hurricane peanut butter/ ch. 2/ raw snip xo

(1)
The gale force winds howled from the northeast and blew the limbs of my Live Oak hard and repeatedly against the front of the house. A stack of Disney DVDs fell off of the entertainment center as a gust of maybe seventy smacked into our little salt box.
“Would you stop!?” Aspen yelled from the back room. “Why are you banging stuff?” she asked.
“I didn’t do it! Jeez! Would you just chill out. It was the wind.” I moaned and grunted as I picked up the videos. “It must be close to hurricane force out there.” I said.
“Yeah. More like hurricane force in here.” She joked smugly. “Hurricane daddy.” She said.
“Whatever, I have been good. You just need someone to bitch at.” I said back, maintaining the line.
“Should I get the girls up? Is this storm going to have tornadoes?” my wife asked me.
“Nah…they have a warning out, but I don’t see anything on the radar. Most of this is blowing out to sea anyway. Just another late afternoon pop-up thunderstorm, stronger than most of the hurricanes we get.” I said. I changed the channel to Phineas and Ferb as the kids ran into the living room.
“Da-a-a-a-a-a-ddy?” A little voice called out.
“Yes Emeline.” I called back. “What are you doing?”
“Are we going to have a tornado?” she asked. Mary Emeline ran into the room and jumped up onto the couch and into my lap.
“No honey. We’re not going to have a tornado.” I reassured her, kissed her on the head. “Your mama is just nervous, that’s all. But there’s nothing to be afraid of. You have us here.” I said.
“Daddy?” she asked.
“Yes baby?” I answered again. “What’s up.” I asked her. “Don’t you wanna watch Phineas?”
“Yeeaaaah.” She said. “But first I have to tell you something.”
“Okay. I’m listening.” I looked at her with my entire focus. It melted me, like always. “What do you wanna tell me?”
“Daddy?” she said. “What’s a tornado?” she spun around in my lap and found the cartoon on the set.
“Well, it’s just a really bad wind storm. It’s small though. But it is really fast and it destroys everything in it’s path.” I said. “But we don’t have them here all that often…so you don’t have anything to”
“Daddy?” she asked again. “Where do tornadoes live?”
“Well…they don’t really live anywhere.” I explained. “They come down from the sky when bad weather is happening.” I said, like a dunce.
On the screen a couple of young geniuses are building a beach with real sand, an ocean, waves, umbrellas and ‘Beach Blanket Bongout’ style fun seekers. Their sister Candace really wants to bust them for it, until she sees her dream boy on shining in the sun and sand.
Emeline is losing attention as she asks me another. “Daddy, are we going to have a hurricane?”
“Well sweetie, there’s nothing out there now…but ya never know.” I said. “The summer has a ways to go, and we could have a little blow…but no matter; if a bad storm bears down on us, we’ll go to Mama D’s house in Richmond.” Emeline’s head sunk into my chest as my fingers pulled her hair from the front of her face and put it behind her ears. Aspen walked through the room again, dressed for the masses.
“More like; you never know when hurricane daddy is going to hit.” She said under her breath so that only I would pick it up. “You can be nice when you want to but most of the time you’re just mean to me. Like last night.” She said.
“Please Aspen, not right now, not with her here. I mean damn.” I said, moped.
“I’m not about to get into it, but you need to see Judy.” She insisted. “I have to be at work in like twenty minutes…I’m so late, AGAIN!” she said as she headed for the door. “I love youuuuu! Be good girls for daddy.” She said and exited the home.
I leaned down to whisper towards my daughter’s head, “Are you hungry? Do you want me to make you some peanut butter crackers?” I said.
“Yes daddy.” She said. “Oh, and daddy?”
“Yes baby” I said getting up to fix her a snack.
“I have to tell you something.” She said.
“Yes baby.” I said again smiling. “What would you like to tell me?”
“Daddy, where do hurricanes live?” she asked innocently. “Are they bad?”
“No baby, they’re not like people, and they don’t live anywhere either. They are just big storms that come from the ocean.” I told her.
“Well then why did mommy say that daddy was a hurricane?” her little eyes looked over her shoulder in my direction, and she waited.
“I don’t know hon’. Mommy’s silly sometimes. Maybe she just means I talk too much. I’m full of wind, like a hurricane.” I said “Let me get up so I can make you a snack.”
“Daddy?” again.
“Yes hon’?” I answered her. I stood and started walking towards the kitchen.
“Do you like peanut butter?” Emeline asked me.
“Yep. I do. I used to eat it all the time.” I said. “When I was your age it’s about all I ate.”
“Daddy?” she asked again as I kept trying to inch away. “Maybe mommy called you a hurricane because when you get mad sometimes you break stuff.”
I tucked my head and walked into the kitchen. “I don’t know.” I said. “Sometimes mommy and daddy just say things. We don’t mean anything by it. I gotta make your snack. Watch Phineas.” I said.
My mind flashed back to 1978 as I stirred the peanut butter with a butter knife. I thought about sweating in the attic when I was eight, holding the blow-hose for the insulation we were scattering all over the ceiling joists. Mom and dad were at it about something, probably Jimmy Carter, or Iran. To me it sounded like a crack in the foundation of reality. It made me think of how my kids must feel when I go on like a raving asshole. They don’t deserve it, and I wondered: do I deserve them?

