Showing posts with label 2012. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2012. Show all posts

09 February, 2012

Eavesdropping in Spanish

Fragments instructing the children to behave;
Family gossip about Tio Louis;
Presidential Politics. Reactions to Jack Kennedy's new girlfriend.
La Historias. Admonish the boy: Quit fidgeting! Silencio!
No candy! No pop! You wanna be a fat gringo?
The children speak perfect English, look like
They're struggling with Abuela's words.
New world Hispanics. Old world Abuela.
Waiting on a train headed for Miami.
Where there are more people for Abuela to talk to.
More candy and pop, too.

06 February, 2012

Fade Into


Imagined it all
somewhat different.
Rather, bold.
Magnificent.
Brightly lighted
mini marquees.
Macabre parades.
Acquiescing smiles.
Limp handshakes
from spineless autocrats.
Divine Prognostications.
Deferential treatment
by those conspiring
to have me killed
in a grizzly manner
meant to look like
a pointless suicide.
It would be raining.
And the cats
would be cranky.
Weather pushing me
southbound.

02 February, 2012

Baboon in the Bluegrass, Part 3: Morehead, Kentucky

NO. It's not a sexual request.

It's a city... well, more like a town... a town that will, undoubtedly, be swallowed by the monolithic beast that is Morehead State University (Curse it's name!) and become a plaza shopping and living pavilion... with oodles and oodles of parking, of course. (They really did bulldoze a park once, and put in a parking lot. Well, it was more like a grassy knoll. Ok... more like an abandoned field by the side of the road. But it WAS green space.)

The nice thing about being gone for so long (George and Laura and I decided that my last visit to the area was maybe 8 years ago.) is that there's hardly anyone around who might remember me. At least, no one hanging around on the street or in the coffee shop. This is to my advantage; I wanted to walk around, see what changed, and take things in without people asking How I Am or What am I Up To. I could walk around, be perceived as slightly creepy, take pictures with my cell phone, and slip back out of town again without raising too many eyebrows.

But where to begin? 

One of the problems I have in coming back here -- other than a the fairly good chance of running into some ghost of my old self -- is that when I think about the place, image in my mental map of the place is a bit dated... circa 1995 or 96. When I think about Morehead, I think about driving into town on KY-32 and seeing the mountains on fire the year there wasn't much rain, black smoke blocking out the sun for what seemed like an entire summer. I think about the year there was too much rain and the whole North end of town flooded -- including a house of Melissa's Theater Department friends who were too stoned to realize they needed to leave. That happened when I was in graduate school, around 2001... but it's still part of the elemental 1995 map.

There are houses gone that I expect to be gone, and houses gone that I expect to be there. Every single structure I lived in with my daughter's mother, Anna, is gone. It is as if our marriage -- brief and ridiculously dramatic as it was -- has been erased from the landscape. To be honest, I find it oddly comforting. The number of people who have any memory of that botched disaster of a relationship is shrinking. Even my daughter -- the only good to come out of my first marriage -- has no memory of her mother and I ever being together. For this, I am eternally grateful. Anna's parents are dead. Her grandparents are dead. My mother isn't, thank god.

But she has the courtesy not to bring up my early marriage as one in a catalog of mistakes I made In Spite Of Her Telling Me So.

Morehead has more parking lots than I remember. The Fuzzy Duck Coffee Shop, once located in what was once the back store room of Coffee Tree Books, which was located in a nominally interesting shopping center, is not located -- along with Coffee Tree Books -- in the building that was once the movie theater downtown.

(This was replaced by a six screen multi-plex out on the by-pass. More screens for more lousy movies. And really expensive popcorn. But the bubble gum under the seats is more fresh, at least.)


 It's theoretically more space. The coffee shop takes up what was once the concessions and lobby. The problem is, that it still looks like a movie theater, only with no popcorn, Ike&Mike's, or stale Reese's Pieces and over priced watered down pop. They do the whole coffee, soup and sandwiches thing, along with all the usual coffee boutique items... coffee mugs (though not ByBee Pottery... a travesty, as far as I'm concerned.) froo-froo coffee contraptions, French coffee presses, ground and whole bean coffee, and a plethora of teas.

"Well, you told me I have a plethora. And I just would like to know if you know what a plethora is. I would not like to think that a person would tell someone he has a plethora, and then find out that that person has NO IDEA what it means to have a plethora."

But if ever there was a town that needed a bar... it would be THIS one.

