this is how we do



Man Above sets upon his nightly rounds

just beyond the lip of the horizon,

his long red breath shuddering out to end in purple celestial among first stars,



while in the short time below he sets fire to the future,

makes the pink wind

blow again up over cold tops of black pines,



while ahead the kidnapped sun flees

leaving only old wind to crush her gold end embers

like fire gnats peeling off the cherry from a smoke,



white remnants of herself winnowing

sharp and flat into fading but still

obtaining icepack,



then it is that the grey higway becomes my diorama

and I slide back through black ice mirage

even as I go forth, a player again in the drama,



tales beckoning still as the road shall beckon,

always the black miles falling back into each other,

other miles rolling out red, dark as blood



Later in a tavern,

I take smoke in

codify my drinks,



and prepare

to

stay awhile

another stupid song of mine that you'll never hear. you can guess the chords



Myrmidon: 1. one of a legendary Thessalian people accompanying Achilles to the Trojan War 2. a loyal retainer or attendant 3. a follower or subordinate who unquestioningly or pitilessly executes order: HIRELING



I crouch in the grass

As the crows circle high in the east



Myrmidon

Up for sale here

I bet you can't have me



Easier to be simplehearted

If I was only simplehearted

If I was only simplehearted



I'd

be so easy

be so easy



Myrmidon

Unindentured

Bet you can't have me

I'm unimpressed here



It was all to the good

It was good for a while



I had some good ideas

But I was such a great liar

this blog is all over the place

this blog is a dog on the couch where he knows he shouldn't be

this blog is facile like eggs

this blog is prone to lapses like any addict

this blog is better than TV

this blog is tempermental and lacksadaisical

this blog is written quickly while standing up and drinking a beer

looooooose

lose lose

and I just want to gain



I want this fucking dog

to stop with the police bark

and I just want to gain



I am the last guy in the world to feel sorry for

and yet I just want

to gain



fucking A I didn't want to be drinking tonight

and yet I'm drinking again because

I just want to gain



and I got laid and and gave lay

last night; still I want

only to gain



I want to be better than I

am and manage

the gain



I drip in fast and loud

then disappear for days and

that's no way



to gain. I want no commentary.

Only a feeling. And that feeling

is to gain



I wish I could sit for one drink

with all of you and you all know

who you are



and though that would be no gain,

it would be some comfort,

and it would be some action,



some discreet action. I

am cool as the Parliament now and

dun as the red light



of twilight coming up over

rocks or stones of buildings. whatever

you see. But no,



I'm alone in my truck

and want

only to gain.



But there's nothing here,

no voice,

no sense, no chance



tonight. Nothing ventured,

nothing

gained

get dumb discipline



it's been a weak week a week

of interior mumble-speak, a

leak week with a weak leak

of critique over the weak peak

of a week ago



get home in the eve and want to leave sleeve

on table but not able to weave leave

I grieve for the long eve the siege of the past

if I could last till 10 pm per diem of

bluster could I then muster a rate



of fate to eliminate this crate I'm faced with my

date with the desk. wrong desk, the cubicle

as usual and not even so bad but 10 times as bad

as what could be had if avoid 10 beers,

10 doubts, 10 fears



notes on a page

electricity

rage

whatever, so you wasted

5 days



5 more come to play and remember

it's play

it's play



it's play

some things change

other things never change

this is the entire basis of

the game



you can to choose what to do

perhaps even what you are

but not what makes you

what you are



the choice to work

or to not work

if you are an artist



is the brittle fence

separating the lepers

from the zombies



while here in Utopia

the choice matters

to few: not to the

dead, nor the poor, nor the ignorant, nor the rich & renowned



nor to the air

which surrounds you -

only to you. and

me. and him over there.

and her. and her too.

and that guy. and that one other guy



all you can do is work in the margins till

payday or lottery (amounts to same)

or no all you can do is work in the margins.

that's where all the interesting shit happens anyway

I give you that



A canister or a balustrade or the text learned from ages

of being afraid I think we are closer to our native seeds than thought

friends thought once thought



I walked through some residual deja vu tonight, not for nothing. it's nothing

upon nothing to maybe move you or move me nothing moves me tonight but desire to see

my own come on the page that's head come, come



only no one can give me. and not even that. so often we reach

for sexual metaphors in absence of uh yeah but fuck it, been drinking steady tonight

like a pro and I find that, sure, resumption of smoking give a man more stamina



in matters of sack both drinking and dribbled; my girl's a good and a fine ass, leg, lip:

but I don't think she knows what I have to offer tonight. and I ain't wakin her up.