First Draft/ Ebola Camp Christmas e.p., part two

“Stop the Football!”
Peter Graves Roberts
ebola camp christmas e.p.,
three

“Nobody thought the Dallas Cowboys would be boasting a 12 and 3 record heading into the last regular season game against the Redskins, in our Nation’s capital…but here they are. It’s Sunday December 28th, 2014 at FedEx Field, and the Cowboys are hoping to clinch at least home field advantage for the upcoming playoff season.
Troy Aikman, tell me what to expect today. Is this going to be like the last meeting in Dallas? The Redskins didn’t really seem to show up in that sixty four point gashing. What should we expect tonight, from both teams?”
“Well Joe Buck, first let me say Merry Christmas to you and to all of our fans here in Arlington, and around the country. And we want to wish a big FOX Happy New Year to everyone, especially our service men and women helping here at home, and to those fighting for our freedom…overseas. It’s been an eventful holiday season Troy, and these Cowboys are looking to turn a great 2014 into an even better 2015 with a win in for Super bowl forty nine.”
“Man that’s a bunch a bullshit…” Jimmy said, turning down the television as he exhaled his bong hit. The burgundy lounge chair cracked as it helped his slumped frame forward. “The fuckin’ Cow-girls ain’t gonna win SHIT! Bitches…” he continued. “They’ll be goin’ to the Ebola-bowl…uunnnght !” mist shot from his nose as he started to hack, involuntarily. He brushed the ash from his #12 ‘skins jersey and passed me the bong.
I reached out to the table beside me and pushed play on the cd. I packed one for Charlie and stared for a moment at the reflection of the water outside in the clear plastic tube, then passed it to his end of the couch. The drums splat and rat, the heartbeat ensues, a simple triplet of canned 1981 Jamaican rhythm keys the air and I sing again to Jimmy:
“WHOOA YEAH…you damn craven...
why you so craven? You jussa fly down like Raven…
that’s not the way to behave, you have enough and
still you crave…you always taking away mine…”
With a wheeze and a clearing of his throat he reclines. “Fuck you bitch.” He says.
Jimmy stretched his legs out, flipping his Nike sandals a bit, cracking his toes and then settled back into his asthmatic peanut gallery of one. “RGIII is gonna run all OVER them niggas!” he went on.
“Shut the fuck up, you white bitch.” Charlie laughed, himself, also a whitey. “You’re like 45 now, and you live in Nags Head, you ain’t no gangsta and you ain’t no PRODUCER…stop actin’ all “
“Shiiit bitch!” Jimmy answered, poking his eyes out just a little from the shade of his PING visor, salt and pepper white/B-boy hair cut surrounding the middle of his balding head. “I still got connects in Yard…Andrew Bees and punk ass Beanie Man still chat me up for beats…I got this hot joint I was workin’ on the other night ago…hang on, let me see…” he lunged forward a couple of times until he was upright in the lounger.
“Nobody wants to hear that shit now man.” I said, “the game is about to start. And those dudes just chat you up so you’ll bring ‘em weed when they play in Portsmouth! They got kids in Jamaica that make beats all day long for nothin’! They ain’t gonna’ make you no star bitch…”
I looked down at the brass bowl of green medicine. I put the lighter to the flowers and drew breath in, slowly, as the fire shot down the smaller red tube and bubbled out into the dirty water. I inhaled and sat back on the couch, then blew it out in Jimmy’s direction. “Bitch…” I started to cough a little myself, just turn the game back up!” as I packed him a special hit. “Have you had two?” I asked him.
“Fuck naw NIGGIE! Put it in the WIND Bee-yotch!” he snickered and sniffled.
I placed a rare FAT hemp seed in the bottom of the brass bowl and then covered it with the driest of the shake on the “sesh-tray”. I passed it with a lighter to his outstretched and spindly arms.
Jimmy leaned back, near parallel with the floor and put the fire to the thing. In about a second and a half, just after the tube started filling with smoke, the seed ignites and pops! Rapidly escaping steam jettisons the flaming orb from its nest and it lands right smack in the middle of his forehead, just over his eyes! Shocked, he rocks back and the dirty bong water sloshes all down the front of his neck, chest and jersey.
