Wooden nickels, uh uh, yep, and then some, wooden nickels. Maybe the promise of them is guiding and needing to a man who was never more anything other than a boy who was lucky to get a scent and not a cent and that was money and that done, right, dontchya know?

It seems webbed feet might be the way to propel of the murky madness of the swamp like mire of never to be or have been but hope to be. This makes me think of things other than the wooden nickel, although it is only a wooden nickel.

The phrase comes up as a legitimate one, one that does not house itself in generosity or ignorance but trust. Has anyone ever been ignorant enough to accept wooden currency beyond the pulp of paper? Has anyone ever been so bemused by generosity that they have taken lots of false payments and turned around and said, “Hey, What the fuck?” I know the prior is less common than the latter but both I think are pretty rare.

I think it comes down to trust. It is a field that diminishes in the easiest of ease here on the internet. All of the stories, all of the press, all of the freak shows that we find, engage, and intertwine into our lives. It is all hogwash.

I have stood tall and proud with my honesty, even when it hurts. Sometimes in anger and forced corner situations I spew forth a bit of nonsense, a bit of sewer, in order to get the thoughts out of my skull. I do this in private because I know what I make ‘colourfull’ could be taken as straight assault attack on some, by some. Private is a pretty attractive word, a word that is not so appreciated in many avenues.

Everything should be public, right? We should all know everything about each other. Lips smack and gums savor the taste of knowing it all. Regardless of where you would like to stand on that, we all want a scoop of dirt to make the day go by. If you don’t believe that, than you have not looked at what sells in the world of magazines and newspapers, never mind the reality strain train of TV that suits and soots us all the same.

Everything should not be public. We have private as being separate from public the same way we used to have accident separate from incident. Times are different now and I guess now it is all public. However, those who scream for public are the first ones to scream private when it suits them, and soots them indeed.

Do you know someone that you like, relative or friend, that you disagree with parts of their lives, parts of their days, or a part of them in general? We all do. We all try to reserve ourselves but when pushed to point the time seems ok to vent, even in private. Not anymore.

Hold tight the idea that no one is safe.

Hold tight the fact that everyone judges.

Hold tight there is good.

Hold tight there is evil.

There is truth and falsity.

There are always wooden nickels.

I guess it depends on who gives them to you.

My Uncle gave me one and that’s alright with me …

I suppose it all depends on where your roots were, where you’ve planted them, and if you see a transplant before the eternal wilt; I suppose that is it indeed! Didn’t take too long to figure it out in a chime trill swill swoop against the cylindrical silver tubes. It was all a matter of excepting where you have found yourself, where you are at where you are.

So nomadic camel hump chugging about the country side and seeing most of it, yes, most of it indeed! Would the maids and the pages and the paltry poppers needing help ever need not? Or so it would seem to be and then some, or sum as it were. Yet, each city made it’s mark, it’s cerebral tattooing - an ink injection of forceful penetration and impregnation - a raping of the flesh but with permission, none the less.

A possession, a piece of nice baggage, a kindly little city charm for a ‘what I found along the way’ charm bracelet that poverty will never accept the truth of you having one so you need not fret, should you? Might as well tattoo ‘Coach’ upon my forehead, inject ass ink across the cheeks inscribing, ‘Prada or Fendi of Gucci’ any of them will do just fine, like sugar on a plum, like honey in tea; a dance of get along and do well with and not so well without. Another would gleefully find ‘coexistence’ of ‘codependence’ (’co’, on and on and on but never any David Allen Coe - something that I am quite sure was cleverly left out of the pamphlets and hand-outs and the such and the like and on and on with ’co’s’) and some other pop psych rubbish ala 101 and something nicely scribbled, like personal graphiti, in the margin of a spiral and you never hoped it would appear again. The place, the dream, the time … Where could it all happen, take place, transpire, inspire … it all has changed like newly labeled sharpie stricken whites against a skin that has yet to take the summer sun and left only a reddish hint of it being brought to solar brunt.

Could it be a chilled and sullen winter that one might long for amongst the slimy sea like cooling of the southern realm. They have snow every other damned place, why not shed some flake down upon the imbecile rejects of day and the spawn that the heathenry spew forth, damn little heathens, damn our futures gone, yes that’s right and so on.