The problem, however -- at least according to conventional wisdom -- is that no bar in downtown has ever succeeded for very long.

Scratch that. No downtown bar has ever been ALLOWED to succeed for very long.

At least, that's the assertion of an old friend, Clark. Back in the day, Clark was one of those Those Guys. He played guitar. Girls liked him. Generally people thought he was something of a pretentious ass... but he was still likable too. Clark has been living in Morehead almost exclusively for the past 20 years. One of the things we sat and talked about -- in the newish location of the Fuzzy Duck/Coffee Tree Books was how much town had changed since the last time I was here. The new Wal-Mart. The new Public Library, which, while it's not in the middle of town anymore ... which is decidedly inconvienent if you don't have a car... is a much nicer, much bigger space.

The old library is being adapted into the new home of the Kentucky Center for Traditional Music, which now occupies a Main Street storefront location.

The new space will have class rooms, recording studios, and will generally be a  nicer space. 


The other advantage of the new space is that it won't be owned by this guy... the biggest, sleaziest slum lord in town.


The Dixie Grill... one of the downtown townie restaurants knowns as much for the oderiferious air as the cheap food, is now a hair salon. Main Street Records is now a bakery. One of the bars where I used to go for dime drafts on Thirsty Thursdays is now a church children's youth center. (I blame the Bapists.)  The other bar -- the one with multiple names and multiple owners -- is now a Thursday night Karaoke /Dance Club. (Not sure if the Soot Scootin' Boogie or the Macarena is still in vogue.

When I told Clark that I didn't know how I felt about the coffee shop residing in the lobby of the old movie theater he nodded, but said "It grows on you."

As we continued our conversation, he admitted to a certain ambivalence regarding his life in town. "I don't know," he said," whether I'm really stuck here or whether I stay out of a sense of obligation."

The obligation he meant was his the obligation he felt to his children. He has a son, who is 13, and a younger daughter. Both of his children are with different mothers. Both mothers still live in the area, and he has to see them on a regular basis. But he also seems to understand that a parent is more than provider, protector, soundboard, bank, and bed and board landlord. He also knows that maybe the best function a parent serves is an object lesson.

Clark told me a story about taking his son, at the time 12, with him on a road trip to a city. Clark, who's early drinking experience was made up of house parties and music gigs (with him on stage); he admitted that to not really ever having a bar experience until the Buffalo Wings and Things, took his son around to different bars in the city they were in. Clark sipped on drinks while his son took in the general atmosphere.

This is BW3's. It's too bright, too plastic, and costs too much.
Oh yeah, and the bartender, who looked 10, didn't know how to make a proper Bloody Mary.
This sorority girl and others like her,. who will probably be praying  for forgiveness on Sunday when they go to church, is one of the things that makes BW3's entirely too loud to be a place worth drinking in.

"He was loving it," Clark said. "And that was the point. I told him..." he paused briefly, as if he were gathering the words, or maybe thinking about his own life for split second. "I told him if he ever wanted to DO anything, that he needed to get out of here."

That pesky left foot is always late.

Morehead is the kind of place people go, stay for a specific but undetermined period of time, and then leave. It's like most college towns in that way. For that matter, it has always been a suitcase campus -- students would pack up and go back home for the weekend, and I saw nothing that made me think that had changed. It's easy to think it's almost planned out... that the university Board of Regents, the Chamber of Commerce, and the town council all got together with the cops and decided to make the town as unappealing to college age people as possible without being too overt about it.

There are other, less subtle but nonetheless accepted forms of creeping fascism. Yes, I call it fascism. When the corporate institutions intermingle interests with the political and financial life a community, the prevailing system becomes something like a a slightly more benevolent form of fascism. It may not be too intrusive, and certainly not enough to upset the too young to be paranoid college age kids who, by their silence, accept the rule of the regime.

Don't even get me started on what's wrong with this... I would like to point out, however, that tobacco money built the fucking campus. It's the #1 legal cash crop of the state. I'd also like to point out that there's a Taco Bell in the student center.

This is the entrance to what used to be  the English  Dept. Building. Now  it's the College of Business, which is kind enough to allow the English Department to say. See the sign? English Majors are people too!

This is one of the places we used to stand and smoke... before the  fast food financed fascists took over.



And this, dear readers, is where all the money really goes.

The new and updated Adrian Doran University  Center (ADUC) Your tuition and tax dollars at work.

There are still a few remnants of my past here, though. And some aren't even all that depressing.