I'm going ice fishing tomorra A.M. and plunge my auger in ice



and there's no frustration here much, physical or meta-, that a Bloody Mary

two bong hits and friendship can't cure. this is how we do

here in the state of New Hampshire. And rarely advertised



thus. my guts full of Pandora I can only express rare and dread is

the thing I beat off. Fuck. Would have been better tonight to get into some

other head than mine. I got no tales of present intrigue. Don't want any.



Want to conflate. Want to tell you something you'd rather not believe

but have to. Or maybe I should just give every gory detail of every fuck

ever had and every fucked up time ever had. But no because then I'll start



wanting more. Hence this butt in this bloody hand and all of you who feel me

or who've ever felt or are so inclined toward such as one and etc.

know this: I was and am the best blues guitar player you'll never hear:



Long ago one sweet Liz lied abed it was Sat. morning and we'd just come together.

Click and Clack were on the radio. I plugged in my gray Strat

and played a few licks. She said, I love that, when you get that bad-ass look



on your face. You are a bad-ass,

aren't you? I said, I think

I might be a better guitar player than Eric Clapton.



She said,

well, let's not go

overboard.

Momentarily you will learn whether this suspect is a threat to the United States. I was listening like a dumbass to CNN and got this title, Mr. Ashcroft



Red hands, red hands

blood on my knuckles

dry blood painted cross knuckles

past hand

past dry hand

best I can do

best I can do



picking at threads

threads

one way or another

conflating my fate



(gotta win lottery)



the quiet times spent not drinking

a never cessation of boyish ways of

boyhood taking notation per

nightmare runes of self yet not

such nightmares of some



Fallujah



loss of depredation is

the song of a eunuch

in the tradition of the woods

dark

tradition

of the woods



is thus: mnemonic understanding

of what wages

must be paid



mark the currency oh

and the currency is a wild

boast yeh



I mark you like a host

like a carnivore in exodus

deemed



most likely to seem yet I dream

and the dream is fervent,

heavy with past



inflection you see I carry this

mist off the highway south

and I can't remember the number



no wonder I was a white ghost

a host beneath lands of whoever

has most



and if wrist cramps up that's

when ramp up for real. I'm gonna steal

from the rapt gift and lift



from the highways the

High Way

second to none. except one:

that's me:



when I get free to flow

motherfuckers

will know



and will she still

smell my smoke? don't know

still to write in the notebook

is the no-look



not trapped like last simply

trapped like past

yeh I'm trapped like gas

in an atmosphere

like fear

like dipshits young

like Jung in a post-Mod

book



and look why not?

be a Rook

on the board:

no sword just straight



at angles

like trees

like 45 degrees

I mean munchies



I got no trees

no smoke



tonight

right good



right

everybody feels ambivalent about Raymond



the whiffle ball of his life began its declension thusly:

the edge of his olfactory perception

began to crumble and fester like vile asbestos from beneath walls

condemned; in short,

his sense of smell went gamy.



at a public cafeteria associated with the drab yellow box of a building

where he worked as a typist of various alphanumeric codes into various

incomprehensible computer systems, a short, grey-skinned cafeteria



lady

doled him out a blob of mashed potato

and a stench hit him like a litter box,

like someone had dumped one on him, a full one.

he wasn't sure if it was her

or the food. he flinched, he pointed his glance

down on her, and her gums cracked open,

concupiscent and terrible, to hiss the words,

"cricket meal....bugssssssssssss...."



and the odor of that breath and of those words was the beery, pissed



upon odor of typically homeless individuals,

sick, befouled bodies sprawled upon concrete,

the odor of a man with a bleeding forehead on the ground smoking a



butt

he picked up and lit off the ground and him down scrabbling and



reaching around

for his teeth, his busted state-issued spectacles, his dry pint of Zhenka.



and it too was the odor of the yellow, mouseshit-covered white keys of



an ancient piano in an abandoned church basement,

and also the odor of an improperly used condom slicked off hastily and



crushed

beneath a venereally infected, sexually victimized-turned victimizing



individual's grubby sneaker into a pile of char and cinders and

broken brown glass, and yeh it was the death smell of a cluster of dying

red sumac just beyond the pilings of a dead railroad by a broken brown



river

with a huge concrete pipe of offal emptying into it.



as she spoke the gray-skinned cafeteria lady's eyes dimmed out to black

like weak headlights fusing out on the last night of civilization as missles



start falling

and rioting convicts, freed, start burning front yards.

the other humans behind him in line at the cafeteria and seated

before thier trays of food seemed not to notice

any of this. shit, he thought, well, fuck,

May is as good a month as any for psychotic episodes.

