I look up at the moon
The moon that I know so well
But the moon does not know me
So it says, "do go to Hell"
Like the creature in my mind
Sleeping softly I eye and pine
She doesn't know I know her yet
Less than mutually, we're both upset
They say a shark can sense a pulse
From a length away of nine feet
So why must this drum inside my chest
Send you to climb in trees?
You came to me as a faint swan
Broken facial features and red hair quaintly drawn
But now you rule like a fisted queen
Spades of Black with daggers preened
Oh, I guess I shouldn't say it's over
There's just this disturbing weight upon my shoulder
But I guess maybe she doesn't know
It's just my life I've gone and blown
Monday, March 31, 2008
Friday, March 28, 2008
Excerpt from "Holy, Holy, Hallowed"
Death came riding over a hill.
He was still miles away, invisible to anyone else, but he was approaching.
I took a breath and mounted my pony. The heel of my boot went in her
side as I pulled up on the skull, guiding her brains into the East.
I may have bothered kicking dirt into the lingering fire pit if I thought I might fain some spec of anonymity. But this was Death, He knew who I was and where I was going.
Admittedly, and in the most harshest of truths, I'm not sure where I was going; time had expired for me when the jackal spit me out in a crib.
When the dwarfed sun sat and rose again I was in Nancy crossing the border to Wurz.
Death was behind 60 kilometers or so, all the way, driving on at a steady pace. I look back once and only once, but see nothing. He is there. I've felt his lack of presence enough times to know. The magnificent beast he rides breaks through the ground like a woodchopper's ax. And this debris he sends into the air clings to its rider and I no longer separate him from gray sky or red earth. On the dustier and darker parts of the journey I often wonder if the rider disappears inside the bowels of the creature to rest, but I can only presume on these impractical reflections that journey with me.
Through and through, he sits erect like some great traveling tomb.
The two of us have met before, many times to be sure.
(Inner Set)
Dear reader, when I tell you Death is following me I don't mean to present to you a madman. There is no spit leaking from my lips. There is no eye twitching or bouncing around its cage and in these times there are certainly enough madmen to fill every sanitarium from Bordeaux to Bucharest. I have no intention of exaggerating my circumstances.
Although I speak to few others in my passage, if the subject of Death or "death" should come to bear upon the mind of strangers, they seem to accept my reality as delusion or metaphor.
But this is nothing I am striving for interpretation or analytics over. Death is that of legend and myth: a skeleton, a skull, a book and a sword. Death moves. Not unlike an expedient salesman flogging elixirs and detrimental condiments for the damned, there is much work to be done to make it to the end of a busy day. He is a reaper of lore, smiling, accustomed to his profession. This is no matter of pleasantry or wit. The answer is that Death is not the end.
Just three weeks ago I stopped in Jena for the benefit of my horse. I went to a bar, a hotel, even a surgeons office--all doors and windows were shuttered and secured. There was, in summation, life in town. This was clear to see from half-full bottles of ale and hour-old cigar butts. I wondered if Death had already been here, conquered, and held the inhabitants ransom as another display with his obsession and mockery of me. But as these pursuits came to mind I rode across a beggar, laid up against a hitch with his head down from the sun, saliva and soured liquor dripping into the whirlpool of mud he stared into.
"To where have all the people gone to today?"
The man, if that moniker would even suit such a miserable thing, didn't respond.
"Arse, where is everyone?"
He looked up toward me, grinning or straining his face from the sun. When he opened his mouth I mistook the few teeth he had for smashed pecan shells. I repeated myself a final time. A trickle of urine ran down onto his dirty bare feet and in between his toes.
No words came out, just a buzz of mumbling. I landed my boot in his face and planted him on the ground. The sky, hanging unusually low and nearly crushing down the top of my hat, broke apart as the fool started giggling and proceeded to hysterics, reaching for an empty bottle in a puddle he had probably been through a hundred times before. There was no sip of backwash to be downed, save some wet dirt and manure. He cursed me as I rode away, gripping the bottle and throwing it at the hind of the horse. "Friend, you couldn't chase a maggot of a dog's dick."
I rode up an incline over the main part of town cutting through a ravine and up over a barren hill with more dust blowing than weeds rising. When I approached the top the townspeople were gathered in the valley below. I rolled tobacco on my way down, putting the cigar between my lips and staring into the great black wide open covered in small strips of clouds following the smoke from my mouth. Even covered in hot, human sweat I felt cold, sterile and stalked by something almost certainly inhuman.
Somewhere in the center of the eye of onlookers was a casket with a little girl, no more than 8 or 9, sleeping inside. Cause of death was one of two things: disease or murder. The few faces that looked my way positioned me to take the case of murder as disgust and loss of faith seemed to be in vogue. I dropped down to finish my cigar. All around me I heard the uttering and crying to the name of Eva Waller. The priest spared no fat in his sermon, but as the rain fell and the sun went on carelessly shining regardless of the wet smell of a warm rotting corpse, all I heard were his last words.
"And as you walk through that dark and ominous Valley of Death, may you set your soft fingers in the palm of his hands, and let God do the rest. Shall you never have to fear that day, or that hour as we, the common, wounded and mortal man, will forever be, when the trumpet blows from the mouth of that mighty hunter known as Death."
The pine box was covered with dirt and lowered in.
