Egalitarians of a smaller world
with forks for fingers
chew loudly on the gravy train
of poor boys paper thin paychecks
spit me out cause I got no cash
better to be on the street with
a shoeless shuffle
than trying to capture a seat
at the silver spoon table....

Pasty-faced bankers counting out loud
the graves of American dreams they spoiled
the song of their voices in unison
is a terrible dirge and a
strange romancer that keeps
one and all clinging to that sweetest of dreams
hope....

Dudley Do Right is a little man
in his little office
acting like the bureaucrat he was born to be
just pennies on the pound for his cold soul
a deadeye wrangler six shooter bang bang
his heart a cardboard cutout of his childhood idol
deadeye wrangler six shooter bang bang

all these flavorless fools
pay to play on the great machine
where the crowds call for ever more
salacious parody of what should be
where the almighty buck stops here
twice a day
all day Sunday
preacher man
baker, solider, liar, thief
deadeye wrangler six shooter bang bang
deadeye wrangler six shooter bang bang

© 2018 mark john junor all of my poems are my
exclusive property and all rights are reserved

Although the Wrangler has left the ranch,
Within our hearts he'll be enshrined,
For now he's gone to the last roundup,
Leaving the rest of us behind.

The sky was the Wrangler's favorite rooftop;
Walls couldn't pen him in.
To him the slow destruction of nature's
Wonders was a cardinal sin.

The saddle was his poetry--
His homage to life, a living ode.
When not on his horse, you'd see him riding
His two-wheeled "horse" on the open road.

An expert storyteller he was.
How he delighted us with his tales!
His theory: a little embellishment
Never hurts when all else fails.

And write! How the Wrangler could write--
Each of his letters a work of art,
A masterpiece of expression, replete
With wit and charm that flowed from his heart.

Fishing, hunting, philosophizing,
Photography, and art to boot:
His varied interests, but interest in YOU
Was maybe his greatest attribute.

Sometimes when his patience dwindled,
He could lose it, and who could blame him.
His wife, Barrie, had to try
To tug on his reins to try to tame him.

A legend in his time, he was--
A striking presence wherever he went.
And spending money to help other
People--to him--was money well spent.

Although to the last roundup he's gone,
The Wrangler's lasting imprint survives.
As we say our good-byes, remember
How he enriched all of our lives.

-by Bob B (8-3-20)

