Sunday 25 November 2012

Citizen K (subsection D)



Who was this citizen #K ... and who gives a goddamn fuck, anyway? She too would be subject to the necessary scrutiny that any Org under constant threat of infiltration by the enemy required of its members. And yes, this was an exclusive Org. The defense of freedom was no ordinary task. No wafflers allowed. Same to any element unrelated or disinterested in the cause at hand. Background in advertising? See ya later. Witnesses to the revolution? Take a walk. Unless you have that light in your eye, that readiness we demand. No! birdwatchers need not apply. Investment bankers? Brokers? Well come on in, we need the ones who were insiders once and turned away forever. Potential secret weapons. They may know the enemy well! But are they akin to our cause? Come, come, let's talk. Veterans? yes, yes, we most certainly need purveyors and conduits of the imminent asskicking we are to prepare for the corporate slug. The proprietors behind them, shopkeepers and small business mom and pops? Yes yes! You know our pain so succinctly! Come to our table. Please.

EtruscanK-01.pngAce of spades carryied the flush. The Org. grew larger and larger in no time at all, despite one of two being turned away at the door. The leaders were many and came into clarity in no time. The others were drawn like magnets being magnetized. Clubs in the back sported diamonds, and threw darts at all the hearts. Half-alpha, half-numeric. Take a letter, take a letter! Oh, did you fail that test? Now you're numbered.

Halfway to her lips. Then citizen #K sang with them what had been held so close inside, close to her heart yet unable to breathe. Before now. Now the passsion spilled out like  the lyrics of economic injustices, bank fraud, white collar allowances and tax cut phobic politicos. Half-baked, her anarcho-socio-cap-in-your-ass-free range capitalism. Confessedly untried and untrue ideologies. Halfway out her shell and barely visible to the world yet, she offered all apologies. Everywhere she went, they locked arms with her. Less confusing, she believed, now there was some locus from which to act and, if necessary, act out.



Citizen K (subsection C)


The expectation was to defend the freedoms otherwise self-evident since the declaration of independence was emblazoned with signatures of the well known freedom fighters of the late eighteenth century, North America. Sadly, not one Native American put ink on this document. Which one could argue, demonstrated the self-evident hypocrisy of the time. Still, the natives would get their due, in time.

Okay. Anything less than complete immersion would be discarded. Anything other than Anarchy in its original form was unacceptable. The stakes were peak. No room for error. Whatever fell outside expectation became detritus, and emptied shells of varied ideas and opinions bore witnes to their having become decidedly nonextant.
EtruscanK-01.png

The defense of freedoms was weighed down by nothing but its own failing in defending the uninheritable lands and deeds and rights of the native peoples it so subjugated or neglected. Nothing could stop the momentum of the settlers settling. Until centuries later, when a parallel could be drawn between the Indigenous peoples efforts toward reclamation of their history, as it had been often so brutally and intentionally destroyed, and the great Thirst of the 21st century middle class, in its push to hold on to a democratic principle within a capitalist nation under siege by coporate interest, omnipresent.


Said lobby was arguably omnipotent, for it came in interwoven in the fabric of human life and lifestyle. However, it was this exact possibility (presumed not yet achieved) which created the space for an uprising to counter. AKA The defense of freedoms by awakened and courageous defenders of freedom subsequently giving of their time and energy towards the cause, the aforementioned expectation....the defense.




This did not and would not and could not preclude an Offensive! Citizen K held in her heart both a yearning for and precognition of the mass awakening of the middle class, in momentum and movement toward reclamation of freedoms deluged and undermined and in effect stolen from them by conglomerate lobbied interests foreign to them yet immediately impacting their quality of life in diverse yet consistently toxic and unacceptable fashion.


Citizen K (subsection B)



Shadowing herself seemed a nice way to revisit her own capacities. Particularly the ability to map, self[ orient.  Only through her innate abilities, might she return to her natural homeostasis, then produce her beats proper. Still. All this inner work could not be possible unless she maintain her understanding of and parallax with the external truth. The locus, the place. The context in which she might exercise her rights and her powers, judiciously, in the world. All of which required not so much success on any level, but a more tangible, objective criteria...

EtruscanK-01.png
A level of cash. A measure of cream. A maintenance of the corps vitality. Providence in the form of food and shelter, and, the new element recently introduced to the system (and still vastly misunderstood); nutrient psychopharmaceuticals. She knew about sustenance. She allied with providence. She had only to choose her method. How to proceed. And as the 21st century steamed on, metal theft on your local graveyard shift, USA, began to appeal to her as a means to this very end. Of course, her goal would be metallic reclamation. Not theft. Theft was a sentence they might give her, when they denied the claims. They always denied any existence of source ownership, placing reclamation efforts in jeapordy.



 Yet they themselves introduced nothing, no deed or title, to demonstrate any claim or ownership of the particularly vital material element at stake. This was the vulnerability through which the courageous might enter at great risk of material life, a point whereby the house of cards might be finally named and revealed, thus to take the monoliths down. Proof of insubstantiate cancer polluting our freedoms. Trespassing our rights. Destroying our country's original authenticity. The promised freedoms outlined and secured in the amendments and the constitution itself.

Follows . Nov 2011 post. Citizen K (A)

Thursday 27 September 2012

Just b4 midnight

And know the night if you will, stop your ritual sleep for a change, let your ritualism evolve and rearrange the composition of your waking hours presence...

Then watch what blossoms once you plant that seed in the ground of your fresh modified behavior  (not sponsored by kaiser fyi).

You may find yourself a lover of great opportunity in graveyard shift land... shifty shifters free to apply. Endless coffee all night. Sunrise there to greet you when you clock
                            the fuck
                                      Out!

Sunday 23 September 2012

like sunlight hits your sunday

this might be a spiral, this moment in time. this moment with its long tail of bad bad news delivered up to the countryside wraparound porch monkeys,  eating bananas for the potassium required in a county known for an atmosphere which depleted the nutrients in the air to a level whereby the lungs took in more toxins and...  And nothing. I'm out

Thursday 12 July 2012

One three five am.

Not just another night. If she really evolved, she believed there would never be just another night, ever again. She had the restlessness to make it so. Her life.

