Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain

If it keeps on rainin’ levee’s goin’ to break…
-Memphis Minnie

What Deford thought would be fun ‘for a few months’ turned into 37 years.
-Liberal Radio

In America it’s not Republican and Democrat–it’s just those are the only options people have.
–Trevor Noah

The fear of not doing what I want to do in life made me do what I want to do.
–Dave Chappelle

I think they will be both miserable and emboldened.
–Karl Rove

For fuck’s sake.  A silver lining to this shitshow is I’ll take it to the mattresses and bring you back a slick 600, neat and fine and ain’t it though.  It’s been raining since the end of summer and today the weather has turned brutish and cold.  The news of a dismembered journalist is on the wire and 30-35 people are still missing in Mexico City, FLA–ravaged and otherwise destroyed by the 3rd worst Atlantic hurricane to make landfall in the U.S.  In other news, somewhere in America someone is perfectly happy with the way things are, follows James Woods on Twitter and sees no contradiction in a GOD BLESS OUR TROOPS, ESPECIALLY OUR SNIPERS bumper sticker emblazoned above a dangling set of TruckNutz on his black Chevy Silverado.  The Grateful Dead were wrong.  The trouble ain’t with you or me but everything and everyone.  The mounting mud and torrential rain falling out the window of this garage apartment are great reason to stay indoors, at least until my shift starts, and it could always be worse.  That sentiment carries a lot of water (sorry) with me and is sure to carry me through the gnarly vice-like moments in which we have found ourselves in the dark New Century.  I know it could be worse because it has been, and holding a sign in the freezing rain for 6 hours is heaps better than sleeping in the park of your hometown with a pack of Marlboro and a copy of The Fountainhead in your sleeping bag.

This is the end Beautiful Friend.  But I’ll still try and make it because I don’t know what else to do.  We’ve got 135 months to right our course ecologically which seems to be the issue of our time.  I suppose if I was black I might think differently though, seeing as how cops kill you if you’re black and you’re marginalized and hemmed in by a capitalist system in a country where it’s a crime to be poor.  Holland has never looked so good.  Early voting opens October 22 and the Chinese Century looms like a sleeping dragon.  I’m still writing poetry, and in turns sleeping as terribly as a zombie and a babe in the arms of a sweet blonde witch out in Bee Caves.  Landlord’s raised the rent here and I know it’s time to move on but not before I get a couple books out and finally amass the MAMU.  I’ve been shitting liquid since January and the contusion on my left heel rages, swollen and unhealed.  I probably need glasses, someone sideswiped my car and I’ve got a cyst on my lower back.  I been working–doing shifts at $14 and $15 an hour, holding a sign and ushering corporates to their shuttle downtown, and like a pig out in the sticks of Texas, sweating and sore in black closed-toe non-slip shoes.  I have yet to pore over the bank statement from my summer abroad, the whole thing was a journalistic failure if not a great opportunity to see how horrible some of my friends are and glean enough inspiration to carry me through another season here in Paradise where it’s overrun with technocrats and Californians but practically better than anywhere else in the U.S.

As fucked as it is, and oh how it is fucked—getting old and staying sober, taking orders from 20-something twats in full black bistro attire, living in a cold-tile flat with limited hot water, suffering IBS and constant headaches, ecological collapse, murdered journalists, news as entertainment, reverb soaked pansy-ass jive perpetrated by sexually ambigious college grads, stolen elections, rhyming poetry and the torture of Ugandan dissidents–it could always be worse and by the looks of it will be very soon.

See you downtown in the rain, motherfucker.

#JusticeForJamal

Even good news is bad news for the Post

— Cameron Gray (@Cameron_Gray) October 17, 2018

 

Take Your Medicine

…to live outside the law, you must be honest…
-Bob Dylan, Absolutely Sweet Marie

I’ve really let myself go. I’m doing my best but my best is paltry and weak. Nights I fall out, days I do what I have to. What I know, in my mind, is fear. It’s fear keeping me in line, not taking any chances. What I don’t know, in my body, is trauma, or the memory of it, the abuse that continues, that’s changed me and keeps me on a dark and narrow track. I tried to disengage from this blog. I shared poetry and performances and I wrote about others. Writing about others came home to roost when they started taking notice. Not so much because they took notice but for the kind of attention they paid to being what I felt was a hack anyway. It’s all fine and well. Writing isn’t a perfect art. Guns need to be cleaned and even then you’ll breach wide and fire into the blue—instead of taking down the enemy you only alert them to your location. My explanations only dug me in deeper. To the uninitiated, the newsletter I sent out last week made me sound petty and worse. There’s no excuse. It’s not funny anymore. Asserting masculinity can no longer be at the expense of femininity. True power never seeks without but always comes from within. We know this, and the world going to pot? That’s no excuse either. Ultimately, the truth is a good medicine. It’s often bitter and harsh but that doesn’t make hiding out in the dark any easier or any more sense being afraid. The truth hurts but it’s trauma that keeps us hid and a memory of pain that’ll keep us suckling at a lie.

