4.30.2010

owl city

I work a lot of late nights. It's three freeway interchanges to get home then up the avenue next to the light rail. Past the 24 hour Burger King on 46th, the 24 hour McDonalds on 42nd, the light rail stops to my left. People dart from there across Hiawatha in front of me like nocturnal rodents. Dodging traffic. Risking it.
It was raining last night so I had the fog lights on and next thing I know I've come to a complete stop, staring at two human beings (presumably not rodentia), wearing garbage bags over their clothing. Staring back at me. Like poor kid Halloween ghosts in plastic sheets.
It seems like time stops, I hear a screech of tires, look left and watch an Escalade get smacked by the train. It bursts into flames. I look back at the road in front of me and the garbage-bag people have become owls. They fly away. Sometimes I can't sleep for days in Owl City.





4.29.2010

emerson on friendship

1. We have a great deal more kindness than is ever spoken. Barring all the selfishness that chills like east winds the world, the whole human family is bathed with an element of love like a fine ether. How many persons we meet in houses, whom we scarcely speak to, whom yet we honor, and who honor us! How many we see in the street, or sit with in church, whom, though silently, we warmly rejoice to be with! Read the language of these wandering eyebeams. The heart knoweth.
2. The effect of the indulgence of this human affection is a certain cordial exhilaration. In poetry, and in common speech, the emotions of benevolence and complacency which are felt toward others, are likened to the material effects of fire; so swift, or much more swift, more active, more cheering are these fine inward irradiations. From the highest degree of passionate love, to the lowest degree of good will, they make the sweetness of life.

4.28.2010

the lightkeeper

A night without ships. Foghorns called into walled cloud, and you still alive, drawn to the light as if it were a fire kept by monks, darkness once crusted with stars, but now death-dark as you sail inward.Through wild gorse and sea wrack, through heather and torn wool
you ran, pulling me by the hand, so I might see this for once in my life:
the spin and spin of light, the whirring of it, light in search of the lost,
there since the era of fire, era of candles and hollow-wick lamps,
whale oil and solid wick, colza and lard, kerosene and carbide,
the signal fires lighted on this perilous coast in the Tower of Hook.
You say to me stay awake, be like the lensmaker who died with his
lungs full of glass, be the yew in blossom when bees swarm, be
their amber cathedral and even the ghosts of Cistercians will be kind to you.
In a certain light as after rain, in pearled clouds or the water beyond,
seen or sensed water, sea or lake, you would stop still and gaze out
for a long time. Also when fireflies opened and closed in the pines,
and a star appeared, our only heaven. You taught me to live like this.
That after death it would be as it was before we were born. Nothing
to be afraid. Nothing but happiness as unbearable as the dread
from which it comes. Go toward the light always, be without ships.

by Carolyn Forché, a fantastic writer of poetry, to be published May 3, 2010.

4.25.2010

split myself

the man laid his hat on the table
hung his coat up on the wall
sat down to dinner
said as soon as I am able
I'll say something nice to you all
then he took a deck from his pocket
spread em so I saw em all
then he turned his back to me
shuffled em and drew me
the card that said I never would fall
oh mary lou won't you tell me what to do
I got a dollar on the corner
and a lazer in my shoe
if I don't get an answer
gonna split myself in two
he spun till a ton was glistening
turned to me and gave me a smile
he said I'm leaving now
but I want what you owe me
I'll be back in a little while
that was the last time I saw him
hope I never see him again
I know it sounds funny
but I owe him some money
and I really don't want him for a friend
oh mary lou won't you tell me what to do
I got a dollar on the corner
and a lazer in my shoe
if I don't get an answer
gonna split myself in two

thanks to kirk kirkwood, tempe AZ's finest

air hockey tournament

tomorrow! at the sons of norway norwegian center for norgies. three pool-table sized air hockey tables. no beer, but cabbage and ham shanks are available for a nominal donation to the norway norwegion sisters of the norwegians. the dreaded triple N society or NNsN in popular norwegion lingo.
anyway: starts at 7, round robin single elimination, personal paddles only after inspection (you dirty finnish bastards!). cabbage at 6:30, games at 7. do not even try to bring beer. it's a norwegion event, bring vodka dumbass. and your english pop mixtape.

resident dave

MSP3.
Resident Dave is moving out at the end of the month with his dog Scoobie. Scoobie is the cooler of the two. Scoobie doesn't corner you and talk utter nonsense like Dave does. And while Scoobie can be an offensive sniffer, he responds to commands. Dave not so much.
But I have found that Dave responds to direction. Like "Hey Dave, sweep the patio and pick up those twigs, we'll build a fire." He'll go right at it. He'll say, "Yeah, yeah, right, I need to do that." I just sit and watch, smiling. Wondering what makes a dude like that tick. If someone said that to me, I'd chuckle and say "for real, dude?" And if dude said "yeah, clean the patio", I'd say "[expletive deleted], and if it isn't too much to ask, bring me a beer, your wife clearly doesn't understand how to." But, that's just me. I can be abrasive but I've always figured folks appreciate a straight-shooter.
For example: I spotted the cross-eyed baby with the birthmark of Florida on it's forehead (they fixed the eye, but last I heard the map covered the entire SE US); I warned my roommate that his new mustache was a little too "Freddie Mercury" (he shaved it off same day); and my favorite, when I told Curt Warner, "yep, you can jump and ride a porcupine but you might regret it." He jumped it anyway. (He regretted it.)


