will see I’m good. She will see how much I suffered to see her, barely able to bend on a shred of faith, hope and desire for something better. At three hundred and twenty pounds the weight pushing down on my kneecaps was causing me great discomfort and pain.

I thought that she’d see this when I got up to her. I was certain that she was going take me in her arms and say, “It’s you Buddha. I’ve been waiting for you.” However, when I got up there my presence caused a small schism.

It seemed I was too sweaty and the stressed out helper didn’t wipe me down enough and saints don’t dig on stink.

This schism embarrasses me horribly and makes me paranoid. I feel worthless and angry because of it but I go up to her nonetheless. Not sure if it’s okay and if I’m wanted, I push this out of my mind and belch out something about claiming self, time and space.

She wipes me down. I lay into her. She whispers, “Walla walla walla walla walla” into my ear, hugs me, lets go of me, puts a Hershey kiss and I’m scuttled off the stage with the rest of the meat. Its over and I feel nothing other than a strong sense of kindred with a dog fart.

Immediately I start to sweat. In the world of explosives, it had the combustive significance of popping a paper cap. You know, the kind of fun for poor kids, timid arsonists and old men from the glory days of the dustbowl used to have.

I found my way back to a group of strangers standing around talking to the girl I came with. They knew each other. She introduced me. They looked at me with wide eyes knowing it was my first time expecting a gushing forth of glad and glow.

I got angry. Fuck them. Its mine not yours. I’m not going to testify to the mass hysteria and drink the cool aid and cosign your lazy desperate eyes searching for a clue.

This girl speaks. She says, “You have the Shanti glow”.

I respond, “Oh, yeah? I have to take a piss.”

This girl looks at me like I’m crazy and stupid. The feeling is mutual. I walk away.

Fuck you. Get your own hug. I’m not sure what I feel. I’m not telling you anything just to make you feel less stupid for waiting for ten hours at the Holy Hilton you hysterical fucks.

Angry. Angry. Angry. I take a piss. My dick smells. I am ashamed of it. I go back. They want a cigarette. I tell them I want to sit and bask in the Shanti glow.

I am angry and want to smash something. I sit alone.

A stranger looks at me. She’s a tourist too. She heard about the brown lady from a metaphysics class and saw the brown lady’s advertisement in a magazine and, like me, wanted to meet someone who’s a bonafied saint in the flesh.

She asks how it was. I tell her I don’t know -- It takes a while for my head to catch up with my heart. I tell her that the group of people I was with all looked at me expecting some big epiphany but I gave them nothing except telling them I had to go to take a piss. I tell her that they looked at me like I was crazy but I didn’t want to tell them something for their benefit if it wasn’t true. They can get their own hug. Their own testimony. Their own first time.

She sees I’m thinking out loud and have more to process. She leaves me alone. I like her. She likes me.

I sit. I wonder. Then things start to fire as I ask “why” and “what for” because at an event like that with an ending so anticlimactic it is something that you do.

I admit I expected special treatment and magic for my suffering but was treated like the rest of the cattle and didn’t like it. There was nothing special. Nothing. No big pay off for all the meaningless painful shit.

Then I thought of how I have recently come to shift paradigms and decided not to glorify or inflate my suffering, at least in theory and pontification. I realize that I’ve been patting myself on the back for becoming willing to kill it. Like I’ve come to some special place. That I have been killing it but it was not yet dead and it may never die.

Then I concede to the fact that in my heart of hearts I felt that my suffering made me

special and I deserved great things because of it and I was angry and got nothing

in return. I wait in pain for hours, get a hug, a whisper, a piece of chocolate then they violate the agreement by moving me along to make room for the next sucker come for truth.

As I sat there, I thought to myself, I do not shine. I am no different. If I am treated just like everyone else I deserve the same love and neglect as everyone else.

That’s the message.

I am not Buddha. I’m just a man who has been bitch slapped. My suffering does not bring me worth or make me deficient. It does not make me great. It does not make me inferior. It does not set me apart from you.

It is a mental Hiroshima. It is an ”ahhh”. It is an “aha”. It is a great big “oh” at the Airport Hilton. The “why” and “what for” that I have attached like humans do.

God damn, the little brown lady delivered. I felt that the last ten hours were hours well spent and forgive them for their little brown dolls, hundred dollar bracelets and want to go home.

I want. I hunt. I get. And there I was. Bitch slapped by a little brown lady and given a Hershey Kiss. The rest was up to me.

It Irony.

2010-06-25T00:26:28-07:00

Where did this word begin? I know how it lives now. As hard as I go. For some mutated pic Of poetry. Hilarious. Like most things. Such are things with the waking. In life. One with Marco. One with Polo. All with a cusory underatanding Of the universe. Which is both theoretical As well as tangible. I give thought to the curriculum. I think about all of the educated fools Sniffing their tin stars like the ripe ass stains Of lived in quandry. I smell the bacon that came with the Tag of streamliners and the atomic waft of Shelter - as related to architecture. If you were to build a home for three. How big would it be? And could you find the time to take a moment And stop. To think. How a word like poetry Can so easily turn to wraith. Have a nice evening. The cursor blinks at me.

THE FACTORY EDGE

2010-06-11T13:50:05-07:00

parked. waiting for my father.

listening to a blue flag blow in the wind.

it squeaks like a pirate ship.

the edges are tattered.

been doing the deal

for a

minute,

i guess.

cars up on pedestals.

balloons bouncing about.

facing the sun.

dirty on my windshield.

waiting.

aching.

feeling the enormity of the moment.

the irony of the exit i got off on.

lone hill.

i smell hamburgers.

i see the orange letters of a place i rarely went to

but have since become a regular.

home depot.

i am a poet.

i can sweat copper piping.

i know more about the factory edge

than i did a few years ago

when a friend gently

taught it.

this used to be a christmas tree lot.

now its this.

center.

where the rubber meets the street - I hear ocean.

Breathe. Center.

Wait. He'll be here soon.

As folks hush with hurry to and fro

and all about I take notice of the

palm trees, and balloons, and

the flags - in addition to the

one that grabbed my

attention.

They point towards something.

Effortlessly.

In the same direction.

LONE HILL, 2010. DISPLACED. BUT NOT. NEVER DEAD. RESURRECTED.