Where ever there was an innocent life taken, there was a guilty monster, waiting in the chamber, watching the procession, waiting to be hanged, waiting to die. And most pressing to follow suit, this meant Death was in the shadows. As I crushed the cigar under foot, I noticed a figure pass through the crowd, placing a handful of white tulips on the fresh dirt. No one noticed. The tulips were wilted and the mourner's hands were finer and whiter than most refined grains of sugar cane. I knew. The procession back to town, to the gallows, had already begun and I was fighting my way going through the crowd the opposite way, I felt the vacant eyes of man in pursuit. Not a living man of blood and tissue, but that of a walking sickness. No eyes in his face, just empty sockets in their place. My wrists quickened in the reigns, bearing down on the horses back. She screamed. Inside me head, I was screaming just the same.
Chapter 136
"Shit," Basil Valentine said. "Do I have to suck the marrow from your bones or eat the lice from your hair? You bloated fuck."
I took my pants off and lay on the table. I wanted to wince but it would be of no purpose.
"Just get the metal away from my spine and out of the way of my heart old man."
"Ah yes, a real straight-shooting blowhard. You see rider, I have tasted the rotten juices squeezed from Death's brains. Don't underestimate every man as fodder for your own pathetic being.
"You faggoty cunt, just address my wounds. Death's knife is still in my skin."
Basil, finally calming, took out his instruments--dirty, rusting
scalpels and crude scissors and assorted accoutrements--bloodstained and pissed
on.
"Yes, no worries son, this will be relatively painless if you are what you say you are. An animal, no? Hunted? Prey mingling with the predator. you can't out run the blood pumping in a tiger's heart can you?"
I felt a blade go into the back flesh. I was ready to die. Anything other than Death's hand. I tasted blood in my mouth and smelt rust in my nostrils. Everything went black.
Then there was laughter.
Then there was nothing.
I awoke again, this time with more cognizance than the last 5, 6...not sure how many times. I felt a beard on my face, thick and coarse. It has been a week, maybe more. My body felt wet and when I touched hand to head, red came back in return. Gauze and assorted wrappings were soaked through and the smell of moribund hounds suffocated my sinuses. I focused on the light from the window and stood from bed, but the mind was playing tricks. I was crawling through broken glass and torn book pages. A piece of glass went through my knee and my face broke the ground. I went to the door peering into the crack before me. Basil's eye was staring back at me. But it was not attached to any end. His face was smashed and I quickly realized my face was lying in a mess of his brain parts. I wiped the matter into the beads of sweat from my mouth and rolled back to the window...my adrenaline was building now and as I moved the stains from the window with my palm, a town on fire greeted me on the other side. Dead bodies burned, buildings fell apart, but no other noise did I hear, just the break of flames against the walls surrounding in on me. I collapsed and felt another boil on my skull burst.
He was still miles away, invisible to anyone else, but he was approaching.
I took a breath and mounted my pony. The heel of my boot went in her
side as I pulled up on the skull, guiding her brains into the East.
I may have bothered kicking dirt into the lingering fire pit if I thought I might fain some spec of anonymity. But this was Death, He knew who I was and where I was going.
Admittedly, and in the most harshest of truths, I'm not sure where I was going; time had expired for me when the jackal spit me out in a crib.
When the dwarfed sun sat and rose again I was in Nancy crossing the border to Wurz.
Death was behind 60 kilometers or so, all the way, driving on at a steady pace. I look back once and only once, but see nothing. He is there. I've felt his lack of presence enough times to know. The magnificent beast he rides breaks through the ground like a woodchopper's ax. And this debris he sends into the air clings to its rider and I no longer separate him from gray sky or red earth. On the dustier and darker parts of the journey I often wonder if the rider disappears inside the bowels of the creature to rest, but I can only presume on these impractical reflections that journey with me.
Through and through, he sits erect like some great traveling tomb.
The two of us have met before, many times to be sure.
(Inner Set)
Dear reader, when I tell you Death is following me I don't mean to present to you a madman. There is no spit leaking from my lips. There is no eye twitching or bouncing around its cage and in these times there are certainly enough madmen to fill every sanitarium from Bordeaux to Bucharest. I have no intention of exaggerating my circumstances.
Although I speak to few others in my passage, if the subject of Death or "death" should come to bear upon the mind of strangers, they seem to accept my reality as delusion or metaphor.
But this is nothing I am striving for interpretation or analytics over. Death is that of legend and myth: a skeleton, a skull, a book and a sword. Death moves. Not unlike an expedient salesman flogging elixirs and detrimental condiments for the damned, there is much work to be done to make it to the end of a busy day. He is a reaper of lore, smiling, accustomed to his profession. This is no matter of pleasantry or wit. The answer is that Death is not the end.
Just three weeks ago I stopped in Jena for the benefit of my horse. I went to a bar, a hotel, even a surgeons office--all doors and windows were shuttered and secured. There was, in summation, life in town. This was clear to see from half-full bottles of ale and hour-old cigar butts. I wondered if Death had already been here, conquered, and held the inhabitants ransom as another display with his obsession and mockery of me. But as these pursuits came to mind I rode across a beggar, laid up against a hitch with his head down from the sun, saliva and soured liquor dripping into the whirlpool of mud he stared into.
"To where have all the people gone to today?"
The man, if that moniker would even suit such a miserable thing, didn't respond.