The front door to 122 W. Second Street. The house I shared with  Jared, Bobby, Dave,and  sometimes, Eric. My primary function was to screw over the landlord, who charged per student rather than a lump sum of rent.

Douchebag apartments next door. They weren't there when I was  a student. Merely  pointing out that they're a blight. And Douchey.

I did more drinking than I can remember here. Really.  Pictures would  be appreciated. Really. Or... you know, forget it.

When I started here as a Sophmore, these two urinals was  a single long narrow trough. Keep your eyes on your own winkie, dammit.! God is watching.

I just think this is cute. Like those poor dumb kids are really going to find JOBS.

Oh, and see that diminutive bell tower behind the signs? Once upon a time, there was a tall, healthy, beautiful pine tree there, that had stood for as long as anyone remembered. It was cut down because someone with money wanted to put up a bell tower with her name on it.

 Did I mention diminutive? It's more like a vibrator for a hollowed out porn star. It plays show tunes sometimes, too.



[I need to extend my thanks to Paul V. Christensen, Mike Frazier, Brian Parsons, and Dixie Parsons for some welcome donations. Thanks to you, I've bought my train ticket from Ashland and expect to be in Norfolk on THURSDAY FEBRUARY 9th.

If you like what you read here, you can help by:
  1. Passing the link around.
  2. Graciously donating to the cause using the button on the right hand side of the screen;
  3. Contact Catherine Sellers at Greyhound, 415-331-6049. Tell them you are asking about a sponsorship when the operator picks up. I write about them enough. They should be helping me help them. Right??
Thanks for reading.]



31 January, 2012

An Expert Destruction


Main Street is crooked, runs right past
City Hall, the police station, empties
right in front of the University
Administration building.

All things tend southward here... the slopes,
the hollers, the crosses. Life has moved
out to the by-pass: movies, libraries,
community.

The school is a warehouse
of long dead ideas, stored up
for future kindling.

Boxes of unread books provide warmth
and nourishment the nests of rats
and legions of insects pouring over
our mistakes.

Outside, the street signs are picture perfect,
and the old buildings are either
scrubbed down or destroyed;

an expert destruction
of all evidence to the contrary
that once upon a time
there was something else here.

Bars converted to youth centers;
cigarette stores to ice cream stands.
The future is piling down upon us
barreling 80 miles an hour down

the new wider highway
past the mega store where
all hope is lost and sold
at discount rates.

But the banks,
at least, are solid
and are open for business. New restaurants,
same old food.

The movie theatre converted
into a mausoleum for ancient idealism.

Everything is fine. Everything is dandy.
Self help books sell well. No one reads
the classics anymore. Too many big words.
Too many big ideas.

Poetry is for little girls and for fags.
Rumi was a terrorist. Poe liked little girls.
Whitman needed a shave
and real job.

No one remembers the year the mountain burned.
No one remembers the year the north end of town flooded.
The people who carry the memories
have fled east, into the mountains
or west, into the desert –

searching for moonshine or for messiahs
that will give them answers
to nagging questions that have not
formed the words to articulate properly.

26 January, 2012

Another Coffee Shop Poem


[Dedicated to Lou Schau. Also to John Briscoe, Tim, Steve, Ed, and Vaughn (aka The Graybeard Round Table). Also to Heather Houzenga.

I am not pretty enough for this place.

The cut of my clothes or my weeks old beard
gives me away. If I didn't have money for coffee
they would shoo me away in spite of the rain.
It doesn't take long for those urbane airs
to rub off; only two and half years
in corn and god country where they do not tolerate
too much polish (except for Sundays,
and even that must be the right kind and cut)
and they do not trust urban attitudes
and they do not forgive when you are not smart enough
to notice the difference.

Two people in line ahead of me.
Most of the tables are occupied
and I spy one empty seat:
one of the coffee leather chairs
in the corner. A business man
with next generation's iphone
and designer eye wear takes it first...
laying claim to it by laying his
expensive looking brief case
(also leather) before he
takes a place behind me in line.
If I am very lucky,
the barista will get his order wrong.
But I am not lucky, since she is too perky
to be incompetent.

The first one, a large woman in stretch pants,
pays in cash
    • exact change –
The skinny bitch in designer shoes behind her
taps her foot impatiently. When it's her turn, she steps up
quickly orders coffees with too many qualifiers
(half caf decaf slim skin super latte with a mother fuckin' twist)
pays with plastic, then moves forward. We have learned, have we not,
the way the conveyor belt works...

