Angles in the Arctic (Pilot)

"It's always Christmastime in these parts, Johnny," said the old man, who had the skittishness of a ruminant nursing young.

"Which way's East?" I asked.

"Depends on who's asking, in'-it?"

"Beg pardon, old man?" Hiss in my voice.

"It's that way," he said, gesturing.

That was the problem with these washed out North Pole exurbs, I thought. All the ex-elf foreman were bitter, brittle, but they had no heart when you really got down to it. Sure, they'd go through the motions like they wanted to fight, to show their smiling starving beautiful children of light that their daddy was worth something, worth a helluva lot come to think, and no way, NO WAY was ol' Daddy going to put up with any old traveler such as myself asking him for directions. Hence the yuletide prodding from the get-go. Yes, I'd bested the geezer. But why leave it there? I pulled out my Luger and shot him in the dick.

All Aboard To Piperburg

Aye, said the cloying pirate
who smelled like cinders or
christmas mints.

Cylinder.
Cylinder.
Cold-tab.

There are our favorite flavors.
(Sand-Snipe!)
(Imagined nutmeg!)

Sand-towel.
Head-garb.

Aliza with a bright shawl
Midnight Rose in the garden
brandishing a duckhammer
and swearing in Polish

Snitches running the alleys
these days with pipers and
strollers and boobs
spilling out their pockets.
Christmas.

Bermy Foss o' Duckwood Green

bermy foss o'er duckwood green
original pancake houses
you & my original twin
ate lettuce in the garden.
a tin box of convents at noon.

this is how i explained myself
to the doorman.
he didn’t like this one bit.

<>
I am one day
going to lead
our band to stardom.

Passes in the wind
some scent of freedom:
a dead skunk.

First pipe of the mission Ordinary,
because less common now,
diversify your entry,
and waylay your tomorrows.
Welcome, to Piperburg.

Snowshells are better than no shells

Shel Snowverstein
on the beach
scouring for cowries
Snowsock on his toes
"suck my Snow Cock, bros"

it takes a keen eye, and a keen eye.
what's left is right, get into it
you can't spell intuition without it
"it" is in tuition, too: two issuances

The market for seashells is virtually nonexistent (emphasis added)
but there's seashells galore, a neverending free supply
as mollusks are left for dead, among the floating plankton
hermit crabs are fickle - the nomads of the sea

I search for the Evershell
the Purple Conch
Seashellbiscuit
Mishell Obama
Snailmobile 5000

The one thing I know is
I'll never snowshell again.
At least not on shrooms

Incantation (Adagio)

Never the tomorrow snowshell,
Never the tomorrow snowshell,
Never the tomorrow snowshell.

To-Never, ...
To-Morrow...
... (To-No-Shell.)

Exhibition A

I hope you realize
every exhibition you have missed.
Amy at the frieze, Amy
between the thumbs of the statue
David. It had been -- it was --
more than enough to say: drab.

Thanks us slowly. That's what
she said, any way. Her hand
was on the table, her mind was
on the radio, her dress was
nice-it-was-white
; WHOMEVER GOES HERE,
BEWARE!!! ; said her eyes
when she wasn't thinking about
what she looked like.

This was often. If I say
I cried on the doorstop, will you
free me? Is that what honesty
costs these days?

javascript:void(0)

Blind spiderweb

The spider's web
is blind.
Was blind, had been culled,
just before the dawn
or after the skipper sunk.
Beneath the gunk at the bottom
of the harbor. Oil &
/ or
s o i l e r o s i o n.

Problems mounting becoming one:
---the need to change our ways---

An often eluding urgency. Felt
but not committed. Recycled but
not co-mingled. Intermittent
is only constant
on the constant fading white of noise.
That's an intelligence term. Like
the box in all our houses:
television. Transport your vision
not to the fake future, the wrangled
misunderstood past (there is no other
way), or to the present world being
filmed: IT IS NOT YOURS.

