I am not as much as you. I am not what you need me to be. Make a face; you don't approve. You know it. I know it. That's why I have legs. That's why I have muscle. That's why I go the extra mile. I do it all for you. I do it all for you. For you. Make some stupid remark. I may kill you. But this is my smile. They took it from me. This is my smile. Somebody made me laugh before the cuffs came off. I snubbed out some motherfucker's life. You found out. We had a laugh. You took a picture. You applied the rules. No one told me or I forgot. This is it. I had this laugh.
What else is there to say? I'm lucky enough to hang out with a Texas sculptor who talks like a pirate when he wants to talk like a pirate. Ladies and Gentlemen, the one and only Mik Miano is in town! Some of you have seen the bumper on the back of my '81 Toyota wagon. That is the work of Mik and his son, Zack (Zach?). Mik is visiting from Houston and we went down to see Fred Friction administer longnecks from behind his altar at the newly reopened chapel named Fred's Six Feet Under, which is a cozy basement grotto underneath Iron Barley down near the corner of Virginia and Bates...and then we went to Mangia Italiano and the City Diner, of course. That's what happens quite a lot when we're haunting the streets of St. Louis together: Irish Whiskey and another beer. "Yes indeed, I think I will!" Mik said. This image is worth a thousand slurred words, I do believe. Perched on Mik's lap oh so perilously is the puppet that I am sitting until Lindy comes back someday to reclaim it. I suspect that the puppet will pop up in many other pictures.
More energetic and delirious than I’d been in awhile, a customer at the bar upped the giddy with silly shit spurting forth with innocent excitement about the world of the new. “I’m not kidding, Violet,” he said to the bartendress. “I don’t care what it is, but I like to try anything I haven’t had before.” “That was good!” he said of a Huber lager. “What else you got!” She poured him a Schlafly American Pale Ale and he piped up again. Heads turned. We were sipping coffee on a day that hadn’t quite yet kick-started itself. I barely got some lunch in me and was starting to long for the smoke I had left in my flat. The coffee bent nothingness into something but nothing and I felt conscious for the first time since the whiskey and chronic buzz I had put on a couple nights ago, before cold and dark days of reading and sleeping. “I discovered Pizza Hut all-you-can-eat,” the wackado continued, loud enough for all in the dining room to hear. “Man, I had salad and nine pieces of pizza. And then! I had some cottage cheese and some pudding!” The cat next to me was now crying into his sleeve, not able to laugh out loud. “Then! My buddy called and wanted me to hang some dry wall with him. Aaaahhh no, I’m immobilized!” The shit satellite radio poured more 80s schlock into the mix. I knew I couldn’t last long thinking about all the hopeless love I had spent while listening to this dreck but somehow it felt good, sparked by the coffee and an increasing need for inhalation. “You show me an all-you-can-eat graze bar and I’m there!” he cackled now. “I wish they had a place that had it all. I’d munch cheeseburgers, souvlaki and kani maki. This little dude must have a tapeworm, I thought…and how does he know about sushi? He didn’t look the type: a buzz cut, weathered face and work-a-day demeanor. But there was something crazy and angelic about him. He took his days with him, I guess. I don’t know. I remember thinking that NOW was enough for him and he was definitely enough for all of us. He had us by the ovaries and gonads. He let us dive down and sink into our own comments about Morrissey and the shit Brit DJ. Let us look out the windows onto the banking public on Grand Boulevard. Let us sip and wonder “what next?” And then, “I started drinking when I was five”. Skulls on necks spun, they did. “I used to sit on my Granddaddy’s lap and drink beer, Violet.” He had us on the hook again and was reeling us back in, but I was glad that I was not him, yet jealous and envious, somehow. “He used to give me whiskey, too! Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!”
Violet kept herself together somehow. The rest of us were either stunned or crumbling to pieces, but she was clocked in and simply grinning a little. “Do you like that APA? That’s what I drink,” she said. I liked her composure, but I wanted more. “Ah, Man! This is fucking great! What is this????!!” Violet pointed at the APA tap handle. “It’s kind of fruity!!” he squeaked as the boy to my left lost it, expelling mucous across his plate of chicken wings.
...and it becomes something else. Sometimes it stays just as it is, word-wise. Here is something I wrote on the back of a drink ticket at work, for instance:
*A Fine How-Do-You-Do
Why don’t you pull
A sumac branch out of
Your innuendo;
Sit on your own face;
And I’ll fuck your god in
The heart
With a pear and pepper
Chutney gun.