I step up, order a medium coffee
with an espresso shot, pay, step to the right. Skinny Designer Bitch
is waiting on a multiple order and his hogging the small round counter
with the cardboard coffee cup cozies.

My coffee is done before her order.
So that I do not burn my fingers,
I am forced to growl “Excuse me”
before I reach in front of her
to grab a cozy. (She looks up horrified,
briefly grabs her expensive purse
for fear I might steal it, use her
husband's credit cards
to order a breakfast sandwich.

She storms out not long after.
By the time I turn around,
a table has opened up,
and I sit down, trying to avoid eye contact.

There's only so much I can put up with
before the coffee kicks in.


21 January, 2012

Ahead of the Storm


Shadows pass on the other side
of frosted glasses. I can make out
trees, the shapes of hills, traces
of Interstate 74. 45 minutes out
I know intuitively where we are,
silently lip the names of the places
like a prayer: a mantra meant
to keep myself focused.

                  Shadows punctuated
by glaring fast food signs. Rolling
down the hill, I start counting
the minutes until the cityscape
will come into view. Shadows
surrounding the lights of houses,
street lights. Anonymous beacons
for other weary travelers.

Shadows engulfing what I leave
behind me. Seven hours north, echoes
of tears where once there were kisses
the warmth of your eyes
the inadequacy of it all
the absurdity of it all. I let
the shadows wrap themselves around me
as the city comes into full view.



20 January, 2012

Harrison Street Station Run Through

"I love it when a plan comes together." - John "Hannibal" Smith 

The original title of this entry was going to be "2AM Harrison Street Station Blues." It's nice when a snazzy title happens to pop into the brain... I usually labor over, over criticize, change, despise, change and finally give up on titles. I've always struggled with titles in the same way I struggled with long division when I was a kid. I know it ought to be a simple thing, but dammit, my head just can't seem to wrap itself around it.

I was planning on writing it because even though I managed to get a ride into Chicago from Jim "No Toll Is Going To Slow Me Down" Beaudry, I had it stuck in my head that my bus was going to leave on Saturday, January 21st, and 12:15.

So there I was, sitting at one of the places available to plug in my netbook so that I could both charge the battery and check Facebook, listening to music through my ear buds, when I heard an announcement about an express bus to Cincinnati getting ready to board. "Hmmm," I thought. "If I had known there was a schedule for today, I would've probably taken that one instead."

I was about to go back to my music, my Facebooking, and my emailing, when I decided to go ahead and look at my ticket... the one I had bought a few weeks before and had sent to me in the mail. I looked at the date.

It read January 20th.

I looked at the date and time on the task bar. SHIT. That was my ride they were calling out.

I rushed packing up my computer, grabbed my other bag, and headed for the Express loading area. I looked at the date again, double checked it with my phone... because I didn't want to be the stupid schmuck  who tried to board the bus 24 hours early. My cell phone display confirmed that today is, for REALZ, January 20th.

I got in the short line, and when I got to the driver checking tickets, he didn't shoo me away; instead, he pointed to the bus and said "The same bus will take you all the way to Cincinnati."

So here I am, aboard the bus headed out of Chicago heading south and east. The world outside looks like a Cohen Bothers movie. All gray and white, to the point that it all looks almost dead body blue. (You remember that color from the Crayola box, right? ) The bus is on the empty side. I don't know if it will stay empty all the way to Cincinnati -- we have one short pick up stop in Indianapolis -- but so far, so good.

There's only three problems.

1) When I arrived at the Harrison Street station, they were cleaning the men's restroom. And by the time I noticed they were done, I had to get on the bus. That means at some point, I'll have to use the rolling outhouse in the back of the bus. If you here a large plop, that wasn't a mystic shit. It was me falling down the rabbit hole.

2) I didn't buy a bottle of water because I figured I had time.

3) I'm not quite sure who's picking me up in Cincinnati yet. Or, indeed, if I can prevail upon anyone in this weather to drive downtown and pick me up.