Make it. Make it / love us / take it
at your own leisure. There is no time;
there is little time.

As they say, the spider web is ulimately
blind. Said differently: every man has
limitations. Spiders hunt closer
the truth. Even then it's a battle
and no small one: death,
(then a breath) ... life.

Excellent Beginnings

Burn down the bowling alley until nothing's left.
Except a scar of black question marks on the hillside.
That's right, I looked toward the Drink-&-Bowl (or
so I named it) every time I drove past. Northbound
Indiana state highway 41. Those were
in the days when I would regularly smoke marijuana
on forays through the Hoosier state.
Some fields, a picnic there. Grass, clouds,
boys, mainly not, barns, just space.

Space and more space. Grist. Earth. Trees
and threaded fencerows. Burn the braying
shapes of ancestors with the county building.
Take the universities while you're at it. The places
of knowledge. Dredge the rivers. Disrupt the hydrology.
Call it a case of
excellent beginnings.

loaded mountain man

burn the buried building while we can
decline to erect stadiums in old quarries
think of the lumberjacks shining, swimming.
they had banquets then with real mountainmen
wild boys of the land trading funky specimens
of beaver pelts, axes, grindcorn, mexican
medicinal rubs, gunpowder
and the one they call wilt-a-weed.
that one made you curl up in the sun
like a kitty-kat.

in any case they had no beverage sponsor.
there were sherlock wizards counting their purchases
spying on them through magic boxes in the televisions,
computers, smart phones, lecticorns, spy-boxes,
federally mandated spy-cells and mini cams
they put in all those pills
that we swallow.

Dog Fists

Even the Dog Fists were half-alien
at some time. But like all good
tribesman, they became spirits
at the broom of dusk
but
what have we here a cock-a-roach,
a cocca-doodle-doo, some shithead
research laboratorist stashing lobotomies
on sideway mirrors lecturing through the
unicorn lenses of ever-sideways tomorrows

I'm giving you a compliment

no exceptance, no expectance.
Accept it.
April rains bring May grass

The bloomers are flowing
lowering
blowing

We're gonna go bowling
eat banana splits
listen to a record

We're gonna fucking bowl
We're gonna get there soon, son
we're gonna burn it down

Douse it - that's it boy. More fire. Gasoline.

"Arson" is a gerund.

Burn the bowling alley til it's gone.

rocks, glass

i am everything (i have)
ever made. we are more than
their rocks and glass. we are
our own kind of support. we
are water after all, water
(shining through) the fish glass,
or the glass fish. the eel-grass
as it was in May, for example.
how the crane tiptoes through
the swamp, after all. doesn’t it
feel great to be alive? doesn’t it
just fit, right in there, when you
burn down every place you have
ever been?

Illegal Blog Moment

BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG

BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG

BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG

BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG

BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG

The Tattletale's Postcard

I got this postcard from an old friend who had been going through some troubles with addiction.

“Stumbling upon
a choir of work-a-day nuns shoveling coal

was watching lethargy
burn in effigy.

Effortlessly,
Eric.”

I wish I knew what he meant.

A Terrible Thing To Overhear

[LOUD GASP]

DONNIE DARKIE: SOMEBODY TESTED MY SPACESHIP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

DONNIE DONNIE: Not your SPACESHIP???????

DONNIE DARKIE: YES, YOU IDIOT, MY SPACESHIP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Poison Promise

poison make you happy
heppy and ssssssad.

Verrrry heppppy end veryyyyyyyy ssssssssad.
No pueblo, senioritas, I said,
biting into a cordita. Thing is,
it was a sandwiche.

::::::BITE SPONGE::::::::

The wheels at midnight turn
on every capered owl, hour
turn the sly snow glass sly
turn the bye-bye jug of Noke away.