Brett Lars Underwood, 2007
The funny part was when I handed it to a customer!
Or this piece of something that I wrote at the final bar of the night one night
*Balled Numb
You know what’s it like
At 3 a.m.
My bones numb from your
Fire
The candle has set the town
Ablaze
And
The bartenders are tired
And you are scared out
Of your mind
Can’t comprehend the
Outcome
Or even what just happened
Then
So you cry yourself
To sleep
Meanwhile, I laugh in
My dreams
But why can’t you get it?
Brett Lars Underwood, 2008
But while I'm at it, I'll post one that I wrote straight into this machine:
I was doing laundry last night and this poem followed me upstairs amidst an armload of clothes.This was written on the back of the piece of stationary:
PLEASE
CLEAN THE
DRYER FILTER
AFTER EACH
USE…..
(FIRE HAZARD IF NOT) Thanks.
On the other side:
The Mind of Absolute Trust
By Seng-Ts'an
The great way isn't difficult for those who are unattached to their preferences.
Let go of longing and aversion, and everything will be perfectly clear.
When you cling to a hairbreadth of distinction, heaven and earth are set apart.
If you want to realize the truth, don't be for or against.
The struggle between good and evil is the primal disease of the mind.
Not grasping the deeper meaning, you just trouble your minds serenity.
As vast as infinite space, it is perfect and lacks nothing.
But because you select and reject, you can't perceive its true nature.
Don't get entangled in the world; don't lose yourself in emptiness.
Be at peace in the oneness of things, and all errors will disappear by themselves.
If you don't live the Tao, you fall into assertion or denial.
Asserting that the world is real, you are blind to its deeper reality;
denying that the world is real, you are blind to the selflessness of all things.
The more you think about these matters, the farther you are from the truth.
Step aside from all thinking, and there is nowhere you can't go.
Returning to the root, you find the meaning;
chasing appearances, you lose their source.
At the moment of profound insight, you transcend both appearance and emptiness.
Don't keep searching for the truth; just let go of your opinions.
For the mind in harmony with the Tao, all selfishness disappears.
With not even a trace of self-doubt, you can trust the universe completely.
All at once you are free, with nothing left to hold on to.
All is empty, brilliant, perfect in its own being.
In the world of things as they are, there is no self, no non self.
If you want to describe its essence, the best you can say is "Not-two."
In this "Not-two" nothing is separate, and nothing in the world is excluded.
The enlightened of all times and places have entered into this truth.
In it there is no gain or loss; one instant is ten thousand years.
There is no here, no there; infinity is right before your eyes.
The tiny is as large as the vast when objective boundaries have vanished;
the vast is as small as the tiny when you don't have external limits.
Being is an aspect of non-being; non-being is no different from being.
Until you understand this truth, you won't see anything clearly.
One is all; all are one. When you realize this, what reason for holiness or wisdom?
The mind of absolute trust is beyond all thought, all striving,
is perfectly at peace, for in it there is no yesterday, no today, no tomorrow.
Compare it to this piece by Charles Bukowski. Why? I'm not sure.
THE GENIUS OF THE CROWD
there is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average human being to supply any given army on any given day
and the best at murder are those who preach against it and the best at hate are those who preach love and the best at war finally are those who preach peace
those who preach god, need god those who preach peace do not have peace those who preach peace do not have love
beware the preachers beware the knowers beware those who are always reading books beware those who either detest poverty or are proud of it beware those quick to praise for they need praise in return beware those who are quick to censor they are afraid of what they do not know beware those who seek constant crowds for they are nothing alone beware the average man the average woman beware their love, their love is average seeks average
but there is genius in their hatred there is enough genius in their hatred to kill you to kill anybody not wanting solitude not understanding solitude they will attempt to destroy anything that differs from their own not being able to create art they will not understand art they will consider their failure as creators only as a failure of the world not being able to love fully they will believe your love incomplete and then they will hate you and their hatred will be perfect
like a shining diamond like a knife like a mountain like a tiger like hemlock
"He's got a lot of irons in the fire", she whispered, several feet away from the bar not knowing that he hears everything.
Everything!
It is quite maddening sometimes. Or atleast it used to be. Now he can weave mariachi with chainsaws; bowed cymbals with bees buzzing; bird calls with babbling seamen and jingling trinkets.
He doesn't mind at all, you see.
It just the music of his city.
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