With their hands bound behind their backs and their noses pressed to the black granite walls of the memorial, the men in thousand dollar suits stand in a line one hundred men long.  Their suit lapels are cut the same way- double breasted, in the current style-  and they all wear either red or blue ties.   The sky is gray and the clouds smear into the horizon like stains on a dirty kitchen floor.  The memorial is comprised of two walls. The two walls stand 246 feet long and are made from black granite rock sunk into the earth.  At their highest points they stand just over ten feet tall and at their lowest just over eight.  Etched in an optima typeface, the walls contain the names of 58,256 United States servicemen.  The flags- that is the flags left hanging and not already stolen, incinerated, dessicated, or otherwise rendered useless- hang at half mast like impotent manhood barely flapping in the wind.

Maya Lin never saw this one coming, I think.

The bombs have subsided now, for the most part.  Occasional pops and crackles sound over the landscape here and there as children launch celebratory bottle rockets and m80’s to a soundtrack of shouting and music in the distances.  Government buildings and business towers smolder like chimneys filling the sky with thick clouds of smoke and tall flames that grab attention in the same manner of the billboards of yesteryear, never mind what they’re selling.

The streets are full of people wearing rags and filled with a confusing spatter of images- victory, defeat, nobility, triumph, destitution, and change in every possible way and direction parade down the road.  A Salvation Army Band marches along adding a soundtrack to the confusion while an entire city council is gagged, sodomized, beheaded and fed to a pack of wolves, not necessarily in that order.  A small boy feeds the President of the First National Bank a stack of twenty dollar bills one at a time while his father and a gang of men with shotguns laugh hysterically.  The Bank President chews the bills gagging, but does not weep.  The boy’s father douses the Bank President in gasoline and lights a match to him, while bank tellers are being skinned alive by former trapped borrowers.  The Bank President erupts in flame- an immolation to nameless gods- as the songs of victory and the sounds of celebration fill the streets.  The drum corps of the Salvation Army Band keep time as the brass section belts out an anthem for a new tomorrow.

“When liberty comes with hands dabbled in blood it is hard to shake hands with her.” -Oscar Wilde

“I am the signet which marks the page where the revolution has been stopped; but when I die it will turn the page and resume its course.” -Napoleon Bonaparte

 Postcards from the revolution: “Wish you were here.”  “Off with their heads!”  “Let them eat cake.”  “Solidarity forever.”  “Dope, guns, and fucking in the streets.”

I apologize for the lateness in the posting of this letter.  The last three mailmen on this route were delivered to their respective home addresses in body bags.  The sights contained in said bags are better left to speculation but the boy who steals my neighbors’ newspapers tells me the last guy was sent home with each of his testicles tucked in the cheeks of his mouth and his cock tied to his face like the nose of a Halloween accessory.  I won’t lose sleep over this story.  While the old guard changes over to the new and the old markers, banners, customs, religions, and ways are streamlined, stripped and recycled into whatever comes next, one fact still remains the same:  patience is a virtue.

The men in thousand dollar suits stand with their noses pressed to the black granite walls of the memorial and their hands are bound behind their backs.  They stand in a line one hundred men long.  Many of them have spent their entire adult working lives earning their positions in this line.  Every campaign, every speech, every bill that became a law, every handshake, every vote, every red cent earned legitimately or illegitimately- it all adds up.  The men in thousand dollar suits stand silent.  There are no whimpers.  There are no tears.  There are no prayers to the almighty God who supposedly watches over and guides them on this, a very real and very imminent judgment day.  When the sentence is carried out the time for appeal has passed.  The population has spoken.

The sun is hiding in the gray sky lost somewhere between the smears of clouds and doesn’t dare show it’s face.  It’s a grayness like granite.  It sits on the horizon like a mountain blocking out the blue of the sky encompassing everything. A lump grows in the throats of one hundred men as the first thunder clap of gun fire leaves the barrel of a rifle and continues down the line one of men in thousand dollar suits one hundred times.  Each body falls limp and every execution adds a sentence to the new constitution one senator after another.  The double breasted suits soak up blood.

Maya Lin never saw this one coming, I think.

