it started with the four.
moving between cars
as the train moved between
boroughs, counties, islands.
and as we hit the light
of the brief aboveground
the music it did play.
spins, flips, drops, dance moves i'll never do, they did on a moving train and in close quarters. deft maneuvers inches from commuters they dared to ignore them. and as we slipped back beneath the same city yet always the other - or i suppose the original depending on how one perceives it - they moved on. and just like that... it was over.
and then it was hours spent selling happiness in the place i never feel good enough for but never feels up to my standards, and then, as always, it was over. those last hours always seeming so terribly long and so terribly quick, spent with that mysterious thin film on skin, that drunkish feeling in head and limbs, that same desire to stay and fix what i've forgotten, to get the hell out. but just before the final curtain fell with bike lock on front door... is that? i think... well he and his wife certainly look happier than they did after that prostitution thing came out. but ultimately i leave with that unbalanced feeling that comes with an unbalanced till: four dollars over after ten dollars short is almost too much to take. it's like i tell mike: i feel like i'm losing my mind... i haven't been getting much sleep.
but fuck it. i got a train to catch.
and do i how i do. just before doors closing and i'm settled in, eating cookies too broken to actually sell. a substitute dinner akin to the breakfasts i used to make from the day old tray precariously balanced on bakery machines.
and just after making it back to my own island, my county, my borough, my home, he steps through the door asking for change, for dinner, for attention. and then the latter he demands though in not so many words: "from the halls of montezu-uma, to the shores of tripoli," somehow sliding his way into america the beautiful with such skill clearly not available to his ability to hit the notes he's aiming for, into that song which i can never hear without being reminded of sinatra emoting his own version in his later years. the tired sinatra, the sinatra that still somehow had it, the sinatra who had a cold.
and then...
the transfer.
not running not walking senses shifting somehow alert flowing with the crowd to the other stair that leads me to my own train on the wrong track a new route and just making it just barely to find out we're skipping stops we're expressing past all those i never care for anyway this train is goin' places and then finally...
a stop.
a next stop announced, but at this point... how can i trust it? i get off and walk the long way turning onto streets that seem vaguely safer, somehow smarter, some kind of a more full. but as i cut across the rare two-way street in the dead traffic night i see it in front of me and the first thought i have: is it breathing? and i watch and i wait but i don't stop walking. and there is no breath. there is no panting, there is no up down up down of a body being guided by lung.
the dog is dead.
i don't stop. somehow i am capable of instantly realizing the possibility of death, capable of checking for the signs without a slowing of step, and yet something in me that will do something after the fact is gone. it's simply not there.
howl, howl, howl, howl! o, you are men of stones:
had I your tongues and eyes, i'd use them so
that heaven's vault should crack. she's gone for ever!
i know when one is dead, and when one lives;
she's dead as earth. lend me a looking-glass;
if that her breath will mist or stain the stone,
why, then she lives.
and yet i know,
now she is gone forever
...
i come home to another, very much alive other, signaling it's intensity through shrill yaps and yelps that have kept me up for nights on end. i come home to bugs and heat and hunger not satiated by leftover sweets. but i come home. home to last cigarettes and a glass or two of gin. home to a shadily rented apartment where i am no more permanent than the occasional breeze - blow winds and crack your cheeks? i should be so lucky - but i am home.
come home, come home
ye who are weary come home
calling, o sinner
yes, i am come home
Friday, June 3, 2011
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Making The Most Of Rapturous Nothings
"if you asked me what music i like most... i reply, the sounds around me i haven't composed."
and what haven't i composed lawd lawd i ain't even a composer. not per se. but what don't ever one of us compose?
every day and every moment we each and every one of us compose our desires, our secret hidden fantasies buried down so very deep coming to the surface in fits, starts, bits, drops, pops, bangs and sometimes all it takes is walking a midtown street in the rain trying to remember how you got to that place how you got there how you are how you were and all of a sudden and a very suddenly it's all too much to hold in and then. just. like. that. pow. bang. hmph. it all comes out. tears. sobs. wails. tears sobs wails drop to knees holding on barely holding on trying just to try hoping to keep it together but failing so miserably but succeeding succeeding succeeding yes yes yes yes yes this is something something something SOMETHING this is happening and fuck it all FUCK. IT. ALL. "every day is a beautiful day every day is a miserable day." this is something that happens. every moment. every day. and you. or her. or him. or someone else entirely. and that's just how it is. that's how it was how it will be. every moment a funeral every moment a festival. can you honestly tell the difference? ha. i dare you to even fucking try. good luck, because it's all the same in the end. like a new york conversation it's impossible to tell if it's argument or agreement. and every night we fall asleep with the same in our heads and wake up with.... well the same. tabula rasa? bullshit clean slate. it's always the same and it's never so. we're left hanging on the edge of reality. hanging on the edge of everything that ever was and ever has been. how exciting is that!? we are, at each and every moment, on life's edge. the end of the world cannot be prophesied. it's just gonna happen. just like that. so at least at the very fucking least... enjoy it.
