Wishes Formed in Your Ancestor’s Heads but Scattered by Dementia, a Lynching and Other Pressing Matters Before Given Voice or Written Down

Dignity

And the illusion of dignity

May you never have to wax your moustache

Or wear a whalebone corset

Manufactured by an uptight tailor

From the bones of a gigantic sea creature

That moved with more grace and power

Than fifteen Russian ballet companies

Before it was rudely skewered

By a boat full of filthy apes

Riddled with scurvy and praying for wind

May you never be chased

Through the hot lung busting night

By a gang of religious bigots

Outraged by the color of your skin

And the content of your mind

Owls hooting from the killing tree

No fucking help

And not wise at all

Just concerned with eating mice

And being owls

May you never be a slave

To a lifelong obsession with what things cost

And miss out on the simple joys

That surround you

May you never have to stand

In a slow moving elevator

With ten overweight Texas businessmen

Stopping at every floor

Of a six hundred floor hotel

The doors opening and closing

And people looking inside

At the lack of space

And the gargoyle grimace on your face

The realization hitting them over and over

That no, they can not fit in

And the doors slowly opening and closing

Opening and closing

Guillotining your life away

Slice by dull slice

May you never have to run

With the herd into war

Or support for a war

Filled with the murder of children

So the folks back home

Can maintain a way of life

As senseless as a cow turning a field of grass

Into shit

Through steady mastication

And the processing of four stomachs

A tail at the back swishing away the flies

From the anus

Like the benedictions of a priest

Or the swordplay of a lazy pirate

Or the benediction swordplay of a lazy pirate priest.

May you never

Have to suffer fools

Who come to your house with tools

May you have the balls

To take your own life

Before you’re too old

And incontinent

A burden to your family

Dim of eye and shaky of hand

Clinging on in some

Sterile maze of strangers

After all your loves

Have turned to dust

And your friends have gone

Waiting for expensive medical procedures

That will allow you to do jigsaws

And be patronized by the young

For a few more years

May you never have to sit in traffic

Going places you’d rather not be

May you understand dignity

And the illusion of dignity

And achieve reconciliation

With the void

And live full of joy and mad ecstasy

Your eyes blinking out a million snapshots

To be treasured in the brain pan

May you never cut your gum or inner lip

On the sharp corner of a potato chip

Or choke upon an orange pip

And have people stare at you

In dumb, glass eyed incomprehension

Like freaky ass bovine

Raw Fish Leaves Bad Taste in Mouth

One hundred and twelve of the nation's 'Tsunami' sushi restaurants have already changed their name following the devastating wave that hit Japan last month. A further two hundred are said to be considering a change.

"It makes sense," said a local man on the high street yesterday as he watched an Asian man on a ladder pull down a large neon wave from the front of a small restaurant that promised the number one sushi in town. “You don’t want to associate your food with such a tragedy, I guess it’s disrespectful somehow.”

Patrons at a nearby bar were heard to speculate further. “You don’t want to remind people of nuclear waste and washed up corpses when you’re serving a raw, pungent smelling product,” said a hip young man with large lamb chop sideburns.
       “You can’t blame them," added the bar man who was attending night classes in Business Administration. "A BBQ place is going to do more business trading as ‘Squealers,’ than ‘The Tortured Pig', it’s just simple marketing.”

The American Association of Restaurateurs issued a call for support from the dining public. “Please don’t let the images of all the recent ocean based disasters, the gulf oil spill or the recent Tsunami which cracked open several nuclear reactors, stop you from eating fish. Yes the water is contaminated. But the ocean has always been the dumping ground for dead bodies, fecal waste and dangerous chemicals and it hasn’t stopped millions enjoying all kinds of fish or sushi before and it shouldn’t do so now.”

At the Tsunami Bar and Grill in Orange County business remained bullish and there were no plans to change the name. Chef Parson Hughes said he doubted anything would stop people eating sushi, “the dangerous mercury levels in Salmon, the fact that the entire fish market is controlled by the True World Group which is a front for the cult led by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the routine slaughter of dolphins as revealed in films like The Cove, none of it matters. People just don’t care. As long as they can fill their fat faces and get stoned on sake they just can’t get enough of this shit.”