“Aww shit man.” I start my half assed apology as the laughter erupted in the room. “I didn’t even see that seed in there…” I laughed some more.
“FUCK YOU bitch!” he starts. “Now I gotta go and soak this muther fucka….you motherfuckers suck! God damn it!” He gets up and walks towards a nearby closet. He fills up a bucket with water from a large washing sink and sprays some stain blocker something or other on the jersey and puts it in the bucket of water.
“I full on didn’t know that was in there man, I wouldn’t do you like that…” I go on. “Thank Jah for your mama’s washing machine huh?” I poked as he passed by me, pressing his dragging knuckles against my wooly capped head. He started drying the chair with tissues from the table next to it.
Charlie, in full hysterics is holding his side like he caught a cramp running; “Man, that was funny as shit!” he laughed. “That shit shot STRAIGHT out of there and STUCK on your forehead…it was PERFECT! You couldn’t do that again if you tried…Aahhhhh haaaaaaaa…” he just kept on. I laughed to, and added:
“Yeah…you did look like a punk ass bitch when you nearly drank that whole tube a’ bong water…aaaaa-HA! And FUCK the Foreskins…I thought RGIII was hurt again anyway. They’re playing for three and thirteen anyway; they’ll keep him iced on the bench and play Cousins anyway…watch. And it don’t matter anyway girl…because…the deadskins…are going….to …LOOOOOOOOSE!” I sang to him in a small, annoying chipmunk voice.
“Man? Y’all are a TRIP!” Charlie chimed in, bouncing his busy VANS on Jimmy’s mama’s Oriental rug. “We need to just go SKATE! Turn the teevee off for a minute. It’s all a bunch of overpaid, homophobic gladiators anyway. The Empire is watching us watch this shit every week, just like in Rome. This place is the beast; this place is going to fall. FUCK football. Let’s go skate! C’mon! He said. He stood up and shook his little soapy dread-lings and kicked the tail of his deck and popped up onto the couch with a quick Ollie. “That’s what y’all NEEED to worry about…that styyyyle”
“Shiiit bitch…” Jimmy interrupted, grabbing the board and placing a hand on the corner of the coffee table, just in front of me.
“Look. The…FUCK…out!” I said as he jumped into the air, a little, barely missing the weed tray on my knees. “You’re gonna spill the fucking bong dumbass!” I said. “Ease up ‘Sketchy Hawk’…damn.” Charlie and I both laughed. “I don’t give two shits for the Emperor, the Romans or the bullshit commentary, I just wanna see the game.” I said.
“Shiiit! Y’all NEED to skate VERT! –couple a’ street pussies here. I know y’all are soft…little ‘Mini McGillicuttys…I see how ya are…shiiit.” He trailed off, wheezing.
“Yeah man. In a minute man…” I looked at Charlie as he rolled his eyes. I grabbed the remote and unmuted the game, well, pregame…and turned off the Roots. “Craven ass bitch.” I teased Jimmy again.
“Aaalll-right ! We are going to be taking you all back to Cowboys Stadium in Arlington Texas for the kickoff very soon…” Terry Bradshaw broadcasts…”And don’t forget to tune in at the game break, where Jimmy, Howie and Me will be talking with all of our players’ family members, working around the country in the many facilities…that have been, ahh, beco…ming needed, uh. Troy Aikman, Joe Buck! Back to you fellas! See ya at halftime!”
“This has been your FOX! NFL Sunday Pre-game show…be sure to join us right here at halftime…” mutters the television voice.
Jimmy sat up in the chair and motioned at Charlie. “Sing me a song bitch, damn! Pass that shit!”
“Fuck you” mumbled Charlie, clearing his hit and laying back, his right hand covering the plastic tube.
“Man that shit’s fucked up. E-Bo-la. They shoulda stopped lettin’ motherfuckers in here after that first dude back in the fall.” Jimmy chimes in. “Fuckin’ Obama, I voted for that nigga TWICE too! I still lost my house, and now this shits all up in everything. I think them Ghana mother fuckers are on ta something. I bet that shit IS some kind of vaccine testing gone wrong. These crooked Babylonian bitches.” He turns red eyes to me. “Put it in the wiiind bitch!”
“It’s not Obama’s fault, dumb ass.” I said. Charlie kicked his skateboard against the bottom of the table with a loud, wooden SMACK!
“Oh…shit! Sorry ‘bout that. Haha…It isn’t Obama’s fault if people are just doing stuff behind his back and letting this stuff get out of control. It’s like Selassie…” He said, gazing at the teevee now.