“What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”  -Thomas Jefferson

If there were a heaven Thomas Jefferson would sit in it smiling.  Youths in the streets cheer rebels in gas masks and every police car on the street is overturned or on fire.  Gangs of children ride skateboards and bicycles across sidewalks shouting.  The elderly hide in hospitals, churches, retirement homes, suburbs, RV trailers, bomb shelters, wherever- location is not so important.  Those not dead from panic or congestive heart failure will meet the greatest taker of life there is sooner before later: time.

Time kills everything eventually. Time kills everything dead.

One fact certainly remains unchanged: patience is a virtue.

Wall street recollects 1929 as skyscrapers rain bodies endlessly for hours on end and the streets recall the paintings of Jackson Pollock in each investment banker that falls to the pavement in the torrential down pour of bodies.  Entire wardrobes fly out the window before painting the sidewalk in various shades and splotches of crimson and hair.  The painting is ten feet deep in the end and covers several city blocks.  A man at a street cart sells hot dogs to onlookers in exchange for bullets- the only real American currency- and they cheer as businessmen come crashing to the ground below.

Elsewhere, Omaha, Nebraska sits quietly and empty as does Pueblo, Colorado, Ogden, Utah, and Cheyenne, Wyoming.  Their streets are silent.  Their populations are missing.  There are no tears in Butte, Montana.  There are no sorrows in Fargo, North Dakota.  While Kansas City has seen better days, her poor and underprivileged are not complaining as they roast businessman alive over grills in city parks and douse them in barbecue sauce.  The loin is the most tender cut of meat, after all.  Indeed there is not a single tear shed in the states of Iowa, Indiana, and Illinois.  In Chicago the Thompson Sub Machine Gun is once again the king of that great street, State Street.  Men in cars speed up and down the streets fantasizing themselves as Lucky Luciano and John Dillinger for a new millennium.  Their cars skid to a stop and they unload an entire magazine of ammunition at a time into unsuspecting targets be they animal, mineral, or vegetable.

Oklahoma is a wasteland- I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.  The gods hate Kansas.  California, owing to a sad state of despair, dramatically swallows a handful of Valium and drifts off to sleep in the Pacific ocean leaving no trace behind save for what’s left in the fossil record.  Sedimentary, my dear Watson- sedimentary.  She didn’t even have the courtesy to leave behind a goddamned note.  So it goes. Cased closed.

Postcards from the damned: “I’m sorry.”  “Better luck next time.”  “We won’t get fooled again.”  “At least I tried.”

The men in thousand dollar suits, with their hands bound behind their backs, and noses pressed to the black granite walls of the memorial each lurch forward, bend at the waist, bend at the knees, then collapse after a clap of gunfire behind them.  They fall like dominoes, one after the other.  They pass silently like farts in the wind.  Their executioners yawn and kick spent shell casings from their paths.  One of the eldest men stares his executioner in the eyes and nods his head before the trigger is pulled and his head cracks open like a melon.  The executioner does not even blink. The body of the old man stiffens, bends at the knees, and collapses to the ground the same as all the others.

Maya Lin never saw this one coming, I think.

The church bells are ringing across town at a cathedral though the altar has been torched for kindling and the priests have been unfrocked, undressed, and marched down the streets single file for the amusement of the public.  Church pews have been carried away, along with everything else not tied down and several things that were.  The food pantries are raided.  The upholstery has been lifted.  No one is crying over the missing collection plates.

The old make way for the new, the new make their own way, and the cycle continues cyclically like an ourosboros tapeworm that spends it’s whole life generating new segments while eating it’s own ass just to stay alive.  These revolutionary pricks won’t even have all the blood washed from their hands and out from under their finger nails before they’ve become the same bureaucratic sons of bitches they deposed in the first place, mark my words.

“Eager souls, mystics and revolutionaries, may propose to refashion the world in accordance with their dreams; but evil remains, and so long as it lurks in the secret places of the heart, Utopia is only the shadow of a dream.”  - Nathaniel Hawthorne

Time kills everything eventually. Time kills everything dead.

One fact certainly remains unchanged: patience is a virtue.

The sky is gray and the sun is still hiding as the clock inches towards evening and the gray fades into the black of night.  While a new dawn is only a nighttime away, it remains to be seen whether it will look that much different in the new light of morning.

I’m pee shy.

I know, I know- that sounds crazy- but really, if there’s a bunch of people in the room making noise, I just seize up and can’t pee, even if there’s a veritable Mount Coolidge sized reservoir of urine in my bladder that is waiting to escape. It doesn’t matter how bad I gotta go. If there’s the sound of somebody breathing in the same room with me, I am zipped up like zip-lock.

