Trainhopping Scumfuckers

To be or not to be:
That is a technicality.
Whether 'tis better to weather
The slings and arrows
Of a thousand sorrys and
You're unqualifieds
Or say
Screw this
And vacate this whore house
For greener pastures.
To board a freight train
No ticket
No destination in mind
Just away
And away
And
And
And forever and always along
Down the tracks
Of whatever and whenever
Amen.
Eight men
Cruising
In steel-smelling; rust-smelling
Chambers in wheels
Chicago to Seattle
Empire Builder
Grunge sponge
A suitcase
A big-time story that's false
But passes time good
As any drop-down TV would have been.
We arrive
Ill-stomached, good-spirited,
McDonald's coursing fatty
Through our veins
Offer a grimace and a
Shrug
For your ever-loving shove.

When I Get It Right

It feels like liberating a hairball from the kitchen sink drainpipe.

I root around with a plumbing snake,
A steel rod,
A flashlight.

Nothing.

I get down on my knees,
Crank a collar counterclockwise with a fat wrench:
The P-trap clatters to the clapboards
The smell of rust mists into the room
The whole sink shakes
I shove my fingers up inside the main pipe and voila.

Catching the back of my skull on the edge of the cupboard ("Fuck!")
I emerge damp, bruised, triumphant:

"There's your problem right there, ma'am."
The dripping tangled mass
Springy between my fingers
Mysterious catacombed matter.

It's not like I can tell you what hair is made of
Or what precise path to follow should you care to attempt a detanglement
Or the scientific names of the asymmetrical creatures you might find
Should you take a microscopic head count.

I just unclog the pipes.
Sometimes they pay me.

If I Could Read Minds for a Day

washington-post-inside

If I could read minds for a day
I'd read them in print
Dead tree edition
Over toast and orange juice
Letting the top corners flop like Beagle ears
The bottom edge jostling table crumbs into my lap
Thumbing the serrated sides
Ink dying my skin cells graphite.
Scrape a few onto a slide
For microscopic viewing
Bear the lens down
And read the thinks
Your mind has dyed.

My Favorite Place to Drive

No, not pins dancing on the head of a demon. The other thing. See below.

Hellraiser Pin Head

Off a cliff
Onto the head of a pin, like an angel
Is my favorite place to drive
Just so long as the other angels don't jostle me
When I arrive.
They can be so territorial
And I've got shit on my tunic
From shoveling it all day in the stables.
So if they don't jostle and they don't mind the smell of a working angel
I'm cool with the head of a pin.
Can I dance in my car?
Next question.

If She Calls Me on the Phone

If she calls me on the phone
Do I answer, "
I am a digital approximation"
?
"Press 1 for English"
?
If nexward she implies axforwardslash cramward,
Crawl out do we dare?
Allowing for 4G interference gulleting
Down telecom drawers
Well, bass synths tech know sys
Tem and dese.
Call out your sexcams
For all eternity.
I'll-withered callow stems glory funk blug fjord gunk.
Blargh.
Autocorrect blasphemy calls to me. I'll I'll I'll.
See how the cat doth hump moonweary gallumphing for e'er and ere I saw elbow.
Yeah, forward slash me to ribbons, yeah yeah. Whoa.
Glory gunk if you please continue fallow in your tread, stead, what head.
Give God gore.

If You Wait, Wet

Interwoven strands of time
Hairclipped in place
Pigtails punked

Plough through leather libraries with your bulldozer of knowledge acquisition
Thbbpt
It was nice knowing things.

Good morning, world
Deoderant, underarms, under cities, subway potpourri
Gaunt grace glanced glidewards, glinting

Gumwads ground into fiberglass seats
Polished with the ass of a metropolis
Herringbone clouds catch you.

Trick stomach twists tangled tongue torque
It's like a visit to the spam doctor
Take two *plop* and call me in *plop*

Punchlines pulled.
30 gross to the bushel
If you wait, wet.

Meet My Dada

Aggravation. Alleviation. Teeter down, totter up. No balance. Dynamic equilibrium. Sight block. Limits of experience. Locked in a human.

Help.

Bite brick wall, floss with barbed wire, pain of big rock sharing drowns in my blood.

All my atoms weave their way into other DNA in the year 3014. My protestations whisper in the wind: "Shuuuuut uuuuuuup, youuuuuu idioooooooooots." Whistling through Old West gas station doors, termite-textured.

Please chuck stones on the ground until it splits and you all go mouth-up.

Continue the bound-and-gagged existence and keep hacking at it like John Henry until the mountain collapses.

2012 passed with a grunt.

2013 let out an SBD.

2014 and 2046 high-fived each other with rubber chickens.

Let go of my leg, vile devil. Irreligious of your irregardless.

Sometimes I like walking across the bottom of the fishbowl looking good and looking at you in your submarines as you blow Dumbo bubbles blissfully shredding gunt.

Why? Because all of human activity is conditioning and instinct, with a few horseflies of genuine inspiration getting swatted.

Meet my Dada.

So much remains uncharted.

Eighty percent.

You took some hits.

Some chunks broke off the ship.

And you're light years away

From where you started.

But you're still kicking up stardust,

Line dancing with black holes.

