Just a simple vine thread to where yesterday could have been. A simple notion that today could be as good as the fuzzy yesterdays and without recant to what tomorrow may hold. A simple, simple, simple, simple. Is there another way, another day? If I knocked loud enough would you answer the door?

An egg shaped candle in a pool of white wax and then the call of what it is and then the call of what you are and then the call of …

Doors closed and compassions waned towards the direction of never known without the wherewithal of never between or betwixt. A simple passage of now. A simple passage of tonight. A need to calm down and a need to forget and a need to not make the night happen. Where does that put you in the shortest of skirts and the most argyle of sweaters? Complete with the look of innocence and then some. Never once did the thought cross my mind. And yet, maybe it did.

To walk through the wood of weathered wane and not know of where you came and where you would wish to be, in the thoughts of angry men and angry women who never once did ever even try to know you or anything else that may have occurred along the path to where you now stand. Would that be the way? Would it be the way that satisfies you? What would your epitaph say? Maybe not a lot, as we have lost interest in such these days.

You can’t stand tall when you are pushed down but a little bit of pressure leads to a break through and it is no more complex than that. You never know what would inspire to be the be all, end all, of it all and then some; but it does occur to you in the deepest depths of a coffee mug or a sleepless night - a pillow wrestle of sleep where not even the demons in your mind shut up for a minute. A simple minute. One of peace.

Peace? Peace you say? Who the Hell inspired that conjuring?

Simple.

Never no no one, no; not at all.

And then some?

Or maybe not, in all of the heated fumes and window heat.

Steam.

Hot backseat love.

Busted …

Fall and fall and fall and you still have to pay autumn’s vig. A real simple slice up cut of an envelope filled with what you won’t get back on the bet, the wager; somehow in some to be conveyed as the reason why not continue down a cobblestone path that has the uprooted green grass moss stones that no longer sit just right. No excuse at all. Pay and march on young man! Show some respect to Marcus Aurelius.

“A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.” So where does that leave me? The party pool has changed and done so exactly to my liking. The fall and falter of Nancy Pelosi will bring forth the proper fate in two years. Better for them to have won now as opposed to the full gamut two years from now. Should it even matter to me now as I skim and sift the classified ads and hold strong to the passions of pride and pomp and circumstance that have led me this far down the road? I look up and down, all around me; so where does that leave me according to Marcus, where indeed?

The wooly dog will still greet each customer and their smiles as they come in and look at the relics that I made good on, the ones that will stand for a decade or more beyond my departure like the relics of ancient something or others. A gilded sword hilt to show them all who was boss; we all know it was never me, or I as it were. I worked through the days in the alley, in the shop; through the evenings in winter when it darkened far to early and reminded me of getting ice cream on a high school evening long ago with some girl that I wanted into the pants of far more than I wanted into the mind of. These days and evenings; the nights when I would come home filthy with a bit of a cough and tad bit of nausea and dizziness running through the melon and collapse with a tall boy in the chair that I could call friend after a long day of ass/back bust.

They will still offer up the greeting ‘Welcome to our house’ when a customer chimes the ding dong in the back and rattles the sleigh bells in the front while moving the door in that hypotenuse pie splay out and then back in like a rogue protractor seeking out work, much like I am now. Swing in, swing out; jump and jive.

I will still arrive at work in another place and long to see the various cars of the family that I have come to know, the family I have come to love, the family that I now call mine. I wonder if they call me family these days? I am told, time and time again, that they wish more than anything to not have to let me go. In all honesty, I think that is an immediately secondary wish just behind their business not falling into the pits of hell after 30 years of serving the community. I can understand that but I think it should be made clear. They are now paying me out of personal bank accounts via ATM. I almost cry every Saturday upon receiving my pay. It actually hurts to take the money and I wouldn’t either, if I could live without it. I like being there, doing what I do, sanding away and breathing life into the long forgotten dead and unused denizens of music’s cavernous and carniverous past.

I can still see my boss coming down to visit me at the music store before I worked for him. He would come down and smoke a bowl and a cigarette and we would all laugh and joke and talk business. The other music store guy and I would comment on how is Dad looked like Geppetto in the back alley, buffing out brass with a big fabric wheel coated in Tripoli and spinning furiously away from each little hinge or screw that was being given it’s bath of Ponce de Leon. I am going to hate thinking about those days for awhile. It hurts.

The inevitable noon time question won’t be asked anymore. “Richard, what are you having for lunch?” will only be a memory comparable to Quasimodo’s bells after a trip to Dr. 90210 and an appearance on ’Queer Eye for the Hunchback Bell-ringing Guy’. I will miss it, but the tonality of each generous inquisitive query will fade out soon like the end of a bad live rock jam. Soon, I will only hear “Richard” and will wonder in a déjà vu stupor who is calling my name. I wonder if this is how we actually end up hearing things that other people do not. The revenge of the fading memory played out like scratchy records through a horn, all played on 78.

I already desperately miss my work, my job, my vocation.

It is affecting my writing and that could be interpreted as a ‘bummer’ for all of you, sorry if it is.

