Always Be Closing (rough)

it was a movie I'd only seen GIFs of, but it's taught me a lot about the world, success, and how
success gets defined in captioned headbursts. I have coffee. I have steakknives.
I have a David Mamet T-shirt and a woody allen haircut and a
Shyamalan twist ending. We welcome these words when
accompanied by celebrity spit takes, because, as
the man constantly points out this is the world
 we live in now, and furthermore, why not? 

We are transcending transcendence.
It's cool, man.
In a TV show I've only heard the drop-lines from, very serious lessons about
being a bad ass. Its important to live life to the fullest, which means lots
of squinting, punching.

Think, think, think, shout. Repeat. 

In the twist ending I am revealed to be nothing more than a
scarecrow that was brought to life by a bolt of lightning
created by aliens who believe in Jesus. 

This will not happen for a while yet, so pay no attention to the straw that I trail behind me, 

the way that it's constantly catching fire. 

2 of 4.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day! Listen to this Irish Music:

here's some new stuff, with the addendums to follow:

Lord and Savor

Tell me about this weird moment, he said, chewing an elongated piece of intestine. He gnawed and gnawed. Tell me about this epiphaaaneeeee smack smack smack smack gulp, this new revelation that you—spit—know. I love beef jerky. I love it. I suspect, however, that much of it is actually pork.
The ceiling fan continued its one-per-minute rotation.
But tell me, young sir, young miss, youngling, what is this thing that happened in a second and is now gone but has changed the way you feel about everything? Tell me, and talk into this tape recorder, then we will let your parents go. It is the plan.

The sun was grey and dusty and the two stared out the county courthouse windows for a long time. The child also chewed a stick of jerky, and eventually said that it was when he saw the ponys, he knew he wanted to be a cowboy, and the man knew that this meant absolutely nothing, and that he was not, in fact “the one” by any stretch, the prophecy would have none of him, just some fucking kid, and his parents had been beheaded for nothing.

Sword and Labor

We unfolded the sign over the bridge over the freeway near the university and the residentials. “FUCK YOUR WAR” it said. The anticipated military parade didn’t arrive. The city council members who’d voted to fire on Everett did not pass by. They were in a hotel talking tunnels.

But everyone has their war. We hadn’t taken into account the use of metaphor in self help books. The passing subarus became alcoholics, the passing jeeps filled with self doubt. At some point a Dairigold tanker crashed into the Betty Paige house and everyone fighting a war against sexual repression just lost, all at once. We were trying to roll the sign up again once we saw what was happening but it turned out that our war was with prudent withdrawal, which was also why the walls of so many vaginas collapsed and we had nothing warm to soften us. Also, the bridge. They warned us this could happen.

You never saw me come, you'll never see me go (2 flashquicknesses)

discman
In times of such economic turmoil, political import and environmental uncertainty, sometimes I simply want to stand, 19 years old, watching a wall of department store tvs condense the whole thing into stupid, simplified sound bites, mewling mouths of anchors and beauty queens rashed out by headphoned metal. I could nod there until everything's dusty and blown away, or rebuilt and shiny, dependent only on the lead salesman to tell me when to move out of the way.

everything else becomes fiction

sometimes I sit on the edge of my southside porch,
drinking french-pressed coffee I bought with government
stamps and wonder how anything ever seems urgent.

then a cop car blazes past, at nine thirty a.m.,
sirens shrieking, lamenting. then a firetruck,
then an ambulance, then three more red-and-blues.
I am halfway into my book, about a young man who
grows older as he wanders around the world unfullfilled,
sleeping with lots of women,satisfying all but
the most wanton, admitting to some of his own flaws
but not others. the dustjacket describes it as
thought-provoking. the sentences are constructed immaculately.

the cop scanners crackle hard in my neighbor's truck.
coffee grounds take over my mouth. a fog, in august,
over the tree-line, and more sirens and two old ladies cross
in the middle of the street,one holding a safeway bag
bulging with onions. they cross in front of a bus,
without even looking. if there weren't raccoons, I don't know
what we'd do about the trash.
soon I will trip down the hill for my own reckoning like I've done daily
for a year and a half, all my life.

Faith Without Works/Ties that Bind/Toby Shiner's Jacket.

jewelry rained from the top of the sears building and
the hockey jerseys glowing in the light of the carfires
raised chants, broke windows, someone tweeted pictures
picked up by the news.

in the largely empty workroom a computer plays anarchist
folk rock from the thirties. we drink prime whisky on a
brown carpet. the novelist unfolds deserting the "movement"
slowly, halting to shake his head. "we were just kids."
bleak unraveling of belief in brick and mortar and black masks.

conflicting reports as to what this actually means.
a sort of populist chaos. the petulance of spoiled children.
inevitable release of Id in a building full of people,
the outflow of violence. loud noises! ooh, shiny! fuck the fuckers!

at my 19, the ponytail had ceased to be political. the
les schwab jacket, two sizes too big, gifted by a friend was
also not a political statement, or an ironic one, but it did
make me feel bit harder than maybe I was. when the protests turned
to riots turned to A Battle In Seattle and cameras swarmed
and my co-reporters at The Polaris took their tender skin to get
broken by rubber bullets on the second day, bragging on
the fuckedupness of the thing I knew that I had to finish the week
without these bragging rights, the anarchy of the restless, the bravado
of tourists.

To Fix the Gash In Your Head

Perpetual States

To be forever eating, to be forever drinking, never sated. What they said it would be like in hell (a variety of sources, don't ask me to be specific,) the vice of choice shoveling, battering, inundating. To be forever packing snowballs with no one to throw them at. To be forever pissing, never relieved (bad example: in the act itself there is relief)what they said hell would be like when they believed in it. Sometimes the bus is forever turning a corner and Jerry is always just missing his connector. At times like this the sky remains exactly the same as it was the moment before and pieces of bread fall from the old lady's hand to the pigeons (who eat the crumbs, this old lady is not in hell.) At times like this, and sometimes at other times, Jerry thinks of Joe Wenderoth, sitting in Wendy's, completely dazed on cough medicine and perpetually wanting to fuck the red, soft, wet
mouth of the girl at the register. How sore would you get, from shifting in your seat, due to that wanting, and what about those days when people think you terrible for disenjoying their picnic and being unthankful for your peeling sunburn? There are a few of us, and we are forever realizing we aren't alone.


I wrote these both in under 25 minutes at work. Or you could read James Burns' Largely Correct rant/take on Indie Rock in all it's linguistic meaninglessness. I quibble with some definitions, but I think the larger thrust of what he says is well stated and something I'd have written here but am lazy and hate writing about music a lot of the time.

Pinching, Pulling

Crabs running sideways in sunglasses make me hop quicker than a dance with "hop" in the title ever could. My girlfriend is hungover from wine and whisky after wandering the streets of Columbia City lost but nonplussed. Eventually the bar (there's always one of those) overcharged me for drinks and the man who makes a living playing guitar on cruise ships was talking to the off-duty bartender. It was like a dance. Or hop. The woman he will see later is in California, so it will be much later. I think the off-duty bartender's swooping dark hair has him convinced. Successfully, I guide my wandering girlfriend to her whisky-ginger, which is now mainly melted ice (I hadn't known about the earlier wine) and in low light I still drink IPAs like they were ales with half the strength (maybe why I always have a headache) and the on-duty bartender is reluctant to do anything at all. Half the walk home I had my fingers through blonde hair, staggery past fields of disused tires. This morning I was glad I can give directions and cook eggs, because if there'd been a pack of wild dogs, I doubt I'd have been able to fight them off.