"Arse, where is everyone?"
He looked up toward me, grinning or straining his face from the sun. When he opened his mouth I mistook the few teeth he had for smashed pecan shells. I repeated myself a final time. A trickle of urine ran down onto his dirty bare feet and in between his toes.
No words came out, just a buzz of mumbling. I landed my boot in his face and planted him on the ground. The sky, hanging unusually low and nearly crushing down the top of my hat, broke apart as the fool started giggling and proceeded to hysterics, reaching for an empty bottle in a puddle he had probably been through a hundred times before. There was no sip of backwash to be downed, save some wet dirt and manure. He cursed me as I rode away, gripping the bottle and throwing it at the hind of the horse. "Friend, you couldn't chase a maggot of a dog's dick."
I rode up an incline over the main part of town cutting through a ravine and up over a barren hill with more dust blowing than weeds rising. When I approached the top the townspeople were gathered in the valley below. I rolled tobacco on my way down, putting the cigar between my lips and staring into the great black wide open covered in small strips of clouds following the smoke from my mouth. Even covered in hot, human sweat I felt cold, sterile and stalked by something almost certainly inhuman.
Somewhere in the center of the eye of onlookers was a casket with a little girl, no more than 8 or 9, sleeping inside. Cause of death was one of two things: disease or murder. The few faces that looked my way positioned me to take the case of murder as disgust and loss of faith seemed to be in vogue. I dropped down to finish my cigar. All around me I heard the uttering and crying to the name of Eva Waller. The priest spared no fat in his sermon, but as the rain fell and the sun went on carelessly shining regardless of the wet smell of a warm rotting corpse, all I heard were his last words.
"And as you walk through that dark and ominous Valley of Death, may you set your soft fingers in the palm of his hands, and let God do the rest. Shall you never have to fear that day, or that hour as we, the common, wounded and mortal man, will forever be, when the trumpet blows from the mouth of that mighty hunter known as Death."
The pine box was covered with dirt and lowered in.
Where ever there was an innocent life taken, there was a guilty monster, waiting in the chamber, watching the procession, waiting to be hanged, waiting to die. And most pressing to follow suit, this meant Death was in the shadows. As I crushed the cigar under foot, I noticed a figure pass through the crowd, placing a handful of white tulips on the fresh dirt. No one noticed. The tulips were wilted and the mourner's hands were finer and whiter than most refined grains of sugar cane. I knew. The procession back to town, to the gallows, had already begun and I was fighting my way going through the crowd the opposite way, I felt the vacant eyes of man in pursuit. Not a living man of blood and tissue, but that of a walking sickness. No eyes in his face, just empty sockets in their place. My wrists quickened in the reigns, bearing down on the horses back. She screamed. Inside me head, I was screaming just the same.
Chapter 136
"Shit," Basil Valentine said. "Do I have to suck the marrow from your bones or eat the lice from your hair? You bloated fuck."
I took my pants off and lay on the table. I wanted to wince but it would be of no purpose.
"Just get the metal away from my spine and out of the way of my heart old man."
"Ah yes, a real straight-shooting blowhard. You see rider, I have tasted the rotten juices squeezed from Death's brains. Don't underestimate every man as fodder for your own pathetic being.
"You faggoty cunt, just address my wounds. Death's knife is still in my skin."
Basil, finally calming, took out his instruments--dirty, rusting
scalpels and crude scissors and assorted accoutrements--bloodstained and pissed
on.
"Yes, no worries son, this will be relatively painless if you are what you say you are. An animal, no? Hunted? Prey mingling with the predator. you can't out run the blood pumping in a tiger's heart can you?"
I felt a blade go into the back flesh. I was ready to die. Anything other than Death's hand. I tasted blood in my mouth and smelt rust in my nostrils. Everything went black.
Then there was laughter.
Then there was nothing.
I awoke again, this time with more cognizance than the last 5, 6...not sure how many times. I felt a beard on my face, thick and coarse. It has been a week, maybe more. My body felt wet and when I touched hand to head, red came back in return. Gauze and assorted wrappings were soaked through and the smell of moribund hounds suffocated my sinuses. I focused on the light from the window and stood from bed, but the mind was playing tricks. I was crawling through broken glass and torn book pages. A piece of glass went through my knee and my face broke the ground. I went to the door peering into the crack before me. Basil's eye was staring back at me. But it was not attached to any end. His face was smashed and I quickly realized my face was lying in a mess of his brain parts. I wiped the matter into the beads of sweat from my mouth and rolled back to the window...my adrenaline was building now and as I moved the stains from the window with my palm, a town on fire greeted me on the other side. Dead bodies burned, buildings fell apart, but no other noise did I hear, just the break of flames against the walls surrounding in on me. I collapsed and felt another boil on my skull burst.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
David Allen Coe
David Allen Coe show review: July, 2007 (a sample of my 'professional' work)
“Country DJs knows that I’m an outlaw; they’d never come to see me in this dive.”
Those words, from David Allan Coe’s song “Longhaired Redneck,” may as well have applied to his performance, July 11, at rock venue White Rabbit. Country DJs probably weren’t in attendance, but an audience mixed with frat boys, over-the-hill cowboys, and even a few hard rockers was on hand to watch Coe, 66, prove why he’s a dying breed in the land of country outlaws.