This is the blog I’ve been trying to write—for weeks, the diamond in the mire and sticky dross of gossip and vituperation. I can’t live down that it worked, for a while, that I felt like I was living Mencken’s life of kings slinging ‘em down week after week. There’s hardly anything more satisfying than taking down the Goliath in 600 words. Nothing feels better than a bourbon in the morning either, but the real problem ain’t the hangover. The truth is the truth. When the light of day finds you it can feel like it’s cutting you down your cold middle, especially if you’ve been hiding out stanchioned in the frozen night. The light ain’t wrong, the light is the light. It feels good on your back and bids you enter the sacred spaces of dusk and dawn. The night is ok for poets and soldiers advancing, and alcoholics and sex addicts—me, I’m peeling back the layers. I quit drinking to get to the Real and oh boy have I. The fireworks, Doc, have started. I’m confronting myself, it’s dank and musty in here and like the song says there’s too many skeletons in my room today.

I been trying to dig myself out. Hang up the gossip column and get to the hard stuff. I fell into a hall of mirrors. I was so busy trying to convince others what an artist I was, when the truth is I was only trying to prove it to myself and either way I haven’t been an artist, haven’t been writing—not in earnest, anyway. I wrote about chronic masturbation at the end of the world, burying horrible xs and practically day drinking cocktails of resentment and woe, leaning grim and perverted beneath the masthead of this column. I was getting by, which, for a co-dependent, alcoholic, anger addict is ok. It’s better than getting fucked up or shacked up or using precious bandwidth on folks who can’t even comprehend the problems you’re railing on. It’s fine and well, survival. It’s what we know but, to thrive? Like our heroes have done, to thrive is far from this day to day I’ve taken on—delivery shifts and YouTube marathons, sugar gorges and late, musty masturbatory mornings. As deplorable as the Gossip was, and as trite that I’d be focusing on someone else are the endings of these posts. They’re always wrapping it concisely, in a bow for bullshit. It’s contrite and positive and 20th Century Essay Writing 101. Don’t leave your readers behind in the mess and quagmire you’ve lead them down—lift them up Good Writer. I can’t anymore, Good Reader. I can’t lift you up. You’re on your own. We’re on our own. This is our world now. At least I’m not having to explain, though–backpedaling into sexist doublespeak that was somehow supposed to defend a heartbroken romantic on the edge of Empire.

Sometimes the best you can do is call it, a bad hand is a bad hand, as she used to say, and probably still does, in her happy married life far and away from me and my mawkish bullshit. See you next week, motherfucker?

“This much madness is too much sorrow.”

…one day I will finally and fully unreel the inner-diatribe of self sabotage. I will have fully documented the script that grinds out any high hopes or goodwill about living like a cigarette butt. And it will be here, online, out in the open for all to see. And we will laugh.
–Emotional Physics

come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.
–Lucille Clifton

Aho good reader. I have gone independent. Thanks to Rubina Martini and the Independent Publishing Resource Center, I have 83 poster pressed and perfectly bound, black on yellow copies of September, my latest collection of poetry. Sometime after Farewell to Armor was released, I came to the sad realization that a publisher isn’t required to do anything for you. Assuming it’s in their best interest to sell books is a mistake and grossly overlooks what a publisher actually does for your publication. I owe allot to WragsInk. They came along at just the right time. I just got off a 2 year unemployment jag/drunk. I had to leave the premises, I had a little over two grand in savings, $2,500 of which was owed to Gioconda Parker for Yoga Teacher Training, and I totaled my car on the onramp to Ben White one rainy night that spring. I was in trouble. It was the usual kind, nothing that couldn’t be beat with a few years of hard labor or shifts as a bartender-but my real work would suffer and I’d have to stay underground for the remainder of my 30s. Without the work, the sum total of my life would be a brutal and tiresome slog and succession of day labor, shit jobs and dysfunctional relationships. I’d have to consider all options including the great shame of going back home, with my tail between my legs and not even a college degree for all my trouble. In a last ditch effort I called up Maleka Fruean and booked a reading at Big Blue Marble Bookstore. It was at that reading I would meet Richard Okewole; and begin sifting through over 250 poems to come up with the final manuscript for Farewell (and fall in love with the editor in the process). That book kept me alive. Kept me current. Prompted me to reach out to great writers like Don Bajema and reconnect with great writers like Butch Wolfram. The rest is history except I wasn’t pleased. I wouldn’t be pleased until I published my own book and founded my own press. A heaping 2/3 of that goal has been completed. I’m back from the Pacific Northwest and I’ve got 25 days left to achieve my goal. Looks like another crash course and this time it’s business. But if the past 2 months are any indication of how this’ll go down, I’m gonna have to make some changes. Some much needed ones, long overdue. My psoas is cranked tighter than a clock spring. I’ve been smoking a pack of triple-nickels every day since the summer. I’ve got big ideas but most of the time I just sit in their thrall, daydreaming and smoking on the roof. I understand the importance of rest. And I know for sure I’m gonna need a partner in crime. It’s high time for me to finish my teacher training and get back on the path of health and happiness. We both know about the dirty decades I spent, living with my Art above all else. My goals seared through romance and contentment. My focus narrowed to the barrel of a gun. I was never sure if I could make it but was certain I would die if I didn’t. It’s time for some integration, some inclusion, something other than the madness of a dayworking poet, at odds against the fucking world. I quit drinking. And I can’t really see a reason to go back to that lifestyle. “No-chance” was a great myth.  It fueled me on but it’s just a myth.   As it is I feel like my days are squandered in a retroactive doubt, which is another blog post entirely.

It’s time to finish what I started. I’ve pulled myself up and out of the ashtray. The struggle to become an aritst is over. Now is this surrendering to being one. To go forth into this world I’ve made. The dream cracked wide. My chosen destiny.  

stick with me baby, anyhow
things should start to get interesting
right about now
-Bob Dylan, Mississippi

Join me.
Trainer