Our Love

Like two halves of the same nut.
Doing and thinking.
Acting and reacting.
Laughing and crying.
Working and playing.
Taking and giving.
Loving and hating.
Yinny and yangry.
You are afraid to be alone without me.
And I am afraid to leave you.
Each word from your mouth
gives me more strength
while it takes my appetite away.

Sweating Like Hemingway

"Hey, I'm no Hemingway," said George.
Despite these additional discoveries and experiments, however, the core Hemingway style persisted in most of his prose and today it is recognizable worldwide.
The infamous shirt.
"I hate it when you stare."
It is raining, and George lays back on the bed, looking out the window...
"He is why books from the 1800s seem overwritten."

If she knew you well enough she might call you "boopsie" and haul you off on a hike
or a trip to India;
of course, with her long legs came great lungs,
and you didn't hike with her, you gasped for breath behind her.
We were both from Illinois (she was from Oak Park; I’m from Champaign).
I want to die at a hundred years old with an American flag on my back and the star of Texas on my helmet, after screaming down a sharp Alpine descent on a bicycle at 75 miles per hour.

In this age of Mike’s Hard Lemonade, Smirnoff Ice, Bacardi Breezers (flavors include pineapple, watermelon, mango, coconut, raspberry, blueberry, and probably estrogen), and other alco-pops marketed to prepubescent girls, it’s easy to wonder:
why should I drink throat-burning hard liquor
when I can instead sip five-proof carbonated fruit juice?

"There’s a good reason why it takes you three years to learn how to screw up the English language," he says.

Really Frightened

Fucking rando, dude.
Do you know hat I mean?
I'm talkin' drunk and random, man.
It's open now.
I'm not kidding.
About an hour ago I had the  best idea for a story.
Fuck.

A long time ago I wanted to tell you about this place I went to.
But, I didn't think you'd understand or you know, care.

I know why people want to explore.
I know why people want to find a new buzz that makes them twitch and giggle.
They want to be scared.
I'm going to sleep now.
Later.

Dreaming about 3 beautiful girls I used to know, sisters.
I met them again in a cooking class after no contact for 20 years .
They all had broken hips.
We went to West Mildred for a drink after class,
but it was all condemned and most of it was already torn down,
including the bar.
I made a baloney sandwich for the final and got an "A", but was reduced to a "C" because of my cussing in class.

I started dreaming about that house again. 
The same place with the crooked, exposed stairwells
and the hidden access to the third floor in the closet of the 2nd floor bedroom.
Dreaming about a ghost.
I don't put much stock in any of the paranormal.
And when I woke up I couldn't move.
It felt as though someone was pressing on my throat.
I could hear someone crying in the adjacent room. 
It kept getting louder. 
I was finally able to fling myself out of bed and upon entering the living room
I saw my dog, her eyes glazed over and crying like a baby. 
Not a puppy, a human baby. 
The weirdest noise I've heard a dog make
and she seemed really frightened. 
I called to her and she woke up and starting wagging her tail.
I think we were having the same dream.

A Thousand Birds

When I'm there
You are gone
Probably sleeping
Off a good one

Knock, knock, knock
I'll blow your house down
Unless you're inside
Then I'll just whistle

I came to tell you
The sun is out
It feels so good
But this burning hole

Must you feel everything
To know what you need?
A thousand words
Is more than enough

If you'd stop spitting
For a while and listen
You can hear the songs
That the birds like to sing

Trip

We rolled off the purple in the same direction as those before

whose gold-lust dreams shone brighter than the reality

of panning water in the hot noon sun.

We had conquered.
No meandering South Platte rubber ducks,

We don't stop for cattle barons or electronaires

till the river towns of Missouri call us to port with song and dance,

civilization and disorderly conduct,

promise and promiscuity.

The mild, wild mid-West.

Dinosaur Bones and tired tendons

Dark ages powered by electricity

Tammy Wynette and Kit Carson

Noodle and Head Gear

full range noodle paneling counterpoint
grape village lightly gone
same caramel camel luster
cone prestidigitation

Aardvark's snark
bush lust busker
tired truck scalds
flies manifest
destination heard of sun

far-flung tiers
soaked camel's hair
barbarista incubator
indicates inoculation
checkpoint tree-prone
pharmacy juice

Barren warrant
borne elixir
cash and carry
garment fixer
garden simply
rosebud mixer

Camel panel
point and counter
de-stained winds
wood discotheque scratch
Her dusty head gear.

Three little words...
but I only remember one
color of daffodils
north,south,east,west

terror soup for curmudgeons
serious rich window kids 
instagram herbal perfect
chemlawn mileage killers
Forsythias are the best

Bi-Polar Sound Guy

War games in record store in-store purchase
Crabby-ass non-musical musicians selling and for sale:
nice t-shirt included with stick-on art-rock manifesto,
Colored hair, and easy guitar chords for beginners
who are the living end and are
too fucking stupid to understand Mel Bay
or soap.
It's the surfactant for you.
Plug it in and
Spread your legs, fatso.
Does the carpet match the curtains?
You might have a disease.
Predictably, it's curable.
-
-
-
Stay home and practice your scales
and please don't tour.
If you do, I hope I miss it if you don't pay good.
All the turd-burgling gurgling
Ukuleles that make me pukelele even more than this.
Hey there,
cutesy-girl sad-eyed voice and big weepy something-or-other.
My cat has big weepy eyes.
It's an allergy that gets worse
when he licks his ass.
I'm allergic to that tormented self-sap,
sad-sack Sally Ann Ladue.
Another song with heartache that makes my heart ache
and wrench and die.

Johnny Q. Fuckerly
suckerly my dickerly
PUnk rock conforming non-conundrum
video baby pointlessly useless
time of wasted drinking stories
bottled discord and angst routine
and decomposition by those who can't compose.
Ride that ass-pony to the end of time, please
and just stop it.  Kill it.
Glue factory.
Bet you can't tell a story without opening your painted mouth.
Oh great, another uniform that someone made you.
Wear.
Take your clothes off and do it again
in the dark,
this time with feeling.
If you move, you're fired.
Who says a dance band can't play art music?
Once it's art, it's not an art.
It's a show and it's a business.
Them's the rules.

My Dad said you were an asshole, Merle.
He was right, you drunken killer.
Tupelo blue-collar street-wise art-school dropout
buncha hyphenated bores.
Do that one about name-dropping your hero poets
or the one about drinking while living true
Red, white and blew
on the South Side by a factory
that built cheetohs for what-nots
while the workers smoked Pall Malls
and middle-class kids did cocaine with
their college-educated black friends
or Heroin.
Ooohhh.  Fucked up.  Oooohh.
Oh, that's what they all love.
Their friend, the local bad music reviewer
is gonna make a splash.
There's no humor in vapid, sad attempts.
Is that fuzz in the community pool?
Another pedal?  Plug that shit in.
You'd like to borrow a cord?  No problem.
You should borrow a chord.  No problem.

Tell me a story.
Save the staves.
I Don't want to go down to the basement
Unless there's a good drummer there.
The pipes leak and my stereo smells better.

And tonight I'm going to make you
The best you there is.
Open my mind.
I hope to make you magically delicious.
Because some people like to jack off in public
And some will pay to watch
Ugly pterodactyls do their thing with corn.