It’s still rock and roll to me.
08/23/05 / Tuesday
Riddle Of Steel, Bill Latham
O’Leavers / Omaha, NE (1322 S. Saddle Creek Rd)
Details: 21+ / 9:30 pm / $5 / SDN Presents
August 13, 2005
Waiting For The Storm
Sitting outside before the storm
waiting for the sky to open up
while the thunder purrs against the
horizon-
I imagine that a Lion sounds this way playing
right before the kill.
Cicadas and Birds are chirping out
their
warnings- winged little harbingers- messengers
“Get somewhere dry dummy.”
I wish we had a porch.
“A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” &
“Ride The Lightning”
& “Singin’ In The Rain”
I understand.
I have had four glasses of wine
and
five cigarettes
and
one plate of cooked vegetables in
curry
and
I know instinctively that each season
is all about waiting for the storm.
August 12, 2005
Ruins
Walking around the lake in the park
yesterday
looking at the fountain & the skyline & the city
staring
It occurred to me that someday
the Woodman Tower & the First
National Building
& the Qwest Center & every
shopping mall
in America
will look just like
the Coliseum & stonehenge & the
Great Pyramid
& the Hanging Gardens of Babylon
& every other
ancient ruin
in the world.
I stuffed my hands into my pockets and I
smiled.
Don’t think history won’t repeat itself.
August 11, 2005
The Difference Between Tips And Advice
“This coffee is shit,” he said from
snarled lips
finishing the last luke warm drop
and pouring himself another cup-
then another one after that-
all between drags of cigarettes and a sweet roll.
He wiped his hands off
and tipped three dollars
(on a two
dollar tab)
before leaving for the night.
August 10, 2005
On Waking
Too much work and so little time
not enough money, but enough for wine
I woke up drunk on the couch in the
living room
Again
August 9, 2005 1:13 AM
No one woke me up
but time
and the need
to urinate-
I went to sleep in my own bed.
If I dreamed, it wasn’t worth
remembering.
It rarely is-
I don’t even get laid
in my sleep.
I bide my time & bite my tongue
&
I stopped counting sheep years ago-
too
much goddamn work anyway and it
never
sounded as good as a song does-
“Rockabye, Rockabye” &
“Where Have All the
Flowers Gone?” & “Old
Stewball Was A Race
Horse”, ETC.
I woke up sober on the trundle in my
bed room
This morning
August 9, 2005 6:01 AM
The alarm clock keeps time
better than I do
consistently.
August 6, 2005
‘…and God is whoever you’re performing for…’
I start to feel as though my hand has
a brain all of it’s own. And then, I’m a super hero. I have
power.
The power of
:::::DISASSOCIATION::::::
:::::DISASSOCIATION::::::
:::::DISASSOCIATION::::::
:::::DISASSOCIATION::::::
The heart of a sea lion. The
spine of a jellyfish. The nerve of a cactus.
PARANOID AS F-
“Where are all the good men dead? In the heart or
in the head?”
I am an impartial jury for my actions. I can observe everything
that I do. I make choices. I make mistakes. This is a
:::::DISASSOCIATION::::: ride,
baby. Everything is warm and tasty and we’re all bathing in
existential pudding. Let’s talk tapioca and genuflect lemon
creamy thoughts and chocolate memories.
A man goes to see God, though God is dead. When he arrives he
finds God in bed with the Virgin Mary and there’s afterbirth on the
head of his cock- nicely circumcised- according to Jewish law.
“Briss me darling, I’m beautiful.”
“I made the world in six days and rested on the seventh.”
“I’ll come again.”
“And again.”
“Forever and ever.”
“Amen.”
I’ve slipped and fallen into a stream of consciousness. I am a
single solitary entity. I am old as time and as young as a moment.
“Maybe we could dance together.”
And quite suddently I am awake. Disoriented. Dizzy. Stoned.
Coming down, Sunday morning.
but still :::::DISASSOCIATED:::::.
I’m drinking olive oil mixed with turpentine mixed with paint mixed
with blood mixed with piss mixed with mother’s milk
mixed with bactine mixed with q-tips mixed with
love mixed by mother mixed by mixing mixed by
sunrise not by nightfall merely spinning into NOTHING SPECIAL OR EXOTIC.
No different than usual.
:::::DISASSOCIATION::::::
:::::DISASSOCIATION::::::
:::::DISASSOCIATION::::::
:::::DISASSOCIATION::::::
for a simple surrender.
“I understand.”
“I’m a businessman.”
“I’m the personification of death.”
She knows that fare costs $1.50 but she plays forgetful and asks me for
a fiver.
“You don’t need a fiver,” I say.
“I might pick up a nickel on the way home though.”
“I’ll give you a tenner then.”
“Thanks.”
We ended up smoking a dime and driving her station wagon out to the
lake to watch fish screw.
The lights were yellow and violent and while I felt completely relaxed
I was scared as hell. Paranoid too. Scared.
Freedom was a road trip. Freedom was a road beer, a joint, and
American Beauty on 8-track in the cab of an old chevy pick up
truck. “Didn’t get to sleep last night until the mornin’ came
around.” I’m sorry…. We drove out of Tema on six tabs of
acid rach following the melting road in front of us.