“Selassie!?!” Jimmy shouted, smirking. “This has nothing! Man, just take another bonghit…mmhhhm, hhmmm…” his asthma laughed with him.
“The issue is” I said, handing Jimmy a regular hit, “and NONE of you listened when I said so back before Halloween, that nobody was doing anything when it was just 10,000 cases world-wide. Now it’s 10,000 a week and everybody just wants to freak the fuck out. It’s all bullshit fear. That’s all. These health care and CDC mother fuckers should have fixed this shit MONTHS ago.” I stood up and walked over to the counter between the living room and the kitchen to pour a shot of Maker’s. I grabbed his little shot measurer that came with the Christmas bottle of Maker’s Mark and filed the big side, looking in the cabinet for a glass. Looking past the friends in the room, the waters of the Sound looked like dancing, gleaming diamonds outside, below Jimmy’s deck. The clink of a few cubes of ice in a glass made it stand out especially now, I guess.
Jimmy pulled the hit and exhaled with a wheeze again. “Charlie, your problem is you still believe all this hoodoo shit about the Bible and the fuckin’ Illuminadi. That shit is fairy tales man. It’s dead.” He said, keeping the side of his mouth slightly opened when he paused between phrases. Taking off his visor and scratching his head. “The REAL mother fuckers that aren’t to be trusted in this whole shit are those pharmaceutical mother fuckers. They’re the ones behind all this fuck’ry. It ain’t about Babylon fallin’. It’s about the global unification of assets in the hands of the few that don’t give a fuck about you or me. Those mother fuckers are going to get us all killed one way or another. Fuck it!” He pulled his feet back, out of the sandals again and rolled his foot over his toes, cracking them again and putting them back under the strap. He stood up and looked at me. “Yo, bitch! Pour me a shot!”
“Yo bitch!” I said. “Buy some Coke.” And pulling the flat half a’ two liter Pepsi from the fridge I poured it, fizz-less on the ice and drank my shot. I poured him a short one and passed it across the counter. “You want one Charlie?” I asked.
“Got damn nig-gie, give me the dirty glass! I see how you are. Bitch.” Jimmy slurped his whiskey. “In my own criiiib too, daaaang.”
“Fuck yo house BITCH!” I laughed.
“Nahhh.” Said Charlie. “I’m good on that. I’ll take another bong hit though.” He rolled his neck against the back of the cushy couch to turn his cheesing grin my way. “Put it in the wiiind…” he laughed.
“Daaamn! Smoke up all my corn and drink up all my juice! I see how y’all are. Gaht Dayum!” Jimmy said. “Y’all nigggas is CHEAP!” he laughed.
“He’s right man.” I said to Charlie, he’s the one with the money. “Big dollas…heh heh.”
“Shit.” He started again, “as long as PETA keeps paying me to build them doghouses I’ll be set. If I didn’t have that though, I’d be fucked.”
“Well build ‘em bitch!” I said, passing the tube to Charlie. Sitting back down in front of the coffee table and inspecting the remainder of the smoke-ready weed, I grab the remote and turn up the television. “What the fuck?” I said. “It’s been commercials for like the last fifteen minutes, and now some special message bullshit!” I shout at the television now “WHAT THE FUCK? THIS IS WHAT C.N.N. IS FOR! Put it back on football.” I say.
“What is it?” asks Jimmy, coming back over from the bar. He sits down in the big burgundy recliner, but doesn’t recline. “What’s this shit, another case?” He wonders aloud to me and Charlie.
“I don’t give a fuck who or what! Dallas. Mother fuckin’ Cowboys! –end of story!” Every week it’s a case, and all them bitches quarantined, THERE’S TEN THOUSAND this week in West Africa! Nobody gives a fuck. Some white nurse from Tennessee gets it though, or a tiddie surgeon who’s trying to score karma points and we flip the fuck out. It’s fucking stupid. Aaaah!” I get up, looking outside again and heading for the sliding glass exit. “Y’all done fucked up my buzz! Fuck it!”
“What the fuck?” says Charlie, looking confused?
“Yeah…what the fuck Pedro? What the fuck did WE do…?” He stood and stared at the person at the mic. “Hold up y’all. This’s some Presidential shit!”
“Nothing man, I just…” I said.
“HOLD ON!” Jimmy said again. We all got quiet and looked at the screen.

