happy
birth
day

Bob's Dylan
Ol’ In-one-ear-and-out-the-mouth –
This is what they called him.
His other ear didn’t hear so good
And he only heard half of what you said.
He chinked in the gaps with passages
From a book of false observations
He kept under the couch
Right next to the tray with all the dope on it.

wunderkind’s smelly chamber
flush with misbegotten pride,
ripe with yesterday’s news,
calculated face bites calculated lip and spits vitriol.
this then is the end of questioning & dumb antics,
this is about all he’s got to say about that.
suck in the chest until the eyes bulge & the room constricts,
hands get placed on this day’s soft throat.

we listen — listen, not telltelltell — if we know what’s good for us.

Marriage Document
If I had half a mind
We run from room to room in our too-small home; fleeing, stalking, approaching, evading, demanding; always with the slamming of doors in front of or behind us. The business of harried, apoplectic migration reverberates within this space we finally realize never had definition, boundary or even a right to exist to begin with. And there is nowhere else to go; without this we have no meaning. Endless volley of accusation and apology, declamation and declination, constant-fucking-giving-in, drawing lines loud but vague — this is bad theater we are in, and we are at best amateurs at accomplishing that which needs to be accomplished for this thing to go forward vital and necessary.

mammoth blanket
justin stone

On this day in history. . .

1946. Jack La Lanne swims across the English Channel with a great white shark strapped to his back.

1983. Turkey Shoot, aka The Make-Out Kid, “the biggest face these parts,” makes the claim that he is “ready for anything.”

1967. Somebody says, “Like they say in St. Louis: cleaner than a broke-dick dog,” and everybody nods though no one know what he is talking about.

1999. A woman in a book shop in Park Slope, Brooklyn says to me, “Don’t give up the ship, kid.”

2004. Clay Ridenhour of Tomball, Texas, is sentenced to 20 days in jail and fined $150 for yelling from the stands, “I have a gun,” at a referee during a high school junior varsity basketball game. “Why I chose those four words, I’ll never know,” Clay says.

1996. Jerry Busch, college landlord, explains to his young tenants that it is cheaper to have somebody killed than it is to pay a lawyer.

1954. Warm and cold fronts collide and clouds gather. Breeze scatters evening leaves across the yard. Somebody on the porch says about something else, “Ain’t that a far sight.”

1980. The Taylor wedding party brings a lot of bad out of a lot of people.

2003. Absolut Night is the only band that does not make into the final round of the Higgins Pointe Battle of the Bands. They have their wives there, the kids. Everybody's hair is long. They have driven three hours from their small town to compete here at this slightly larger small town. For some reason, they have invested everything in this gig. They believe they are a great metal band. To watch them load out and leave the lodge is pretty much heartbreaking. There will be no Metallica played on the long drive home. And they all have to work tomorrow. Early.

1916. Rigoberto Alarcon writes in his journal, “Who among us is sleeping tonight? / The foolish, the privileged, the unaware.”

1985. Daniel Jason, who always wished 1) he didn’t have two first names for his first and last name, and 2) for name-brand tennis shoes, explains to his after-school teacher, “I’d shake your hand, but I have pink-eye.”

1943. Faulkner tells his landlord, “You may as well ask the sidewalk about the street.”

2000. A recently graduated group of Phi Delts make a pitch at Warner Brothers for a movie they are calling BROS ON MARS. The script is optioned, they party.

1972. The Hot Body of Christ Church is founded in Buffalo Springs, Arkansas.

1979. Big Chuck says to Little Chuck, “If you don’t keep up or move out the way you’re going to get yourself runned over, Dumb Chuck.”

1867. Sawbones tells the worried family, I am afraid we are looking at the Summer Complaint.

1990. While taking the metro-line across town Darius Jefferson says to nobody in particular, “This bus don’t stop anywhere.”

1987. Doug Tyler, a peer I greatly look up to, in large part because he is fast and has hit puberty, writes in my middle school yearbook, “Don’t let your meat loaf.”

2001. I run into Doug and his meat has loafed. I am afraid mine has too.

2001. A “very weird”, possibly even “gay” substitute teacher declares to his Health Class students that the brain’s functions can best be described as 90% magic, 10% fireworks.

1889. The Mathematician begins his initial experiments with Tainted Calculus.

2003. A woman asks of two young boys recently moved from the Marshall Islands to Clatter, Iowa, “What’s the deal with those two mexican boys?”

1988. Marty Scorsese says in an interview, “. . . viewing, always viewing, always seeing, your eyes being on everything.”

1981. Words of Wisdom read in the Words of Wisdom Daily Calendar: “A friend is a person who knows everything about you but likes you anyway.” Stephanie looks out the window.

LYT Rules

My good friend and controversial writer/personality Luke Y. Thompson, aka LYT, graces the front cover of the OC Weekly. His story is a gonzo-eye view of last week's Comic-Con in San Diego, a yearly gathering that is something of a mecca for today's screwball media-culture. Films, telvision, comics, toys. Entertainment industry showboating, glad-handing and socio-economic experimentation. All circuits blown all the time. Story here. Also check out Luke's longrunning blog LYTrules. It is one of my daily stops on the interget.

Congratulations, Luke Yelasdi Thompson!

Dealybopper / Clay Legs
Mom of Jonas
she nursed Jonas
on chocolate similaque;
Gave her boy a sweet tooth!
And when Jonas turned 16
Mom bought him a late-model van.

“Hand me that dealybopper.”
“I can’t.”
“Hand it to me with your mouth.”
“That was the easternshore of it.”
“Cars flish by in the rain.”
“It’s not so bad.”
“It’s not.”
“It’s good.”
“It’s good.”

prayer
Ambulant’s dream:
the language of people.
Smooth round stones:
Ambulant’s stride.
The eyes, we know,
are magic.
A fire crackles
in chest:
The joints, the cheeks,
the top of the head:
Warm.
Enough fire for
another year:
Ambulant’s beach.

I Saw You Wearing Yesterday’s Get-Up
We kissed under a vain and tawdry sky.

Oh, Lord, grant me a gimmick
Because I might be in trouble.

Anyway, there is a dangle in my chest.

Something quick and easy,
Something sure-fire.
Something that sells.
I have thus far failed in my professional aspirations.

Something that cleans up after itself.

Oh, Lord, grant me a gimmick
like Garbage Pail Kids
or Yahtzee.
Spiderman 5: Falldown Kitchen Sink
A long-legged style of walking.

Lord, grant me the right questions
Not to ask.