the playing of it safe

I was writing in my little moleskin.
"What are you doing? What is this?" she said motioning to the pad, exaggerating the way drunks do.
"It's my notes. I take them everywhere. Record my thoughts."
"Get rid of this," she says motioning with certainty.
This behavior has worked for her before.
"No. You should get one of these. Y'all should," I motioned back quietly.
"Nooooo," she answers coyly in upspeak.
Well, Fuck it, I thought and continued on. I knew if it takes a measure of complaint it would be a worthless effort.
It's in my nature to find limits and I felt bad at that moment for my friends, my lover and myself as a loser. One who does't see. I let the irony of this thought rest.
Then I thought of Constance, her crime and her poker face and how I just nearly belted her one.
THE PLAYING OF IT SAFE, I wrote down to be the title of the next entry. Because, when I thought of her and the academic madness that scoops up the valuable pieces and germinations of authentically derived and expertly crafted expression as a cud to be chewed and gnawed like so many undercooked pumpkin seeds I have a measure of pity and fear. Fear for having it wrong and pity for seeing what essentially is the root of wasted efforts, power politics. And if 'authentic' is a trip then hammer it out. Beat the romance out of the thing and let it simply mean 'derived' as in out of life or out of body experience and not crafted from the necessity of smartness, laid out in the particular measured code of proverbial boredom.
Join the cast of characters bitch, we need each other for the dreams that unfold. I'll explore it, whether in the known or unknown. Friendship is weathering the cycles. Go round, go silent, go blind, but go. Go go go.

poverty and poker

After being ass raped at the border again and not but two miles into Grand Island I see the troopers lights. Somehow he spots the little red inspection sticker shining through the windshield glass covered in rock salt. (This year's sticker is blue.) Then, there I am, roadside in the rust covered heap of shit on the way back from a grand celebration in Niagara on Buttercup's post radiation life, her 28th birthday.
What is this about now? I ask the cop in a neutral tone. Why am I being stopped?
You're being stopped for failure to inspect your vehicle sir.
It's not my vehicle sir. Silence.
He didn't care, having made the stop, I knew I'd be processed and pushed through the system. The most likely course, I pay the ticket having violated the public trust. This would be a setback, the little things that add up to failure. Get your shit together and in line, quit fucking around, be done with it. This is how this works. The anatomy of American poverty. Now just to be clear with my reader, I'm not poor, not in any fair and measured sense of the word. I've traveled around the world, hold expensive degrees from leading schools and enjoy a plethora of experience. I've got energy, skills, talents and options. It would be a great feat to starve now. I just couldn't afford the car now in either case, my timing always off. The kicker of the matter is I had the beast in the shop some days prior trying to get it in gear to pass state inspection but there were just too many specifics wrong with the her. New vehicles come from one of two sources, other peoples money or steady per capita employment. Still, all of this is choice. Poverty. Like I said, I'm not poor. I've got education and that makes me wealthier than some, but economically, as in scale of income, I'm impoverished. America is designed to keep you on the edge. What's more is, your success or perception of success has as much to do with your failure as any measured quotient. Design is the great communicator. The design of everything - the design of your face, the design of your trip, the design of your vehicle, the design of your wants and needs, the design of your family, your neighborhood, your mailbox and your neighbor. Maybe that's why I choose to give it all away. There is a promise in giving yourself, that a greater and fuller experience awaits. A worker deserves his wages but those wages can be anything- they can be freedom, they can be trips across borders or trips over mountain passes, over cities or grasslands, over imagined terrain and back again. All of it without fast food or dreams or queens. All in all, the struggle here is not such a bad thing but it will eat at you nonetheless until your friends and neighbors are waxing over the void. Especially when the gamble fails and there is nothing else.

niagara

bone

grand, stand

This bar is my own private mother fucker.

He who wants to pin me down is he who wants a lotus,
Eat 'er up kitty kat, little man on point,
the lotus is your poker fish.

Dipshit.

Grand standin' hypocrite.
What does he bring? Authentication? Liberation? Masturbation.
So here we standin' and there we endin'!

All y'all, no intervention.

Balled up in phases. From the
tips of waves to private
kennel caves to rocket propelled grenades,
phases, phases, one step shorter, even for a murderer.

If you wanted war, should've chosen more,
a clue, a tare, a fight, a tout,
one who's out.

ask for a refund, stitch the punctured lung, bang another drum. Dum Dum.
Big boy's gotta dance,
watch him prance,
watch him strut!

Duck the one that couldn't cum
and pray wild for the sufferin' son.

We're one. Done.

operator

weakness is a stone lobbed at a sinner,
less, the operator.

dirty herds the possessor,
to dirtier still the end,

and before the end, the wine,
and the wine is my wife.

I flop toward you, my wife, like a butterflap.

What is worth destroying? Everything.
What is worth risking? Everything.
To this end, even the wine will go down till the chase is the demon.

Great minds find great constraint.
The best among us are silent. father. sister. lover. friend.
Every thing is everything till all they are is you.

The rest is vanity. I'll be your mirror.

huronscape