Snay bye' Numero Dos

Sssssssnay-bye' make you say bye bye
she say
ssssnay bye' make you feel guuuuhd
poison make you happy,
happy and ssssssad

Goodbye snakebite
good day spider
spinster god
original splinter
my eyes are clouds

SODA, red rum
el capitain morgan
private stock
such a backwards label
MURDER, a dos

Es espanol for murder of two
somebody get snay-bye tonight
someone get snay-bye reeeal guuuhd
somebody gonna get dead
bit in the neck tonight

Snay bye etc

Sna’ bi hurt, he said, lisping an insane voice into the jungle darkness.

(Pronounced Snay-Bye).

Sna’ bye make you say guuhd-bye, she said again, sinister as the snake she was

rapidly becoming.

Lessons of nature: there is no sin in abundance. Just ask the trees and rivers and frogs.

The softly murmuring shepherd to his neighbor to join

in some humble ceremony.

Nature's Lesson

There is no sin in abundance.

Dessert Shore

1. Time for tea at the airport

If I haven’t fully growled
(may hap I haven’t growed up)
it’s because I’m an animus
an omnibus of Beth’s truck
d r i v i n g  i n  t h e d i s t a n c e
…scattered lines of light…

2. My stances

My stances may not be pretty, Amy,
but they sure are great. They have never been greater. I think about them like little sisters and clothing and chocolates. My problem at this very moment is that I don’t have enough to write about, and it’s really a problem.

3. Okay

Possible feelings:
--the man has got me
--the man does not
--I am free now
--I always will be
(freedom, as a tree frog)
--I am my own dog
--God is my savior.

Certainly, though:
Love never fails.

4. Love never fails;

else the sidebar.
the intractable highcar
phrased over thattaway
from the frames by the grain caveway
(((…don’t go cave away,
cave-way…)))

on me like Ponzi
schemes … I mean … to dream
faster that masseuses massage my large
knuckled bulges of triceps
is to really begin to gleam. 

5. Shhh, Massachusetts

Or then Massachusetts looms large like broom sets
put out for passage at the loyal, Polish bell.
(They sell these things like telephones!
… tell-a-phone; …telly-fones… )

6. So

When I hear fire I break skates to the wind,
so their skate pieces may whirl;

7. Prints

my how my presence leaves clues that
i was here! ? ! (They’re just finger pads!)
becoming whorls on specimen 100420 A
I’m down the hall, #B, in the morgue:
a man with a specimen (((a man w/ a lantern)))
illumining my fingertip ridges:

behold no whorls but thumbs with double-doops
and all loops ulnar save one
which is indeed radial.

I know this because as Boy Scouts
we studied fingerprints & heard
from a police detective. He was an
articulate man. That was before I
became an Eagle… 

((( we studied comic books
in grade school; said the man
who sold elementary dross)))

8. You will

find me
underneath a tree
besides a rug / a drug / a bear
or left laying stolidly in the silver lining
like something coming out of the woods and combining
with another shape like ramrod
geez, my stakes are large now,
I can’t let them talk me out of what
I deeply wanted. 

9. Lizard

I want a lizard for Christmas
or somebody’s habit to plead for ankles;
in the old West, the staircase banisters
weren’t see-through (for reasons of
chasteness). They were
shored up. And yet so far
--in the dessert--
from the coast.

Failed firebombing

I went into the bank with the package. Determined to show these bastards who was in the wrong for once. Woman waiting in front of me in line. Gray hair. What is that I detect? She smells. Foul like New York City garbage or an arrest warrant stored up some cop's ass. Dunno why he'd do that. Goddam cops.

Focus: firebomb the Kinkos--Bank, I mean. Blow this bank all to heck. I'm gonna do it. Oh Brother!

Next thing: talk to attendant. Damn she's a hot young piece of ass. Guess I'll withdraw some money and go to Kinkos. NO! It must be done here. I'm sweating. Don't know what to say. This girl is milking me with her eyes, her sweet slutty sultry slutty eyes. She wants it. Right here. Right now.

I take down my pants and shortly get tackled by a dirty security guard who smells of aftershave. Never did get to detonate the blast. Guess I'm going to prison.