432 miles to Manitoba/Hank's best girl

Hank's best girl

stronger than most of you
or me

across oceans and universe as
pixie borne through
hells and lifetimes more
than most alive

stronger than most of you or me
seen it, like i seen it
motorcycle slides head
knocked of in the
red veiled helmet
or alone when i ran
at seventeen in D.C.

flex your head
XXX

stronger than most of you
or me

the unyielding tide-
-the acrid piles of
nutmeg
sweet nightmare
that forces backs to
bleed on bricks

stronger than most of you or
me

the cigarette deaths
and steam soaked streets
the billion broke up
stars that scream;

wrap it in her hand's palm
now...
feed for the birds on
Avenue B

stronger than either you
or me

-if i could sit and
cook a story drown in
silence of the drunk's


but watching and dadding
and waiting for sinking
just hopeful wishes and
wishful hopes and some
blueberry muffins and
432 miles to Manitoba

media schrapnel

humans believe.

we/they believe
what is comfortable,
chicken soup, hot cocoa
and diaper ads

if a mouth on television,
on the interwebs
on speed
tells them
"the president is from Africa"
they believe it
-the congresswoman
was a witch
hey laugh and smoke pot and
sell it

a russian team shot down a friendly plane
over a war it
sounds favorable to friendly
defensive fire.
when a rocket blows up near a park
and hospital
they tell us the bad guys fell short
it wasn't from the same crew that has lost
43 humans to
the devil incarnate while
mowing down one thousand and
forty hellions, devils and kids
of that scum.

why do American Humans believe so little
about our figureheads and their intention
while believing
nothing from the black man
handcuffed, kicked and beaten
on his own couch
by white cops in a black neighborhood
???????

it's all on the news

who would your Jesus bomb?

“last night, for the first time I baked confections sprinkled with salt and grains” (three books)

we never know.

and worse for us that
thinking that we do.
-that is when the
iron falls…

i watch old friends grow
comfortable as cities
shrink to rough oil scene
-the quest recedes to
beach routine.

and my friends are sharp,
they cut to remind my
calm the place to find me,

beside Miss Morphine
lying now where the blade
no longer signifies
-where the air we
breathe is cancer.

speak to me in seven days
and I am told to go
or stay, seven steps
to heaven’s nay as
all this life I danced with
8…
and 8 will bring the answer
then, open the un-earthen gate
where news supplanted
by dancers.