Here she was well made-up to her five feet, seven inches of her. Add a low heel inch and a styled up do to catch her somewhere between five nine and ten. Like she liked. Out on a ride in a 1994 primed but not painted el camino with her friend. West to east Oakland for some business he had to settle.Then they started on back west.  She could breathe easy again.
Am i gonna have sex tonight? was a question crossed her mind, and which she entertained out of boredom. No stupid questions, right? She could not really know, might as well get the answers from the stars. So she could fantasize or try and get real about it, or worry how she looked. Or just let it pass with all the other nonsense she found renting space in her pretty head.
 A few years ago, she wouldn't have had to ask.
A couple years ago, it was more like 50/50.
Last year the numbers were all over the map. She was purposefully unpredictable.
Glen Echo Ritual by K
 This year, the ratio was probably one out of ten.
Sex took a backseat to other aspects in her life, in her chart, in her modus operandi.
She focused on working on her art projects, projecting a certain style, walking that fine balance between her comfort and the thrilling (and scary) place which was like an edge she walked. Carefully.
 She had little choice, once she set her mind to setting out any night with him. Based on some of the trauma and thrills mixed up in her recent years experience of the streets (within the wide light he cast encircling them both and more. She was fortunate even to get the chance to stand in these circles, under his protective watch. She thought so. Most of her people (where she was from) would have and did warn her against this kind of company she kept. In almost every case, she realized they simply misunderstood why she did what she did. Some thought it was because she had been spoiled as a child. Some thought it her own selfish rebellion. Some thought she was thirsty to get high. Some thought her a slut. Others explained it away as her having fallen off track, lost her mind, become criminal-minded, become lazy. Or that she just was insecure and did not know who she was. A grown child! they marvelled over their foie gras. Stuffing their necks like the geese before them. Eating like food was the panacea for anxiety. Stuffing themselves, mindlessly, with worried glances one to the other and back, reverberating in an unatrractive way across country club putting greens.
Nah, she could no longer care nor stress about what people thought. If they thought those things, they were hardly anymore her people. Maybe by blood or origin. But she defined her people nowadays, and her people were people with whom she shared a mutual respect and love. People whose company she shought out.
She was quite mature, really. She had her mind on her presence. Her mind on mindfulness.
When out in the streets, she kept vigilant. She loved her life, that's why. And safety was no given out there for a girl like her. In her early twenties. Hot by most mens standards. Hot by most women's standards as well. Whether they would admit it or not. And hot was not just sexy and beautiful like it used to mean in the seventies and eighties. No, hot now encompassed such qualities in her possession as intelligent, stylish, unique....someone who many stopped to look at or think about or smile toward. (Or hate. Like haters love to do).
The only degradation of her status from hot, in her experience, were the times (infrequent, fortunately) when someone thought and then expressed (either vocally or another way) : slut! aka whore! aka toss up! aka junkie! All of which, though inherently unmistakably untrue, still made her feel thoroughly unloved. And as she knew now that she was done crying over that bullshit: she understood how misunderstood she really was by the haters. The ones easy to envy, easy to fear, easy to narrower-constructed paths and visions etched within the parameters of those who taught the art of envisioning one's life through the lens of some asshole's vision superimposed upon their whole young and manipulated souls.
If she cried, she cried for the haters the original haters made hate.
Okay, enough about her equals love and beauty, prevailing against a red tide of haters. She was truly, at times, exactly what the worst of them suggested she was. She saw her darkness quite clearly. She accepted as much of herself as she could, good and bad. She could take the heat. She would not duck in denial of those parts of herself she also wished she could disown, for real. Like the promiscuity in recent years. But then again, she was stimulated in alot of ways, and she responded with honest desire. She got a lot of consequences from her behavior, you know. It was not exactly a sleigh ride in a winter wonderland. Well, there was sure enough snow to go around. Snow and flow and freestyling motherfuckers high on blow.
But that shit got old. fast. She certainly did not hit the streets for it. She had lots of subtle reasons to style her life the way she styled. And the simplicity of getting into a man's car not knowing what the night held in store, freed her from the choices of which there were too many to count.
The rush she felt was akin to all sorts of rushes her mom and best friend Rachelle and her brother described to her all the time when she was a little naive nothing sitting at the dinner table looking at her nails in their beautiful unchipped glossy fineness.
Yeah, she did nails. She was a miss manicurist back then, high school, all cause she made a bad french nail. Everyone thought her nails were salon quality work. She had a steady hand, and back then she had a strong sorta focus.
Looking now at her beat up half-chewed to the bit, chipped like a mother kinda delapidated shanty of nailbeds, she could only laugh. She easily traded off the endless boring nights reading cosmo, trying to find her style, her fashion, her self... nights now had no comparison. Usually.
The good ones were fucking great!
The bad ones were terrible and sometimes but not often, scary.
The usual ones were the usual people whom she knew, had established trust on levels from hypervigilance to the kinda ease the good guys set her in. The guys who cared about her. Who wanted her to be happy and challenged her to handle herself like a grown woman.
The guy she was going out with tonight was one of those. Not a pimp but only because he didn't fit any stereotype. Not a boyfriend cause he knew and even enabled her dating. Not a john cause even though it may have started that way, they both meant more to one another than either expected they would from the start.
From the start he was just some dude on a couch in the apartment of some sweet much-known and loved transvestite who held company while his wife was out working her nine fiver. She would go there to try on the always wonderful room half-full of clothes they all picked through. Replete with the most thirsted after labels a girl could have her heart set on.
Then he was to her just some dude half-watching the big screen tv, half-the-time on the phone working out the next paycheck, the next meal, the next ways of means to make life tolerable in the states. Which of course required cream. Meaning cash. He found a way to walk her home one night, and they began to see how good they could be for one another, and to manifest exactly that. No strings.
Tonight he was taking her somewhere, possibly to chill and see some of the girlfriends she laughed with over stupid shit. Hopefully not with any of the bitches who hated her for her looks and envied her her relationship with him, which most saw was somehow a little deeper than he had with most chicks.
Never tight like he was with his people, not tight like he was with his main business partners. Not to be held up to flesh and blood. Nor his two ex-wives. Whatever it was, the je ne sais quoi that was them, was not to be competed against, compared with, or anything like that. Much less high maintenance. She often thought about him, one three five am, and she continued to pick up his calls (despite a temptation to let the intensity of it all cool for a while) and continued to go on these nights trusting him...because she felt freshness, she felt love, she felt protected. What they had was honest.
He was literally the only dude she met in the past five years when she inadvertently found herself in the company of a bunch of the kinda people they said Jesus used to hang with. You know the kind. From the far side of the tracks (far from that hollywood plastic kinda sparkle). The dark side (cause the tax bracket was weaker, and city services were half-assed). The fast food on every other corner side. The shoes hanging over the telephone wires side. The side of town mom & pop shops rule. The 99 cent store side. The crack whore side. The you thought you knew poor? side.
For Raccoon by K
The street smarts acquisition curve was climbing over here. Atleast hers had. Though she had no fear at the start, and her self-confidence kept her safe for a little while, she realized quickly she become a mark. Someone to be manipulated and taken advantage of. But the markers wanted a mark, and made her what she wasn't simply because she came into view. Not so. The world does not work to please markers. The world may be an assemblyline of marks, but she was not in line for it. She was to see to that. And he was to see to that, through his connection to her. Well thank goodness! she thought, when she found herself protected. Attempted plays for a mark. Failed attempts. Instead, she became respected. Then by many cherished.
Today, hmmmm she wondered. Not really a mark by the look of her. Certainly dressed appropriate. Daisy dukes over tights. All-stars on the feet to soften the sexual enticement. Makeup done subtle (not garish) for the touch of sophistication. Jewelry light but clearly chosen chains, bracelets, earrings. And only her favorite necklaces. She forged a wide-eyed open attitude with some ability to trash talk in a fierce and freestyle way, when necessary, and often just for fun, just fucking around. This served to let someone with whom she was unacquainted know she was comfortable with herself, and in any circles, street or academic. She could make ya laugh (if you weren't a natural born hater).
Tonight? Tonight she had no fear, no worries, and a strong desire to get laid. Probably and hopefully if she could coax him to drive toward the northwest side of town. Where the gentrification was mad furious. Where two diametrically opposed hoods came together in some eye of some culture storm.
Yes! she felt her heartbeat later as they headed up grande avenue. She popped another strawberry hi-chew in her mouth, and his, then did a show-n-tell on pink gone neon pink tongues. His tongue was wide as fuck! She laughed, he asked why, and she laughed some more.
By the time they were turning into that old 7-11, she had a laugh or two out of him. Which left her first in tears, then steady smiling until smiling had long gone out of fashion. The scandalous bitches rolled their eyes all night long. They only wish they knew what the hell was to smile about, when there was so much picking on, up, and off still to do.
Hard work, being miserable, she thought to herself.
Then decisively struck out on her own.