When Garth Brooks paraded on stage in the early ‘90s with his rock show gimmick characterized by his use of the wireless headset mike, it seemed easy to side with Waylon Jennings’ view that Brooks was “doing for country music what pantyhose did for finger-fucking.” Now take into consideration Coe, on stage with the same mike strapped around his mouth, but wearing a wig, beard and braids similar to George Clinton of P-Funk fame, playing a guitar emblazoned with the Confederate Flag specially designed for him by Pantera’s late Dimebag Darrell, and sticking both of his middle fingers up in the air.
I’ll never see that mike in the same light again.
Coe started the show off hard with his homage to Hank Williams in “The Ride” and began a 20-song-set medley, never really completing a whole song outside of his self-described favorite greatest hit, “Please Come To Boston.”
Coe is a songwriter (he damn sure lets you know it) and he’s also a talker. He was quick to stop a song to explain the meaning or amusing origin as he did with “Jack Daniel’s, If You Please” which he heard his father say one night when Coe, 11 at the time, went to a bar to retrieve his drunk old man.
One of the stranger moments of the night came when Coe pointed at a fan wearing a GG Allin shirt and solemnly stated, “Allin was a good friend” before proceeding with “If That Ain’t Country.”
Coe also performed a few of his raunchier tunes including “Linda Lovelace” with the chorus, “Well, I've fucked 'em all from coast to coast, cause honey, that's my bag/ I'm the only guy in the world who can make Linda Lovelace gag.”
The second part of the set seemed plagued by sound problems in which Coe’s guitar grew unbearably loud. Even worse, Coe dedicated much of the last half to sharing stories about his pal Kid Rock and singing his songs. Still worse, Coe covered Uncle Kracker’s overplayed cover of Dobie Gray’s song, “Drift Away.” There was no encore and Coe’s last words to the audience were ominously, “I think I’m dying.”
Gordon Blow, 52, waited at Coe’s bus to have a record autographed, but was informed by Coe’s guitar player that he “rode separately.” Blow, a guest DJ at 69.1 WKRP, had seen Coe in San Antonio back in 1978. The biggest difference almost 30 years later?
“It’s louder!” Blow said. “My ears are still ringing. They’ll probably be ringing in the morning.”
But Blow still enjoyed the show and how could he not when Coe introduced himself as a man with a fourth grade education who spent 20 years in Ohio State Penitentiary and had been on Death Row.
You’d better enjoy it…or else.
“Country DJs knows that I’m an outlaw; they’d never come to see me in this dive.”
Those words, from David Allan Coe’s song “Longhaired Redneck,” may as well have applied to his performance, July 11, at rock venue White Rabbit. Country DJs probably weren’t in attendance, but an audience mixed with frat boys, over-the-hill cowboys, and even a few hard rockers was on hand to watch Coe, 66, prove why he’s a dying breed in the land of country outlaws.
When Garth Brooks paraded on stage in the early ‘90s with his rock show gimmick characterized by his use of the wireless headset mike, it seemed easy to side with Waylon Jennings’ view that Brooks was “doing for country music what pantyhose did for finger-fucking.” Now take into consideration Coe, on stage with the same mike strapped around his mouth, but wearing a wig, beard and braids similar to George Clinton of P-Funk fame, playing a guitar emblazoned with the Confederate Flag specially designed for him by Pantera’s late Dimebag Darrell, and sticking both of his middle fingers up in the air.
I’ll never see that mike in the same light again.
Coe started the show off hard with his homage to Hank Williams in “The Ride” and began a 20-song-set medley, never really completing a whole song outside of his self-described favorite greatest hit, “Please Come To Boston.”
Coe is a songwriter (he damn sure lets you know it) and he’s also a talker. He was quick to stop a song to explain the meaning or amusing origin as he did with “Jack Daniel’s, If You Please” which he heard his father say one night when Coe, 11 at the time, went to a bar to retrieve his drunk old man.
One of the stranger moments of the night came when Coe pointed at a fan wearing a GG Allin shirt and solemnly stated, “Allin was a good friend” before proceeding with “If That Ain’t Country.”
Coe also performed a few of his raunchier tunes including “Linda Lovelace” with the chorus, “Well, I've fucked 'em all from coast to coast, cause honey, that's my bag/ I'm the only guy in the world who can make Linda Lovelace gag.”
The second part of the set seemed plagued by sound problems in which Coe’s guitar grew unbearably loud. Even worse, Coe dedicated much of the last half to sharing stories about his pal Kid Rock and singing his songs. Still worse, Coe covered Uncle Kracker’s overplayed cover of Dobie Gray’s song, “Drift Away.” There was no encore and Coe’s last words to the audience were ominously, “I think I’m dying.”
Gordon Blow, 52, waited at Coe’s bus to have a record autographed, but was informed by Coe’s guitar player that he “rode separately.” Blow, a guest DJ at 69.1 WKRP, had seen Coe in San Antonio back in 1978. The biggest difference almost 30 years later?
“It’s louder!” Blow said. “My ears are still ringing. They’ll probably be ringing in the morning.”
But Blow still enjoyed the show and how could he not when Coe introduced himself as a man with a fourth grade education who spent 20 years in Ohio State Penitentiary and had been on Death Row.
You’d better enjoy it…or else.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Gimmie Back That Bullet
"I don't know how to tell you this Vince, but, shit, man..."