“Pete, impale me now.”
it says…
the God inside the fox
and hound.

purple flower

it’s what I see
the concrete on fire
the streets of addiction
the holes in the colon
an ocean of glass
and volcanic, and manic
the power
depression
impression of mine;

held back by
broken bones
and wrenched neck
as I stop
and stoop
to pick and hand
her one small
purple flower
-my first baby
daughter.

while leaning against
it to
keep it behind me

hypodermic boulevard

juggling ice with
buttered hands
it’s how we
it’s what we do
because

in traffic, I
rode behind one slow
lamming through the
gnats like silent dull bangs
his tail to my
nose as he drives too slow

i lay back smoking it
and I forget for a second, the
rats and race and cracked dead
slate turtle shells and drift
away into the wisps of mallows seed
and
the one behind me makes me push.
rear view and double yellow left
and isn't that how we
do isn't that what we are
are?
Just hate and push the one
in front of us and hate and block
the one in back of us who would
but for some peering tasteless gas
lay waste and cancel
the one in front

and isn't that just what we do?
juggling butter in
frozen marshland
hands in wasteland
mind in chains
the continuing host for
the evolution of the viruses

juggling ice-brain waste caves
in spent sharp rigs, and birthday cake cans
and cigarettes.
hypodermic boulevard and the
late
late
shock./ the
setting sequined supper of
the sixth great extinction.

standing behind me; some thing
pushes me to push the
thing in front of me
and that is what a
human does to life.
what we do, we are.

us are

stood
beside the mailbox by
the big little road


horns blown
my salute extended
going about our business.

when i'm out there
on it barreling
in the Cadillac
issuing the fuck yous
and flashing lights


it's not right.


none of it is
us
are.

just in the nature of this.


-everyone with somewhere
to beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee,
and nothing.

(c) 2014 peter graves roberts

"The Hog Island Sheep"

saturday outer banks minute:
(5/17/14)
"Pirates were DICKS, and the Hog Island Sheep"

so yeah, lot's of you like to see the pirate movies with the swashbuckling hottie-mens like JD and Keith...but have you ever really learned the history behind these murderous, slave-trading daft cuntz?
*only redeeming quality up front...they were a fair bunch among themselves, they had 'shipboard articles' entitling all aboard an even split of the 'booty', as it were, and a prototypical democratic model for doing business, including what you might equate to worker's compensation.


-but they were dicks. imagine a bunch of asshole gang members (the 16th-17th century Brits) that rule an area so vast that they can't control it...or, POLICE IT. so they give authority to a bunch of lawless, greedy bastards to board and/or blow up vessels from the other gang (mainly 16th-17th century Spanish) and then take all the 'treasure' aboard for themselves. sounds cool huh? -from that 1950's 'murican male perspective'.
then, after the QUEEN told them to stop once the war ended and SHE signed a treaty with the other gang, the Privateers, or Pirates kept on robbing, looting, burning, raping and murdering. When caught, they would say ." oh...but i am sorry" and be given a governorship somewhere in the caribbean on some sugar plantation or the like. they don't celebrate Chris Columbine or Spicy Rum Capt. Morgan in Jamaica, all my marley and weed loving friends...they call them come-bust-us and pirate morgan...remember the dying slave that first discovered rum in a fermented sugar cane juice puddle, delirious and without the fear of a bludgeoned reprisal from his well paid task master the next time you step up to the bar at the brewin' station and order a captain and coke...dancing to some mid-western reggae cover band. yeah mon...yer jammin'.


so to recap. pirates were dicks. don't dress your kids as pirates. unless you wanna remain, or if vacationing, be like the naturals and the transplants here...and just self medicate, and look the other way. remind yourself that you are in the best place on earth, perfect weather, colorful, fruity cocktails, and sugar-poison slurping slaves. forget the dying souls all around, calling out in the night...the fell trees and smashed reptiles; the road-rot of small bandits and marsupials.