if i was a pearl i’d feel itchy scratchy stuck inside an oyster shell if i was a tree i’d  be a big fat redwood fantasizing about Julia Butterfly Hill living and peeing around me if i was a dog i’d be a Catahoula hound if i was Italian i’d be Sicilian if i was pasta i’d be spaghetti if i was Icelandic i’d be Bjork if i was a rock star i’d be Elvis Presley Bob Dylan Jimi Hendrix Jim Morrison John Lennon Bruce Spingsteen Maynard James Keenan if i was i writer i’d be Herman Melville Mark Twain James Joyce William Faulkner Thomas Bernhard Yukio Mishima Naguib Mahfouz Phillip K. **** Gabriel Garcia Marquez Annie Proulx Lydia Davis if i was a poet i’d be Walt Whitman Sylvia Plath Ted Hughes Gwendolyn Brooks Pablo Neruda  Heather McHugh Carl Sandburg Robert Frost Arthur Rimbaud Dante Alighieri Homer if i was a painter i’d be Leonardo Da Vinci Michelangelo da Caravaggio Johan Vermeer Rembrandt van Rijn Paul Cezanne Marcel Duchamp Jackson ******* Mark Rothko Ad Reinhardt Anselm Kiefer Susan Rothenberg if i was a photographer i’d be Man Ray Ansel Adams Edward Weston Diane Arbus Robert Mapplethorpe Sally Mann Helmut Newton Richard Avedon Annie Leibovitz if i was a philosopher i’d be Socrates Plato Aristotle Jean Jacques Rousseau Sören Kierkegaard Immanuel Kant Karl Marx Georg Hegel Friedrich Nietzsche Henry David Thoreau Ralph Waldo Emerson  Jean-Paul Sartre Jean Baudrillard Michel Foucault if i was a singer i’d be Woody Guthrie Otis Redding Grace Slick Bob Marley Joni Mitchell Marvin Gaye Johnny Cash Patsy Cline June Carter Patti Smith Chrissie Hinde Nick Cave P J Harvey Beyonce if i wa a band i’d be Velvet Underground Ramones *** Pistols Clash Cure Smiths Joy Division Uncle Tupelo Pixies Nirvana Nine Inch Nails Madrugada Sigur Ros White Stripes Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra Justice of the Unicorns if i was a boot i’d be Chippewa Frye Ariat Red Wing Tony Lama Wellington if i was a shoe i’d be Christian Louboutin Jimmy Choo Kedds Chaco Chuck Taylor p f flyer if i was a dress i’d be Channel Dolce & Gabbanna Giorgio Armani Marc Jacobs Comme des Garçons if i was a cowboy shirt i’d be H bar C Rockmount Temp Tex Karman Wrangler Levis Strauss Lee if i was a hat i’d be a Stetson Borsalino Stephen Jones if i was a fruit i’d be a mango apple banana blackberry if i was an scent i’d smell like fresh perspiration jasmine sandalwood ylang ylang the ocean if i was a doctor i’d be a gynecologist neurosurgeon if i was a flower i’d be a hibiscus rose orchard if i was a stone i’d be a sparkling ruby diamond opal if i was a knife i’d be a k-bar switch-blade machete if i was a gun i’d be a Remington Winchester Beretta Glock AK-47 if i was a car i’d be a Lamborghini Ferrari BMW Saab Volkswagen GTO Ford Mustang Dodge Challenger if i was a  TV show i’d be Law and Order if i was actor i’d be Charlie Chaplin Humphrey Bogart Steve McQueen Robert De Niro Ed Norton Shawn Penn if i was an actress i’d be Marlene Dietrich Ingrid Bergman Natalie Wood Audrey Hepburn Marilyn Monroe Helen Mirren  Meryil Streep Brigette Fonda Robin Wright Julianne Moore Angie Harmon if i was a female comedian i’d be Gilda Radner Lily Tomlin Nora Dunn Joan Cusack Sarah Silverman Tina Fey if i was a  football player i’d be Sid Luckman George Blanda Walter Payton **** Butkus Mike Singletary Joe Montana Jerry Rice Payton Manning LaDanian Tomlinson  Drew Breeze if i was a celebrity i’d be Charlotte Gainsbourg if i was a rapper i’d be Tupac Shakur if i was a movie director i’d be Sam Peckinpah Robert Altman Stanley Kubrick Roman Polanski Werner Herzog Rainer Fassbinder Louis Bunuel Alfred Hitchcock Jean-Luc Godard François Truffaut if i was a bird i’d be a eagle hawk sparrow bluebird if i was a fish i’d be a dolphin shark narwhal Charlie the tuna if i was breakfast i’d be a French toast pancake folded in half with 2 strips of bacon in between if i was a cold cereal i’d be snap crackle popping rice crispies shredded wheat cheerios oatmeal if i was tea i’d be Japanese green matcha Irish breakfast Tulsi Thai holy basil Lapsang souchong Luzianne Lipton if i was a soap i’d be French hand milled ayurvedic Avon Ivory Dove Pears Aveda  if i was a man i’d be a football basketball baseball tennis swimmer athlete if i was a woman i’d be a track star runner writer painter gardener doctor nurse yoga mom i'm just scratching the surface and the beat goes on lahdy dah dah

Look up from grey, your stony walls,
Break with the sun, seasides beyond,
Even dreams can come true my heart,
Take one step into the song of the lark.

If I should stay, Cuillin Hills will weep,
End up bleating with black faced sheep,
Stoic on cairns, froze giant of Callanish,
Or gutted in harbour like some cuttlefish.