I have been in bed for three days. I don’t have as much money as Brian Wilson so it is a very different experience. My body hurts from head to toe, as if hot white match heads have replaced my blood cells. Each muscle seizes and loosens time and time again until I am dizzy and know not where to turn, how to sleep or what position will be of the most comfort since none of them are. All night, I sweat and burn, sweat and burn, over and over again my friend, over and over again once more. The blankets are no longer my friends but rather my Gitmo detainees, my Gitmo gizmos - they are quite upset and I have heard rumor that the ACLU will be filing law suits on their behalves any day now. If the sheets do not then I know, KNOW, the down comforter will. None of the fans work, not one single fan even though I have three pointed right at me, right on me. Right on!

I get so depressed and so nervous, so anxiety riddled, that not even seclusion works as the paranoia only fuels it. Today I needed to open up the windows and shades to help with it all. Let in the air, the sun, the heat. I can smell the world and it makes me even more ill. I guess there is something to be said for turn around, putting it in and shaking it all about.

I will miss the Mom and Dad I know now. My brother and sister at the shop. I will miss coming in early with my key and getting the shop opened up and the coffee down. I will miss listening to my talk radio all day and being able to smoke when I want to. I will miss the neighbors. I will miss the freeway traffic that abuts the alley. I will miss. I will miss. I will miss.

I guess sometimes things don’t have a way of working out.

I guess, I guess, I guess.

I wanted to free fall through all of this and have a bit more faith than what I am used to but it all seems so dismal and misconstrued.

I will take on a new job just like any other with verve and vigor.

I have never gone longer than three days without work when I have wanted it.

I guess that will earn me a merit badge in Hell.

I will be dressed pretty spiffy when I get there.

Samuel Clemens had that whole rap about Heaven and Hell and the weather and society and such.

From Marcus Aurelius we get, “Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.”

Fate, bind, accept, love, heart.

And then the new days begin.

They begin with angry sheets and tired souls …

Sexuality driven across dry lips and forgotten about as the desert road toll is paid and flaunted as some sort of get between in the Nome de Plume of existence and survival and then the wind still lip licks the days into balm smeared greasy days of done. Never once was permission asked. Never once was the plan of night taken where it could be in the thoughts of it all and then some, as if it never mattered and the simple slick entry of slippery seduction was secure in it’s sedentary soliloquy.

Little silly secrets in a bar stool sunrise while the day still does not know what it is and the night I speak of with that and then some. What would be done by the night if it could do something to restrain the day’s wonder and wander lust existence of petulant and pugilistic love fuck screw time watch glimmer? Would the tube tops dance more proudly? Would they tell their mothers of coke lines snorted in bathroom stalls as they dreamt of cock inside them? Would they reminisce of lover’s words at bed flight that they shared with the youthful feathered haired vixens of another day, another world, another societal frame of cars and burgers and movies all resulting in sex, with the drugs making it easier for everyone involved?

It was simple enough. A Floridian nightmare of dream watch and horsepower, complete with gasoline fumes and homeless people ganders at the midnight hour. How many give with all’s are you going to grip and grasp at the night of your demise, a night of seizure and lip lock up - complete with foam and seizure? It is simple. Your pretty ass with quarter cut jean panty short humidity repellent splendor forget about the Cuba Libre’s and the sandwiches to drool over, complete with the plaintative plantains - dipping sauce and all. How you want to dip and sauce as well.

Could anyone grant you immunity and indifference to it all? How could anyone hide it all and tuck away what you have done and what you have forgotten, along with those mornings of waking up and recollection not found and left abound to leave you out with all that you begged and pleaded to know with? You could never know the sweet violin the country guitar twang of it, never.

A mystery of dream and reality and hope and want and never mind.

Something that fell into the lap of a man.

I need sustenance.

It will happen now.

Now …

The ease of the cascading water down a hill, doing what nature wants it to do and never asking for much in return - sometimes never asking for one damn thing. How simple it would all be if that were the case for us all. Just floating down, free falling into the pool of self and never once looking up to where once we came. Simple. Just like water. Clean. Clear. Crisp. A rebirth in every drop savored, a renewal in every taste.

When one changes it all up and it is upside down (looking down which really is up, looking up which really is down - a dyslexic set of left and right parameters switched on us like a road sign in a horror movie), we never quite know how to find ourselves never mind anything else or lesser than ourselves which leads to quite a self indulgent quandary. “To be or not to be” turns into “What the fuck, Chuck?” and they are certainly very different questions.

I have spent most of my day reflecting on incarceration. I saw two movies, documentaries, that seem to have this effect on my every time I see them. One of them is a film named “Stevie”. This film is well worth the over two hour time investment, the viewing. It documents a man going back to visit his ‘Little Brother’ that he mentored ten years prior to the filming in rural South Illinois, specifically Pomona Il. It is a sad transformation of faith and charity at the hands of bizarre and depraved societal exchanges. It makes me cry immensely every time I see it and I have now been inspired to write to him.