and what haven't i composed lawd lawd i ain't even a composer. not per se. but what don't ever one of us compose?
every day and every moment we each and every one of us compose our desires, our secret hidden fantasies buried down so very deep coming to the surface in fits, starts, bits, drops, pops, bangs and sometimes all it takes is walking a midtown street in the rain trying to remember how you got to that place how you got there how you are how you were and all of a sudden and a very suddenly it's all too much to hold in and then. just. like. that. pow. bang. hmph. it all comes out. tears. sobs. wails. tears sobs wails drop to knees holding on barely holding on trying just to try hoping to keep it together but failing so miserably but succeeding succeeding succeeding yes yes yes yes yes this is something something something SOMETHING this is happening and fuck it all FUCK. IT. ALL. "every day is a beautiful day every day is a miserable day." this is something that happens. every moment. every day. and you. or her. or him. or someone else entirely. and that's just how it is. that's how it was how it will be. every moment a funeral every moment a festival. can you honestly tell the difference? ha. i dare you to even fucking try. good luck, because it's all the same in the end. like a new york conversation it's impossible to tell if it's argument or agreement. and every night we fall asleep with the same in our heads and wake up with.... well the same. tabula rasa? bullshit clean slate. it's always the same and it's never so. we're left hanging on the edge of reality. hanging on the edge of everything that ever was and ever has been. how exciting is that!? we are, at each and every moment, on life's edge. the end of the world cannot be prophesied. it's just gonna happen. just like that. so at least at the very fucking least... enjoy it.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Greatest Who Song?
The question came in a text. But it's an answer that needs more than 140 characters. An answer not simple enough for simply a title. So.
Quadrophenia is an epic piece of art but that works best as an album. Same goes for Tommy (sorry Pinball Wizard), and The Who Sell Out... almost. So. I Can See for Miles is allowed on the short list. My Generation is on there because it's an amazingly raw Who song that works completely without the context of an album (a single that stays a single) and does that whole "capture a mood of the moment" thing.
But... the best? Without question it's Baba O'Riley. And maybe it's because it's from an album that failed as a concept that it's something that can stand so well on it's own. And maybe it's that it's a sort of funeral for the 60's, a modern rock second-line for the generation that had little left to offer. Or maybe what it comes down to is as simple as the sonic landscape, the sonic assault, it lays down. That unrelenting arpeggiating synth combined with that crazy Irish violin at the end combined with Roger at his screaming best combined with one of the most satisfying drums intros maybe ever combined with a guitar virtuoso who could play anything but is playing power chords. Fucking power chords. And it never resolves. It just... stops. It always leaves us wanting more. One of those perfect rock songs that at the same time makes us want to drive a hundred miles an hour, makes us remember our first girlfriend, makes us want to fight any asshole who gets in the way, makes us remember dancing in our bedroom to the first band we discovered on our that was ours and no one else's, makes us need to throw our arms around our friends and drink far too much far too fast. So yeah. Baba. Give it a listen. And turn it up waaaay too loud. That's what i'll be doing tonight.
Quadrophenia is an epic piece of art but that works best as an album. Same goes for Tommy (sorry Pinball Wizard), and The Who Sell Out... almost. So. I Can See for Miles is allowed on the short list. My Generation is on there because it's an amazingly raw Who song that works completely without the context of an album (a single that stays a single) and does that whole "capture a mood of the moment" thing.