My mind is mournful, keens with winds,
O what choral fantasias we both'll sing,
Hymns north, west, south, easter terrain,
Thoughts' forsake, points the wind vane.

A fine stout dinghy awaits pure ravel,
My sorrows a mend upon that voyage,
Into the west, moon hid from maid sun,
Aye, ginger haired wrangler tae horizons.

I'm covered from head to toe in resin, acrylics and epoxy,
Some pulverized rocks my son gathered from the Chattooga River,
Now reduced to a burnt ember dust.
I added silicone sludge and a little baking powder as well,
And once mixed, this dicey concoction is beautifully toxic,
So I waft the air and inhale it.

Painting a colorful sunset is too easy, I prefer black and white,
So with a wooden board the size of a door,
I get to work with my rubber sledgehammer, blowtorch
A gallon of poison and flammable spray.

The passers by have seen this look in eyes,
From The Shining or possibly their preachers,
You know, the same look that's a sight to behold.

Slamming the hammer down with brute force
And purposed abandonment,
I paint my sunset and wrangle the stars later.
A shower won't do me justice>

so don't change then
you seem to be perfectly comfortable
in your insanity.
wrestling, withdrawing,
anhedonia coming alive in your party
master wrangler of sorrow,
been there, done that.
and like watching
the christians and the lions,
i am rooting for you
but know you will shed blood.
and when you are devoured enough
you come to life,
crazy sonafabitch.
stay where you are then,
forget em happy pills.
i will go certifiable with you
as long as you do not forget
the lunacy of our love.