Saturday 9 June 2012

some encouragement

She had enough consciousness to still her choices in a frame she materialized before her. What she found when examining the quality of her apprehension (at least 15 minutes daily, if she were to add the seconds together), was a choice to deaden the jaded voice.She decided to work on the deadening aka character assassin in her.

 Hey! that's a sick thought, motherfucker! the voice taunted her.
She was a mean bitch, that voice.
That voice wanted her dead.
No mercy.
All you got out of that exceptional experience was that one sick thought?
the voice teased.
Fuck you! she swore at that damn little voice, that whore.
The voice knew her well.
Knew her,
knows her,
and will know her again.

Character assassination the process, once developed, takes less than half of one second to boot up, upon recall! Which might have seemed a gift, were it some swank new cell phone or tablet on the market. Laptops take your mark, set, stumble out into the new swirling waters of fresh clouds and death-defying boot cliques! Leave your hard drives at home! Don't even bother with the clones.

Character assassination does not need the presence of the lord to occur.  No, this brutal homicide needs nothing but the object of derision to be triggered, launched and manifest. In any company, under any circumstance, and without anybody's permssion! The supreme court need not hold her in contempt.

 The day may be partly sunny or dropping burning ice like frozen daggers. The weather need not cooperate whatsoever. Her experience was of such breadth and depth by age thirty to be a counterforce equal if not exceeding the intuited balance of venom flashing to strike her body in any instant forced upon her, hot to the touch, dead serious in expansion like the assemblyline division of cancer cells in the stricken organ, and capable of leaving her cold numb and never to be heard from again.

No, she was not dumb to this! She had suffered the shaking death oh too many times if not once!
She was older than she looked, older than she felt or seemed to others. She may have been wise beyond years, but oh so desperate beyond cares. And her force would take a fight off the ropes.

First blood and first reaction, like pulses in one pod indistinguishable to the naked senses! so effortlessly fluid together at once, in that one precise moment when all dies had been cast.
Chance only surfaced in the cards, in the stars, in the odds, in the numbers. All else was predetermined by weight of experience and full presence rolling time to zeros for fresh confrontation.

Still. She was non-violent. So any blip on the intuition screen of her mind of her surroundings before heading out, would cause her to take pause and breathe and ground herself for clarity of the signal to be ascertained. She honored herself this way like she had failed to honor herself in her youth. This was essential.

Some would presuppose or suppose, that her life was a tragedy playing out to certain loss or heartbreak. They would unabashedly suggest to her these beliefs!

She used to feel compassion towards them, if she believed they cared about her as well as themselves.
But now she would cut them short with her laughter, for life as she knew it? was absolutely irresistable and undeniable and mysteriously light and colorful when she could see beyond the burden it lent her.
No one could claim a greater thirst for it, this life! than her.

Neither could anyone claim to have lived, if they could stand there stupid and blind to her own! Her sorrows were great, yet her awakening was thorough and cast wider and deeper channels among squabbling currents and radiating fields of electromagnetic conjecture. Thoroughfares of panic scattered like light, yet not necessarily coming up against the peaceful full quiet of celestial orbit paths in ritual apparent constant cycles in the shadow of universal change and chaotic dionysian contrast.

You, too, are of value, of worth infinite, and she prays that your soul finds home, finds some sun, some light to be lit by. For she will tell you if you come to come across her and smile when you meet, both, she will tell you no different but surely altogether not the same...

a simple gesture or saying or empathic insider-true heart-rendering; each of us share in the burden put upon us, each of us take what we give, or suffer thieves and keep giving, hold back some then to suffer more still, until....we push back disease and come back to our senses, and give back what any can see life has lent us!

 Thus is the magic and mystery unravelled, trust in it like self and with time's passage, the age on your aura will bring the world to your soul like the moths to flame, and your spirit will be full any day you depart us.
 Full and as young as the day you first felt her, your spirit, inside you, the brilliant day of your awakening to her. Your day of true birth. The day you began living your life. The day you came along and were you and only you.

Thursday 31 May 2012

Have 21st century kids. with a side of industrial plastics.


or
Part II (of 5/29 dirge)


twenty first century kids
might care less about
fallen by and by
numerically larger
hyped
dimensions

this might really bother the mind
to consider
what 21st century kids
care about

psychologically
tripping on what
one suspects
21st century kids
could care less 4...

i think i'll have a
hormonal imbalance today
and a side of
industrial plastics
please

then segue
through the
monoxide blue
toll takers
into
my own
 
smart-ad-bombed
corporate
eco-calibrated
anti-wilderness

21st century kids
 notwithstanding --
 it hurts! 
(life, presumably)

 i tried everything!
(so to escape, presumably)

 jailbreaking my android
flushing my gps signal
setting privacy controls to
three- U's:
unmapped
unincorporated
unconnected

i even called the omniscient-G
like china
and demanded
they map my island apart
from all other islands
and unique to my wishes

g unfortunately
used my call to nail my g.wallet
a past due amount
from some cell phone skins
i purchased last month

i am researching how it was
that china put the fear into
them, damn it!
 shit, i am using their search
engine!

No! 
i tried 2 sound convincing
 i will not let any fucker know my
longitude or latitude!

i tried visualizations
Taller than walls
my firewalls!

the bathroom glass
 looked disdainfully back

i tried desperately
pushing estate
 sales of
location history on c.list
then
burying all former permissions
 i could find on myself
testing
poly-profile forensics

i found myself
 vacating gaps
writing over all zeros
in what formerly was known as my
free space

 how did they come up with
this shit!? 
who owns clouds? 
beside myself

i forced the author to
grant continuance on this
post, which was a bitch in hell
let me tell you


to b continued...