Swing your partner, she's all you got.

So much remains uncharted.

I will not avert my eyes, I will not turn my back...

I will not avert my eyes, I will not turn my back.

I will stare into the sockets of the skull, the endless black

That never dulls, that never cries, that never blinks, I will not shrink

Until the finish. Nor shall death diminish my resolve, think

Forward.

An Unusual Cabby: A Story in 25 Tweets

An Unusual Cabby: A Story in 25 Tweets

I improvised this story today on Twitter, one tweet at a time. It comes from a place of need. All tweets appear here in chronological order from top to bottom and have been proofread for respectful capitalization only.

Lord, I need a lift. I need to get from here to there. You're the expert, but if I may suggest a route, hang a left and aim for the glowing.

"Hang on to your shit," spake the Lord, and floored it.

In reverse. Pinned by velocity to the back of the passenger seat like a sixth-grade science project, I could just make out my past flying by.

As Fall Branch receded into the future, I saw the places I've been. At this divine speed they appeared as wet Polaroids not fully developed.

Azusa. Pasadena. North Hollywood. St. Paul. Mounds View. St. Paul again. Yonkers. Roswell. New Haven. Geneva. Minneapolis. London. Paris.

We passed green foothills in white caps, threaded through S-curves wiggling between sheer cliffs, blasted out into great expanses of desert.

And then we were riding on water. His taxi skipped across the Atlantic like a checkered yellow stone.
The Lord never asked me whether I was comfortable.

"Thirsty?" the Lord did ask unto me. "Yes," I replied, upon which He handed me an Evian bottle full of brilliant ruby wine. I downed it.

Yea, the Lord got me completely wasted. He pulled over. I fell out of the cab onto a cobbled street. The cab had turned black. "Nice trick.”

London. West End. The Hammersmith Apollo loomed high above my head. The marquee read "BLAST!" Blast, I'm late for my entrance, I mumbled.

"Don't worry," spake the Lord, "You're fired. Get in." I looked at Him, looked at the marquee, looked at the black cab and climbed in. Sigh.

The Lord buried His sandaled foot in the floorboards and off we flew, still in reverse. "Paris, right?" I asked, fumbling with the seatbelt.

I stood on the beach of Brittany at sunset. The blue swingset. The oyster bar. My friend Sanaphay, stoned and puking up oysters. Bliss.

The Lord shoveled me into the cab again, took the wheel, and punched it back to Minneapolis. University of Minnesota. "I'm tired, Lord.”

High school: Marching band, theater, English class, cross-country skiing, crushes, Live, Dave Matthews, lockers, cars and bicycles.

Middle school: Shame, darting eyes, righteous indignation, the stench of skepticism wafting from Mead notebooks. Picking fights with giants.

Elementary school: Mr. Galinsky, a class music video, the Bookworm program, a rosy girl of long black hair named Chastity. And Katie.

Baseball cards. G.I. Joe. Transformers. Mr. Rogers. Barbara Mandrell on PBS.

A wooden fence and a little blond boy named William in red shorts. Me.

An Easter Basket of green plastic grass and chocolate eggs. The reassuring smell of cigarette smoke on Mom's pea coat.

Everything goes black. "Lord, I can't follow You here.”

"Then you aren't ready to go all the way, " spake the Lord. "I'll pick you up in 87 years. You owe Me six hundred large." Put it on my tab.

The Lord sighed. "Thanks for riding with Us." I helped Him with His robes, slammed the door and gave the roof a pat. He threw it in reverse.

The End.

I wrote this poem today while walking.

Along the foothills
Down the boulevard
Threading a path along the valley
Straight ahead wide open territory
To my right mountains loom
If I close my right eye
I can pretend I am back home
Walking along some flat old highway
In the flat open plain of Minnesota
I walk on shifting sand
I stop and dig
Won't stop until I hit bedrock
Then drill a hole until the bit snaps
And plant the first piling
To my impregnable fortress
Nothing will topple it
No one gets across the drawbridge
Without knowing my dance macabre
Coreographed by the hands of puppet gods
Me versus pantheons
A lifelong tangle of war
Until by strings I rearrange the gods my way
And sit

WARNING: This song may be offensive to some viewers. Listeners, on the other hand, will be pants-pissingly delighted.

"Anyone who worships Bukowski needs to sober up. Nuff said." - @jepun

That is the tweet (and new follower) that prompted me to post my song "Judgment Gun," which includes this disdainful reference to Bukowsky:

You smoke to make your voice sound like gravel

So that one day everyone will finally take you seriously

And revere you as the next Charles Bukowsky

Only wiser

And therefore even more of a jackass

WARNING: This song may be offensive to some viewers. Listeners, on the other hand, will all be delighted to the point of pissing themselves.

 
Download now or listen on posterous

Musclemouth_-_Judgment_Gun.mp3 (1910 KB)

Track Title: Judgment Gun

Lyrics written and vocals performed by: Will Conley a.k.a. Musclemouth

Original music composed and performed around the lyrics by: Nolan Voss (drums, bass, guitar - I think)

Recorded in Nolan Voss' bedroom studio in New Haven, Connecticut in 2006