to me, the Cartesian saying had to be relegated to shrapnel,
i treat the cogito
                                           ergo                       sum
like i'd treat atoms, brushing and
signaturing each other with
a stabilised unification
under the name: helium, or hydrogen.
evidently that's also a term
for three dimensional space
and the cohorts of chaos that come
from it.
           but something worries me,
intrinsically it's what i would simply
term: the automation of thinking.
basically? it's blood hard to stop thinking,
to do yoga to intricate being
in nothingness,
    as Heidegger suggested:
non-being is a tier below nothing,
      and i guess automated thinking
comes from non-being,
because there's this intrinsic manifestation
of instinct found in all sport activities
that doesn't allow thinking to take place,
no footballer thinks about his exertion
on the football pitch, no golfer maps
out a system of thought to *** the hole
in one...
                some would even say
that thinking is a form of laziness,
          i find that the whole notions turns
out to be a **** up affair of concern,
the mere notion that thought is automated
    and cannot be barricaded against
its relentless battering our very being
is due to the fact that so many of us
do not attain the all that glitters is gold
particularity of fame...
             it's not that we are doubtful,
but that we are mindful / thoughtful,
a few of us make it to the top of the sardine
can, but so many of us are minding
our own business on this placebo earthenware:
yes, i call this a placebo urn of things
needed (people always rave about nouns
anyway, call it slang, or whatever,
it trends, hashtags and the outdated
forms of phone numbers - calling big brother
eeny, meeny, miny, moe) - i could
swear it's so, but then again, maybe not so.
still (what a crass digression),
coming back to the Cartesian shrapnel...
           basing in on weights and measures -
it's so tiny, that expression,
                      we can think the realistic
and only express a centimetre of the world,
we can be the realistic and only
express a centimetre of the world,
  and then we can think the illusionary
and express a mile of the world,
        and we can be the illusionary and express
   a kilometre of the world:
toward the basis of fame and contentment of
  the shadows...
       yes, we have achieved a "death" of history,
by simply stating our recreational pursuits
being more important than our
need for historical eventuality and crisis, and change...
we have stated a "death" of history
via our population size, our ability to combat
diseases (whether infantile or of a certain maturity),
yes, we have established a congested world,
which facilitates nothing quite like a herd
(cattle mentality): hence the modern concern
for alienation... we're created a collective manifestation
of insects, or as one might suggest
  this is yet another geocentric and heliocentric
concern for us... although relegated to
egocentric and the collective ethos of comrades -
but given the former has been eradicated
as it was previous known: communism -
      in economic vocabulary it's all but gone,
but still exists in the sports: yet again,
the re-surfacing of abolishing automated thinking,
namely, automated collision with the daily
activity - either competitive or mundane,
    as we all soon realised: if automated thinking
is not eradicated by automated doing
     we end up mentally distraught -
our own thinking alienates us and even progresses
to symptoms that have no viability
       concerning a drowning man, nonetheless
we're actually drowning.
i can hardly think that nothing is an abyss -
       to me thought is an abyss (cat meows,
i write, the fermentation of wine goes on in
four jars to my left, bob, pop, bob, pop,
and daniel licht is playing to the fatty *****
that's my brain) -
                     i knew that ponderings ii - vi
would get my creative juices flowing:
finally! a book on philosophy that i can comprehend
within that bilingual complex i've established!
or: this much can be said upon
giving a supermarket cashier a signed copy of
my actually printed works
     and hearing a compliment with eyes
waxed with glee (Tarah);
           now i have 100 copies to push,
become akin to a drug dealer with poetry,
           and that's not going to be easy
without p.r. and all that jingly marketing qualms.
still, what's there to be done
        if not that there is something to be done,
even if it's nothing, or a pebble on a mountain:
which is why there is so much
   potential in individuality, but also so much
angst - instead of doing crosswords we have
other riddles to be bothersome about,
   but so few even get a ?         to be concerned with.
again the Cartesian shrapnel equation,
              so much is staged on it in terms
of how thinking becomes automated, robotic
to the point of making children succumb to
    premature depression -
      back when premature dementia was the hit
on Broadway or in an Estonian lunatic asylum
in the 19th century,
when we first received our psychiatric vocabulary,
now it's the young who are odd
   and it is premature depression,
          a bit like the black plague, against
all hopes, a single identifiable folly.
             and where the best rewards?
solitude, where else?
                          for all that swindling of the talk of species
and competition within / without,
        always one ******* says:
                           i am the zeitgeist - always one:
are there really benefits to realising that
****** equation? are there? to feel alive, to feel
conscious, or the madness of Nietzsche's reversal
stating that he's a thing that simply, exfoliates
necessary thought?
           thought is primarily a moral ought -
the should i or shouldn't i?
        it's intrinsic, inherent and simply: just there...
or in the unlikely event, a step into the abyss
   and subsequent pathologies of the enabling of
   a destruction of the soul: as manifestation
of a transgressively transcendent embodiment
of pure body.
                 so, against all duality, i simply fathom
that ****** thing as shrapnel,
     curiously via (as i already might have said):
so much thinking doesn't precipitate into being,
     and so much being doesn't precipitate into thinking -
or of those who adorn mental silk fabrics and Solomon rings,
         and those who have to pay for elocution
lessons due to their ****** endeavours -
      yet again, alignment with Thesaurus Rex,
cue: down Synonymous Avenue
                     because how many times are we sharpening
our narrative trying to feels less inclined
                 to exfoliate in the exotica of what's
the necessary verbiage, and escape into single
identifiable meanings, without poker, without politics,
without sexualised ambiguity?
for me language should work, not be desecrated
to fun: it, should, work;
                     or here i rest my ambitions,
without any poetic dogma - or to make poetry unrecognisable
when stated, for no reason to discredit
   the systematics of poetry: but for reason
                        Kraken wrangler on language -
as much as Nietzsche might have said about
      philosophical systems and their errors and lack of
honesty: i say as much about poetry careful to
be identified as such: metaphors, imagery blah blah -
all things that make people conscious of what
they're reading is actually what they're reading and say
it's poetry - as i said to the supermarket cashier:
enso (Japanese,
marcon purposively missing) - to write while standing up,
and so the reader is standing up,
         not a novel you take to bed,
                     and read for months on end,
dozing off, or sneering at "uneducated" people
on the train...
                         i might as well be writing instruction
manuals for the sadistic training of ballerinas -
              one cut, one incision, and get the **** out;
or at least that's the idea -
      learn to spell, work on punctuation variations,
    learn to tie your shoelaces... and don't believe in
the word edit.