Tuesday 29 May 2012

and on. and on. listen vs talk. take one. (a poem or dirge).

never ask no one 2 listen...
why?
...
can you anymore?
(listen)
everybody cannot!

everybody
is now akin to
nobody

so i say
so i say so.
sorry i say so violently

you and i
we know better!
(we know)
we know damn well
what we are
not


every smaller division of cutup
into front/rear differential
upper/lower case hills
acute/obtuse felt sense
of ten diff. type strata
of the now
formerly known as
chills

even Ken Wilber
might struggle
to ID that level!

a certified hospital?
a medical institution?
on the top of pill hill!

every Darwinist
might concur defeat

every accomplished
identity thief might agree
not to 

every Tibetan monk might
lose interest quick...

strike a squirrel pose
with hands
 playing sunlight

every shadow
another possible animal

Platonic wet dream
on every french caveman
cavewall

tabula-cave-rasa?

nah.
car insurance co.'s
 comic relief in form
fills the ad-days
the sad-days the
salad days...

every caesar dying every 
scandalous which way
and let me say:
oh manson-may-i?
helter-fuckin'-skelter! ha!


try and copywrite that,
manson.... son of man son.
son of cave man son
held for holy ransom...


its hell its hot out
its gonna be a fuckin' melter
liquid liner
every designer
fashion faux-pas
fuck you too!
hip nyc
coffee fuckin'
table
book mother
loving
ocean
skys
atmospheric
neon
pink
nightmare
scratched with silver.

fuckin
liner!

every hot hell day
in every goddamn way
the useless hopeless half of me
throws it out like a dirty
wish to wish upon
the wishful wishfullikins:

i'm a love you
i'm a love me
i'm a love the kids
i'm a love the vegans
i'm a join the heathens
i'm a crazy mad season!

(or somethin' like)

i'm back in court
for his and hers, moms and pops
and a backup set
of
guilty until innocent
charge
i took for ya in the colon
charge of treason....

(which continues on and on like)

for none
and paradoxically
every
unintelligible
conscious
buddha blown
god drone
pantheon
pant-sewn
patch
of patchouli
stinkin'
rose of
religious
fearless
freedoms...

(can i buy a rhyme? and on)

my huguenot
brothers
sisters
my daughter
of american
revolution
revolving
credit
union
drawn revolting like
mowed
lawn-hair!

(and some passion plea play like mrs dash
to bring it all back to sense again or somethin')

take me
im your pawn!
im your prawn yes your little
prawn
with a little head pink and shaved
kinda pub crawled public mauled
pubic stage of maturity
fuck the fuckin' reason!

the reason.
son.

pop-n-park your popcorn
right here, bitches!
we got aluminum
interference
on the
homeland
hotspots

hike skirts
torn shirts
twisted lifestyles
twice fucked
flirts

come one
come every one
ok?

join my screw-2-the-loo
group
invite
happening
bed-in
event
worklivefuck
space
cubicle
countdown
4:20 flightdeck

fantasy starved
adult video store
niche-carved
eddy--pulled
nook-shook
artwalk
opentalk
factoforum
bdsmall
fuckfest
peeps-deep
pandemic
colonic
no
fun
cell-sized
phonic
week
long
kick.
sic

south of
suck-cess-city
Unity
Slug
Ass
festival
every
endless
fearful
year

and
on

and
on

a
non

Monday 21 May 2012

latitude twisters in the rush of right now! (final-edit-lost)

Today it was may. Spring dropped the sun into our sky, and our sky turned a soft gentle blue with a royal lineage tarnished only by the eco-pollution puffs of refractory gray-whites slowly unraveling into the low voltage vacuum which inevitably picked up pace and pulled every living air being into the jetstream, like it or not, or one of a few jetstreams of which one had little choice to free agent out and demand a home.

Today it was may for K, and K had no home except the ones intangible. That is not to undermine or underemphasize the magnitude of having any home at all, for an intangible home was better than no home at all, mind you. You are minded. Domed. (not brained, for such would be a violence and violences were not tolerated in these parts). Nevermind. The mind is being pulled into never. Not ever. Never.

This is a bad happenstance which occasions K today. Today in May. K is off to one side of K. Witnessing K (by the way). Thank god-dieu merci. For this ability allowed for one to see one coming or going, but better yet to anticipate both good and bad happenstances of all flavors and types. Almost like your antivirus might scan an file before it dishes it into the hard drive bowl. If its rubbish, it gets the hook! 86! If its protein, it gets put into the bowl for electronic digestion.

An opening. An ending, yet a commencement and thus a paradox like how you feel conflicted on your day of graduation of any sort, kind, ritual. Well, that was how K felt. How K described the feeling. Or would if asked or invited or begged to do so. She would comply. (Unless the affiliation were of the sour apple kind of vine). K considers herself of highest caliber. Meaning honest in practice not nature. Meaning benevolent in an empathic, compassionate kind of way. Definitely not elite or better than you. Certainly not morally positioned to look down upon others (unless others happened to be sociopaths or murderers).

Anyway, pretty harmless, that K. Much less turbulent than the jetstream pulling all matter without discrimination into its high velocity air channels. Like latitude twisters, some said. Others saw them predominantly as helpful aeration and circulatory organs of the sphere on axis spin semi-tilt, in otherwise fixed or non-variable predictability, in any given span of thousand or couple few thousand annuals. Clearly their was tension and disagreement among inhabitants of imperfect sphere, as to the effectiveness of naturally arising streams of fast moving air kept close by force of gravity and others.

katya by kalikila.
Of course, dark matter was a whole new wax ball with a potential core of life-altering elements yet unknown origin and interaction or exposure to said atmosphere. So jetstreams were left for farmers and their almanacs. Some of which were now read on e-machines rather than off parchment. Trees everywhere breathed a collective sigh of relief, and converged to determine how to best express gratitude to technologies developed to save their skin. Literally.

All of which was critical to K. And K now knew what once she had no gratitude for herself. Having been ignorant once. Only once. Only once per life lived. Who K was before and after this sunny may day, meaning today, may be relevant and could be referenced (if queried). However, contextually, materially, tangibly manifest and smelled, tasted, felt, seen, heard, and interacted with.... before and aftertimes were faded out to the spotlight of the magic of the beauty of the undenying impartiality and potential immeasurable adrenaline rush of right now.

Author notes: Unfortunately I lost an hour and a half of complicated editing of this piece, as my hotspot went down because my nexus lost power... so in this rare occasion, i have decided to post the barebones piece at its last saved point, which gets the idea across and maybe the feeling, but is not whole by any means. I wont be re-finishing this. 

Friday 11 May 2012

may eleven, twenty twelve. more thoughts on NH.

 Where there are trees, there are fires. Alot of controlled fires in the pine forests of NH. Most of which were smokeouts safely wrapped behind the sternum and tangential to the sacs at the ends of networks that make up the lungs. Alot of lungs in a state of recycle from a quarter century of casual freerolling tobacco pinners, ritual made mornings to calm the whole organism mental and physical, for each and every slightly unpredictable afternoon of attention and presence toward the community here  understood as having slid off benchmarks long since established and become landmarks. Like pine become oak. Hardened to dead solid. Respected like a wall. Not respected so much as a known entity and spoken of as such. Like goddamn it! I accidentally ran the snowplow dead set into the old Oak tree lee side of Smith's rock! Everyone would know what ya meant when you said such. Locally.

The young families of the lakes region NH who sourced locally, were typically well-educated (though often self-educated), working class in nature (with varying degrees of industriousness), lightly scarred by nuclear family proclivities toward violence and insensitivity....misogyny and sexualizing the burden of most women, but taken on and often handled the best a girl can handle trauma. The children were always loved except when they were not. But usually somebody could love each and every child, if that child was not in some isolative place. Men and sons and brothers were still likely in the taking up of arms of diverse typology (anything according to what one could reasonably within the law beg steal borrow or finance out for themselves) when any issue become too emotional or overwhelming to be handled well (settled). Often a family affair of long running depth could end up getting beat back down to size. Most did not prefer this way, however it ran in the blood of many. And so was manifest. Often against the wishes of atleast one pacifist in any family system tied into the Ten (what i call the greater systemics).

