Earth A.D.

I’ve read your blogs.  I’m not impressed.
–Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana

You call it terrorism, I call it patriotism.  
-Jeremy Joseph Christian

…By the time that ad hit TV, AM radio had been taken over by “music” played by fake bands that were putting out fake pitches for “flower power”…completely divorced from the Nam, the military funerals we were serving daily in our parish church—where the caskets didn’t have bodies because the boys had been blown to bits, the heroin being shot by draft dodgers and vets alike over in the park across the street from my childhood home…and the police riots in Oakland against the Black Panthers….
–Anthony

Now it’s just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors and U.S. senators and congress members. So now we’ve just seen a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect and sometimes get favors for themselves after the election’s over.
–President Jimmy Carter

I go inside her pants.  I move my fingers.  I do not talk.  She doesn’t talk.  But she makes a sound which I feel was an orgasm.
-Bill Cosby

Christ.  Ain’t even been back from the island 2 weeks and already got them Babylon Blues.  They’re playing Steely Dan at the bougie coffee shop and singing along in biker shorts like useless bearded choads.  The heat’s reaching for triple digits out here on the patio and I’m coming down with flu-like symptoms-a soreness in the bones and spongy raw feeling besides, no doubt depression knocking and the ennui of prescience in these End Days.  I am truly at a loss.  I mean, before I left for retreat I was fucking exhausted.  Now I’m on call in the middle of an 11-day shift.  My sleep is fucked from 5 days in a row of turning a disabled man over in bed at 4 in the morning, and I’ve got 6 to go.  It’s been a long time I should be far from here, and the irony is that when I finally decide I’ve had enough and it’s time to go, I find myself working even more and for longer (October), and gearing up for 21 days on the road.  Christ.

There’s no consolation in the news.  Nothing promising on social media.  Everything is painfully bleak and bland, and enough to drive a man to drink.  Know what I mean Brother?  Lucky I have this time, though, and lucky we have each other.  I’ll be posting a poem for the Black Lives Matter movement, on my pages and feeds.  It perhaps offers very little for the struggle, if staying the question of where my outrage is and where it’s gone-why I lay on my back in the afternoon and can’t even be bothered to pick up the phone and call those hardons on the hill.  They’re taking away our right to live healthy happy lives and they kill you out there on the street, in front of your daughter and your girlfriend, and nobody will be outraged or speak up for you, let alone the NRA, who heretofore couldn’t shut up about the right for people like Philando Castille to bear arms.

Musings on my neutered outrage and declarations at the end of the world aside, there are torch bearers out there-like Saint Shaun King and Jimmy Carter and Henry Rollins and Lamont Steptoe-and anyone telling it from the mountain and making ’em know.  It should be noted.  Whatever these good folks are on they should send some our way, right Sister?  Blow some of the smoke of outrage downwind to weak dysfunctionals like us, who’re struggling in our own way with something on balance with the guilt of keeping our mouth shut while the Police declare war on black people and elected officials declare war on the poor.  I’m looking for a way through, good Reader, because it’s gotten so dark and twisted here, and my only hope is in the dumb strength of my Irish Italian-American blood.  We’re long suffering but hard to kill.  I’m disgusted at this disease and that it has taken to this virulent level.  I mean, it’s black and it’s in me and I can feel it acutely.  Which is heaps better than waking up 3 months from now with a three hundred dollar bar tab, smoker’s cough and all my friends mad at me.

At least this way I can get my arms around it, right?  I can really have a go at taming the beast, maybe look into psych meds and self defense classes, start that post rock band with Doc and start blowing doors in East Austin and giving ’em the what for.  The alchemy of this blog, the power of writing, never ceases to amaze me.  In penning this post, sweating it out out here, drinking Hairbender and Topo and admitting these gnarly thoughts and dark kinks in my psychology to you, I have discovered that I do have hope, however myopic and self-interested.  I have hope that one day I will feel better.  That one day I’ll have taken this thing up a notch and I’ll be in better health, maybe even be in a place to serve.  What the hell?  Even a bougie place like this will play Randy Newman if you show up (and complain) enough.  I hope that one day I’ll feel better.  What’s wrong with that?  Should I hope that I don’t?  What’s tragic and funny is, with the way things are going, and the way the world is slanting darkly down, it’s a toss up.  Do I assume the worst for myself, and only buckle in for more misery?  Or do I get it together somehow, really put up a fight and claw my way up to the plateau for a better view of the end of the fucking world?

It’s lonely at the top.  See you next week motherfucker.

Confessions of a Jerkoff

The following post was written the Sunday before last, while in the midst of feeling like a failure.  

“You get your story and you hold onto it, and every time you tell it, you forget it more.”
-Laurie Anderson, Heart of a Dog

There’s nothing ironic about writing this at a Starbucks in downtown Austin while they play The Beatles.  The Beatles aren’t my favorite and neither is this coffee shop, but I’m left alone here.  It’s perfectly copacetic and American.  No haircuts, no 80’s music and plenty of space between me and the only other customer in here.  The Beatles are too terribly cute to resonate with me and my junkyard mind, but it’s not insufferable, certainly nothing earphones won’t fix and heaps better than the hipster coffee shop near the mansion.  I can never work there, can barely sit there without choking on good vibes with the urge to kill rising.  Which is all strangely prescient, being that the intention of this post is to demonstrate what a jerkoff I’ve been, and that in a slovenly state of mind even the universe can conspire to distract you, fuck you off and prevent you from getting the work done, if you let it.