Final Draft

I'm sitting here on my couch at 1:00 a.m. on Monday morning listening to Congratulations. And it's not because I just overdosed on Ambien and snakebite meds, though God knows it's a realistic scenario given my predilection for uppers and serpents. No, I tell you, it's because I am engrossed in newly listening to Congratulations, and I think we should all give it another chance. In other words, you've been punked: it's actually a mad chill album. Literally it’s cool and uncool at the same time. It’s the embodiment of strange opposites: dark, bright, serious, carnival-like in its absurdity… at once tawdry, at the next exquisite…

Yes, I've lost it, you'll say, but after a few listens, expecting to dismiss it (like I did Metric's "Fantasies," which is in NO WAY worth purchasing) it made its peace with me, and I couldn't help but return to enjoy and inspect it, bizarre and darkly jaunty though it may be. Ironic wino pothead donkeys rule the desert at one moment, while at the next a parade of pipework queers takes control of the nearby bellshop. Somewhere in the midst surfing and tantra are involved, but every rock stars have strange ascents.

Exhibit A:
"It's Working" -- This song is about ecstasy (http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:TzaVhpzGYDwJ:www.rollingstone.com/reviews/album/32862565/review/32906679/congratulations+MGMT+%22it%27s+working%22+rolling+stone+ecstasy&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a) Saying that simply makes things easier. Before, one might think, "Wow, this song, being bald-facedly about ecstasy, has an earnest "raison d'etre" and explanatory, inclusive feel ... hmmm, that's what all the drughead hipsters out there would say… guess I better hedge my bets and now say that my possibly positive judgment of the song in no way makes profligate drug use acceptable behavior for us respectable young men of conduct.”  Now, one is confident to say: these dudes are weird. I'm going to examine them.

This was Rolling Stone's take:

'With Congratulations, the knowing smartasses of Oracular Spectacular seem confused about what's next. The result is a hazy, hit-and-miss album that will likely alienate some fans of the debut, but one that also testifies to MGMT's restlessness as songwriters and human beings. "It's Working," a song VanWyngarden describes as about the drug Ecstasy, mixes surf guitars, harpsichord glitter and bong patters with some less-than-ecstatic lyrics: "I see the signs of aging/But if I try to feel at all, I am deceived," VanWyngarden sings.'

A pretty good assessment, I think. Anyway, in this penultimate paragraph, I’d like to sum up my point: Congratulations is at least weird enough to listen to again in full (preferably when baked as ciabatta), IF NOT TO REVISIT COMPLETELY BEFORE PRAYING FOR BETTER JUDGMENT.

Thanks for your time and brave lifestyles.

Your Father,
Douglas

P.S. It feels like someone’s listening…
It feels like someone’s missing…

First Draft of E-Mail

RE: NEW MGMT ALBUM(EN) [_yolk_] ;

Slogged-out as rebellion, or the choice of eating sturgeon for dinner, I'm sitting here on my couch at 1:00 a.m. on Monday morning listening to clips and phrases like "electric juicer lining" and "ice cream hose to kiss" emanating from Congratulations. I'm not going to be pretentious enough to stilt this into a "real" music review. But I do it from that spirit when I say that perhaps MGMT has "punked" as all here with this one. I think it's pretty chill.

Well, I'd like to write more, but I'm gonna take some ecstasy and set off on my moped now, listening of course to "It's Working" (which is, of course, about MDMA)

From the article:
"With Congratulations, the knowing smartasses of Oracular Spectacular seem confused about what's next. The result is a hazy, hit-and-miss album that will likely alienate some fans of the debut, but one that also testifies to MGMT's restlessness as songwriters and human beings. "It's Working," a song VanWyngarden describes as about the drug Ecstasy, mixes surf guitars, harpsichord glitter and bong patters with some less-than-ecstatic lyrics: "I see the signs of aging/But if I try to feel at all, I am deceived," VanWyngarden sings."