Could it be a spring panty perfume push of aired out closets and cobwebs knocked loose? The cleaning of the attic, the dusting of the shelves; how many sweeps can you go when smoothing the basement floor? I bet we could all go a lot, a lot more than we think, a lot less than we would like; yet the cleaning keeps on, like coal farts from the Earth’s core, oil spews that would sadden the best of the worst, and a windmill that has snapped it’s blade. Poor windmill; poor, poor, windmill.

The fill ‘em ups of long ago and forgotten in the minds of children who have never scene them or a picture - the picture of course would be to unruly, can’t you see? - they will never see them, they will never know. Each time acid etched like primer paint set for the plate to be sprayed and then it is in the smooth film silk streusel and strudel that you were looking for - “Sweet!" ~ Sweet, indeed!

Let each town mind blur into the sappy syrup of yesterday’s images stretched and smeared and shown so sheen and sheer, so silent in the still of the sap, the honey, the syrup. “Does anyone have any tea?”

Can you taste a falling Autumn in Northern California, a salty spring day on the Long Beach Boardwalk on a grey Rockport, MA day. A simple day, both, in their own right and stalwartly so, indeed! The Southern California Christmas with nothing to be intended except for silly materialism shoveling it’s excrement down a chimney hole. The Floridian summer strangling you with the sweaty sweet smile of suffocation and suffice to slow; a minister spring in Maine with the green grass and the glorious gargantuan April flowers - May showers blast lunch buffet loge - indulge. The shoveling of snow anywhere. A snow bitten crisp lick crack short saunter stride winter morning in Ithaca, where it only makes sense that it is cold or you would be lost somewhere between long johns and a scratch ticket with a Sunday 32oz easy morning turn around, looking down, can’t be found, oh the sound, surround, put down and done. There it is again - ‘Done’.

Each little paper toll reminder you grab as you drive, plough on, move ahead; down the black tar tarmac and terrible, driving aside the time is made up as the day drowns through the final straw snorts of a strawberry gloss lip shake tracheotomy pipe up suck down of ice tea on a diner day in the middle of Sun with no purpose beyond sweat. Each wake up another stretch, each eye rub a new one to see; however miniscule and minute we would never mute or moot about the subject of ‘new’ at hand and on the table laid out straight like gibberish grinding organ-monkey-owner-types, when carnie calls piss off just the wrong passerby - the game is fold around and ... I have laid straight, uh huh, straight.

Can you ever hear the calls through the bush, the fox horn, the smoke, the trepidation, enough to see me, to know where I am at and where the others around you may be or have at least found themselves in the middle of the belief of where they are at, at the moment, yes sir, they do, but can you hear it? Open them up, exude and mine out the wax that clings like a spelunking haberdashery, in black, clinging to the repulsed ceiling/flooring tooth of a rock with defiance; I don’t care how, just remove the WAX! Thank you and then some, indeed, and so forth and so on, don’tcha know? And then, now, where were we and were we where, indeed?

But never the fire line is broke regardless of weather and sentiment building like sediment receding the same, like father O’ So-and-So’s hairline and reputation - taken a back about every two years, yep, yeppers indeed, concluded about every two years, wouldn’t ya know?

Be right back, I know where they have been and into which sauce they have found themselves dipped, dipped indeed, and then some, be right back, I’m sure, indeed, without duplicity but duplicity found, indeed.

A torn screen still letting in the wind and sun but only allowing entrance to the most discerning, logical, intelligent insect that finds the flaw in the barrier. Would you change the screen? Would you let it go? What would you do, if given the choice? What would you do if your choice was a permanent and penetrable one? Remember the wind chime, the tubular audio sparkles? Remember it, indeed remember.

Take me down and make it ok again. Hearing the noise, the calypso, the Latino rhythm of never once from whence it came and then some, indeed!

Lost.

Done.

Lustful jungle gerrymander juggle.

Indeed, once more and with more vigor than the priority of statements from a chronological existence of knowing known notoriety and when it is to say quite clearly,

“Done” …

Within the adventitia of close knit, finely wove, palm sweat chiseled down broad scratch hook wool into the most ethereal silk to ever be thread (and just barely it was), lays close to the breast a child, of mix and mingled faith and frothing festivities of midnight and post-midnight grandeur and gala glimmered and glamoured past the highs of hot white eye ball of bulb flash in a fashion photo and into the light of the mirror.

