guest Blog: Maleka Kay Fruean

Back when I was a longhair, in the idyllic 20th century, I was working for a landscape crew in the projects and living in an artists’ space with only a sink and a camp grill for $135 a month.  I made and received calls at the phone booth on the corner of 18th&Callowhill.  One day it was my brother, Tau.  He landed a house in West Philly.  We’d have the whole place to ourselves for $250 a month each.  It was temporary at best but a suitable transition for the return of the King.
We spent the terrible summer living there and working on a demolition crew.  Nights we’d split furniture in the backyard, light it on fire.  We were both going through a painful split w/the other sex.  It was total dudecore.  In the fall I got back together with the X and Tau told me his sister would be coming to live with us.  I understood.  Even if I did complain about the estrogen, she was his sister.  She was his family and so she was mine too.  She came over to see the place and meet me, her little brother’s best friend.
What I remember best about that first night, having dinner with Maleka, was her incredible, conky Samoan hair.  A big curly crop of it firing out all over her beautiful face.  And her explosive&contagious laugh.  We got on right away and have ever since.

The years passed.  Roommates came and went.  The rightful renter returned.  They were unkind years but they were mad&fun.  It was like coming of age in a boiler room.  Years later we would find out that the furnace in the basement had been filling the place w/carbon monoxide the whole time we lived there.  Perhaps that can explain it.
It was the worst of times.  Heart break, ache&the rest.  Psylosibin&vodka.  Red meat and Evan Williams.  Trouble, and not always the good kind.  We were at the gates of adult life.  I was young and scared of dying and I had something to prove to myself about my Father.  I guess in the universal sense we were winning but it never felt like it and we never said quit, never said die.

I’d go on to be a dj&journalist.  Maleka went on to marry and have three beautiful children and become one of my favorite political poets.  She still is.  A constant source of reflective fire&inspiration.    It is w/great pleasure I present to you my sistren, Maleka Kay Fruean.  She’ll be guest blogging on Friday and maybe you too will fall in love with her fire, her beauty.  Even if you’re not living in a shotgun shack on the corner of nowhere&oblivion.  Aho.

Victory is survival.

last missive from the Lonely Winter

Like a bankroll twisting&peeling off, like green wings behind me. The sun was shining down on my blue car all the way in from Hill Country. Rolled the window down,
This is bat weather.
Need no more reason to stay. That they hang under there, cool&fine, during the brutal summer days. That they split in November when days darken and the sun pales.
No more of this twisting and racking myself in the daytimes. I thought.  Grinding it through the nights. I was free.
Free for an afternoon drive through the bright-wet sheen. Awake&alive in the post record-breaking rain. And she, with her chants and charms, she couldn’t hurt me anymore.
Up&out there on that highway, you really get a sense of something Vast.  You can take that old highway clear up to Kansas City&Montana.  You can go by way of Fayetteville AR and up&on through Memphis/Nashville, TN.
Or you can slink low&lonely, moaning down that Musical Highway-Texas 10′ll take you to some pretty girls in Lafayette and if you burn on through you might find yourself in the bottom of the macabre night, New Orleans.
But I’ll stay here in the perfect bat weather.
I pull into the spot and they’s a note on the door. I rip it where its pricked. I throw it away.
I don’t need you anymore. 
Trouble was and trouble is.  There is no difference.  Down here, in the Pearl of the South, with the jack o lantern lights on&down the hill from the barrio store.

I caught a fever and a sickness but the disease it peeled right offa me. Like a bankroll, like green wings, blowing in the wind behind me. Up&out there on 290/360/71, I could see the Frost Building, the dome, and Charles Whitman’s tower.  All that money was blowin around behind me like so much greed&lust between Temple and the bad road.

though the Blues be my blanket,
and Trouble my home,
I’m finally OK with you bein gone.

no more crazy woman blues

I cleaned out the old place. I was waiting on the 5 and sitting at the bustop next to a Mexican broad with a nasty cough. I had the Swiffer, a shower curtain&rings, and a loaf of barrio wheat bread&peanut butter in an old laptop case.
Just then a red Lotus Ethos pulled up.
“Get in.” the driver said “and leave those.”
She nodded towards the Swiffer and my hobo sack. I gave them to senora and I climbed in.
“I’m Lakshmi.” she said and the wind blew her curls toward me like tiny black arms in the moonlight.
We came down the hill from the barrio and the city gave rise. We were descending into all that blue glass&steel with the Frost Building up there like some frozen flower. We passed all the venues, jukejoints, barrelhouses and bougiebars. The young&the Rich&the dumb were out, all on parade, blazing in sex&greed&money&lust. Their musics blared. I looked at their faces. Their grins were permanent, no irony, a permanent pretense at happiness. We passed a yellow mansion on our right.  Pulled into the lot out back.
“That’s your place up there,” she pointed. ”Go in. Wash up. I’ll fix us a drink.”
The place was filled with clocks. Big clocks with Roman numerals and pendulums lined the walls and up the staircase hall. I reached into my pocket and I still had the old clock key. I opened the door to my apartment and it was a cathedral of lightboxes. They lit up the place in rose pink&bottle green. I smelled the Sandalwood burning.