But... the best? Without question it's Baba O'Riley. And maybe it's because it's from an album that failed as a concept that it's something that can stand so well on it's own. And maybe it's that it's a sort of funeral for the 60's, a modern rock second-line for the generation that had little left to offer. Or maybe what it comes down to is as simple as the sonic landscape, the sonic assault, it lays down. That unrelenting arpeggiating synth combined with that crazy Irish violin at the end combined with Roger at his screaming best combined with one of the most satisfying drums intros maybe ever combined with a guitar virtuoso who could play anything but is playing power chords. Fucking power chords. And it never resolves. It just... stops. It always leaves us wanting more. One of those perfect rock songs that at the same time makes us want to drive a hundred miles an hour, makes us remember our first girlfriend, makes us want to fight any asshole who gets in the way, makes us remember dancing in our bedroom to the first band we discovered on our that was ours and no one else's, makes us need to throw our arms around our friends and drink far too much far too fast. So yeah. Baba. Give it a listen. And turn it up waaaay too loud. That's what i'll be doing tonight.
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Don't Pay Heed To Temptation
- do y'all have any headache medicine?
- there's bottles of it behind the bar.
somebody's telling a strip club story of 5,000 down to 5.
the hippos are being electrocuted in their tanks all around me.
like frogs in the slowly boiling water.
like the rhinos in heat fighting for control.
walkmen like cigar store indians still watching over me.
this is where i'm ended up.
the same yes the same ol same.
with a hometown cocktail just the right touch of french.
more than herbs than can count.
"dye your hair yellow and raise yo hem"
lawyers talk about shows i watched to hear bands sung by singers i met one night to have drinks with years after my french class crush had faded with ex-girlfriends whose hearts i broke by giving in to the poor planned staying arrangement desires instead of spending nights with improv friends who first illuminated the academics of language before disappearance into unknown frontiers into which i had once trekked with broken hearted ex-girlfriends of the men whose women i then loved with women who lived with women i had once almost loved when my own were somewhere else being beloved by loving strangers over the phone...
it all comes back to somethin don't it.
and all this over a hometown cocktail that never was my own but the drink it sure could be.
the hometown where i once met that girl, no not that one, or that one, nor that one, but yes, her right there, for a lunch just to run into the past i had left behind and had seen the day before.
something else?
naw, the something same.
the shrimp and grits were perfect.
"what i want you to remember as i disappear tonight"
good strong drink makes the connections.
just like the time i was with but still without that girl no, not that one, not that, no wait yes her in the city where i was with my girl.
- it's such a good message for the kids.
- there's bottles of it behind the bar.
somebody's telling a strip club story of 5,000 down to 5.
the hippos are being electrocuted in their tanks all around me.
like frogs in the slowly boiling water.
like the rhinos in heat fighting for control.
walkmen like cigar store indians still watching over me.
this is where i'm ended up.
the same yes the same ol same.
with a hometown cocktail just the right touch of french.
more than herbs than can count.
"dye your hair yellow and raise yo hem"
lawyers talk about shows i watched to hear bands sung by singers i met one night to have drinks with years after my french class crush had faded with ex-girlfriends whose hearts i broke by giving in to the poor planned staying arrangement desires instead of spending nights with improv friends who first illuminated the academics of language before disappearance into unknown frontiers into which i had once trekked with broken hearted ex-girlfriends of the men whose women i then loved with women who lived with women i had once almost loved when my own were somewhere else being beloved by loving strangers over the phone...
it all comes back to somethin don't it.
and all this over a hometown cocktail that never was my own but the drink it sure could be.
the hometown where i once met that girl, no not that one, or that one, nor that one, but yes, her right there, for a lunch just to run into the past i had left behind and had seen the day before.
something else?
naw, the something same.
the shrimp and grits were perfect.
"what i want you to remember as i disappear tonight"
good strong drink makes the connections.
just like the time i was with but still without that girl no, not that one, not that, no wait yes her in the city where i was with my girl.
- it's such a good message for the kids.
Friday, October 1, 2010
Don't Belong To Every Choir
each song a profane prayer
a dirty joke
an anthropological six-day drunk
amblin in and outta towns with dead leg limp and lazy eye. roll. roll it round. roll it roun yo mouf. cigrette slowwwwww shtep. shit. done an gawn. oh gawn you jes flattrin. flattrin me i keep comin round this place to be overhearin all a kinds a my peoples but do i say a thing? naw naw naw i am in affect choo AL! eastern european cheese farmer tired lawyer granny smith apple drink maker! these is all the sort's my peoples but do i speech? do i throw a hey hey hey!? naw naw naw in affect choo AL! shiiiiit naw nothin like the sort i should go home and drink for free wait...