I just spent ten minutes in the restroom at my job in a state of such constipated stress.

It was bad enough that my phone call had dragged on for fifteen extra minutes and I had to pee. So I finally got to the restroom. One urinal was already in use. So was one of the stalls.

My personal rule for urinals is not to use them unless I know the person I am peeing next to. That way if I’m at a movie theater or a concert or something, I’ll feel a little more comfortable when I have no choice but to pee amongst a mob of other peeing people. I will choke up a little bit, but eventually my stream will ease it’s way out.

Since only one urinal was unoccupied I went with a stall. Stalls are good because they can drown out the other distractions in the rest room. Sometimes there are things to read scratched into them. I always prefer the stall when faced with a room full of other people in public restrooms.

Since I was seized up I decided to sit down. Sometimes when I pee I sit down. If nobody’s around and I’m on my own, I’ll stand. But, since I’m taking the time to write all of this down and make some sort of point, I’m pee shy. If it’s a crowded room, I’ll probably take a seat. That way at least I’m a little more comfortable while waiting for the seizing up of my equipment to cease.

Taking a seat didn’t help much. The person at the urinal flushed loudly and washed their hands. As the bathroom door closed, someone wandered in who was sort of mumbling/humming to themselves. Now faced with a sound track, I was silently damning my bladder for not being able to operate due to sound interruptions. As I was beginning to feel my resistance wane and the urine begin to spill out of me, the guy in the other stall cut loose a loud fart. Or dropped a deuce with a loud rip. I’m not certain. All I know is that it was loud in the way that we think about explosions being loud. And it was followed by several other minor such explosions.

I couldn’t pee. My stream stopped. Dead in it’s drip. It was like the pesky neighbor kid tied a knot in the garden hose. The pressure was there. It was starting to hurt a little. But there was nothing I could do.

I stuck my fingers in my ears to avoid further distraction. At this point the person at the urinal began whistling out loud. I could hear it through my plugged ears though I did not recognize the tune.

WHO DOES THAT?!?! WHAT THE FUCK?!?! Is my brain operating as an FM radio station broadcasting to everyone in the restroom that they need to make as much noise as humanly possible?!?! I kid, but it blew my mind to be sure.

Finally the whistler left the room, the exploder did too, and I was able to pee and come back to my desk.

Jesus H. Christ.

The crowd outside on Sixth Street was chanting “OBAMA! OBAMA!” and they had taken the street in a spectacle of celebration. Further down the block Police had blocked off the street from autos and now celebrants of all ages were cheering, crying tears of joy, or just standing outside and having a cigarette before returning to the big television sets inside of Buffalo Billiards to watch more CNN coverage.

Or at least that’s what my friends and I were doing. We’d had quite an extraordinary amount of drinks for the night, starting at Ruth’s Chris for $5 Martini’s, to the Driskill for the Travis County Democrats Celebration, and finally to the less crowded and therefore cozier Buffalo Billiards.

Tuesday night was wonderful. I kept remembering the ‘04 election very vividly (well, as vividly as my memory allows…I did drink an entire bottle of Wild Turkey that night and call in sick to work for the next couple days…Christ, that was an awful election…) and it felt vindicating to see things finally go a direction I want to see politics tip toward.

I remembered something I’d heard at the University of Iowa my freshman year from a couple of the faux-broheims on my Dorm Floor- “win or lose, we still booze” and that’s applied to every election I’ve voted in yet. Except this time my team didn’t lose.

I was recording with my 4-Track on Sunday afternoon and realized I needed a couple rhythm tracks on the song I was recording. Since the only percussion instruments I own are a cowbell & 2 drum sticks, I found my selections some what limited.

Then I got a bright idea. If the title of this entry is any indication, you can already see where this is headed.

I discovered that if I miked my belly and slapped my hands on either side of it, the slap recorded loud enough that my belly worked fine as a percussive instrument. So I recorded a five minute track of me slapping rhythmically on the sides of my belly with both hands.

Five minutes later my belly was beat red. It looked like someone who has worked out in the sun without sun screen all day long. Also, it hurt like hell. It had not occurred to me that slapping my belly for five minutes on end would cause bruising quite like that. This morning the bruising has subsided mostly and now sort of looks like little red freckles on both sides of my belly.

I need bongo drums. The end.