I better get out to my car and smoke 3 filterless cigarettes.

He proceeded to the end of the line, dropped his tray in the trash

and soon enough walked out of the building.



To get to the store he had to cross four lanes of traffic.

Standing on the battered white stone median at mid-road

the exhaust fumes hit him, but the smell was the smell of the last

girl he'd worked on and took from behind in the manner of dogs. this



had occurred a while back.

too long a while back. she was from Quebec. he'd met her at party

at a friend's apartment. The friend was a white Jewish Rastafarian. He



fancied himself a percussionist but slung dope for a living. The friend



happened to live above,

I shit you not, a fish market, about 63 paces or so from the edge

of a tidal river on the North Shore of Massachusetts.

Danversport, Beverly. One of those towns. It might have been.

He wasn't sure of the name of the town. It was a lamely attended

party, at least by the time he got there. A Peter Tosh record was in the



CD player and blaring.

The RastaJew and three other young men sat apelike, passing spliffs,



congretgated around and totally consumed

by the violent colors and sounds of the dark urban rape-and-murder



fantasy emanating from a boosted X-box and a boosted Quasar 36-inch

television, all boosted from a local Wal-mart. No matter about the



boosting,

plenty of employee hide to cut that shrinkage out of, and plenty more

where that came from. This was the white Jewish Rastafarian's take on it

at least. He was the most frivolous, deadly serious, utterly dangerous buffoon

our hero had ever encountered. Our hero owed him money, but only a



small amount. Our hero knew the friend kept a Glock 9mm and clips

stashed in a black nylon laptop computer tote also stolen from Wal-mart

and kept beneath a bed. Our hero also drove drunk occassionally, and

rationalized the risks thusly.



But the girl from Quebec. Our hero, by the name of Ray, ended up, as I've

mentioned, at this time in the past too long ago for his particular

self-esteem's tolerance, working on her privatalia from behind, in the

manner of dogs.



Her name was Manet. He didn't ask her about it, never even thought

about doing so. The Jewish Rastafarian informed Ray in between

mouthfuls of cold Chinese spare rib caked with that pink stuff as they



were both in the kitchenette standing by an open refrigerator that she was tripping on LSD,

mid-trip, about 4 hours in. She was drinking Seagrams

margarita-flavored wine coolers in the living room, chain smoking Camel



Wides, Unfiltered, and lying on her back on the dipiliatory dirty vanilla

shag carpet, staring at the whirling ceiling fan. She was wearing a navy

blue knit jersey with a hood and baggy black warmup pants. Her socks



had holes in them and were filthy.



What she and Ray shared was a total lack of interest in the video game

in progress, and also 3 bong hits a piece. Oh and they were some

crumbly, stankie trees up in that bitch. She found nothing he said



entertaining in the least. She called him "wigga." Her voice was hoarse

from the butts. Ray thought she sounded like the Canuck Joan Rivers.

He told her so. She responded that he seemed like the kind of person



who probably liked to be pissed on. Ray said, I'm not the one doing the

talking, you french bitch. It was a good move. She warmed to his

insults. He verbally abused her a bit more, but in a very low and as



tender a voice as he could muster. He was aware it was working. Their

conversation went on in this soft, foul, antagonistic vein for more than an

hour.



The video gaming went on and on. Drinking began. Ray swigged from a

bottle of cheap ass brandy he found in a cabinet over the RastaJew's

stove hood. He had no idea whose it was, didn't care. A couple people



left. Then after a while there was something happening in the apartment's bedroom that

Ray hadn't been included in. Manet had been though. Ray heard some

sounds. A thump, a peep, an exhalation. A groan. You can probably



guess. I don't think I have to spell this one out for you.

Ray was out of smokes. There were none around. He exited the apartment

and walked a mile and a quarter up the side of the road to the Packie. Bought a pack of



Pall Malls and a 40 of Bull Ice. Headed back down the road. Went up the stairs

past the fish market and back into RastaJew's hideout. The dudes had all

left. Manet was hitting that bong. Then after a while he was hitting her



from behind in the manner of dogs. The smell as he ground away was pretty hot and also not so

hot. She was not in fact particularly clean. It was sickening and exiting.

There was a fleck of some dun substance on the back of one of her thighs.