"What is it? Spit it out, Jason," I replied.
"Kurt is in a coma."
"Kurt? Kurt who?" I replied.
"Kurt Cobain man! He tried to kill himself. I just saw it on CNN before I got to school."
"Is he dead?" I replied.
"No, not yet. He took a bunch of drugs, a cocktail or something. He's in a hospital in Rome. That's all I heard. Jesus, I can't believe he did this..."
"At least he's in Rome. I mean, he's got to be better off then he would be here. Why the hell would he want to kill himself?" I replied.
"Don't you understand? We're doing this to him. All he cares about is the music. The media are killing him--MTV--ahh, what a joke. There are too many posers out there with their hands out."
"Yeah...well, I hope he pulls through," I replied.
"Shit, I've got to get to class. I'll talk to you later, Vince."
I guess that was big news for a fragile 13 year old. In the last year I had gone back in time two decades from discovering rock 'n' roll, (i.e. Aerosmith and the Scorpions) to quickly getting up-to-date with the 'now sound' of Grunge in the Melvins and Nirvana. Luckily for me, I was young enough to have skipped over "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and gone through my tweens to "Rape Me" instead.
I wanted to be a rock star. I wanted to go on world tours. I wanted fruit trays ordered just for me, without anything from the melon family. I wanted to make a bunch of noise in an arena in Tokyo and have an orgy with 3, no, 4 Asian girls that didn't know any English. I wanted the sloppy, narcissistic wife I could do drugs with and have a semi-handicap love child with.
I wanted to try heroin. I wanted to overdose. I wanted to die.
I found a spiral notebook in my room a week prior to this revelation. I found it in the top of my closet buried under a bunch of board games and a wood burning kit my 15-year-old step cousin had ruined by trying to burn a pot leaf onto the hood of his dad's jeep. My brother had run away from home a year earlier, but the signs of his handiwork were there...sketches of the Joker, a semi-nude photo of his girlfriend Jackie, my brother holding a ceramic moonshine jug in one hand and one of Jackie's breasts in the other while Eddie looked on from an Aces High poster on the wall behind them, and finally, on the last page, written with some of the letters backwards (for effect I assumed): "Live Fast and Die"
He took out 'young.' No boundaries. No rules. If you're going to die why tack on labels like 'young'? Shit, die straight out of the womb if you want. I couldn't tell if he was a prophet or slightly and certifiably retarded, but I wanted what he was selling and besides water-downed Guns 'n' Roses' jargon it was a new way for me to live my life.
For the moment, however, I stood alone in the hallway, late for class, wearing a Pink Floyd shirt that the same brother had given me before he split town. It had a cow on the front and said "Atom Heart Mother" on the back. I had no idea what it meant, but my mom was adamant it pertained to an atom heart mother fucker of some kind, so I kept wearing it.
A month later, Kurt Cobain was dead.
I tried to watch his prayer vigil from Seattle on MTV, but the camera closeups of people wailing and falling down to the ground were a little more than I cared to be associated with.
A few days later I was watching 60 Minutes with my parents when Andy Rooney's end segment came on and boy, did he have some ripe words to say about Cobain. A textbook definition of a curmudgeon, Rooney seemed to have trouble identifying with young peoples' public mourning for Cobain.
"What would all these young people be doing if they had real problems like a Depression, World War II or Vietnam?" Rooney said.
Footage was shown of a girl weeping at the vigil, "What's all this nonsense about how terrible life is?" Rooney quipped. "I'd love to relieve the pain you're going through by switching my age for yours."
My dad laughed and as he usually shouted to no one in particular added, "Say it. People are idiots." I thought Rooney was a dinosaur, but he was right. I felt just as old and wise, but on the other hand, Rooney had been in World War II. What the hell did I know about living? I'd seen Deer Hunter enough times to know Vietnam was a time and a place I'd never want my ass to be.
A year passed and I was now fourteen, sitting on a bench outside the school cafeteria eating lunch with Jason. A group of kids from my grade came walking down the hallway and out into the courtyard. They were all dressed in black, two of the girls wore veils. The fatter of the two had a rose in her hand.
"Look at this shit," Jason said.
"What are they dressed like that for?" I replied.
"Don't you remember? It's the anniversary of Cobain's death."
"Oh. Jeez, it's been a whole year already?" I replied swatting a bee away from my Coke can.
The kids walked by. One of the boy's shirts had Cobain's face on the front. The picture made Cobain look like a sad, helpless puppy. On the back, in bold letters the shirt stated: "I knew he'd die."
I sat there with Jason eating my turkey and cheese sandwich and watched them walk further away--a disappearing funeral procession--march of the brainless.
"Ah, to hell with this," I thought.
I searched around on the ground for a decent-sized stone and tossed it into the air. I lost track of it in the sun but it landed in the dirt, just missing the fat girl with the rose. She turned around, I couldn't see her eyes under the veil, but I knew she was looking right at me.
Jason laughed, shook his head and said he was going back in the cafeteria to buy a Nutter Butter. He never came back.
I sat there, waiting for the bell to ring, trying to spot exactly where the rock had landed.
"People are idiots," I thought to myself.
"What is it? Spit it out, Jason," I replied.
"Kurt is in a coma."
"Kurt? Kurt who?" I replied.
"Kurt Cobain man! He tried to kill himself. I just saw it on CNN before I got to school."
