Long Train Runnin’
February 23, 2010
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In 1970 The TV Was Drab And Black And White And The Music Was Wild And Colorful
February 22, 2010
2 Comments
Alone
February 21, 2010
7 Comments
The wife and ma don’t get it. Yer always alone.
The corner men yellin’ all that stuff and I don’t hear a word of it. No crowd, nothin’ all the time. I hear the other guy chuffin’ and the bell and that’s it.
The fight doctor never says nothin’ but I hear him all right. Watching like an audience that’s allowed to climb in the ring and beat you. The swells sit with their broads in the front row and I shower them with a man’s sweat and baptise ’em. I could beat them all one after another or all at once but they’re not there. The fight doctor is there over your shoulder, like death.
It’s a wonder I ain’t killed ten refs ’cause they’re not there, neither. They can say what they like and stand between me and the beezer I’m pounding and I jes go around ’em like a fireplug. You don’t listen to fireplugs, do ya? I don’t listen to none of them ’cause they’re not sayin’ anything I need to hear. I’ll kill that man if they let me and he can cheat all he wants so it’s all nothin’ to me and I roll with it.
Oh, the new ones come and try every gambetto and the refs give ’em a little talking to. I swear they do it to get a minute away from me with a little man that smells of aftershave instead of a big man that smells of sweat and death. I’m your dentist and they’re all coming out, pal. Hit me low and he talks to you and saves you for a minute. I don’t care.
The ref backs away and we’re alone again. You can’t win. I like it here.
The Young Man Don’t Know Nothin’ (from 2008)
February 18, 2010
4 Comments
Ya see, the young man comes in and he don’t know nothin’. That’s a given.
Well, not precisely nothin’. He knows all sorts of things. It’s just that everything he knows isn’t so, or ain’t worth a fart in a whirlwind to know. Useless.
But a young man ain’t born useless. You got to make him so. A young man is born to be a boon to his fellow man and a credit to his parents, if his parents don’t pay too much attention to him and ruin him. Let him be.
They come all in here, extravagant of hair but miserly with manners. They want to start right in being something. Son, you’re an unthrowed pot. Stand up straight and listen.
You see, you ain’t born knowing, and you can’t learn it in a book. How you gonna know to put fabric softener in the steam box to make the oak come out of there real withy and limber? Your grammar school teacher don’t tell you that out there in the real world you gotta use the ceiling for a brace for the inner stem while you make down the bolt.
Oh the smart ones come in, though, not as often as you’d like but often enough, and just remind you how dumb you were when you were their age. They’re young and handsome and clever and the whole world stretches out to their horizon. You’re already on the horizon and you know it. And you think to yourself how wise that boy is to come in here and stand up straight there with the wrong clothes and a box of the wrong tools, and not enough of them, and his hands like his momma’s –smart enough to say “I don’t know nothin’ but I’m willing to learn if you’ll show me.”
That boy knows everything.
So What
February 17, 2010
5 Comments
I wouldn’t put my finger in that change return slot if there was fifty bucks in it. The greasy handset, battered by a numberless army of salesmen and lovers, hangs like a murderer on a gibbet over the thing. Let the bums get it. She said she’d come. I’m not calling her any more.
I loved the feeling of the neon glowing on the side of my face in there. Don’t tell me it’s just light. I feel it like the sun. It’s the only sun I’ll ever acknowledge. The one in the morning rises alone. Mine rises when the manager flips the switch. It never sets on me, that sun.
Man, that scirocco of sweat and booze and cigs and breath like a welder’s tank. I feel like I’m born again, from a mummy’s womb. Straight on in, just like the music.
The stage is exactly three inches and a galaxy away from the dance floor. Dance? Please. Stumble around with a woman that ain’t your wife floor, I think. I like the old dude that looks like Batman’s butler or a fruity sort of baron or something that conducts or sways or whatever it is he’s doing. He’s possessed with it, same as me. He’s usually possessed of plenty of cake, a desire to buy a man a drink, and an aversion to arithmetic, too. The waitresses adore that.
The curtain is dirty from wiping your hands on it. Me included. It’s dirty like life is. Up high, it’s dirty with cobwebs and dust and corruption because you can’t reach up there. Down low it’s dirty with the grubby hands of all of us trying to wipe off the sweat and grease of what you’re doing.
I listen for the cornshucks of the brushes on the snare. He hits it, but I don’t care about that. In between — the faint circular sketching he does without thinking — that’s what I’m after. He’s lathering the dry face of the song so I can shave it with the sharp edge of the brass. The bass rumbles like thunder in the distance.
I can taste metal and blood and booze in my mouth. Tastes like life.
Month: February 2010
sippicancottage
A Man Who Has Nothing In Particular To Recommend Him Discusses All Sorts of Subjects at Random as Though He Knew Everything.
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