The months following the publication of September and my return from Portland haven’t exactly been stagnant, but things never passed the speed of agony.  I’ve been busy but not busy enough.  I’ve kept up with gigs.  I did a book release at the mansion, performed for a packed house and sold some books. That week I appeared as the guest on Writing On The Air.  I was Chicon Street Poets featured reader in March and played their year anniversary as well as their presentation of Popsicle’s Departure 1989 by Maydee Distefano.  I was a featured reader of Blood Jet Poetry Series in New Orleans in March with great poet and friend Bernard Pearce.  I played a short set at the first Story Barn and my monthly gigs at the Airport.  I tagged along with fellow poet Brian Grosz and writer Kent Grosswiler Jr. for Writer’s Roulette and Spokenandheard at Kickbutt Coffee, and I opened the Ice Cream Social at the end of April.  I’m playing House Wine Thursday and then heading down to Houston the next day for Songwriters Roundtable Vol 8.  I’ve been able to support my community and made appearances at performances by Grosz and local favorite Nathan Hamilton.  I’ve been out to see Ebony Stewart read at the Bedpost Confessions‘ book release and also Testify semi-regularly.  I went to Joe Gray‘s first show on Wednesday and been listening to my homeboys on the Broad Street Breakdown.  I wrote poetry and posted a poem every day in April, kept that going throughout May.  I’ve had some poems featured in PoetryInk‘s 20th Anniversary Anthology as well as a tribute to Lamont Steptoe, and spoke and read at NSFW: Poetry For Wankers in May.  I’m sitting on about 10 new poems and hope to have them submitted by the end of June.  Meanwhile, I’ve submitted “You’d Be Alone Here Too” to the No Extra Words podcast and hope to get some stories together for submission to Backyard Story Night and Testify before we hit the road for upstate NY in July.  Lastly, I had some work appear in the Fredericksburg Literary and Art Review and am thrilled to be featured in The Waggle Magazine again.  In my interview with Chicon Street Poets I mentioned that I hope to break into twelve new markets by 2017, including Boston and NYC in September.

If you think that I’m tooting my own horn, you’re goddamn right I am.  At the request of my therapist I’m doing away with thinking that I am not an Artist.  It was my mantra for a while- twenty years or so but who’s counting-but thanks to the professional help of a good therapist, I won’t need to think that way anymore.  Also it just ain’t true.  Point is, it’s become terribly necessary to toot my own horn.  Remind myself.  As much as I feel like a jerkoff, I’m still getting work done.  I’m not moving at the speed of my heroes and I may never.  The only way a little light’ll get in, and the only chance I have in this chase, is that I voice it, here and to the universe.  That even with the proof of shows and print and interviews and performances, I still feel nowhere.  And even though I’m not nowhere, and am in fact somewhere, I know I could do so much better.  If I can’t rightfully say that I’ve beat depression, I’ve certainly won the round.  I haven’t smoked a cigarette since December and I hardly ever have the urge to drink or drug.  The difficulty is this yearning for otherness.  I’m stable.  Clear.  And utterly boring.  This way of feeling reminds me of similar crossroads in my life when I knew I’d have to perform-do work or die.  I can only imagine that this time I’ll be able to hit unimagined heights.  I’ve got sobriety and health on my side.  A stable gig, money saved and lots of time.  I hope to see you on the road, good reader, and the next time I get up I plan on jamming this fucker all the way home.

Booted&Forested

Taking The Weekend Off

The wire was dead down here at the office on Friday.  This much madness was too much sorrow. I broke code and dodged deadline. Silence isn’t a good trait in a self-proclaimed iconoclast writer. My silence was the result of a tie between my shock and utter apathy about current events. It’s a great big dirty world. The news was bad. I was sitting at the writing desk among the empties. When I attempted to reflect on current events a dumb boredom clamped down on me like a migraine. The upside down American flag in the back room rustled lazily but told me nothing. Me&Steve Earle were yelling back at the bastard grackle and I was bored. The grackle yelled and me&Steve Earle hollered back. Then the phone rang.
It was American Book Award winning poet and friend, Lamont Steptoe. Said he was just checking in. He told me I should send off a poem to the 17th annual Poetry Ink Anthology coming out in April. Deadline is next Friday. He asked me about what was going on in my life while offering me the wisdom of Etheridge Knight and Sam Allen and hipping me to the 7 universal roles of a poet. He said something to the effect of do your work for three decades or so, and things will start to happen. What a godsend that man is. A cherished friend and something to look up to. His call was a much-needed shot in the arm. After hanging up with Lamont I felt redoubled, at ease. I knew I could rest in my work, wherever I am in the world and whatever I am doing.  A poet.
Then the editor came by and we went out to the big poetry show. Bedpost Confessions‘ Poetry Show was a high night of art and hilarity. These ladies know how to throw an intimate and inclusive event that never compromises the art of performance. I mean, how many times have you gone to a slam, a spoken wordoff or whatever-the-fuck, and ended up feeling so alone&isolated that you began to wonder if Plato was right? Sweet, sexy, revealing, as dark as you want and fucking hilarious. Well done, ladies. Well done.
I was particularly impressed with the poetry of Ms. Jenna Martin Opperman and of course I was reminded of how so very special poet Lacey Roop is. It’s not often that a poet can simply make me happy. Fill me with joy. What a blessing she is. Look out for these performers and this series. They are up to something good. For true.

Saturday the Editor&me went to a songwriters circle at the Saxon. We dug on tunes from the mighty Jay Sims&friends over Lonestar big boys.

Now the weekend’s over. And I’m back at the desk. There’s still plenty to be outraged about. By dodging deadline Friday I managed to avoid having to touch on the crime of the century or the brownshirt humor of pop culture and the voices of those railing against it.  The world kept turning and grinding out the days of our grisly plight but I had to recharge and redouble. Had to bask in the love for my people before I felt ready to get back in the game.

I’m ready now. Christ.
Vox populi vox dei.