19 January, 2012

Last Full Day

The taste of last night's beer lingered this morning.
Three in the morning, I can't sleep. That voice
in my head, the one that's been telling me
This is not your home woke me
thumping like a timpani drum. The cats
are calm. The walls are thin
and, even with the plastic on the windows
lets the arctic weather in. Ice glazed
like thousand year old donuts
covering everything. Small tectonic glaciers
in the shape of tire tread and work boots
gray from the grating of the plow
and car exhaust line the streets. The voice,
it tells me, Wild birds know when to fly.
It's the caged ones that die. It's too early
for riddled wisdom, and I'm out of coffee.
Cold feet, bad TV, the memory of another
December fresh like the snow was
two days ago casts long shadows in fast dreams
in which the faces belong to strangers
and they all have something to tell me,
something I must remember,
something that is the piece to a puzzle
with the picture worn off. All that remains
is a sense memory and the voice in my head
No feeling lasts, it says. So it's better to feel it all.

18 January, 2012

Two Days Past (Winter 2012)


The streets have been cleared
and the previous night's freeze
packed the last snow fall,
eliminating the drifts covering
Illinois 64 that are impossible
to plan for and more dangerous
even, than the ice that may
or may be underneath.
The wind is blowing,
but the sun is shining
and people are out
and about because no one
expects it to last. Shopkeepers
keep the windows clear,
spruce up last month's goods,
because they know
another sunny day
may not come again
and it's the early bird
who gets the worm –
so said the preacher on Sunday.
Or was it that self help book on the bed side table?
The sidewalks are cleared –
except for in front of the houses
where the grandchildren
are too preoccupied to endure
10 minutes of the tundra.
Piles of the white stuff
around the bottom of street signs
and at cross walk corners
are there to remind us –
as if the arctic chill
and frozen snot weren't enough –
more winter is coming.




13 January, 2012

Day After Snow, 2012


Snow covers all our petty arguments
silences our numerous indiscretions
and turns our thoughts, once again,
towards warmth. Overcast morning
the color of gray slush on the streets,
and the rumble of the village trucks
scraping what remains off the street outside
shakes the entire house.

[I am the only one awake to notice this.
Even the cats have learned to ignore
the intrusion. And I have learned
to pay it little mind.]

The ground shakes all the time, now.
Trucks or now trucks.
News channel talking heads dismiss
the phenomenon, focus instead
on election year gaffs and movie start cleavage.

(They learned their lesson in Vietnam. Had they sent
strippers with the reporters, we could've won the war.)

[I don't watch the news, anymore
before three cups of coffee, a smoke
and a good healthy shit.]

Forecast calls for partly sunny skies
bone cracking arthritic cold. Those bits
of remaining pristine snow will glisten
and the slush will shine gray
and the footprints will stick
until Spring erases all immediate traces;
there will be no path to follow
and there will be no proof
that anyone was ever here.

12 January, 2012

Rosetta Stone Autopsy


Two days ago it was warm enough to wake the flies. Now
it's snowing, light dusting like powdered sugar
over the gray and brown post-harvest landscape.
A spoonful of sugar, or so they say, though
as the barometer drops there's not enough sweetness
to go around. The blood slows, thickens, settles
into the veins …
                              geologic sediment
that will, in the later years after my death,
be excavated when the explanations
(eventually) become important. There will be rings
in the bones – evidence of warmth and cold that,
over the years spread to the vital organs:
the heart,
                     the liver,
                                              the spleen.
The story spun by inexperienced necrophiliac historians
will be one in which they are heroes
and in which the corpse on the slab

is nothing more than an anonymous preamble
to an inevitable greatness they will copiously describe
using strip mine style explanations,
and retrofitted possibilities limited by statistical models
that are inadequate to the taxonomic task
of reconstructing a memory...
because they lack the hieroglyphic key
they themselves destroyed when, 

upon finding flies the belly,
they slaughtered them without a second thought.

03 January, 2012

Winter Fruit


The tangerines are surprisingly good
and the apples will stew up nicely.

Christmas was mild this year
and though the local children

were sad there was no white Christmas,
the parents who handle the snow shovel

breathed in a sigh of relief.
They know it will not last for long.

Subdued, we sit -- waiting out the day
waiting for the store bought satisfaction

to wear off everyone's face and
get back to normal. The mask is thin,

but effective and I am sick to my stomach
of all the fake piety. Throw some pennies on the drum.

Santa is a drunken bum wielding a bell
and a hangover.

We have enough channels on television
to avoid the Christmas shows

and the pre-emptive strike
of the day after sale commercials.

I drink cold beer.
You drink wine.

The sun is shining.
The lawn is still dying.

Must be global warming. Maybe
the ice caps are melted

and Santa's out of on the streets
with the rest of those red suited

pick pockets.
Too much to hope for, I know.

At least the stewed apples
are good and warm.