- i's s'posed to have a pipe shoved up my ass. i mean, you're asleep an everything.
- it's still a pipe shoved up your ass.
...my folks' liquor cabinet ain't but bible verse crochet and best wholesome intention so "free" ain't quite a right "cheaper" now yeah thas the word drink fo cheapa cheap cheap cheap sang the little birdie bird so's like i say go home and drink fo... aw shit "home" ain't right neither god damn if i don't keep gettin stuck on the words. i s'pose it means i oughta get another drink and make a few more false courage friends. or maybe jes another drink.
i come back to the red shirt girl with black hair accent a southern and tits all a big doing pirouettes on the back deck to not quite a plause to igor stravinsky to social distortion to everthin else and nothin a t'all wouldn't i mind settlin myself between them an all. an other and i ain't nothin but a listner. frank. frank listner. pleased tuh meat cha.
a stum bull back
the mutant faced child
looks up in wonder
a dirty joke
an anthropological six-day drunk
amblin in and outta towns with dead leg limp and lazy eye. roll. roll it round. roll it roun yo mouf. cigrette slowwwwww shtep. shit. done an gawn. oh gawn you jes flattrin. flattrin me i keep comin round this place to be overhearin all a kinds a my peoples but do i say a thing? naw naw naw i am in affect choo AL! eastern european cheese farmer tired lawyer granny smith apple drink maker! these is all the sort's my peoples but do i speech? do i throw a hey hey hey!? naw naw naw in affect choo AL! shiiiiit naw nothin like the sort i should go home and drink for free wait...
- i's s'posed to have a pipe shoved up my ass. i mean, you're asleep an everything.
- it's still a pipe shoved up your ass.
...my folks' liquor cabinet ain't but bible verse crochet and best wholesome intention so "free" ain't quite a right "cheaper" now yeah thas the word drink fo cheapa cheap cheap cheap sang the little birdie bird so's like i say go home and drink fo... aw shit "home" ain't right neither god damn if i don't keep gettin stuck on the words. i s'pose it means i oughta get another drink and make a few more false courage friends. or maybe jes another drink.
i come back to the red shirt girl with black hair accent a southern and tits all a big doing pirouettes on the back deck to not quite a plause to igor stravinsky to social distortion to everthin else and nothin a t'all wouldn't i mind settlin myself between them an all. an other and i ain't nothin but a listner. frank. frank listner. pleased tuh meat cha.
a stum bull back
the mutant faced child
looks up in wonder
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
In All Union All Is Hid
- what is it i want to say on this day the day of your marriage...
i remember hearin those words and thinkin i must be the luckiest man alive hell i didn't even make it through the sentence much less the service before my mind set to wanderin on the what was to be. just gettin lost in her shinin face. and her starin straight back.
______
eyes. windows. into the soul. burnin. open and burnin. seein knowin cryin out beggin. somethin. somethin. somethin more. inadequate. a not quite. never quite. but almost. just enough to. no. won't. cain't. wouldn't ever. but maybe. if only. open and burnin. the soul. windows. eyes. window. eye.
who are all these people and why are they really here and why?
______
i was there, watching the two of them standing before god and man, but i was the only one who saw, was the only one who heard, was the only one who really knew what would come of this union, and i sat there being ripped to pieces somewhere between knowing what i should do and what i couldn't do and realizing that the two were the same sides of a different coin, and even though i knew he was standing at that altar feeling as though blessed by some holy spirit... she was as good as laid bleeding before us, an entire open wound, unexplained and muttering.
______
- oh my good lord it's just some kinda wonderful. them two's gonna make just about a perfect match ain't they.
i remember hearin those words and thinkin i must be the luckiest man alive hell i didn't even make it through the sentence much less the service before my mind set to wanderin on the what was to be. just gettin lost in her shinin face. and her starin straight back.
______
eyes. windows. into the soul. burnin. open and burnin. seein knowin cryin out beggin. somethin. somethin. somethin more. inadequate. a not quite. never quite. but almost. just enough to. no. won't. cain't. wouldn't ever. but maybe. if only. open and burnin. the soul. windows. eyes. window. eye.
who are all these people and why are they really here and why?