I was down on my luck** and had not returned to my job nor had any notion of returning again. I had a plane ticket for Boston that would fly me to Minnesota that was scheduled to depart in twenty days. I had still not yet bought the bus ticket to Boston. I had one hundred dollars to my name. My friend Billy had owed me one hundred dollars as well and gave me one hundred and thirty dollars in 1988 pesos coins as repayment. Knowing that it might be difficult to find a place who would honestly convert them and that their worth fluctuated, I would have much rather he paid me in US dollars but I took them in thanks and didn’t mention it. He knew what I was thinking and told me that if I couldn’t get a fair price that I could mail them to him when he got to Missouri and he would mail me what he owed in cash but until then all of his money was ******* in his trip home and even that was barely enough but that he had checked on their worth and said it should cover the one-hundred he owed. I smiled and we warmly shook hands to seal the deal.  We spent the day riding around in his wrangler and running some final errands for him before he would be gone.
The three years we had known each other might as well have been a lifetime and had felt just as full as one and had gone by just as fast. We ‘d drunk coffee and smoked cigarettes outside of Elizabeth’s bookstore. We’d watched in silence the beautiful women that would walk passed without much attention given to us. We, however, gave great attention to every ***** and bounce and shimmy. There were some gorgeous women that came to the bookstore those years. We shot pool with Bernie, who had the keys to the Mason Lodge and had many great conversations on the fire escape. We played games of chess in the bookstore. We drove around listening to the blues. Sometimes we got together, the three of us, at Billy’s and we’d make a fire and they’d drink coffee because they were old men and had had to stop drinking years before and I would drink some bourbon or wine after a cup or two of coffee and then we’d share a pack of cigarettes between us and we’d feel the warmth of the fire and have some good laughs. Bernie was diagnosed with a rare and terrible cancer in North Carolina on a trip to see his son in the Air force and had been brought back home a few months later and beside his wife and daughter and son fell silently to sleep and never woke up again. I hadn’t gone to see him but Billy said that when he saw him he didn’t mention his condition once and that he even got out of bed and sat with him on the back porch that looked out upon the open land and sky and they talked like nothing was wrong and laughed and said they’d see each other again. Bernie died a week later.
I hadn’t planned it this way but the opening to this story is very much dedicated to Bernie, and Billy, I hope you get safely back to Missouri and that your pesos will help me make it through the fall.
I had not told my mother or my love, Rosalie, that I had left my job. So I made fake work schedules and left the house and returned home at all the appropriate times with a lanyard I had kept from work hanging from my neck and hung it on the doorknob when I got home. During the day there were several options to occupy the eight-hour shifts. The town ran very much so due to the college and I would go up there and browse around the old books called the stacks and take a few with me out onto the grass of the quad and read them. I would read for hours. I got restless every now and then and would even read while I walked in circles up and down and back and forth the crisscrossing paths under the trees of the quad. This was great until I got caught for taking these books from the school at my own leisure and soon it was revealed that I was not a student there and they told me not to come back. Some days I would run along the riverside. I enjoyed long walks on the train tracks around the city with my headphones on and taking pictures. I always had my backpack on, even if nothing was in it, but usually there was a book and a pair of Rosalie’s ******* and on occasion I would take this out and close my eyes to smell them and I would miss her very much. We lived with a few towns between us and she was a very busy and dedicated young woman. She was working in nursing homes and taking care of home patients and going to school full time on top of it and doing clinicals and taking care of her little brother because it takes a lot sometimes for a man to be cured from his drinking habits, which was very much true in their fathers case and her mother was a wild and paranoid woman who refused to believe that her boyfriend was beating Rosalie’s little brother while she was away at work. So Rosalie took great care and love for her brother and also custody.
I, however, had not been so responsible with my life. When I came back from the Army it was not as a hero but I could tell a great hero’s story because I’d known them all but mostly they were characters in stories I’d read in the barracks, or secondhand tales given in extravagant detail during chow and none of them were true but they sounded quite exciting. It made the time at bars when I had gotten home less lonely because I could tell a tale in first person convincingly enough that many an old vet, with his own made up fantasies, would act like they believed me and would share their stories and we didn’t have to sit there thinking about the buddies we lost or the women whom had fallen out of love with us one time or another or the families we were avoiding. I liked going to the bars, but I wouldn’t have had anything to say if it weren’t for those stories.
I met Rosalie a month after having been discharged. She sat in Elizabeth’s bookstore and was studying for a class. I was with Billy at the time and we were outside smoking cigarettes when we saw her walk in.
“Did you see that?” Billy said. I saw her all right. She had gone inside and we were still sipping our coffees and smoking and I was still seeing her, no matter what else walked by or how pretty the sky was or the warmth of the sun.
“That’s a good girl right there,” Billy said, “not like most of these others we see out here, kid.” It annoyed me a little that Billy was still talking about her, egging me on a little. As I had said, I had seen her and he was disrupting my fantasizing and I had known she was a kind girl and I wanted to save my dream of her for a little while longer before I brought it to her.
“I know,” I said.
“Well, go and see about her then!”
“I’ll go”
I had no intention of letting her pass by but there was thunder rumbling in my chest and butterflies in my stomach and I had suddenly become cold even though it was sixty-five degrees out on the sidewalk and something was keeping me from standing. “I’ll have one more smoke and then I’ll go in for more coffee and see her then.”
“Tonto’s nervous! Ha ha ha!” Billy got a kick out of the thought and patted me on the back. “If you want,” He said, “I’ll go say hello for you.” He was still amused.
“You’re twice her age Bill,” I said, “she’d probably call the cops on your old ugly mug”
“The cops may be called because of how well endowed I am and she’ll be screaming and the neighbors will worry about her and call the cops on us”
Billy was always talking about his manhood and I never knew any good rebuttals because I was honest with myself and so I never had a response. I let him brag. All I knew is I had one and I knew it wasn’t large but none of the women I ever slept with ever said it was too small and they all enjoyed lying with me afterwards and talking quite a while before falling to sleep and sometimes the *** had been wild.
The cigarette was finished and I was still nervous but I didn’t want to hesitate any longer. I don’t even think she’d even seen me when she walked into the store.
I went inside and ordered a coffee and looked over to her. She was on a laptop and had a pile of books beside her and some papers and she looked up and our eyes met. I held the glance with her for a little longer than a moment. I was a little embarrassed and she was beautiful and I was wondering what my face looked like to her and if my eyes had been creepy but she lifted a corner of her lips and smiled before looking back to her work and then my shoulders relaxed and I realized I had held my breath. I laughed to myself at my own ridiculousness and let it go and then walked up to her and extended my hand and she took it with a smile and I looked dead into her beautiful hazel eyes again with confidence and we’ve been in love ever since.