Classy

The bar had no restroom signs

Anywhere to be seen

There were just a couple of unmarked doors

Down a dirty corridor

One had two doorknockers on it

At chest height

The other had two baseballs

Embedded just below the waist.

It actually took me a couple of minutes to work it out.

The doorknockers were slightly uneven

Suggestive of the real woman perhaps?

As opposed to the ludicrous

Fabricated porn star ideal

But lets acknowledge

That the real woman

Includes the grotesque

Just as much as the one

Born of monstrous fantasy

And the real man

May indeed have baseball balls

That’s not to say,

Huge and hard and powerful,

But rather:

Fetishized homoerotic objects

Of childish hierarchy-setting

Game play

That should be hit with bits of wood.

Two pints later I paid another visit

And found a girl

Pondering the riddle of the doors

I chose the balls

And as the door closed behind me

I heard her laughing

And calling to her friends

After I’d finished

I went outside and found the girl

And two others, still laughing

Taking pictures of the doors

With their super smart phones

Bouncing the balls and knockers

Off Satellites in space and into

The lives of other friends

Boyfriends

And beyond

Before E-harmony there was Pee-harmony

I went back to my seat

Wondering how many couples had met

Trying to find the restrooms

Tipsy and unable

To decipher the door symbols

And if any of them were still together

Married

With kids

Living happily in the suburbs

Their young daughters growing up

Polishing their knockers

Against the carnival buffers

Of our culture

Their young boys growing up

Playing with their balls

Struggling to comprehend

(in strong silence)

What it’s supposed to mean

To be a man.

I'm sure future generations

Will look back on us with pity

And reclassify our civilization

As only semi-intelligent

And not because of knockers

And balls on a door

But because we are dissatisfied

And are always wanting more

Stretched out too tight

Like a violin string

Snapping in the middle

Of the infinite concerto

Unable to enjoy

The chorus

Or the silence

The choir of man

Barking

Whimpering

Half mad and full mad

Growing hair

Shaving hair

Master of electricity

Slave to any easy delusion

Stuck between animal and immortal

Our brains squirming like Proteus

The minor Grecian Sea God

Who possessed the power of prophecy

But always assumed different shapes

To avoid answering questions

Proteus, our savior

Take the signs off

All the doors

Let us step back in confusion

For a moment

Into animal simplicity

And lose ourselves in the truth

Of Species-hood

Free from the mean narcotic

Of individuality.

Later

I would drink more

Insult people in my mind

Lose my keys

Then laugh with friends

Spill red wine on my shoes

And drool in my sleep

Classy.

Unusual Road Signs

Government Created Dustbowl
This Section of Highway was Cleaned by Gays
No Shaving
Cheap Divorce Lawyer
Beat D.U.I.
The Giant Wishing Toilet
Hay HAY!
Shame Evacuation Zone
Snakes
Thirsty Mexican Sharecroppers
Alien Jerky
Dinosaur Bones
Nudes
Beardless Services
Fire Automatic Weapons
Cactus Heaven
Log Cabins Made From Real Logs
Zzyzx
Butterfly Migration Zone
The World's Largest Thermometer
Turn Turn Turn
Apathy
Exodus 21:7-11
Charming Fireside Drunks $6.99 LB

Beggar's Banquet

“Can I have seventy five cents?” asked the beggar. He’d edged up to us as we waited to get served at our local taco stand.
 

I never pony up but this guy caught me unawares. He had an egg shaped head with loose jelly like eyes. There was something strangely soulful about him. Like a street after a carnival, a lone flower in an overgrown cemetery,  a page of a telephone book lying in the gutter.

His music was low Spanish guitar.

“The old seventy-five cent trick eh?” I said.

I gave him a dollar.

He took it and walked off slowly, hobbling, the anvil of the street dragging at his heels. The way some homeless move.  It’s no joke living on the streets, even in sunny California.