"Is he dead?" I replied.
"No, not yet. He took a bunch of drugs, a cocktail or something. He's in a hospital in Rome. That's all I heard. Jesus, I can't believe he did this..."
"At least he's in Rome. I mean, he's got to be better off then he would be here. Why the hell would he want to kill himself?" I replied.
"Don't you understand? We're doing this to him. All he cares about is the music. The media are killing him--MTV--ahh, what a joke. There are too many posers out there with their hands out."
"Yeah...well, I hope he pulls through," I replied.
"Shit, I've got to get to class. I'll talk to you later, Vince."
I guess that was big news for a fragile 13 year old. In the last year I had gone back in time two decades from discovering rock 'n' roll, (i.e. Aerosmith and the Scorpions) to quickly getting up-to-date with the 'now sound' of Grunge in the Melvins and Nirvana. Luckily for me, I was young enough to have skipped over "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and gone through my tweens to "Rape Me" instead.
I wanted to be a rock star. I wanted to go on world tours. I wanted fruit trays ordered just for me, without anything from the melon family. I wanted to make a bunch of noise in an arena in Tokyo and have an orgy with 3, no, 4 Asian girls that didn't know any English. I wanted the sloppy, narcissistic wife I could do drugs with and have a semi-handicap love child with.
I wanted to try heroin. I wanted to overdose. I wanted to die.
I found a spiral notebook in my room a week prior to this revelation. I found it in the top of my closet buried under a bunch of board games and a wood burning kit my 15-year-old step cousin had ruined by trying to burn a pot leaf onto the hood of his dad's jeep. My brother had run away from home a year earlier, but the signs of his handiwork were there...sketches of the Joker, a semi-nude photo of his girlfriend Jackie, my brother holding a ceramic moonshine jug in one hand and one of Jackie's breasts in the other while Eddie looked on from an Aces High poster on the wall behind them, and finally, on the last page, written with some of the letters backwards (for effect I assumed): "Live Fast and Die"
He took out 'young.' No boundaries. No rules. If you're going to die why tack on labels like 'young'? Shit, die straight out of the womb if you want. I couldn't tell if he was a prophet or slightly and certifiably retarded, but I wanted what he was selling and besides water-downed Guns 'n' Roses' jargon it was a new way for me to live my life.
For the moment, however, I stood alone in the hallway, late for class, wearing a Pink Floyd shirt that the same brother had given me before he split town. It had a cow on the front and said "Atom Heart Mother" on the back. I had no idea what it meant, but my mom was adamant it pertained to an atom heart mother fucker of some kind, so I kept wearing it.
A month later, Kurt Cobain was dead.
I tried to watch his prayer vigil from Seattle on MTV, but the camera closeups of people wailing and falling down to the ground were a little more than I cared to be associated with.
A few days later I was watching 60 Minutes with my parents when Andy Rooney's end segment came on and boy, did he have some ripe words to say about Cobain. A textbook definition of a curmudgeon, Rooney seemed to have trouble identifying with young peoples' public mourning for Cobain.
"What would all these young people be doing if they had real problems like a Depression, World War II or Vietnam?" Rooney said.
Footage was shown of a girl weeping at the vigil, "What's all this nonsense about how terrible life is?" Rooney quipped. "I'd love to relieve the pain you're going through by switching my age for yours."
My dad laughed and as he usually shouted to no one in particular added, "Say it. People are idiots." I thought Rooney was a dinosaur, but he was right. I felt just as old and wise, but on the other hand, Rooney had been in World War II. What the hell did I know about living? I'd seen Deer Hunter enough times to know Vietnam was a time and a place I'd never want my ass to be.
A year passed and I was now fourteen, sitting on a bench outside the school cafeteria eating lunch with Jason. A group of kids from my grade came walking down the hallway and out into the courtyard. They were all dressed in black, two of the girls wore veils. The fatter of the two had a rose in her hand.
"Look at this shit," Jason said.
"What are they dressed like that for?" I replied.
"Don't you remember? It's the anniversary of Cobain's death."
"Oh. Jeez, it's been a whole year already?" I replied swatting a bee away from my Coke can.
The kids walked by. One of the boy's shirts had Cobain's face on the front. The picture made Cobain look like a sad, helpless puppy. On the back, in bold letters the shirt stated: "I knew he'd die."
I sat there with Jason eating my turkey and cheese sandwich and watched them walk further away--a disappearing funeral procession--march of the brainless.
"Ah, to hell with this," I thought.
I searched around on the ground for a decent-sized stone and tossed it into the air. I lost track of it in the sun but it landed in the dirt, just missing the fat girl with the rose. She turned around, I couldn't see her eyes under the veil, but I knew she was looking right at me.
Jason laughed, shook his head and said he was going back in the cafeteria to buy a Nutter Butter. He never came back.
I sat there, waiting for the bell to ring, trying to spot exactly where the rock had landed.