Nothing like this had really happened for old Ray. Few girlfriends

in college. Couple misty hookups after bars. But this was grotesque,

dramatic, really depraved. He felt so. It was the best lay of his life, hands down. He



made it through like a champ. He thought anyway. He never found out what

Manet thought. Never saw her again. Thought about her a lot after. But

I gotta get back to this narrative so you'll have to wait for what he



thought.



It can't be said that he never forgot that smell. He did. And remembered

it only now, standing on the white crumbled median with 4 lanes traffic whooshing past,

2 per side, opposite directions, on his



way to the store to

get guess what a pack a Camel Wides Unfiltered, on the day his

olfactory glands went inexplicably and indecently to game,



the day before the next day which was when shit really started to get weird

look at me go



so I am writing now yeh I want to I got to

be a real writer now. and I was last night. and yow

it's going to take some time. you've pissed away enough years by

now so the feeling you want to elicit now is the way

you used to feel loitering in those artist's studios



where they let you play guitar and sing and sing you did

and drink you did and smoke you did

and this for the fear. but not too much now

or it'll hurt the work. but without it maybe

the work no gets done. so you use this as means

for a time



so last night I drank 11 of those damn Icehouse beers

yeh and 11 must be my limit because I woke up

face down on the couch and the dog was barking

at me from the kitchen. he'd scattered some plastic

grocery bags from the bag sock that hangs on a door knob



and he'd removed the tiny plastic plug from the small purple

squirt gun we keep by the sink for catfight prevention.

but he didn't chew the squirt gun and he didn't chew

any bags or anything so I got away with one. the time

was 1:38 a.m. I had long ago put the laptop away



but had already

written the poem below



the dog had to go to the bathroom like a mofo

so I took him out quickly and then realized I'd

forgotten to put on shoes but said fuck it so I walked

out in my socks. lit a butt. the dog squatted

and out came a lot. german shepherds as a breed



are notorious for their large, soft stools.

I went back in and made it into bed. overslept

till nearly 8 'cause my baby's away on a work

trip. made it in to my cubic hole by 9:30.

I am telling everything but what I came here to tell you



but now the Americans surrounding me are cackling and gamboling

away as usual causing me to reflect that it's no wonder

this country is so

fucked I mean talk about bad



administrative support

shit I got multifarious dope pent up blog entries for you

my darling my newly arrived one

but I can't get my dumb USB jumpdrive to work so I just have to tell you

about the jumpdream I had last night



and now. let's not get crazy. I already consulted my Magic 8 Ball

and the answer was: Oh no I terribly don't think so

and this was good because in the dream

I was 50 lbs. too heavy as I am now



and just generally not so fly although the kicker is

I'm more the fly now than ever before but it don't matter now

because I don't leave the woods these days. and uh

you should've seen how I pictured you in the dream



I kept all day today trying to capture that passing seduction

the eye thing you said silently when you said My Good Brother

I knew then that you knew and you knew that I knew

it was a thrilling dream but quiet



the town we were in was big as you but bigger than me

but I think I had the dream as a welcome back for you

baby the very least I could do

the very least

my dog is havin his nuts snapped off today

benedict tao



are you gonna be sad when I go he said and I said

yes sir and he said that's good that's good

because you're

taking over



I pointed out how slim

my qualifications were

but then it was pointed out

that so too were Buddha's



but actually they weren't

but Jesus' were. but I wanted

no part of that legacy nor he

but then an aide



said something about pull a

Bushido or an Elliot Smith

but in the end I pulled nothing

and instead pushed some others



who loved

their country

and thus the bombs started

falling

this country is fucked finished and fucked

in the worst sense a date rape a date rape drug

you all are fucked,

friends



ah god forbid you have a TV

god forbid you ah live ah here ah

woo boy a confederacy of cunt

dunces do not describe us



we are done we are done

can't you see

we are done for love of Uh

don't watch TV



or you will be of the dust

conclusion that We

Are Done

(sorry,



Abe L.)

we interrupt this loosely aggregated sense

of denial of torpor to bring you a mind

encased in deleterious human wax.

but you you just had nine hours of sleep fucker so you should be the game



yet lunchtime was a slick and soiled

bag of bile-soaked dope ticking for dark

masses recounted in white houses of shallow

bovinity post-post modernity and shit



his moms abused him because he was ugly

like she was too so go homeless till you

no go no more and no your life will not be

cast or a popular reality show



stupidity is the new chastity: remove plastic items

from penumbral orifices of elimination and reproduction

and fuck till blue.

fuck till blue,



fuck till blue.

yeah and

here's hoping

the next drink



is a good one