The honking outside, the deep moss wet pant breath of the man behind the window [No, not the Wizard of Oz, for there was no window but rather a curtain (and a rather shabby one at that), one which only Toto could bemuse as defraud] that no one, not a soul, pays any never no mind to … a shadow.

One that crawls in tight and deep, like little men, of eight year, playing ‘Vietnam Tunnel Rat’ with their realistic weight plastic ‘toy’ gun of black resin bulk. Never much to tell it from real, except for the knowledge of the holder and maybe even the giver of the gift upon it’s purchase price head of a barrel in a bar where this child would not be let in certainly due to age but at the least due to weight. A shadow.

Can you taste the silk black pelt, the Sherlock frock of don and done and back in the tweed wick way? Flicker here and there with Freudian slips and a pant stain here and there and maybe the pictures won’t mind even if the flash bulbs did; who is really to know? And then once more the door, the light, the frame of thought and frame itself; the shadow.

Can one trek in from the ash shunder cinder sought after sullen, yet safe, surface ~sustenance and solvents?

The frazzled and frizzled fountains of forthright forthcoming fortitude fright. Shadows.

Each little velvet kelp leaf of un-saline orange blur and burst broke through the vertical shades/blinds/ strips of plastic to hold back the fury of day, the fury of Sun. The lit blaze a flame fiddle of fire the orange danced back and twice for the girl. All of the passion that one shade could sparkle, sprinkle, sprockets and such. Like little small flakes of dawn’s quite familiar and all of the moments inside Sun Rise’s dress. Ever since all the light kept a spewing sporadically, spitting and splashing into the wind. The shadows may shake, and shiver twice daily, but only the shadow sees what you’ve seen.

The murky gaze of day makes it laughably real. Real like 60 year old people who call their Mothers and Fathers, of 80 years plus, ‘The Rents’. Like the soap balm wax lux lube list of window paint describing the ‘team’ player in your family along with their team and position and number and a whopping, “Way To GO!” right along with it. Too much hoopla, tune down turn off your car. I don’t expect that much solicitation of support on any vehicle other than a candidate caddy or a news room mobile. Like the mud at the bottom of the two day old reheated coffee in the pit of a plaid paste Avis office half way between the boogie dance of clock hands exchange at two and three; obviously a.m. do to the explicit nature of the NC-17 rated thought that was to be present in my mind’s presentation. Lost within the cape speck expose of the Shadow’s eye.

How long can the purple plaid posy posse of petulance and pertinence persist por favor?

I saw the fly in the Kleenex box, Kleenex is copywrited for our protection. I saw it there, black and bumpy, wrong and raw, like a foot soldier awaiting mustard gas draw, deep from within a secret that one should not hold, not even in the most secret cubby of culminated comfort in the arms of a lover whose body is yours, one of your own and under control of the forces within the surly gut of vomitous man in the deepest perversions drowned in the crimson soul of vermillion velvet, garnished with mint. “A sprig, just a sprig will do!” - no one would notice no how anyway don’tcha know, and then some? The fly was still there, perpetual forward, in and in and in and inch away in and in again by inch. Dark creases across the grey, the shadow.

Upon Britain ass bottoms, with bare only to speak of, the whitest of whitest was white now their skin; each tissue, hanky; each disposable blow rag … white, white indeed. Never a white, unless in the green for Superman’s haunts of weakness, defame. Each tissue like bravado, a pause of the crowd, a pause in the silence, they stand tall - applause. Each one waiting for that magic tip wand trip splendor delight of the magician’s last call of flicker lick staff wick all white are the flowers before colour has come and needed to be washed off. Only black and grey needed, the shadow knows. I just asked him and he told me so. Light to make darkness and without it the same. Ride strong tall chariot and such, as night molests day into itself and then back again as release never found on top, and breathing quite hardly, with much harm and danger insight; can the man on the run know which colour the wrestle has put forth? Never quite as well as the time before, or the other time when the shadows told her the answers that time, before, when no one knew, it all was cool, yet we all know why it is not except for those who ask the question ‘is it cool?’ … do you see what I mean, about the shadow?