"People are idiots," I thought to myself.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
When All the Grave Keepers are Gone
A Ballad of Young Paul
“These are the times when madmen are like moths,”
Says Pa, says Pa
“Be safe,” says Ma
She pleads to Paul
Paul smiles and leans
Into his sweetheart’s apple cheeks
“Farewell, my dove,” says Paul
The ships are all boarded up
With children all tucked in
From these hours of darkness
That are expected to roll in
Where the boats won’t row to shore, not tomorrow they’ll go
Paul is lying o’er, o’er the bottomless hole
The one he’s been born to lie in for hours, years and more
But the grave keepers are gone
And so is the crab grass out on the lawns
Where bloody bones stir under dinosaur-slick ground
When the brain dead come out of their coma
The children’s snakes and trees do blossom
And the fruits shake loose
Down the spine and into the watery tear
And in the words of the Good-Good Book
The mongrels and heathens come out for a closer look
And crawling through the sand with piles of it in his boots and his hands
Here comes Paul
Well, it’s been ten years, maybe three more
Since the Reaper came down
With his sickle and alarm
And the boat sinks down
Eaten up to the mast and the oars
Paul jumps down
Out of the boat
The rocks start screaming
“Lord, don’t let him out!”
And he swims and swims and he kicks
Through the rivers and the sticks
Through the shanty houses with broken sinks
And fat women wearing barely anything
Paul recalls, “Be safe,” says Ma
“Your sweethearts got a lot of gall
To still be in love with a scab like you.”
Oh, Paul remembers while he fingers his lips
As he falls asleep under a half moon
Looking up from its reflection in a ditch
Meanwhile, there’s some criminal behavior
From the violin player
Who used to be in a band with a cousin of Paul’s
He’s cheek to cheek
With the girl that’s been in Paul’s dreams
And on the violin goes the chorus
To “Old Dan Tucker”
He kneels in an alley and tells her he loves her
When he spots Paul and a sewer rat prying together
Peeping out from the guts of a drain
Violet cries out, “Thunderstorm!”
And with that, cuts the clouds and pours the rain
So long Sun: melt, dissolve and dissipate directly down to the grains
There’s a small altercation
With the appearance of a pen knife
But unaware of the location
The blood leads to the side
Of the man in the band with a cousin of Paul’s
Violet screams, dripping tears into her cone
Of huckleberry iced cream
And how Paul shakes and shivers
But not a word can he deliver
Upon the body that lies under
The wild dingo dogs’ baited howls
“It was a classic case of self-defense,”
Paul finally positions with Violet
But the only thing she can promise
Is, in fact, to not be quiet
For, in her chagrin, the lesser of two evils had come to expire
“Run away, Paul, you slippery, slimy toad
No more shall we meet and no more shall we cross these roads
May the Devil find you and prick your bones with poison
As the Sweet Lord chuckles and neglects to confine him.”
Twice defeated and doubly heart-ached
Paul simply runs in place
As is the case for the rest of his life
In and out of flop houses
For surviving he’s certainly not the proudest
Since he’s never had a house that’s to be called a home ere go
Paul constructs one last letter
Intent to tell Violet how his heart still swells for her
But a reconciliation Paul knows is not set
He sends the letter away and just as quickly
Ties a fine buckskin belt around his neck
The overturned bucket is kicked
And where Paul is sent—above or deep down—no one knows
But now, after 13 years of no affection
Violet’s been given some unearthly direction
That’s led her back to Paul
Violet unhitches her bags
And climbs down from the wagon
Here at the place of Paul
A redheaded crow roosts on a branch
And rattles the fence
Leading down the cobblestone path to Paul
As Violet knuckles the door
And whistles a tune
She’s shocked to find upon her arrival
Flies buzzing around the head of Paul
She weeps and she wails
And yells down to hell
“Oh, how you made me suffer
For this magnificent malignant!
For now I am too old to find any young lover at all
This sack of dripping flesh and meat
That used to kiss so sweet
Is now just an address for decay.”
And she was quite correct
In the extraction of her display
For the only mourners left were not exactly worms
But instead a blowfly or two
And some maggots that grew out of Paul
“These are the times when madmen are like moths,”
Says Pa, says Pa
“Be safe,” says Ma
She pleads to Paul
Paul smiles and leans
Into his sweetheart’s apple cheeks
“Farewell, my dove,” says Paul
The ships are all boarded up
With children all tucked in
From these hours of darkness
That are expected to roll in
Where the boats won’t row to shore, not tomorrow they’ll go
Paul is lying o’er, o’er the bottomless hole
The one he’s been born to lie in for hours, years and more
But the grave keepers are gone
And so is the crab grass out on the lawns
Where bloody bones stir under dinosaur-slick ground
When the brain dead come out of their coma
The children’s snakes and trees do blossom
And the fruits shake loose
Down the spine and into the watery tear
And in the words of the Good-Good Book
The mongrels and heathens come out for a closer look
And crawling through the sand with piles of it in his boots and his hands
Here comes Paul
Well, it’s been ten years, maybe three more
Since the Reaper came down
With his sickle and alarm
And the boat sinks down
Eaten up to the mast and the oars
Paul jumps down
Out of the boat
The rocks start screaming
“Lord, don’t let him out!”
And he swims and swims and he kicks
Through the rivers and the sticks
Through the shanty houses with broken sinks
And fat women wearing barely anything
Paul recalls, “Be safe,” says Ma
“Your sweethearts got a lot of gall
To still be in love with a scab like you.”
Oh, Paul remembers while he fingers his lips
As he falls asleep under a half moon
Looking up from its reflection in a ditch
Meanwhile, there’s some criminal behavior
From the violin player
Who used to be in a band with a cousin of Paul’s
He’s cheek to cheek
With the girl that’s been in Paul’s dreams
And on the violin goes the chorus
To “Old Dan Tucker”
He kneels in an alley and tells her he loves her
When he spots Paul and a sewer rat prying together
Peeping out from the guts of a drain
Violet cries out, “Thunderstorm!”