Meaning the community and the families that made up the community, was represented by the Ten. Ten being that simple way of moving a decimal point to quickly comprehend larger mathematics by scale. Taught commonly in schools in twenty-first century USA. So plumbers, truckers, traffickers of goods, fences, barbacks, yoga studio owners, microbrew entrepreuners, corner store clerks, cashiers, DIY loan lenders, DIY in home thievery, used car saleswomen, children as young as probably three years old, or as old as forty-five just learning the rudimentary trick. Just push and pull that little black type point in and out the fold, depending on how you are working or manipulatin' numbers, or gettin' manipulated at any given juncture... The lesson of the Ten was a lesson worth learning to most in this socio-economic strata of the country, and worth a few precious moments of what's left of anyones attention span, one would think.

And most everyone did. Except some weren't done being ignorant. Some were overly attached to their Ritalin and or their ADHD or ADD diagnoses. Which was also fine. A choice. And some chose to judge them, but mostly did not. For Ritalin was a widespread panacea to disobedient and otherwise non -compliant kids of the eighties. Some weren't done conning. The others weren't done being conned.

The transactional nature of all human affairs inevitably led to the two aforementioned encampments becoming more or less prominent. Could be as simple as changing bills with a stranger. Here's a twenty for your two tens. A crisp twenty for two old hamiltons. You gotta feel good about that. Hamilton wasn't much to write home about. Certainly no Franklin! No Lincoln. No Clinton. No Roosevelt. In fact, he might just barely resemble a Romney on a cloudy humid poor excuse for a summer afternoon in Wolfeboro, NH.  Romney with an inedible scaleback sunfish on his hook flopping to be released. Romney with a post elect scowl possibly, and straps from the lawn furniture on the dock, imprinted on his back from the weight of him. After an unbearably cold dawn swim. With a bodyguard trying his hardest to just fade into the shadow of a fiberglass laminated bow of an antique wooden campaign cruiser at the bottom of a pencilled in expense account list, waterlogged at the base of the  inboard cover, in that uncomfortable place where one would hope to be able to fittingly sum it all up: where the rubber meets the road! But the road is a lake and not a road, and so casts off the baseboards like driftwood-- but not like driftwood because its not. Maybe a liberal feeling in the atmosphere. Or just a reflection of a mormon element introduced into a state less familiar to mormonism, thus marginalizing the scene. Yes it can get complicated if you stray far from the Ten.

So here you have you with your crisp bill, the Dub,  the double dime, the twenty.  You who may not be done getting conned, and may or may not know it. Or may be an innocent victim. Or an innocent so-called victim who chooses not to be a victim because money is in this case not an object or at least not renting any extra time or leasing any space in your head.

So a real unaffected wise man or woman, according at least to one opinion (if maybe your own, still viable, still counts, like following your own page or blog, for instance). Not perhaps worthy of a half minute of choice words around anybody's dinner table or business meeting. But still extant in the moment. Man and bill. Bill and man. Putting aside all accessories however vital, from cigar cutters to vistaprint business cards to lobster bib tucked away in a tourist destination mariner's rescue kit of some disgusting sort, conceived of and put together by a few frozen asses around a carved out fish hole in the New Hampshire deepfreeze winter, probably a couple twelve-packs into a Meister-Brau and waiting too long for the bass to bite, and not much longer than it takes to jot down somewhere the rudimentary idea to help carve holes into the tourists fannypacks the following summer, as locals are obliged and certainly licensed to do...

Short of theft and long on cute lake crap out of towners hauled home for some goddamn reason no one up there would ever care to know. Nor dare to report. God forbid any such nonsense be found on their person. A great bellyaching hurt would be put upon them, this was certain. For which they would offer thanks. To keep them tried and local true. A kinda purification ritual, no doubt....
Coming back to the twenty dollar bill, the exchange, the con and the conned, and the rest. So crisp it seems counterfeit somehow, the twenty. Like an overstarched shirt collar. Or many, for that matter. Or nothing but starch, hold the collar, light on the shirt. Its own inertia could not be expressed like that, if the one describing the scene actually expected to be a credible witness... unless they were absentee from the class. Or masterful at masking and misrepresentation, which in itself sounds suspicious if not malicious. So?

So here in NH, a great land and loved!! We will have the freedom. The choice to stop and stop at once, no lollygagging about in this soup of crap words (not if you hope to have any kind of decency or respect in this land, okay). Seriously. Wake up. Wake the fuck up. Pretenders stop pretending. Locals suffer and love and work. Work and suffer and love. Tourists tour. Politicians pull up camp for a while. Locals tend to their homes need tending. And charge a prized inflated rate, for sure. And spend the extra on fudge at the fudge shop. And earmuffs and gloves and salt for the winter. Yes. This is how it is done. And no one comes in and does it any different, at least not without any success in effecting change. Not over the long haul. Well...that kind of thing would certainly be rare and not well remembered, by most. Possibly lost in the pines, held out on the mournful chord of any loon any august late night, or june. Possibly held tight and together in the rational of the Ten, or anysomesuchconcept that approaches what the writer efforted to convey, with all the best of intentions. With love for the NH people and land and lakes and all. amen. 

Wednesday 2 May 2012

86 the tv. installment #2


The negative ionic charge of the failed experiment within an experiment, gave way to a ripple of change from the laboratory through the sub-basement floors, up out through the vents in the concrete, then surrounded the campus and trekked out into the lungs of the populace,  then filtered out back into words which found their way back to the auditors of electric company utilities boardroom discussion of routine adjustments on the graphic equalizer of city lighting.

The postmortem of the day was to follow said discussion. Which details looking back upon any error of operations of anyutility, anywhere. Postmortem. To see what could have been done differently to prevent the death (mortem). Postmortem being the ideal way to accomplish an teaching moment, or a moment like sixties commune idyllic living experiments, or an gathering with L.Ron. Hubbard in the easy way he seemed to have to soothe the collective conscious into a smooth groove. Or any other charismatic, for that matter. Postmortem, because the course has completed its damage, and therefore all passions toward choices and possibilities dissipate. So people can hear people and not talk over them and such. Fascinating. Isn't it? I could go on. But I think I killed it.

Funding cannot be left out of the conversation, if anyone were to be taking anyone else seriously. If anyone were to be on the take. Seriously. Someone must be, or else there is a  vacuum. But the place isn't that clean? I wouldn't sit on the carpet if I had two broken legs. Unless of course, we were on the ever so critical topic of FUNDS. Funding fills all vacuums anyway. We depend upon it like fossil fuels. We know we oughta get away from it, far away, but we cannot.

The fuckin' funding! In that one location on the web which cannot ever be redesigned. For it falls into that central place, potent yet interdependent and interconnected to all threads. Yeah. Like intel or google or apple or microsoft. The proprietary stuff cannot not be leased in order to achieve equilibrium. One can try. One can hope. One can pray. But the spider's gonna be pretty pissed off to come home and find a bare spot of air, then drop down on a mainline thread to the mass of useless webbing on the forest floor.

