SELECT ACTION

Steps hit the streets every Mundayne morn
mined clarity from sleeping minds
spun piecemeal wheels healing
in dreck of a slim paycheck
for something as divine
as vanishing points
of light in a better
way of living
and to fool
them with
squinted
third
eye.

Right now

I have to go back to work.

BEER

BEER
(from: Love is A Mad Dog From Hell
by Charles Bukowski)
I don't know how many bottles of beer
I have consumed while waiting for
things to get better
I dont know how much wine and whisky
and beer mostly beer
I have consumed after splits with women-
waiting for the phone to ring waiting
for the sound of footsteps,
and the phone to ring
waiting for the sounds of footsteps,
and the phone never rings
until much later
and the footsteps never arrive
until much later when
my stomach is coming up
out of my mouth they arrive
as fresh as spring flowers:
"what the hell have you done to yourself?
it will be 3 days before you can fuck me!"
the female is durable she lives
seven and one half years longer
than the male, and she drinks very
little beer because she knows its bad
for the figure. while we are going mad
they are out dancing and laughing with
horney cowboys. well, there's beer
sacks and sacks of empty beer bottles
and when you pick one up the bottles
fall through the wet bottom of the paper sack
rolling clanking spilling gray wet ash
and stale beer,
or the sacks fall over at 4 a.m.
in the morning making the only sound
in your life. beer rivers and seas
of beer the radio singing love songs
as the phone remains silent and the walls
stand straight up and down
and beer is all there is.

GENERATIONS

BEAT

BLANK

BEATEN

NOW

FAILED

...more on Vic Chesnutt

Teri Gross did a follow up session in remembrance of Vic Chesnutt. It aired today.



Garbage and others recorded a tribute album to Vic in 1996, entitled Sweet Relief II: Gravity of the Situation

...and another brilliant cover of a Chesnutt song by a band I remember hearing along the way:

PONY WITH A BROKEN NOSE

When you get the call, you hope it is the best news.
The baby's got two arms, ten toes and fingers and the eyes aren't crossed.
Tether ball experiments won't be done on it in Lithuania.
T-balled weeny quits at four days on the highway of road test.
Transmission girlfriend with the penis that won't deflate after flight.
Expanded warranty translates to hosejob irregularity above 180 degrees.
What gives!

HAVE FAITH WHEN YOU GOT THE DOUBTS!!! JESUS HAS CARS!

Patty D. writes:

"I was married for 32 years to a man who said he knew God personally, but the fruit was always bitter, and at the age of 55, our marriage ended. Through the years of mental and physical abuse, I trusted our Lord would carry me through this valley and He did. Never sure of what I would have to endure, I trusted in God, my perfect Father to walk with me.

Divorce is never easy for anyone.

I always had a car chosen for me by my then husband. Now with no credit history, I needed a car and a place to live. I cried out to God. In an attempt to purchase a car while living temporarily with my eldest daughter, and with only $2,000 for transportation and rent, the future looked bleak. I found a car for $1,000: a bargain for its age. The owners didn’t say in the ad that it was a standard car, for I can only drive an automatic. I told them about my faith and trusting God to find the car for me. I woke up early to start my venture, praising God for His love and protection.


At 7:00 am I drove myself in a loaned car down a empty highway. My cell phone rang. The call was from the owners of the car I couldn’t drive. They had listened to my plight and went to prayer. During the night, Jesus spoke to their hearts, telling them to sell their own family car to me for the same price even though it was more valuable. I couldn’t believe my ears. Then, when she told me where she lived, my eyes and heart could not believe what was before me. Forty feet in front of me was the street they lived on. We praised God for His faithfulness and His promise to bring to pass the desires of our hearts. Thank You dear sweet Lord for your promises and protection.
"

Oh to have such divine luck with a car!
I have had good luck in the car department to be sure. Who can ever forget the $500 Toyota Corolla station wagon that did me good service for years after that piddly payment?

Not only did it run well, but the rusted-off, rear bumper gave way to a whimsical sculpture put in place by Masters Zak and Mik Miano (then of the City Museum's welding wonders).
Sadly, I had to send the Toyota on to another place in a lot on Hall street. The bumper is still with me in my kitchen, waiting for orders.
I went on to purchase a Honda Accord that seemed nice with its leather bucket seats and CD player, power windows and roomy interior, but the brakes went South pretty quick. That cost some green. It never seemed to get very good gas mileage and there never seemed to be time and money enough to go on a trip to Detroit or Chicago or Memphis to enjoy the fact that it has less-than-a-hundred-thousand miles on it.
I was not in love with the car and who knows what causes us to do silly things when we've been drinking, but...I left the keys in it a couple weeks ago. It was gone the next day. I don't know. Don't ask.
Have I explained this in a previous blog? Am I repeating myself? I am certainly revisiting the car part of my life, because the police called last night. They found it in a big, wide alley that the officer called Hodiamont Tracks (and which Google Maps calls Suburban Tracks???) to the Northwest of Kingshighway and Delmar. My buddy Sam and I rode up there to find the officer waiting for us in there. He needed to check the trunk to make sure there wasn't a dead body there. He needed to check my driver's license. Otherwise, we went to buy red, gallon can of gasoline and it started and drove all right back to my house.
The lucky ones left cigarette butts and ashes around the inside and they smashed it into something so that the hood, the grill and the front quarter panels on each side are fucked up, but it drives. I'm having it inspected right now, so I can see about selling it, but the guy at the shop said he can't get the hood open, so...I take it to a body shop down on Gravois on the recommendation of my friend Tom. He had a car backed into one time and the guy banged out the damage so he could drive it and didn't charge him. It cost him a twelve-pack, in other words.
We'll see what happens next.
The bodyman is searching for a hood.
Take that however you want to take it.

Comedy

Life is a comedy when the bartender is up on New Year's Day to see the Blue moon descending in the Western sky and he is well rested, wide awake and driving to the gym...only to find that the gym isn't open at 7 a.m.
Oh, but some things remain the same. Semi-automatic weapons were fired willy-nilly at Midnight. There was a double murder on the mean streets while that moon was high in the sky. In a shotgun apartment, a couple of drunk girls got in a fistfight over something stupid, went to bed with bloody lips and woke up with jangly nerves and no cum on the sheets...and downtown, a man died of hypothermia while thinking he would be all right as soon as he could get his friend Pinky out of the Sterno can still caught in his fingers when they found him underneath a delivery truck.

So, here is some comic relief in honor of all those who had to work New Year's Eve.


There are a ton of these, check them out.