Well, eat a dick, guys! Congratulations rules! Mad chill!

Fluent in Finland

I'm FLUBAR
the Finnisher
the Pirate Jew.

Coinbox Anonymous - go to
Shifty Guys Bank (SGB)
101 N. Soandso Avenue.
Meet you on the street
I'll be wearing gold basketball shorts

You'll be all out of sorts
when I rob you,
of course. but don't worry.
at some point we'll discourse
in morse codes

The lost episodes: myriad explosions
imperial foreclosures on erosion
coastal waves of emotion

Is the type of thing I will write you
in morse code, so if you get it all
that's amazing. Well done.
But this doesn't really tell you much.
Which, granted, is by design.
Alright. Talk to you later

definitely having nothing to do with influenza

1.
today i'm a buzzpost
a lecticorn of unicorns
like a bus puppet i'm reminded
of public transportation willy nilly
ode

2.
today i'm getting on a boat
and canoeing down a river
my canoe is my prancer
my shoes are in the water.
if they weren't, how would i haunt her?
of all the motion flowing / fluid / growing
i haven't looked at the camera in years
i am usually more polished

3.
cognitive shoe
walking ground toward
the thought: here i make
a decision, and stick to it.

like a flu letting gas through.

4.
magic

lather

 it's unclear to me
how anybody
can anymore take themselves seriously ;

it takes
joy ;

the joy comes with mourning
deep rich mourning like the lather
of aftershave--I spread it prayerfully
on my face, maybe even dollop
some old spry cologne on my nape
if only for the mention or touch of that part
...wholly for some purpose... ;

woodwinds on the winds now
(( ...birdsong!... ))
too warm for the chaparral
or the Cleveland streets about which
I'm hung up on ;

dry worked-up chorus girls
stingy, stringy; working for hours
each morning before toil ;

what i meant was
in the joy there is deep morning
steeped rich morning like immersion
i carefully enter it to expand my features
fighting back as a saint against the apocalypse
not of time ending but of people lying
sweltering stowaway ships
-- IN WHICH THIEVES HIDE --

lies, lies, lies down the river,
so common they become commonplace barges
nothing to see here:

we cannot imagine an empty present;
we cannot fathom a clear conscience.

((America thinks thus romantically
about the stowaways. Freed slaves,
maybe, or nautical airwave
pirates, sauntered and screwed into the hull
like the mouse sound of silence exigence
bleeding away in the water, frail
freed ink off the wainscot ways
of the church cotton.
We pray these ways after all. ))

Don't Read This!

orchards
of purposes
are marching toward
a place where
hen's abound.

that's right hens,
we've all eaten chicken before.

Shining Time Station

feathers feathers
float like a bee
sting like the police
know what I mean

french hens
nosoberty: not drinking
// C3P0

P.O. Box 666
say ten, back again
the devil's in there

The dog's in there
I mean god
aren't there any American shepherds?
to herd the goats or whatever

Yeah, it's whatever, bro
Now is never bro
Name's Trevor, bro
Nice sweater, bro.

Nobody

Nobody hides
in plain sight
of all the world
vernacular

surely only present
in the mind; else,
we couldn’t see
for nobody, all around.

Nobody thus present
only in the mind
                (her gifts he
                did not take)
as when I say, “Nobody’s here!”
not noticing my hidden companion

(now a sea-captain fearing
the bane stowaway).

Nobody thus exists,    persists,
revealing of himself:
ghost of the railroad past;
wolves a-prowl in the snowwhite
either side the careful tracks,
neither one nor several.

Leaving us with, at the very least,
an insane proxy for solitude, or,
more likely, a spirit of staunch longing

amongst us
each & every moment.

Nobody his own best friend
as god to dog to man
real because we made him
real, only really there
when truly he is not.

Drake says to a girl

i can give it up on the first date
i don't have to exist outside this place
and you know that i can't change

but if stars should shine
the very first time
then dear it's fine, fine by me.