He's gonna find ya, the spider, and shoot ya full of poison for what ya did. Not looking after the funding. Ya. It's not what you wanna think about most of the time, for sure, you wanna believe your here creating and bursting with energy! (which you very well may be) However do not make the mistake and for a minute block out the true nature of your embedded link to the funding. Try and respect it, honor it, and don't keep all your efforts locked in a chest for no one to share in. (Remember, fun is part of funding). Not if you want to be true to the nature of the life in the world that is yours and mine and ours. Nah, believe me, I wanted to see things that way. I tried to inflict upon myself some kind of personal self and only self-dependency for years. In Chicago. But I could not ever shake it, the funds, the virtual branded image and reality of the funds.

Shit, I am basically talking about the paper chase. USA inner city style.  Those who try to escape this, will be forever accosted by the undeniable truth -- until tears and salt water are all that is left of us. Not unlike water released from a sponge, this process. Which happened THERE!  in that boardroom during the postmortem, when the negative ionic charge wrapped itself around the attendees, the suits, those undeniably in lockstep with one lobby or another.

The resulting counterpunch was like an active element come to life. Most immediate! A positive reinstatement of charge returned from the electric company grid through wire to linked wires hung by telephone pole that.... oh fuck it all! So the TV got turned on again!

That is all that happened. I had no control over it, I swear. And no. I do not want to get into a postmortem on the subject. 

Monday 30 April 2012

86 the tv



TV. Hold the life. 

(revision of life. hold the tv)
aka (life by lobotomized heads)


Okay,  clocking in an estimated 48 days, 24 hours, 12 minutes, 6 seconds since the experiment called life was set off its training wheels aka independent of its final dependency, the lightbox, aka tv, the experiment conducted upon the experiment called life, labelled simply ...

Operation: EIGHTY-SIX-THE-TV !

 Proved unequal to the challenge of surviving the universe without the support of said dependency (tv). Therefore the stringent set of regulations as usual rained down upon us scientists from some board of some headlining corporation we were supposedly accountable too... (?) and only after the tenth time in as many hours, did we answer the rapping at the laboratory door (a garage back of a brick double decker two flat in an soon to be revealed location). For we all already had advil migraine tabs in us, and yet this little miracle of a pill could not wall out the annoying sound of knuckles on hardwood.

Friday 27 April 2012

We will have soap opera. Hold the tv.

               I know my silence or my inability to console you had me locked up, frozen in the moment, behind the glass, behind the rain hitting the glass... but no, truly i want you to know you are wrong to think I was somehow careless with it. With you and your feelings. With my own? Na, it ain't so.  I cared and its important to me... if you care about me you will not deny me that I am someone who would do all i could do in a situation falling apart, like you. Because you would, wouldn't you?

 

               You would. you would take it all the wrong way. you would focus your lens on the possibility we wouldnt be alright. you would see hear feel nothing nice. i would cover the other senses you missed. we almost fought over it sometimes, our senses. our lenses. our viewpoints could become physiological. not just witnessed. not just intellectual. not just verbal. we tore each other up sometimes. we hurt bad sometimes the next day. both of us.


konglomerate by k

             Hurt bad, but not just physically. Our hurt went back in from our bruised skin back into the mental swamp of burdensome negative creep land. Luckily there's no tv so you get spared the CSI reenactment and regurgitation of what i just described. Hold the tv may have sounded unfair. for a soap opera, i mean. But now you're glad they held the tv, aren't you? Just like mayonaisse could have poisoned all the girlscouts on that exceptionally hot day they hiked the mountain that was really a hill. five hours of mayonaisse in the sun is fit to kill, i mean. 

            Then both of us left crestfallen and silent. Too tired of not getting to do anything responsible. Too young to be too tired to capitalize nothing. Not even a vertical line over a dot. Yeah, its been learned. But if it's used, it's used to express upset or anger, not so much exhilaration unless the kids are faking exhilaration. It's not hard to do.

 

            We would be waiting then. Awaiting and waiting and anticipating and anti-participating. Anti-anyone who shoved into a bakesale and shoved them out through the in doors. Hopefully some burst of amnesty. This is where the ribbon of hope fluttered with offbeating hearts all a-murmer in the warmer months of the cold comfort climate changes between them and inbetween us. We would be warned, if we were lucky. We would be lucky if we understand emotional mind before emotional mind became a topic in group therapy. 

 

A real fucker. Who gets a good deal? Who really does? As you open your eyes, the way I saw things, well... you lost friends over it. The culture. The attitudes. The competition. The saying shit you dont really mean. The synchronized treading water. The saying and behaving just to hurt someone back because your hurt, right? We can see the scars when the sweat sticks them to your shirt. Or like if i said like i used to make new friends. no! More dead ends. 

bw konglomerate by k

This was cool. this was right. really painful mornings waking up. of course. lots of nightmares, you know. vivid ones. by the afternoon usually felt kinda even, balanced maybe, and the evenings were knock down drag outs with us. Live in a tight space like us, and see how you really feel. You really feel tight screwed. 

 

i was bad off....i was aware of it....i thought a long time about doing somethin' about it....then i tried to do something about it....i had to wait....i had to locate patience in my stressed tired self....it wasnt so hard....i figured things out...i had a working plan with clear choices...but of course i had to deal with the damn Department, and work something out cause i was bad off like i said. They told me about the process and then i stopped working. and then i got a little lost and confused in my mind...for days...and so much for my working relationship -- i got 'terminated'. A difficult word to receive. I cried alot. We cried alot alot alot that day. Well, it was me crying but i knew we were both so sad. 

 

But I would have to take things less as they were gone and never to be again, but more so as they were coming. Faster and faster and in my face. Like a hot desert wind blowing sand into pores. Kinda intimate and warm. Filling up some of that emptiness we shared. Maybe this would continue. Hopefully so. But maybe gone, gone, like a marathon.

Saturday 31 March 2012

notarize the thighs

Probably should not enter here, a familiar yet faraway voice offers. The voice triggers the visual. A question mark which appears like clockwork (after the voice), like a music applications italicized version suggesting living motion or audible quality conveyed via italics. The image of a question mark in lights and stripes in motion like a barber shop's shingle, barber shop's cylinder of red, white, blue and light.

The aforementioned visual appears before her eyes, our young single white female. She faced the intensity of the light and felt the uncensored whole of what emanated. She opened up to the real, which in turn dropped on her in direct correspondence to the level of her openness, the very real. When real became very real, her eyes opened ever more, from almond shape to marble, it the ameliorated states.

Real and animated against the terrain in front of her. She could dissociate from her environment without losing any connect. Widescreen landscape between her long unpainted lashes. She watches as it spirals, grows, then shrinks away. The question mark is really a loose rendition: and becomes less finite and more lifelike as it swells out and moves gingerly yet with cautious expansiveness through her wide eyed blue ice sky twilight desert land. Crisp and sharp picture, without humidity. This was and is and will be the only visual she associated with this particular voice. Who the hell knows why.

Unfortunately (or fortunately) she does not have time to figure it out, decipher its meaning or relevance to her, and she had neither interest or money to pay some PI or psychiatrist or cinematographer or surveyor to do the work for her.