The reason for my trip to Minnesota was to see my old friends from the Army: Grady and Hank. We hadn’t seen each other since I was discharged eight years ago and they reached out to me when they could but I wasn’t very good at keeping in touch with them. After I left the Army it was hard for me to talk to them. I felt I was missing out on something and I didn’t want to think of them dying without me and I didn’t like those feelings so I tried to pretend they didn’t exist but they kept me in the loop of things and always asked how I was doing no matter how well I stayed in touch with them or not. It meant much more than they’ll ever know that they did. So when they said they had both gotten out nothing was going to stop me from reconnecting with them. They said they were going to drive east to see me. I called them back.
“Let’s not hang around here in Maine,” I said, “it’ll be the middle of fall and there’s nothing to do around here. Instead of you guys coming all the way out here and then staying for a week let’s make the whole trip a seven-day adventure and you ******* can drop me off home when it’s over?”
“That sounds all well and good Russ but how the hell are you getting out here?”
“I bought a ticket, I’ll be there on the twenty-second of October at eleven.”
“That’s what I like hearing old pal!” Grady said through the phone, “Now that sounds more like the Russ I know. You’ll find me at the airport at eleven. I’ll bring a limousine with a bar and buy a couple of hookers for us”
“No hookers, Grady”
“Yes, hookers!” Grady said, “do you still do blow?”
“No”
“Good. Me neither. Honestly, I don’t do hookers anymore also. But it sounded like a proper celebration didn’t it?”
“It did.”
“Well, then its settled Russ. I’ll see you on the twenty-second of October at eleven PM sharp in a long white limo and I’ll bring the *****, the blow and the ****** and it’ll be like old times.”
“Sounds perfect Grady, I can’t wait.”
We hung up.