--from "Stars," by The xx

Dèyè Mòn Gen Mòn (Beyond the Mountains, There are Mountains)

Baby we were born alive.

All the mountain ever wanted

stalls hardly beyond the climb.

Strike it like you know the difference

of plaintains; wherefore art

thou factory farms, where is thy

mechanical grass. Stay off the tracks.

The path has been beaten. Covering

a geyser with a fountain, it rains.

Creating the old again = creole. Creme

of some improbable Haiti, sugar-steeped

in brown-backed maiden-thieves.

The earth opens & it is filled

with nectar. Plasma and magma

ooey gooey, mallow in the fire.

Green Beans Salad

MMMMMMMM. THATS WHAT I HAD FOR DINNER. I WANTED CREAMED CORN, BUT DIDN'T HAVE ANY. SO I MADE GREEN BEANS SAAAALLLLAAAAD. YUMMY!

For lunch, I had mexican food. tex-mex, really. The 3 Enchiladas lunch special, Santana playing in the background, got the $1.00 soup but never received it. The waiter, who was either surly or an antisocial moron, brought the check at long last and then asked me if we were Emory students. "Yes," I replied.
Waiter: "that explains a lot."
I snapped back: "What does that mean?"
Waiter: "Oh, nothing"

He disappears into his kitchen-lair, and I explain to my friends what just happened. All 6 of us were indignant to say the least. We started to figure out who owed what. I threw down ten bucks in the interest of speeding up the process. The waiter came back, looking either impatient or like a dull robot fuck who doesn't know how to correlate emotion and expression. I think it was the latter but you really can't tell sometimes.

"Do you need a pen to figure this out and write out the individual prices?"

At this point, I am furious. This food was nothing special, and despite having 10 people in the restaurant including us, this fucking joke of a waiter was trying to patronize us. Either that, or he was a martian weirdo from outer space, and doesn't know how to interact with humans.

"No, we go to Emory, bro" was my retort. My friends laughed. The waiter stumbled over his next sentence

"Uhhh, I just meant that a lot of times kids that go to Emory like to split up the checks because like, they might never see each other again."

He went on, saying something so insignificant that I already don't remember it. What the fuck? Is this guy kidding? "What just went down?" asked my friend Neil, returning from the bathroom. "That guy's tip," I replied. Although in the end, we left him 14%. After all, he might have been sincere in excusing his comment. Or, he might have been a misanthropic, desolate, alienated aberration, a clown. Who am I to say?

How many posts does it take to get to the center of the

Midwestern front?
Frozen tundras. conundras,
barracudas, rotundas
Dolph Lundgren's verandas
Miranda's panda
endangered black/white Santa
Santa Bear with his
Christmas Claws
Christmas Clause: Kris Kross
litmus test: crystal balls
coal colder than a stocking
stuffed like a po'boy
Chippewa is so soy
green beans salad
yeah

Local Man Arrested For Blogging

Champaign, Ill. -- A Champaign man was arrested today for "excessively reckless and senseless blogging," according to a statement from the police department.

Though the police declined to release the man's information, the police chief was quoted as saying, "At no point in this individual's insane, foul, disturbing commentary did he make one iota of sense, and we are all stupider for having to had to endure it. May God have mercy on his soul." 

because it's also a plant,

she says, with a sly little fuck-me grin,
sly american soda this girl sips,
tell me about your mexican trip,
i say, no thank you, i'd rather not

so she says
how's about we go in the back

i say
sure, can i bring my friends?

then they all pop out of the woodwork
and speechify their disaster, saying thus
"OH OH OH OH OH OH YEAH!!!"
making appalling noises,
right,
so, he says
begone ye spirits of the netherlands,
then Ronald Reagan appears, says,
THEY AREN'T DUTCH, I AM
him, you can barely hear him finish,
as his voice and face disappear into the
dying past where he lays
& dreams of secret collonades of grass
wherein the ketchup farmers stow their lotto
& invest in the fruit of the future,
just over that-a-way in the near east.