The thought hardly crossed her mind to hire anyone ever to do anything for her. She never had and probably never would. Very DIY by nature. She inherently disagreed with the tax system, though she paid into it. She advocated for a system with allowances for payment by not only checking accounts and money orders, but payment by community service hours. The dollar bill, though convenient and necessary in many situations she faced, on the macro level she saw how money exchange in the capitalist sytem robbed people of opportunities to put the mind and body and spirit into play.

Which to her was the marrow of life blood.
to be continued...

Friday 23 March 2012

cold steel got love like us

I remember I once

had her blue steel, brown leather...

Once had her only tone 
metallic gold
finish
for myself

she showed me in

i showed her off



she was an impala, 1980

not quite antique


fresh enough to commute
with me


despite her thirty years
and mine
made sixty


city to city
push 2 pull
she held me upright
i held her pretty
city to city


rough ragged we maybe
seemed 2 most

and funny 2 hustlers
2 kids
just licensed
rollin'
who stopped to watch us pass
and wondered how we came
to be

she and i liked
2 steady

watch the watchers watch
as we steady
dust them

 i roll my head back2 see
through the clouds
of dust and crack

while white wheel snakes
through my black gloved hands


then she rolls us
into the farmost lane
and i kick her


train-in-drive

she kicks back!
bounces us over and

outside the lines

any poles get in our way
get bent



i floor her down the final corridors
of early morning fog...
her old school

pedal steel
collapses the

wide acute-angle  press
2 floor


had had enough of me
she had!

and my panic
patterned 
adrenaline rush
commutes
over the bay

she lived a life
volcanic
ran hot
moved slow
 in a way

with gravity
though

her dance
euphoric
 on my mind
hot by birthright
sweet patented
american steel 

she takes
yer rules-of-road
yer mandates federal
yer ideas of fair
yer fears...
she licks them speechless

swallowed B
themusic-theman-themainstream

 swallowed B

theline-thelinear-themadmadlineage
swallowed B
age-of-madness-river-cess-poolz
swallowed B

into her wake
deconditioned
decommissioned
transmissions.....
swallowed B
into her like history
that which B

swallowed by
the sea

this sucker she

will make you her bitch
and liquefy all the earth
around us
--you and me
both!--
this fucker
will have us
suck fumes

FUCK uuuuuuu!
she whines
ignited
turned over
her oilpans full with

blackblood

lifeblood like
no one never knew


but  i think
strange to say
she may love me somehow
through cold rain and
insect-coated steel?
cause 

that was back then

wasn't that?  her cursing
and groans


cause now she is all
opened up
on open road...
carrying my needy ass again
and she sounds like a ten
out of ten



and she carries us
me and mine and
our kid
eyes full moon
eclipse
 

she marries

our nineteen eighty

static images 
small town to suburban
to urban...


she crosses

the many states
of miss america...
compelling 
telling
turning


toward all
our consciousness...

always
a great distance
incomparable

like steel

and flesh


a safe way aways
sending up steam
behind lawn-hose-sprays

ribbons of rainbow
summer hydrant
waters
in our war against
the roads we travel
the residuals
washed off her


then quiet dripping
in the garage
we left her
safely kept

a safe distance

while we send up steam
beneath showerheads
 in our homes...

safely kept

steady-dripping
the day's residue
toward the drains

Tuesday 6 March 2012

Stowaway taken toward Miss Engine #9

The train depot was popping this spring. The crew assigned this year was a helluva crew, boy! Sure makes a whole lotta difference, from the painted colors of the depot herself, fresh and glossy and thick! to the presence of a henhouse and therefore the wonderful signing into dawn through the roosters' cocky lament. Coins exchanged for sodapop were even polished, alike the shoes, and clearly the eminent steel powerhouses pulling dining cars and sleepers stole the hearts and minds of dreamers and adventurers come to travel.

He found himself in contemplation much of the time, on engine nine. He was a stowaway unless someone somehow mistook him somewhere along the number nine line, for someone else. In which case he was a stowaway impersonating a traveler. This was neither here nor there for him. He would have paid, could he have afforded it. And he would be someone another fashioned him to be, if it brought them pleasure and helped pass the time along sometimes. If he ever got a bad hit or feeling off of someone, he made sure to walk away from any potential affair as soon as practical. But this was not often.

Hat Red striped by K
Mostly he caught the cars closest to the engine herself, so he could catch her in a new way, a new style, an evolution of her wonderful yet unadorned simple force and magnitude. He caught something new every time, it seemed, which brought him untold happiness. One can hardly ever guess how any one man's heart may conduct itself when coaxed out of hiding. On this day, he was lost in the physical, and his mind was weary. But once he had coffee and breakfast, the day lay before him to explore another aspect.

The shadows which held the screen of the apron of the engine so to protect it, shone like light, like glossy black finish over the stones the crew had trucked in from east coast shoreline jersey tidepools. Such a tangible and sharp angled kind of darkness was nowhere else to be found! He marvelled at these otherwise romantic sorts of notions. Then he marvelled at himself marvelling! Then had to laugh for having marvelled at himself marvelling.

As though it were living black. Or dark matter that made itself evident to the naked human eye. These days he travelled by rail more for nostalgia than any clear necessity. But the trips became much more memorable and important. although often in recalling a trip soon thereafter in his mind, He had eyes for only one, Miss  #9, rain or shine. Even your average train hoppin' moonshine runnin' babyfaced red, sunspotted, suffering marked for the road and no goin' back home except to die maybe, if he is lucky, livin' in the shadow of the forties and the bennies and the beats and the new american streets pushing out to sweet somnolence of suburbs. Some could but especially he believed in himself, that he could appreciate the way the nina bellowed out her distinct muffled coal storm call way a faraway, miles between them when he attuned to it. Still, the train would be traveling fast, so he knew he must check his ties on the sleeping bag and belongings.

She demands double knots across just about everything coming across her bow. After the first lemon squeeze city of a ride, he abided her limits and demands. Over the years he began to admire her strength and composure. She stood the test of time well. Her wood wainscotting was clearly cut from hardwoods and the carpentry was evidently master in craftwork, uncracked mostly as it was wherever possible continued off any one slab of wood versus demarcated cut and pasting that came apart over time.

Nina she got edged out by most other ladies in her class, Lost many an critical gunny sack he did, lost bread, booze, tools, workclothes in the past trying to get up to speed  at the very coordinates he got handed down from a friend of Burroughs and Kerouac who was coaxed to hop on out of Chicago down toward Kentucky and the gulf mouthing off beneath it all, Mississippi, Louisiana, you know, like he does (the gulf) after a big old redfish sandwhich which where grits get tastier and bodies lie seven feet above that six foot under condition got standardized across the earth the blessed earth who gives when you work her a little, touch her, rake your metal fingernails down her spine to the small of her back, some knoll rising up above red clay lowgrounds and ive oak is.

Well he would not linger anywhere near six feet down and one foot up, you bet all his five fingers got crossed in concern over it. For a day most likely. Until either he shared how it troubled him (unlikely), or someone who caught the bad end of that energetic response might reach out to him to see how he was. Highly unlikely! he knew.