______
i was there, watching the two of them standing before god and man, but i was the only one who saw, was the only one who heard, was the only one who really knew what would come of this union, and i sat there being ripped to pieces somewhere between knowing what i should do and what i couldn't do and realizing that the two were the same sides of a different coin, and even though i knew he was standing at that altar feeling as though blessed by some holy spirit... she was as good as laid bleeding before us, an entire open wound, unexplained and muttering.
______
- oh my good lord it's just some kinda wonderful. them two's gonna make just about a perfect match ain't they.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
The Stranger Shows Up In Town
well... i remember he showed up in town hell what was it. earl! when'd that fella show up round here? earl! goldangit good fer nothin sonofa. that boy. his brother ray ain't right, but earl, he ain't none closer to right than his brother. course they's both so young neither of em prolly remember when he showed up anyhow. it musta been thirty odd years or so. i do remember he showed up leadin a mule packed with none much but a few satchels a what looked mostly fulla books, a cardboard travelin case, and a shotgun. he had one good eye but he looked like it ain't seen much a the same. and that girl. lord amighty that girl. she was some kinda somethin. he looked near abouts forty years her senior but with a fella like that it's hard to tell if it's calendar years yer lookin at or if it's the way life's done treated him. i reckon that fella had seen a thing or two he'd rather have commenced to forgettin. never knew how he got hitched up with a young thing like her but like my grandaddy always said: that's one a them questions you don't ask your acquaintances outta respect and it ain't a question you ask a stranger cause it ain't none a your business. around here... everbody's one or the other.
she musta been averse to age cause i don't think she looked a day older at her funeral. oh we all went. didn't know them two well even then but it's just common courtesy to show yer face. pay your respects. they went ahead and buried her in the churchyard even though i don't remember seein neither of em in church one single sunday in all their years in town. i ain't sayin they weren't christian. just seemed their way a doin things. kept to themselves. stayed on that farm a theirs. saw him in town from time to time. never said much. never stayed long. got the necessaries and moved on.
hthere was once we had what might be considered a conversation. i remember we made our pleasantries whilst waitin on that boy from the feed store to get back from an errand but we left it at that. after near abouts what seemed like all durn afternoon i was about to leave and by way of common courtesy said i weren't gonna wait all day - c'aint just walk away leavin a man standin alone without sayin somethin - and as i was set to step off a the porch he comes out with "until the day when god will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words: wait and hope." i turned round and stared. saw some kinda glimmer pass across his eyes til he looked down all silly grin cross his face. we all knew he was somethin of a literary man so i s'posed it was some line or other from one a his books and thought about askin as much but there was a somethin about the way he leant on that porch post, somethin about the way the sunlight hit that still smirkin face below that hat pulled down low, that one good eye sparklin, that i remembered my grandaddy sayin: that's one a them questions you don't ask your acquaintances outta respect and it ain't a question you ask a stranger cause it ain't none a your business. and like i say: round here... everbody's one or the other. so i walked off. leavin him waitin. leavin him hopin.
she musta been averse to age cause i don't think she looked a day older at her funeral. oh we all went. didn't know them two well even then but it's just common courtesy to show yer face. pay your respects. they went ahead and buried her in the churchyard even though i don't remember seein neither of em in church one single sunday in all their years in town. i ain't sayin they weren't christian. just seemed their way a doin things. kept to themselves. stayed on that farm a theirs. saw him in town from time to time. never said much. never stayed long. got the necessaries and moved on.
hthere was once we had what might be considered a conversation. i remember we made our pleasantries whilst waitin on that boy from the feed store to get back from an errand but we left it at that. after near abouts what seemed like all durn afternoon i was about to leave and by way of common courtesy said i weren't gonna wait all day - c'aint just walk away leavin a man standin alone without sayin somethin - and as i was set to step off a the porch he comes out with "until the day when god will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words: wait and hope." i turned round and stared. saw some kinda glimmer pass across his eyes til he looked down all silly grin cross his face. we all knew he was somethin of a literary man so i s'posed it was some line or other from one a his books and thought about askin as much but there was a somethin about the way he leant on that porch post, somethin about the way the sunlight hit that still smirkin face below that hat pulled down low, that one good eye sparklin, that i remembered my grandaddy sayin: that's one a them questions you don't ask your acquaintances outta respect and it ain't a question you ask a stranger cause it ain't none a your business. and like i say: round here... everbody's one or the other. so i walked off. leavin him waitin. leavin him hopin.
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