The dirty, filthy, mangled and then some desk. It stands tall enough. It holds strong under the force of day and nothing feels it more than this keyboard, this desk, this lot of square drizzle dribble, once again and cut out so right by the chrome and the shape of things never to be dreamt of by pirates at sea, acting as sailors, and hoping that planks were nothing they’d walk. They’d walk the plank in them. The flip board propel firestorm has plenty of them beneath. Just beneath the furled brow of dying men, not so quite right in the mind but enough to know of what ‘death to come’ means and feels, the shadow is beneath it too.

They know. And the brow sweat men of lip gloss humid humanity know where the darkened areas come from, from, from, from, from …

The Shadow, the shadows, ssssssssssccchhhhhhaaaauuuuuudddddddddddaaaaaaaaaooooooooooooooo!

Never a single string twist of a fraction of a second where they will not be. When the triangle, hex angle, octagon, decahedron of light shaft shifts through some cerebral headlight of force forward projections glory gives me ocular splendor in the middle of the night, when Billy Joel sings, on the docks with the black guys, in the middle of the night … but the shards of geometric discipline and strict directive delicacy derivative of light itself moon masked it’s merry stark Star Trek osmosis way through the curtain and the garb of ‘all light block out’ and glory, and into my vision-scape scope of scarce comprehension - the shadow.

When you stumble Hellen Keller blind through the darkened halls, with no fridge light to guide you - no hall way glow of table mahogany - no bedroom dream glitter glinted in the tiles to see your path through without the occasional stumble; it is night indeed.

The shadows across a menu. The shadows across a keyboard. They shadows across a rolling paper.

I watched a man today make an ‘O’ of his orifice and lick quite lustfully with his whetted wet lips the white portion of a cigarette that I bummed ‘out’ to him upon request. He flipped that wetted bad boy and boy his lips sucked in the smoke deep upon flame hit foliation of fumar addiction. He smiled with an over the brow behind the left temple backwards hand flick gesture that seemed tough yet heart felt. It didn’t matter much cause the cigarette seemed to burn with his drool. The back alley was still seen by the Five, as the cars snow cone slush screw slide their way across the black death tarmac of California freeway system and such and sort and so on … the shadow.

No matter where, how much, how many, what time, and who with, of course, but why?

Never an answer from a shadow.

Never the oboe torque you require.

Never the turn of phrase.

Never a good looking girl, never a muscular boy.

Sleep tight shadow, sweet prince, good night indeed.

What dark bags are under his eyes.

The shadows of the shadow tell use where we might be.

Military fold sheets and the white cast down into the recent scruff wrinkles, shadow.

Shadow is hip.

Shadow says, “Done.” …

Ethylene Glycol Monobutyl Ehter.

Di (2-Ethylhexyl) Phthalate, Xylene, Ketones, Alcohol, Esters, Aromatic Hydrocarbon, Parachlorobenzotrifluoride, Crystalline Silica, Benzene, Toluene, Antimony Oxide, Lead, Chromium, Carbon Black.

Acetone, Resin, 2-Butoxyetanol, Methyl n-Amyl, Ketone.

Acetone, Alcohol, Toluol, Xylol, Petroleum Distillate.

N-Butyl Acetate, Ethyl Acetate, Toluene, 1-Methoxy-2-Propyl Acetate, 2-Methoxy-1-Propyl Acetate, Benzene.

1-Chloro-4 (trifluoromethyl) Benzene, Acetone, Acrylic Polymer, Methyl n-Amyl Ketone, Dibutyl Phthalate, PM Acetate.

Tripoli, Water, Kerosene, Hydrogenated Light Petroleum Distillate, Mineral Oil, Pine Oil, Oleic Acid, Solvent Refined Heavy Paraffinic Petroleum Distillates, Silica, Polyethylene Glycol Sorbitan Monooleate, Solvent.

All of them. Can you guess what is what, from line to line, ingredient list to ingredient list?

These are my happy-danger-perfection-death tools of the trade.

This is my group of friends, the ones that buy bus tickets in the middle of the night or post bond on a weekend morning, especially a Sunday morning.

They all drive what they do and then some, like Easter eggs on a DVD or CD-Rom.