Pounds fall off of him in liquid salt as he catches his breath on the flat car he timed and marked for his landing right from the coordinates some so-called friend of Kerouac, yeah right, some buddy of Burroughs proffered comme handmedown to the woe begotten known for nothings who continue to live off the land and kindness of strangers. He  took them almost begrudgingly.

 The dude saw the look on his face and was confused, and would have to remain that way, unfortunate as it was. A long trip to have something not clearly understood between strangers, and without the desire to pursue it to its conclusion. Or, within the framework of desire-in-check it was too much effort to express without seeming ungrateful the way his offer sent a pulse shot of devaluation into the hot Irish sourced blood of the man, like he did not simply exude the talent the skill developed behind years and years of trial and tribulation;
 left in the dust half the time in his twenties hungover, one bottle of wine too heavy to reach the velocity needed to catch that bitch! Good old number 9! Her edges shone in the sun exposed prairies and steel flashed like a streak of cobalt lightning passed deep deep pushing into the Dakotas and beyond and flirting sometimes with the border, dreaming of gettin' off her own rails jumping her tracks to catch sweet pasture serenity of Canada, Oh Canada.

Well that kinda pulse pushes him on to greater accomplishments, you know, steamin' hot in seconds the way the fire gets caught in the jetstream and sets upon the hot dry stunned and sunned skin of trees and husk of corn.
Dragon breath! a man who he knew first as the boyfriend of a babysitter -- then later as his dad. If he were to be trusted. Which he may not have been, but for reasons unknown. Something about his style, his delivery, his message, and the way he looked at you like he wanted to believe his own utterances so badly,  which was kinda pathetic in a factual kinda way.
 If that man really was who he said he was...? Didn't look none like him. Didn't act like someone who claimed blood ties. No loyalty. No favor. No ritual but drinking and working and cursing and fucking. And these he picked up more by osmosis than anything else. He followed the man and spied on the man out of curiosity, but desperately avoided most contact, as he feared the man more than anyone before or after....nah, couldn't be! These brief words were somehow enough now to get him into a state of mind that was tolerable, bearable. And so he intended to go on living. And did.

His love affair with Engine #9 continued. He washed himself in her sights and sounds, smells, and the many diverse feelings which their path together up and down mountainsides and into tunnels, then winding around bucolic mesmerizing untouched pine and deciduous groves.


She really might never know what it feels like to be together, he suddenly thought one day after a lunch of tuna fish and pretzels, reflecting one time on the great divide and horrilbe partition between a steam engine and a human made of flesh and bone. How had he neglected this earlier? Such a critically important topic, it so suddenly seemed! Panic fell upon him, once anxiety let him up. A horrible mantra began to recite itself on the inner walls of his mind. This mantra was one better left alone and not repeated. And so he kept it to himself until it died an unremarkable death.
Silence took over, wonderfully so.
When this particular adventure on Nina came to completion, he walked away feeling broken-hearted yet unable to know what to do with the persisting nature of the persecutory feeling that the love could never survive and was a hopeless kinda love, after all.

Superficial seems the best way to cross the river Lethe. Or so he decided. He had read about that river in his parents church when he was a boy. Lethe. This was the river, the one of forgetfulness. How could anyone forget that much?
Man Under Table Under Light by K
Anyway, he knew what mostly worked for him. So he followed his own advice some more. He changed his life around to match his private thoughts and understandings. Thus he became one of those who frequented tenement buildings. Not at first to reside, for he needed to procure that job at the magazine store. Then he got the job and all things became possible. Minimum wage + a little on top. And nothing at all was possible after that. He dreamt that all things within reach, all things he could safely afford to possess for a matter of time. All things could be kept civil and fair and respectful among men and women, and noise could be nothing other than passion or fatigue or the sound of the television or radio talking over us all. But he ceased to dream, nights, and as a result there was little fruit harvested from his sleep nor his analysis of his lifelong situation...when he tried to daydream about those wonderful rides on Miss Engine #9, his visions stalled out or got flooded and voices came to intimidate, not intimate, secrets. The main secret he kept and would not dare repeat to no one, was the one that hollered: not a chance! better chance for a snowball in hell! 

J stowaway by K
If only he could remember how they always slept nights, him a stowaway lying on some bale of hay or coat or cushion or body...the easy gentle swaying like it was growing up to be a rattle some day, side to side sway, when she was working hard as she was. Wasn't she? He could not picture her or his life then, or see himself from outside himself like he used to.

Life moved on past, and still he tried to find her in his dreams but often ended up frustrated or lost...Down the tracks they came. The trains. He revisited worlds that felt slightly different, not enough the same to get his heart beating like that or even close. Slightly new. More Like the thick coat of paint on the depot walls, or the sifted and rinsed white, gray and beige-colored stones from jersey shore, what about them?
What formerly he romanticized to be such a grande labor of love, had now become simply men on work duty as legal repentance, court-ordered to haul rocks.

The trains kept coming to him like crazy, but only to confuse him more. Here now, its twenty eleven! Catch it before it pass you by! Whoops there she goes, Miss Twenty-Eleven, not so thrilled I suspect. Thrashing about as though to break free, on the steady back of Dear Jetstream number 7.


Everything deteriorated as she slipped further from his mind. Replaced with flooded rivers. The unmoored houses, sagging under the weight of alcohol-soaked baby boomer american livers. Worst flooding in Vermont in decades upon decades. The covered bridges almost had their covers blown. Vanilla and chocolate tears escaped tongues and dripped down to the base of ice cream cones. Summer jaws just dropped. All the flippers in the pinball machine -- flopped.

What did he expect? Carbon footprints leave deep imprints in the self-contained atmosphere. Scarring can be seen in the clouds on an otherwise blue sky scan. Earth is on waitlist for a new dome, mandated a month ago by the milky way galactic court on high. No one knows how. No one knows why?

He was losing his reason. But this was less painful this way. He gave it all over to the sky, his love and loss...to the stars, to the gods ands goddesses,  and to the first electric guitar. Cause he saw that there were far more deserving candidates in the system than he. Why should love be returned to him, exactly? why? He had done nothing so great in his life, never ever, no never, never ever at all.

Were Pluto still a planet, she would tell them all what happened next...his question echoed off the tails of shooting stars in the hall. Then started a stir in the astrological order. Mercury tried to filibuster to delay the clock. Greenwich Standard Time got elected Universal Time. And now it was a lock.

The next thing that happened, really happened, they say. She came back to our stowaway, Miss Engine #9. She rolled through the heavens on some Galaxy Rail. And the whole system seemed to fold down at her feet. To honor the love between them, so celebrated for so long by the stowaway, yet forgotten. But they say her approach got him feeling again, recollecting the rhythm, the heartbeat. Some say he was scared and dead tired. But still he got on his feet!

Yellow Billows by Katya
And the universe got to host this reunion so dear. In a place where the politics are typically driven by fear. Some had been bribed. Eight of nine moons of Jupiter failed to vote for themselves. Rumor has it IO (the leader of the contingent) got T-boned in the green room, by elves. Its even been suggested she had solar flares stuffed down her throat.

But whatever was, let it be! Guess what? I could care!
All i know to remember is that love! True love
represented there. Between a stowaway dreamer
and his railway romance, Miss #9, so fair.