I peeled back my arm and found machinery. I couldn’t remember it
ever being there before, but then I’d never had the flesh of my arms
singed off by a soldering iron either. I tried to scream
SHUTTING DOWN, ETC.
I put a dollar and a quarter in the machine for a Snicker’s bar.
The machine kept my dollar and spit the quarter back at me. It
also kept the Snicker’s bar.
Robot mother fucker.
Robots are amazing though. Sometimes I wish I was one. Or a
daring space outlaw. Or a bartender. Barista.
Consider the Green Lantern for a moment. He’s quick to dismiss as
a boring hero, as the
he’s the superhero equivalent of lysergic acid.
He creates weapons using his
own will power. He can
the eye.
His weakness is
It shatters his confidence, flattens the vibrations, and leaves him
powerless.
The Green Lantern reminds us that the
only weapons we need are the one we can create from inside
ourselves. Instinctively, we have all that we need.
over body.
The ability to recreate Coast City
and walk through it completely hued in green and fueled by Hal Jordan’s
mind.
Just
be
careful
around
the
“THERE’S
The colum looks like a combination of machinery and children’s finger
painting. It’s terrifying. The edges are very pointed and
the only things clearly in focus. I could lose myself in them if
I wasn’t already lost in a blur. I keep thinking about the blue
but I can’t make the right
size="+3">:::::WORDS:::::
with my
size="+3"> :::::MOUTH::::: to describe it.
She says “this is a business meeting and we don’t have time for anymore
of your bullshit.”
“This is a business meeting.”
“Please rewind all seventeen miles of your head, tie your tongue at the
wooden post, and hitch yer ass to an office chair, PRONTO!”
She says “this is a business meeting and we some serious decisions to
make regarding your ability to expand horizons.”
“This is a business meeting.”
Our business provides everyday office solutions. The days of
products and contraptions have passed. Today we sell
solutions. We’ll sell answers that are not opinions, but
options. There are no professional opinions. There are only
professional solutions. Options. Oy.
“Never mind what you’re selling- it’s what you’re buying…”
Solutions.
I always liked singing “Don’t Let Our Youth Go To Waste” when I would
walk home to the dorm room, wasted, because even though it’s a song
about love, it sounds like it’s a song about being young and smashed
and I was young and smashed. I was appropriate.
<center>”And I would bleed in sympathy with you
on those days
and I would drink up everything you have
don’t let it go to waste.”</center>
a little bit lost in the
is urgency.
makes business.
is an investment in the short
term.
“It’s all so simple.”
“I’m a man for the docks.”
“Don’t call me nigger, whitey.”
“Whatever.”
“I’d kill a bitch for a space/time glitch.”
tracer that someone is watching out of the corner of their eye. I
can see myself floating away, just like a pattern in the wall paper.
Other times I’m throwing energy around like you wouldn’t believe.
It’s all I can do to keep from destroying the goddamn world and don’t
think I wouldn’t do it. I crave the idea. It’s just that I
have self control.
SOMEWHERE
INSIDE OF MY HEAD…
Everything is out of order. Everything id also electric. I
feel a surge and I know that I am still breathing- an electrical tickle
in my ear- I’m hearing sights and seeing sounds- the only words that
come to mind are Front Royal,
Virginia summer 1990. I remember it very well.
George Herbert Walker Bush was the President and that mother fucker
hated brocolli. I won’t trust a man who hates brocolli after
running the CIA. Brocolli is kid stuff.
I’m also thinking about the first time I ever saw a Hare Krishna.
It was in Philadelphia that same summer. They were dancing on the
street corners chanting “Hare hare hare…”.
This isn’t mixed media. I believe this is simply a flow of
straight media- thoughts, ideas, quotes, jokes, songs, stories, words,
poems, hymns, memories, oh yeah- let’s hardline on some
memories. Cut it up and snort it off glass. I remember
He-Man, nap time, old baby sitters, Gunn school, Zenith Drive, paper
routes, birthday parties, best friends, polaroid photos, the 1980’s,
tee-ball, coach pitch, baseball, softball, armchair with a beer in my
hand admiring the pitcher’s long
HE hit it
loaded up with sauerkraut, onion, pickle relish, ketchup, seaweed,
chutney, sawdust, cheeze whiz, mustard, bourbon, hashish, swing choir,
and a glazed sauce made from pig shit. It flew out of the ball
park and the words were torn straight off the fucking page. You
should have been there.
This is my running monologue.
I memorized the landscape as though it were my body. The caves of
my armpits. The cliff of my brow. The curves and fields of
my stomach. The tunnel of my anus. The peak of my penis-
two balls dangling like pendulums keeping time, slapping against
skin. I won’t moan or shout though it’s not pleasureless.
I’m just concentrating and FUCKING
MY
I’ve been on my share of vacations, believe you me. I know
interstates and rest stops you’ve only heard about, passed by, or
missed entirely. I’ve seen continental divides, alpine tundras,
and yellow bellied marmots. Now it’s only fitting that I’m stuck
in the panhandle.