The plan was I would spend the night at Grady’s and the next morning we’d get Hank and we’d head for Chicago as soon as we could. One of their friends, Lemon, would be making the trip with us and would be there at Hanks when we got there in the morning. Lemon was an excellent shot with the rifle and a better guitarist and Grady told me I’d get right along with him. He told me he was at the range and the Sergeant was yelling in this black boys ear that he couldn’t shoot worth a ****.
“MY ******* GOT BETTER AIM BOY!” “I CAN HIT YOUR FAT UGLY MOMMA IN THE EYE AT TWICE THE DISTANCE” “YOU COULDN’T HIT PUBERTY IF I DROPPED YOUR ***** FOR YOU!”
The Sergeant, Grady said, went on and on at the top of his lungs yelling at this black guy and we all stopped and stared at him.
“As the Sarg kept hollering the kids rifle kept popping off shots at the target and you’d hear him grab another clip when the other ran out and reload it and then keep shooting but none of us could tell where the shots were going. The Sarg was so loud and the shots had such a rhythm all of us at the range stopped and looked over. There wasn’t a single bullet hole anywhere on the target except directly in the center where every bullet he had shot had gone through and nowhere else.
“Finally Lemon ran out of bullets and the Sarg quit hollering and he called him to attention.”
“Where did you learn to shoot a rifle Jefferson,” The Sergeant inquired.
“Sergeant, I have never shot a rifle before in my life”
“Do you think it’s funny to lie to your Sergeant?”
“No, Sergeant”
“So why are you lying?”
“I’m not lying Sergeant”
“What did you do before you enlisted, Private?”
“I worked on the farm for my father, Sergeant”
“At ease soldier, Staff Sergeant Dominguez would like to have a word with you.”
And that’s how Lemon went to training to become a ****** but he broke his leg in training and got sent home.
“Well ****,” I said, “He must be one helluva guitarist.”