There was a warm white towel on the toilet and candles burning in the bathroom. I stripped down. My clothes were grimy and stained. My hands were burned from oven cleaner&bleach. I took a luxuriatingly long, hot shower. I washed it all off.
I looked at the bruise in the bathroom mirror. It circled my Adam’s apple in a deep, blood-blue.
I walked into the bedroom. She was sitting on the edge of the bed. She handed me the chilled glass of clear white wine.
“To your new life here.” We raised our glasses.

We drank in silence like that. On the edge of the bed with me wrapped in a towel and Lakshmi in her colourful tresses.  The ticking of the old clocks.  She handed me a check for $1,580.
“This is from Mr.Fox.”

It took me 3 years but I had finally arrived in Hippie Town. Now I was on Easy Street, in an ex-Governor’s mansion on Judge’s Hill and riding in style.  Those sundry, piss-poor barrio days. Those raging warehouse nights and the bad bitch of Winter.  They were all behind me now. It didn’t matter who I thought I was or what it all meant. Nothing mattered anymore. There was the old life and now this one.

Outside they rallied and roiled down the drag, bowing down to their Fun God in the Live Music Capital of the World. We drank in silence like that. Sitting on the edge of the bed with the old clocks winding down on the first night of my new life here.

Brother Craig’s blues

9:37PM So.. U were willing to fool around w me knowing that i was still involved with someone?? Yet ‘ him knowing your name’ kills the deal.. Funny man you are.
And, by the way, wanting to do lunch first is not an unreasonable request; however asking me over for a nightcap, is. Considering we hardly know eachoth
er anymore. Cant believe u came onto me so hard the other night. Where are your manners??
& here i was, dreaming about all kinds of stuff.. Marriage, kids, the whole bit. picturing a life with you! So absurd.
10:24PM
I take it you do not want to come with me to meditation?
Wow, youre,harsh. Ok.. Nevermind
Oh well. Dreaming about you was nice, anyway. Always did love your deep voice & hairy chest.. & the way you touch me. ill miss,you. Goodbye
9:31AM
O yea.. One more thing.. Thanks for being the catalyst/ impetus for doing what had to be done. Sometimes love alone is not enough.
12:26PM
Your friends still in town?
1:30PM
Whatcha doin today ?
Oh. No time for late lunch?
3:17PM
Guess not.
Ps what do u charge for yoga?  Want to trade for massage sometime?
I guess,not!!
12:13AM
U sure know to confuse a girl.
4:46AM
So which is it..u just wana hook up or you like,me?

VOICEMAIL
5:24PM
Hullooooo?  Jim, it’s Ravena, hower ya doin just callin to see how yr doin I haven’t heard from ya I been texting you I mean so this really sucks I dont like being ignored um well if you think about it give me a call when you get a chance I’ll be free to talk after about 8:30 tonight if you feel like callin talk to you later ba
So I called back, after 8:30 and got her voicemail.  I didn’t leave a message.  Immediately after I hung up, I get this, at
11:11PM
Whats up ?
and this, at
6:20AM
Hmm.. Your fingers must be broken. Howd u dial earlier, w ur chin?? Lol!! Well im going to assume ur either now involved w someone or otherwise not inter ested. Im going to leave u alone now, sorry if i was being a pest. Take care

lost missives from the Lonely Winter#5

The Office of Jim Trainer
3923 Run of the Oaks#G
Hippie Town, USA

Mako Reles
Medellin, Colombia

2/5/12

Warmest Greetings from the War Room-
Howdy, Mako.  How goes?   It pains me to see you off to some seemingly less industrialized&tropical Xanadu while I’m sipping warm beer w/hipsters dressed like cowpokes on a Friday night in Hippie Town.

Aho.  Jimbo’s Big Friday Night at the White Horse was my way of celebrating.  It was my last day of work.  The temp job.  I was drinking Lone Star big boys with a guy from work we call Peter Frampton.  Me and Peter Frampton were belly up to the bar at the White Horse  and then the band came in.  About the only way you can offend me is musically and when you do its deeply and I am sorry for you, Brother.
They plugged in&starting playing and the fucking bottom dropped out.  How can anyone born after 1969 in this country play rock n roll and not fucking mean it?  I mean, I had just spent the last 30days of my life working in a cold building for 8 dollars and 50cents per hour and I was in no mood for ironic country-lite.  Luckily Stu came through and so did my Uncle Jimmy.  We decided to request Iron Maiden songs-well, we decided to yell Iron Maiden song titles at the band to irritate them/entertain ourselves.  As you can imagine it took quite a while for us to exhaust all the titles from Maiden’s catalog.  At first the band laughed along with us but eventually the crowd&the band tried to shame us into silence.  They had hoped that somehow we would be embarrassed and stop.  We weren’t and we didn’t.