The other film was that of live concert footage of Femi Kuti live at his African Shrine. It is an intense blend of jazz, funk, flare and rock all puffed up with the ingenious stripes of African and Island music. It honestly blows away King Sunny Ade and The JuJu Bees and that my friends is a compliment. Truly amazing music from the son of a political standout and freedom fighter in Africa. It makes your loins jump and jive like no other experience and puts into perspective reality as you watch patrons at the temple enjoy a smoke and a bottle of beer underneath a sign that warns that AIDS is very real. Indeed, it is delectable.

I know too much and I know they will be coming to get me.

I have been receiving odd e-mails lately and they make me need to sit down on the bowl and think for hours at a time. I have never been one to practice this manly ritual of stink and stupor but these days I enjoy it. I am getting older. I stayed up through midnight on Friday and went to the movies which is something I have not done in ten years. I went to see Borat. The 10:30 was sold out and they added a 12 and a 12:30 so we picked the 12. I did not get home till almost three. I was exhausted and felt ripe for execution all day on Saturday. It was the kind of personal hatred tired that makes you paranoid and breathe hard and worry too much about things that have yet to happen. Saturday was an all day event of high anxiety and movie reflection. The movie was excellent and worth the fatigue battle but I won’t be doing late nights like that for awhile.

I am growing up faster than I think or would have wanted. For so long I wanted nothing more than to be the old man in the room, the wisdom wispy one that everyone asked at least one question of during a night of party and smiles. I much more content to sleep in a darkened room these days and never once think of what could be beyond the curtains or the refugee sunlight that finds it’s way across my borders, into my space.

The darker the nights are, the brighter the moon gets, and so on and so on.

I talked to my kiddo on Sunday and football was more important. ‘And there it is’!

These short little blurbs aren’t really creative, good language or phrasing really isn’t even used or thought of in their construction.

I am ok with it.

Someday I will get back to politics.

Someday I will get published.

Someday.

You Better Friggin’ Vote Come Tuesday Or Else!?!?!?!

Drip, drop, drip.

The water falls on and on and on; but at least I have my perspective.

I know who I am ...

The silence of it all can be the hardest. A point of serrated sound cutting through the air like a magnified, amplified, sound of clippers shearing a dog miles away but closer to your ear than you could wish it to be on any normal day anywhere that you have ever been. Static white noise stutter and spittle through the air and right into you, into your ear - or ears as it most normally is.

Silence.

Idle hands are that of the Devil’s mind. They dance about, even in the static of nothing.

Once, I found a place so far away from all the sound that I, upon arrival, thought for sure that I had been deafened for the greater good; unable to hear, unable to respond. I was muted by my deafness. Muted by the lack of sound. I could still talk and take each word by it’s hands in order to chaperone them into sentences but they never quite seemed to make it, they rather lay about lackadaisically longing for days of lemonade and salad and picnic blankets that once were beach blankets but traded in professions for the ease of the event that this day held at hand. It was one nice day, one nice day indeed.

Staring at the white, knowing the white won’t disappear until the shot of black is sprayed. The shot of sound into the deaf man’s soul with a thundering expectation of sound sought to escort the reverberation, the ripple, the wave. White screens are deafness for a writer, a sense of nothing accomplished and everything to be attained in the attrition of one’s self in the simplest of ways to be tossed down, thrown down, at the sight of the white - the black needing page. It is almost a social service.

Stand up tall and proud in that line like a bread whore looking for crusts at any cost. Any costs indeed, don’t we all love crust - or is that just what I am used to? And then the tall stand shorter than they wish to be with all of the foolish fronds and prawns of a Sponge Bob done do that twice and three times on Sunday wet dream of who one could be if they closed their eyes long enough and tight enough. Nothing is that tight. You are just leaving yourself blind.

I have a crick in my neck. A deep one. One that twists the fortitude of trees already twisted enough through time and humidity, in places where the salty air is enough to suffocate you or the tree, or even my crick. A kink. One of less kinky nature hence me using the word crick. And then the proponents of words that sound like creek stand up against. Devo knows of what I speak and yet everything is still pistol hot, cool inside.

Smile, smile, smile.

Could cryptic envisionment and the play played on fool’s games enough of our ‘us’ to get from there to here? Probably not, but I hear that heart burn ensues, permeates and makes one feel over all miserable. Have you heard that too?

Sometimes I think of the whine of guitar notes as wind cascading through the breezes of a balmy day as they are hope for what is to come. Could I once, someday, someway, know that the prize is worth the penance? I sure hope so just for the game face of it all.

Until then the page is still white and blank and hoping to do something better than what I could do for it, with it. You know? Do you know what I mean? Probably not since these are private delusions now made public in a fury of what could never be what is and what ever could be and then some, indeed.

I open up too much and take too much in. I need a sedation of too much negation, one of complete shutdown. Too many spews are spewed forth into my cranium basket of net catch filter fuck. I take too much in, push to much through and feel utterly exhausted at the end of it. I feel too hard, too hard indeed.

I may come off as the hard ass, a cynical little cyanide capsule of societal cerebellum, but I take to much and continue to as a need to interact. If it were up to me I would stay inside and never get a look out, take a check and hide. Simple. Simple, indeed!

Not enough know.

Not enough care.

Plenty keep on with their spew.

Cest la vie.

On and on and on …