Float down a river mixed of them all and call it a day when the sky is a little lighter, the Sun is a tad bit darker, and you can see the Earth’s blood in the dirt.

Easy to hold tight to the ones that make the green.

It is not I.

It is them, they are my friends …

In the simplest of times, when the curtains are drawn in tight together and forced to mate in a sexual dance that repels the light from entrance, when the cats can’t even find the wherewithal to meow, when there is no news and certainly none looked for (out of simple physical disgust and inward innard shutdown); you can find the words ladder climb to the top of the slide in your mind and each step, each precarious grip of the cold metal banister, is worth the touch, the time, the teal colored torture found in the pastels of silence, solitude, self servitude.

Your tongue will not toll out each belled thought, each railroad engine to caboose string of letters into words into sentence into paragraph into chapter into book; each little muted character rode high and fearful upon and behind the strongest muscle. Content in the silence they stay. They stay still and await the day, the day they think will be ok for you to hear them once again, once again with passion and confidence; on the day when your suit is pressed, the buttons shined right (of course shoes to match) and the pinch in the knot of your cravat is deeper than a Kirk Douglas cleft; you seriously could river Nile water boat barge a navigational holiday of African Queen down that thing (of course, pleasing and disconcerting Humphrey at the same time).

The letters gather in the soft dull air that now never vibrates, now never reverberates, now never sullies or stains the airs purity in ever even the simplest way. Now never a ‘hello’, a ‘good-bye’ and Paul and John are both pretty pissed about that; then again never the twain shall meet again except covered in twine and feathers and tar with many a smoke cloud scene and numerous questions to be answered about why tail could cause such derisive divide of pugilistic protagonist prophecy profound. The letters have unionized at the top of your throat, they have formed words. They pay dues and plot and ploy and war room chatter as the coffee pours down over their backs like the water in the dreams of ducks for foir gras.

They have found the way and see their solution shimmer and shine through the cracks of your tongue, the gaps in the teeth, recession of gums, each time your mouth slowly creeks open to take in the air when your nostrils decline. The light comes in swift through the rivers and valleys, into the orrifice, the once verbal one. “The Fillings! The Fillings!”, they thought they smelt silver; there are eight in the back and the words have rejoiced. If only to dig out the silver amalgamate, the words could then slip out one after the first; from first to the next to the end of a sentence, communication once more could be found from this head.

It won’t ever happen until they start digging, causing the mouth to re-open once more. What if the mouth does not open from noodling, noodling around in the silver filled shells? What if the words are driven back to the conscience sedated and wrestled to the ground by that stuff? The pills they keep feeding you are making you quiet, making you tired, they closed up your eye; the three, the third, the thrice one that’s up there, the one that you really have needed to see. What if the words are shot down by Prozac, burned out with the current, or stitched up with lace? Will the fine Doctors (the ones who like silence) find plucked on their heart strings the compassion to let your words be heard just once more?

Your thoughts now have become a prosaic mosiac, one that’s not even acceptable here. The digging begins, the sweat it keeps building, the stink from your gums has made them dig more. You can smell the decay like fall winter branches who would never ballet in the cold winter sun; the branches have stiffened, have hardened and greyed, and only the leaves appear too forlorn.

The pain from your talk box, the one that’s grown silent, the pain from the thoughts all built up inside; exploding, corroding, and canonized visions of what the words taste like and sound like again. You want to be open, to open your gullet, to pass on the thoughts to empty your head. They are all dull the greys of the colors, the tiles all chipped and needing repair. To put one foot forward, a word into sentence, to express your self, “Oh! Never again!”

They’ve made it, these word forms, these perilous phrases, the thoughts were so scattered yet now they seem smoothed like ironed out hair of the time just before you, the time that you don’t know, ceraceous like silk.

It appears the pain pressed on, inspired by shovels, by spades, and by tooth picks that kept lit through the night.

The numbing continues on multiple tables too many cards and too many knights. Only the knave, the joker and five cards ever meant anything, any old way.

Pulsing and pitting and pressing and pausing, all of the words preparing to leave.

Never once did they come out the whole washed out winter, never once did you speak of the leaves.

Until this moment it could not be sedated the word has stood up and would like you to speak,

“Done” …