Category Archives: shards

January 4, 2018 · 6:41 am

heroes

Heroes

Heroes of war. Heroes of peace. Heroes with their song pressed in vinyl. Card-playing heroes and outlaw heroes. Evil heroes and saints. Heroes with halitosis, worshiped from afar. Football heroes and tennis heroes, sumo wrestlers fondling groupies. Land of the rising sun, setting again on heroes. Anti-heroes, where gravity brings the whole thing crashing down. Reptilian heroes, the king snake, slithering through the tall grass.

The last of the long-distance heroes, all legs and lungs.

***

An explosion of spider monkeys in the high branches, the Big Bang of consciousness. The son of Man descending from the heavens on a freight elevator, straight into the basement of the orphanage where the last living hero hangs himself with string theory.

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January 2, 2018 · 4:59 pm

krishna on shore leave

Krishna on Shore Leave

The only way to write with meaning, deep down in the marrow meaning, so deep you’re beyond logic and tin-horn everyday assumptions, deeper almost than words, is to absolutely no-holds-barred no exceptions not give a flying fuck what anyone thinks or if anyone even reads it, what you’re writing. While you’re writing, at least. After that all sorts of things may happen. Like winning the Pulitzer (ha-ha) or being executed at sunrise. It may come to that, what with terrorism the scapegoat for every travesty under the sun these days and euphemisms raining down like quarry rocks.

Let me count the ways that memory gets mangled by an attention span the size of a prune. Let me tell you how an old man just climbed out of his car (I’m in my car, up on the hill, which makes this a hill shard, and if you don’t know what that is you’ve missed out on a few years of preliminaries, and–what? Because it sounds like I’m addressing you personally you think I do give a rat’s ass what anyone thinks while I’m writing? Think again. I’m busy creating a customized universe without forethought or afterthought, I’m slicing through the dark waters like the ship the Black Freighter, I’m Krishna on shore leave, I–)…out he climbs and walks right up to my open window and gawks in at me! He wants to have a little chit-chat, but I neither look up nor stop writing, and he finally mumbles something into the sky and drifts off.

He’s paying the price for the years of lies that went into that sleek Caddy he just climbed out of, for his wrinkle-free Eddie Bower jogging outfit, he needs someone to take up his slack for him, but it’s not me. I don’t want to be his buddy, I don’t want to eat his consequences like a hyena wolfing down wildebeest entrails.
I slap down one last sentence, start the engine, and drive off, tooting my horn when I pass him.

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December 31, 2017 · 11:55 am

lady death

LADY DEATH

Lady Death came in close twelve years ago, brushing the hair out of my eyes, stroking my body like a jockey would a fine race horse. She was indifferent to the doctors and nurses and all the tubes they’d stuck in me, but she was fascinated by the long incision in my abdomen; she liked to trace a slender finger along the spine of staples that held it closed. She sat on my lap when they wheeled me out of there, her arms around my neck, her head on my shoulder.

She slept with me every night for months. Sometimes I’d wake up in the dark to find her straddling me, her head back, her long gray hair hanging limp over her ebony shoulders. She’d sit next to me in the car when I could finally drive again, a hand resting on my thigh. After awhile I got used to her. It was almost as if we were married.

Then one day a lady I’d broken up with just before the surgery came by and said she wanted to get back together, but she had to know first: Was there another woman?

I said no, and Lady Death jerked her head to one side as if she’d been slapped.

I’m back in the land of the living now, but sometimes when I wake up in the middle of the night I hear soft moaning coming from somewhere out in the dark house.

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December 27, 2017 · 4:15 pm

knowing

Knowing

I don’t want to know too much about the enemy. I don’t want to know too much about my friends. I don’t want to know too much about anything more than what I already know, a nameless knowing that drifts down over me like bee pollen–this is the knowing that is rightfully mine.

Familiarity breeds contempt isn’t accurate. Familiarity unearths the bones of another’s slow death, a private affair, and anyone who’s so exposed grows resentful. Familiarity breeds resentment.

We’re better off waving to each other, each from his own mountain top, across valleys of green trees and deer; with the wind in our hair and a blue sky above, every detail smudged into vermilion.

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December 25, 2017 · 5:32 pm

kissing it all goodbye

KISSING IT ALL GOODBYE

In a recent survey of middle-school children, it turned out that the average kid can’t define agriculture or democracy. But what’s worse is they have no idea what these things are down under the definitions. It’s the difference between not being able to find your car keys and not knowing what to do with them once you find them. Agriculture is as simple as soil and seed, democracy’s an abstraction that toys with the idea of freedom.

When asked what freedom is, all the children had an answer. 90% of them said it was being able to do whatever they wanted. 6% said watching T.V. 2.4% said having their own cell phone. The rest had a variety of answers ranging from not having a surf block on their computer to one kid who said nothing left to lose–he’s not free so much as a fugitive in a world of Drone Zombies.

I wrote a novel about the world of Drone Zombies and the fugitives that flit through its waters like minnows. No one would publish it so I created my own publishing company and published it myself. In the book I redefined half the English language through simple usage. Which makes it tough reading for a lot of people.

We are being stripped bare and recreated by a mindset that doesn’t know it exists.

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December 19, 2017 · 4:24 pm

imaginary phone calls

IMAGINARY PHONE CALLS

I make imaginary phone calls. Back a ways I called the then Pope of Rome. It was good between us, because we both speak German.

I don’t understand his thing for young boys or his Nazi past, but when he breaks down and cries, my heart goes out to him. I’m a sucker for tears.

I’m still a sucker for the beauty of young women, too. It stops me dead in my tracks. It’s not lust, I began to realize as lust waned. I think most men have this until the day they die. The Pope says he knows where I’m coming from, but I don’t trust the Pope in such matters.

Sometimes I call the ghost of Studs Terkel. Studs tells me to get my head out of my ass. Crocodile tears, says Studs. Even psychopaths cry.

I suppose I trust Studs more than the Pope, but my heart doesn’t reach out to him. I sometimes wonder what that means. Studs ain’t Woody Guthrie, the answer lies in there somewhere.

Quite often the number I dial is busy. This makes me uneasy. Who could they be talking to?

I came this close to swimming into an ocean of acceptance recently, but the tide changed and washed me ashore. There I lay among the sand dollars and seaweed, gasping like a fish out of water. There was a tendency toward panic, but then I realized this is where Man first grew legs.

I took out my cell phone and punched in God’s number. I had no idea what I was going to say when He answered.

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