4.21.2010

chicken

Someone actually stole chicken off our grill on our front porch in ghetto city. We'd escaped the roaches, and found bigger, scarier, porch-chicken-thieving cockroaches.
Who steals partially-cooked chicken from a grill left unattended because you're in the house focusing on your bong? It was like 10 minutes! Must have been a porch-chicken syndicate. Like a gang. Maybe they worked for KFC. I'd heard about KFC consignment pre-cooked chicken, but it had never been my problem.
Nevertheless, I don't understand this level of insanity. I might enjoy it's sheer bad-craziness, but I don't understand it or condone it. I won't condone it. My time is short. The pig is in the tunnel and I'd like to win my football pool two years in a row. I cannot tolerate partially cooked chicken theft. It is not righteous.
This weekend, I'm thinking of grilling some chicken and sitting unseen in a location where I can unleash the fury of my compound bow, 45 lbs. pull, graphite shafts, expanding broad-head tips. That would sting.

4.18.2010

roaches

MPLS.1
Gotta get these stories down before pre-senile dementia hits and I won't be able to tell whether they're  true or not. So this is number one (MPLS.1).

July 1990. There are cockroaches here. A lot of them. You have to keep the Rice Krispie's in the fridge. Some get in there even. They skitter across the floor with an intuitive sense of obvious impunity. They are too fast to kill. You stop trying. You decide to work with them. Sharing space with respect.

So you turn on the kitchen light by reaching around the corner. It gives them time to run for cover. In return, they stay off the furniture and don't crawl on your face in the early morning hours. It's cockroach detente. A cold-war cockroach standoff.

And then you get a good job and move out. I'm sure the cockroaches throw a party and toast their victory. "Yeah, we win again ... puny humans ... yeah, pour me a bit of that rancid milk. Aaaahhh! The cockroach life."

I really think they do that, but I don't know, I moved out of their neighborhood and into a house in the ghetto. The cockroaches there were all meth-heads. They mostly stole from the ants. Solving two problems at once. I think I must have carried some cockroach cred - word on the street sort of stuff. "Dude is cool." In cockroach street terms.

So, I guess the moral of the story is that if you have to move to the city and stay one step above cardboard-hobo-camping down by the river. Befriend the cockroaches first. They will pave your way into big city survival.




4.17.2010

can't fight

I was downtown last night and I think I met a ghost. Seether. She wouldn't walk with me in a straight way, she wouldn't offer me her smoke. I got all dressed up for this only to get shot down. Seether.
I remember her from Glastonbury. 1995.  Flat chested hardcore. 
I try but I can't fight the seether.
Seether.




4.11.2010

new shoes

get some. your feet are weird.

harold and margo

harold and margo. margo and harold.
met at the soda fountain in buffalo, south dakota. 1983.
she'd heard about harold's pawnshop and what went down there.
harold and margo don't feel no pain.
cocaine, methamphetamine and loaded in the
middle of nowhere and never coming back.

box of spiders

Gran Gran keeps a box of spiders.
She says they're on me when I sleep.
Waiting in the out-house for me.
underneath the seat.
My great-grandmothers bout ninety-seven
and she is sure when she gets to heaven,
old St. Peter's gonna throw his arms around her and say
'I've waited so long for us to meet'.
She put the General in a box
and buried him behind the Stoney Point Church of Christ,
when I was three.
(and she says) "When the lord comes to take me,
I'll die with a smile on, cause He's taking all my pains and fears."
She said The Generals last words were
"It's hotter than hell in here".
Gran Gran keeps a box of spiders,
or so she told me as a child,
and I would hold it in for hours.
Too mean to die. Too mean to die. Too mean.

thinkin'

i been thinkin'.
thinkin' about faulkner and alabama.
bottle trees. ghosts in the cotton fields.
i been thinkin"
thinkin' about boiled choctaw cornmeal
blood sausage and yellow rice
cobbler
a place I want to be
in alabama at uncle leon's just east across the bay from Mobile
i can help him move that tree, eat some bay shrimp, okra. johnnycake.
fight the bloody British and whatnot
yell at it

4.04.2010

for tammy

Tammy,
I am so sorry for your loss. Perry was a good man and a good friend. I lost him too. I'll miss giving him shit over the phone. I'll miss his Blantons on ice with a lemon twist. I'll miss his deadpan, ornery-ass humor most of all. He was a character and he had a big impact on me.
When we spoke you asked if I had pictures taken of the hunting trip he, his dad and brother and I grouped up for in South Dakota. I do. He sent all of them to me. Someday soon we'll have to go through them and I can tell you what was happening. The guide was good, birds plentiful and the banter between father and sons was extremely entertaining. Pete couldn't believe they didn't have a Starbucks in Gregory, SD. The coffee sucked, etc. HA!
Tammy, I still remember the trip well and as Perry once said to me, it was one of the best times of our lives. Brother Steve notwithstanding!
Take care and I'll call again soon.
Me