And with that, cuts the clouds and pours the rain
So long Sun: melt, dissolve and dissipate directly down to the grains
There’s a small altercation
With the appearance of a pen knife
But unaware of the location
The blood leads to the side
Of the man in the band with a cousin of Paul’s
Violet screams, dripping tears into her cone
Of huckleberry iced cream
And how Paul shakes and shivers
But not a word can he deliver
Upon the body that lies under
The wild dingo dogs’ baited howls
“It was a classic case of self-defense,”
Paul finally positions with Violet
But the only thing she can promise
Is, in fact, to not be quiet
For, in her chagrin, the lesser of two evils had come to expire
“Run away, Paul, you slippery, slimy toad
No more shall we meet and no more shall we cross these roads
May the Devil find you and prick your bones with poison
As the Sweet Lord chuckles and neglects to confine him.”
Twice defeated and doubly heart-ached
Paul simply runs in place
As is the case for the rest of his life
In and out of flop houses
For surviving he’s certainly not the proudest
Since he’s never had a house that’s to be called a home ere go
Paul constructs one last letter
Intent to tell Violet how his heart still swells for her
But a reconciliation Paul knows is not set
He sends the letter away and just as quickly
Ties a fine buckskin belt around his neck
The overturned bucket is kicked
And where Paul is sent—above or deep down—no one knows
But now, after 13 years of no affection
Violet’s been given some unearthly direction
That’s led her back to Paul
Violet unhitches her bags
And climbs down from the wagon
Here at the place of Paul
A redheaded crow roosts on a branch
And rattles the fence
Leading down the cobblestone path to Paul
As Violet knuckles the door
And whistles a tune
She’s shocked to find upon her arrival
Flies buzzing around the head of Paul
She weeps and she wails
And yells down to hell
“Oh, how you made me suffer
For this magnificent malignant!
For now I am too old to find any young lover at all
This sack of dripping flesh and meat
That used to kiss so sweet
Is now just an address for decay.”
And she was quite correct
In the extraction of her display
For the only mourners left were not exactly worms
But instead a blowfly or two
And some maggots that grew out of Paul
Groucho
I work at a university library. It's equivalent in size to a small hospital...Italian architecture, imported marble pillars, dirty carpets, broken elevators, 30 years old...dirty, broken, aged and part Italian...If it was a foreign exchange student I might have half a chance.
The library even has seven floors, not unlike Dante's seven levels of Hell.
The other day, I was sitting on a concrete bench in the middle of campus before I started my shift. I was there for about 15 minutes, every minute turning into a darker hour. Young women walked to class in their pajamas and Sunday's finest unaware of the hourglass being slightly nudged on their ripe, Venus Di Milian bodies. The men, strong and clueless, followed behind with their hats on backwards and hair long and shaggy. It was a sea of cigarettes and cell phones. It was an ocean of hope and sexual adventure. And here I sat. A 26-year-old dingy washed out to tide.
As the 15th hour approached, the last class had ended and the campus was all but vacant as Thursday was the last school day of the week. I wasn't discouraged though...I kept right on sitting. I snatched a glimpse of a squirrel hesitate before running up a nearby oak tree. I smelled the air full of the flagrant plume exiting the lavender trees. I felt the concrete underneath me and the crisp, Hill Country breeze blow through my face. And I watched a lost Asian student wonder up the hill, back down again and finally disappear.
I saw a feather, or some piece of white matter, come over an encroaching building and gently float down the side, past my main view, and then back up into the clouds under a sunless sky. Then there was nothing.
Now I knew how Forest Gump felt.
But without any of the accomplishments or exciting stories...
Just the bench sitting.
I buried my face so deep into the palms of my hands my eyeballs made an indention in the bone.
The library even has seven floors, not unlike Dante's seven levels of Hell.
The other day, I was sitting on a concrete bench in the middle of campus before I started my shift. I was there for about 15 minutes, every minute turning into a darker hour. Young women walked to class in their pajamas and Sunday's finest unaware of the hourglass being slightly nudged on their ripe, Venus Di Milian bodies. The men, strong and clueless, followed behind with their hats on backwards and hair long and shaggy. It was a sea of cigarettes and cell phones. It was an ocean of hope and sexual adventure. And here I sat. A 26-year-old dingy washed out to tide.
As the 15th hour approached, the last class had ended and the campus was all but vacant as Thursday was the last school day of the week. I wasn't discouraged though...I kept right on sitting. I snatched a glimpse of a squirrel hesitate before running up a nearby oak tree. I smelled the air full of the flagrant plume exiting the lavender trees. I felt the concrete underneath me and the crisp, Hill Country breeze blow through my face. And I watched a lost Asian student wonder up the hill, back down again and finally disappear.
I saw a feather, or some piece of white matter, come over an encroaching building and gently float down the side, past my main view, and then back up into the clouds under a sunless sky. Then there was nothing.
Now I knew how Forest Gump felt.
But without any of the accomplishments or exciting stories...
Just the bench sitting.
I buried my face so deep into the palms of my hands my eyeballs made an indention in the bone.
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