And that was it.  My work was done there.
I got home in time to draft a letter and drop it off to Pamor Properties.  I was out of there, too.  They charged me two weeks pro-rated rent and I guess that’s what I get for being such a prick to them the whole time I lived there.
I went by Red’s.  She wouldn’t answer the door.  I left a note and walked by the pool for old time’s sake.  It was covered in a sheen of deadwinter slime, dead leaves&dirty moss.
And that was it brother Mako.  The page had turned and my time at Bat Manor had come to a close.  It was real and it was fun but it wasn’t real fun.  Christ-the last two years I spent in that place were like living in a wine bottle.  It was dark and wet and confusing; filled with Fruit files and hungover with madness.

Christ.  I been on Craigslist for three fucking hours now.  I don’t know what I’m gonna do when the money runs out.  All I know is what I ain’t willing to do anymore which won’t make a damn in this economy.  These days the difference between willing and able is the difference between standing bedside while a millionaire dies of brain cancer for 10 dollars an hour and joining my brothers out there on the row, donating plasma or standing highway-side with a sign that says:  39cents short of a soft taco GOD BLESS.

On the bright side, spiritually, there is no death.  I have no enemies.  All that trouble and subterfuge before was only a deepening the appreciation of peace that, even then, was on its way.  I’ve started Yoga Teacher Training and all the channels are opening.  I’m firing on all four.

We are that which we seek.

so understand, don’t waste your time always searching for those wasted years
face up, make your stand, and realize you’re living in the golden years.
–Iron Maiden, Wasted Years

yr Pilgrim,
Trainer
Hippie Town, USA

the heart is the Bastard

it remembers
everything.
there’s no new Love
in the heart
just old skin&
old wounds
drunk Tom Waits’
albums&
ghetto streets.
raw streets and a
fresh desperation.
you can put your
best foot forward
in the new City
but
the heart remembers
the heart is the
Bastard.

lost missives from the Lonely Winter#4

The Office of Jim Trainer
Between Temple&the Bad Road
Bat Manor, TX

Dave Hagysback
Lap of Luxury
Medellin, Colombia

1/22/12
11:24pm

Welly well well. Colombia? Really?
I thought the only thing white boys did in Colombia was get their hands cut off.  I mean, the last lilywhite I heard of travelling below the devil’s navel was George Jung and we both know how it worked out for him, don’t we?
But even Pablo Escobar learned the “high cost of doing business” in an American client-state when he got nailed to a hot roof by American steel.  His Empire was left blowing in the tropic wind and over here we got the DEA.  Oh well, that’s the price you pay to the Big Boss Man.
What is wrong with me?  Sorry.  I don’t mean to wish you ill.  You’ll be fine.  When G and Mako touchdown you guys will be ruling it in the jungle and searching for cheap Modelo and fat girls.  This is just my strange way of saying goodbye.

We are only given one chance in life and the rest of our lives to try and forget it.  Just ask Singha.  I mean, Austin might look like Paradise to a hapless Yanqui like me but you El Paso boys are ruling it.  You survived fucking malaria to laugh in my face at the Whip In and give me a bump in the bathroom and, for all we know, Mako or G could be Quezicotl and their little flight from the Pearl of the South might be the whole world coming home.
The Year of the Black Dragon should be interesting no matter what Hemisphere you’re in.  Although, I have a newfound appreciation for working in American retail after hearing about how they do in China.
Christ.
Every Monday I put on the nametag&a bright orange smile and Suck Shit.  It’s not even a living but not to worry.  We will survive.
The question now becomes how will we thrive?  Do you know what I mean, David?  How will we live our dreams?  How will we crank it, 20 years on the dayshift, and launch into a braver night?  Can we stand again in the cold light of day with wisdom and grace?  How will we liberate ourselves from fear and be courageous like the Buddha?
Like Shakyamuni, there on the beach.  It was raining down swords and he made a wish for peace.

It’s midnight here, I’ve got my blues radio and my cigarettes but, this Chinese New Year I find myself wishing only that I was in Houston.
We will live to see stranger things than our own mortality.  The stupid irony of all this harrowing madness is that it is only through compassion that we will be set free.
It didn’t take a spade to dig out my diamonds inside.

Guo Nian.
Jim Trainer
Bat Manor, TX