I hardly ever give them money and it’s so ingrained in me now they hardly seem to ask.

Drip, drip, drip. One thousand bums asking your best stony face for a dime. Then they stop. Then one night. Outside the taco stand. One appears, hobbling, sounding like a low Spanish guitar. Feeble. With jelly eyes and I nearly forgot, a cleft palate. How could I miss that?

He had a cleft palate like Dracula’s henchman. Like a close up of a flower bulb painted by Georgia O’Keefe. Like a split sausage.

A dollar. What’s a dollar? I’m poor but I’m not that poor. It’s nothing really.

I guess it was Knut Hamsun’s fault. I’d just read The Women at the Pump and was feeling sentimental for the struggle of my fellow man, my eyes pulled open afresh to life’s delicious tragedy by the old Norwegian.

My wife ordered a veggie burrito. I’d eaten earlier but it was late now so I succumbed to a taco. How can you resist. Resistance is futile.

La Posta. La Posta. You golden jewel on Third and Washington. Constantly sweating out a enticing aroma fried spices. Really good burritos, tacos and tammales. Carnitas, Carne Asada, Adobaba. Gulp, munch, drool. White crumbly Cotija cheese with cheddar and cilantro and fresh tomato and guacamole. Thank God for Mexico.

“Gracias. Gracias. Gracias.”

I haven’t tried the fish taco yet and I don’t think I will. The meat options are too damn good and I’ve been spoilt by the other places near the beaches that serve up whole lobster tails fried in butter. After this, battered white fish seems to me to be a step backwards.

The place is open 24hours and it’s so cheap they are practically giving the food away.

Always people hanging around. A real mix. Sun roasted millionaires from Mission Hills, old gay men clutching Pomeranians, bag ladies, cops, escapees from the local hospital in gowns buttoned up the back, sometimes with drips still attached to their arms, Drs and nurses,  on their lunch break, looking the other way…

And tonight, the beggar with the cleft palate who is coming back I see, slowly. Ever so slowly.

Deja-vu. The same routine all over again. As if him tapping me up barely a minute ago never happened. Drip Drip Drip. What the f…?

“Can you spare seventy-five cents?”

“I just gave you a dollar.”

“Please.”

“No.”

And then a curious but obvious thing happened. He actually started to beg, I mean really beg. Contorting his face in a childish and sickeningly soft-headed way. Grotesque. Like a child. Like a gargoyle. Like a spoiled child you hate. Like a spoiled child in a supermarket.

“Pwwweeeeeesseeee,   Pwwweeeeeesseeee,”

“NO.”

He stopped and shuffled on to a new guy who had arrived at the stand. Mr lemon yellow Pringle sweater.  As soon as the guy saw him coming he narrowed his eyes. The perfect city face. The beggar paused momentarily, saw what the new mark had done to his face and hobbled quietly on his way.

The Baby Sculptors

Architecture can be very informative, if you pay attention. This piece is illustrative of why you should never let babies play with masonry tools. Man has long sought to harness the crazy energy of children but there's a reason why you find them in sweat shops in the third world making your sneakers while it is the Mexican adult migrants who lay your patios and mix your cement.

The Revolution in Three Status Updates

Egypt. Revolutions always make me emotional. It's the hopes and dreams of the people that get me every time. Mass non-compliance with the corrupt system, it's the only way.

February 11 at 10:06am

Can't take the Bahrain protests seriously. Every time the reporters say 'Manama', my brain responds with 'Do do de de do'. Manama - Do do de do do. 'Six people were killed in Manama - Do do de do do de de de de do de do do do do de do'. Too much exposure to Muppet based propaganda in my formative years I fear.

February 20 at 12:54pm

WHOA, Middle East, $3.75 for a gallon of gas? Just hold on a minute. You know freedom and democracy is really overrated, look at Detroit, over two hundred years of freedom and democracy and it's like the dark wasted city from Robocop. ;)

February 22 at 10:03pm