We were to spend a day in Chicago and camp at the Indiana Dunes and then drive to Detroit and spend a day and camp there and then head to Cleveland and Pittsburgh and Philadelphia if we had the time and then go to Boston and they’d drop me off at the train the following morning and I’d go home from there. But all of that was still twenty days away and I was down on my luck and had to save every cent I possibly could for the trip. Rosalie was excited for me. She knew how much I hated being home and that I stayed around to be with her even as much as she said that I shouldn’t let her stop me from doing what I wanted with my life but I really had no clue but I did know that she was the love of my life. She was happy to hear of this adventure and supported me but she didn’t know how broke I was and I hid it well by cooking all of our meals with things at my mothers apartment or my fathers house depending on where she came during her once-a-week sleepovers. She was proud of me for how well I had been with managing my money. There’s nothing to it, I told her.
The summer had been one of the best summers I’d ever had. Rosalie and I got to spend a lot of time together in-between our own lives and every moment had been cherished. I worked often and hard for twelve bucks an hour for more than forty hours a week but had nothing to show for it now. I’d gotten in trouble with the law and the lawyer was costly and so were the fines and the bail, even though I got the bail back I had to dump it into my beautiful old truck and then some because I hadn’t taken the best of care of it. I also spent most of my money on dinners out with Rosalie and I liked buying her little brother things every now and then and I had a terrible habit of buying books. Also, I had a habit of going to the bars on weekends and I wasn’t a modest drinker.
The last paycheck I got was for five hundred dollars and I spent it on a room for a long weekend at an Inn by the ocean for Rosalie and I to end such a good summer properly. Money is for having a good time and is for others. That’s how I’ve always thought it should be spent. When you’re broke, it’s easy to find lots of good times in the simple endeavors and I enjoyed those but I also enjoyed getting away with Rosalie. So when I say I was down on my luck do not think I was unhappy about it, I had lots of good luck before I’d gotten down on it and Rosalie is possibly the best luck a young man could ever come across. Still, I only had one hundred dollars to my name and three 1988 pesos coins that I’m not sure will be worth the other hundred and with twenty days to go. It’s going to be pretty tight.

I want to talk about our time by the ocean now...

(c) 2015

coupon for Granny's Original 32% All Natural Oatmeal®
cart-to-cart down aisle 48 and this man's an affront to khakis
and this woman's brain runs off a child's complaints
BLIZZARD 2013
according to the radar, buy 80 pounds of rock salt
from The Home Depot®, more saving. more doing.™
more rock salt. more doing
BLIZZARD 2013
according to the radar, buy two-weeks-worth of tuna,
a pallet of Pepsi Max®, and four loaves of Baker Good's NeverMold Bread®
all for $21.99 with your Sam's Club® Rewards Card
BLIZZARD 2013
cart-to-cart down aisle 62 where once there was soda, now an I.O.U.
and I read on the internet that the preservatives in diet cola will keep
my body from decomposing and I read on the internet that these
dented, discount tuna cans will give me botulism
BLIZZARD 2013
one jug of water from a spring in Mountain View, Arkansas
one jug of water from a spring in New Iberia, Louisiana
picking between Miley Cyrus and Hannah Montana
the pitter-patter on the warehouse roof reassures
time for eenie meenie miney mo
BLIZZARD 2013
and the intercom desperate for a cart wrangler
customer service now open for checkout
don't leave your toddlers alone in shopping carts
they're choking on free samples
with an echo, raindrops strike parking lot pools
just past the intersection an ambulance grumbles
BLIZZARD 2013
in a room with a view wishing the windowpane weatherized
beers bought by volume, candles forgotten, six months of
licorice, EverFluff® popcorn, and hand warmers of chemical kind
remembered
BLIZZARD 2013
will not be landing in the city, watch out for that rain though
if the temperatures drop below 32 degrees it could ice over
and if the temperatures don't, well, it won't

News 7's coverage of Blizzard 2013 brought to you by
The Home Depot®, more saving. More doing.™
and Sam's Club®, savings made simple.™

the tick in the clock
the chatter of an ignition
dishes clanking
Mr. Everywhere
nowhere to be seen
the lungs don't show the lifetime spent escaping
times are cold
but it's too hot in the kitchen
make me a transient drifter
with a handkerchief on a stick
eating an apple
in a boxcar making it's way through cold night
make me disappear a wrangler
an outlaw
delete my typos
and move me to the recycling bin

Dice the dead mans diligence like a Dillinger or Challenger,

He gained a Dodge Wrangler like a sad handler of emotions;

Perhaps all of this is more potent than potions or consumer hand lotions plus alcoholic haphazard;

Yet I consider the price of anything to be lice on everything,

Like a fat woman’s sullen song,

The sounds still ring in the lingering enclave of my eardrums,

Which breath waves like air into my lungs.

It’s sundown,

And therefore, I’ll see you soon;

Yes, I’ll see you soon, moon.

So very soon.