i meant holly

i meant holly, like the jingle jangle
of your speedbump balls a-wiggle

(((transfer the blur
quickly, noise)))

cohesion deploys insane
matterific verbs of hot damn
kids these days::::::The boys!
& the girls

two creepy stanzas, dedicated to heather (the plant)

my eyes cannibalize the sound
from the creatures coming
growing out, becoming dense
as boughs full of holly.

my eyes cannibalize the sound
from the creatures coming
I see the ground, the footsteps too
we hear the spirits humming.

band names pt. 8

The Crableg Sisters
Me & Spider
Ankle Kids
Snow Youth
The Barely Here (tight, bro)
You Will Like Us
Always Ogling
The Snoogs
T.W.I.N.E.
The Holy Smoot Society
The Asheville Dangercats
Bowling For Murder
Soup Cancer
Gangrene Pete and the Specialists
Bobby Pins
Lost in the Tress
Pinewood Derby Pussy
Sno-Caps (possible trademark issues)
Glitter!
Actual Killers
The Drunk Motorcycle Fags
Lil' Miss Michigan and the fang-proof blinders
Glass (so indie)
The Welfare Twins 
Stay Away!
Scared Girls
Snakebite

drab cornish, obvi

a drab Cornish
is a hen nonetheless.

as in, "I ate yer
crab sandwich, mister,

and by the way, you've got a
Cornish up the ass."

Doesn't matter
where it falls,
it's still shit.

Strange paths

(Note to self: look up the word “wroth”)

((Note to reader: This is about a walk and random
corner-store encounter...
it's significance may be elevated beyond discovery))

(((wroth)))

moffed (meaning lowered) brow
or certain picayune discovery
walking from ledge to ledge along the uncertain
delivery of phrases: here’s a block, here’s a house,
herein the home OF A CENTRAL MAROON’S CHEERLEADER
like an advertisement for unwanted? loitering, malingering…

squirrels, their houses clumps of leaves-in-tree, sparring
with the world, saying: skkkkkkkrriiiiiiiittttttt! squeak!
and so forth.

past the old savings & loan to the corner store, where we meet
a florid youth, quite out of his head, acting as if he were on
a high dose of amphetamines, but that’s only how I could understand it,
because I cannot understand it—Tim is clearly insane, says he’s
23, picks up a hair tie off the ground and says, “I could need this,”
and then, “Oh, that’s my hair.” I ask him how he ended up here (says he’s from New York, been here 10 years) and he only replies, “Yes, I wash my hair everyday.”

And “good god, there’s no advantage in it, good gawd, working their asses off, student, worker, good gawd…”

I try to understand him, share a smoke, cut a heater, and he compares me to somebody he knows. A smartass, probably. Either listens and gives his opinion like he doesn’t give a shit, or just stands there, smoking (you know, wistful wafts of smoke out the mouth, like) and doesn’t listen, just seems to, but doesn’t, doesn’t acknowledge.

And that ain’t the worst of it, just hanging around, my friend don’t even have a place, probably just sitting under a bridge a long ways that way toward downtown, not givin’ a shit! Good gawd!”

Hair—bad—day! Understand? Hair—bad—day, Good god, that’s not a good thing. Understand?”

He said most of these things. I observed him, long hair with random too-many hair ties, hair stringy, long, maybe dirty, puffy, he looks like a crazy man up a bridge sheering…

but then he is just himself, a self-acclaimed crazy bum, not a bum but somebody like a bum, bumming for smokes, lights, chastising, elaborating, proclaiming, waiting, spitting, smoking.

He crouches in the parking lot, hawks a good one, and spits.

“That’s my brain.”

I cannot disagree. When I leave he shakes my hand (I don’t like this, but I do it anyway).

“Nice to meet you,” he says. I never tell him my name... just one part of the strangeness.