just stare out at that blue lie...keep a firm grip on that sweating mexican glass and your toes snuggled in the warmth of a ground mountain that during the Archean Eon, believed that it too would stand forever. it didn't and you won't. there is a good and bad news type of living here...we use yoga and shaman and western hippies doped on chinese meds and needles and billboards and jazzy commercials to remind ourselves that we love it, but we know that we live under two possible mothers. one, the finest would be the death by tempest, a cat five hurricane to slam into the southern tail of us and chew up the sound, north by northeast, ripping everything on either side like a saw-blade while the heavier wind and spin-off cyclones pummels the glorious beachhead into something unrecognizable to anyone thereafter. the second death is the slow sinking. nobody alive today will have to deal with it really...our grand-kids will, but nobody cares that the slow and steady rise of the ocean will eventually turn this extended spit into another buried treasure. The evidence of our folly and the genius of our paleo-ancestry will once again become the stuff of legend; meanwhile, we remain...grazing on the seasonal leavings like the Hog Island Sheep.

(c)2014 pgr

the service of the grave

an old
and dear friend
stands outside today
during the service
of the grave.

i have stood
on line
as well-
twenty-four hours
removed from my
jamaican mountain peak,
watching as my moon sank
into the dark and
stars behind me
and another sun raised
red and fuchsia
over that still
blue Carib sea.

a drunken flight or two
and there I was;
next to my departed
in the spitting rains
of February,
just like him today.

a cold fucking mother
this is.
-pale blue wisps of sky
and I hate you
blown against clean
and shaven cheeks.

no saving grace
for days like these
-save the thought
that one amongst
will never see this
pane again.

i stand beneath my
live oak

leaves, branches
heavy with rain
i move in and out
through them
smashing my cigarette;
we've survived another
winter

now together
we bear the
burden
of
satisfying
the unfulfilled

“Classy in First Class”

“Classy in First Class”

It was in June of 1995. Sandra and I had been dating since the twenty-fifth anniversary of Woodstock. She had gone, and returned with pictures of herself and lots of other young ones butt-ball naked and covered in mud. She drove a neat little white VW Golf that smelled of concert urine. Some acid tripping man-child had mistakenly micturated on her Birkenstocks during the “two more days of peace, love and music reunion” I was rocking a cherry, ’73 Gold Duster; no pee smell. We were a fun fit; even if only for a half-year or so. Most of that scene was during cold weather, and she had a big, warm bed. After my grandma died the following spring we decided to take a trip down south. The words once uttered by my old friend and Jamaican home owner Todd rang clear in my head; “you really wanna take her to Jamaica? You know, it is a make or break thing. Once you get there one of two things happen. She will both adapt and love it as we do, or you will be broken up after the trip.” I thought he was a fool. We set the timeline for two weeks down there.
We were flying out of Raleigh so we drove the four hours to get there the night before, staying with a friend of a friend whose name I can’t remember, but she was cool. She took us to the airport for our extremely early flight, eight in the a.m. I think it was. This is when things got a little hairy, but still fun. We stayed up drinking until the wee hours of the morning and then hit an all night Taco Bell. That was the fuel for the eventual fire, now all we needed was a spark. That spark came at the ticket counter when we arrived and tried to sign in. The clerk told us that the flight was over-booked, and that she wasn’t sure she would get us on the flight, but if we decided to take a later flight, we could each have a round trip ticket for anywhere in the continental U.S. This wasn’t sufficient to me. I was hung over, and I had a guy that I couldn’t call waiting for me in Montego Bay. I needed to be on that flight. To make matters worse, my stomach was CHURNING with the un-digested meal from just hours before. It has always been my worst enemy- late night eating. Unless I get a full eight to ten hours to sleep through the process, I awake to some fairly decent cramping.
Sandra dragged me to the bar for a Bloody Mary, and to get me away from the nice girl at the desk. I was beginning to act ‘entitled’. A few moments later we were back at the gate, seated in those hard plastic chairs. My name was called and I approached the counter once again. “Well Mr. Butler, we have got you guys on this flight, and you will be in FIRST CLASS!” she said with a smile. She was very proud, or at least it seemed so. She probably just wanted us out of her way. Nevertheless, in fifteen minutes we would be boarding and accepting the free champagne. I guess the tomato cocktail and the bubbles kind of combined and the slow burning fuse was lit, within weeks a conflagration would ensue. The next three hours however would prove to be the most gut-wrenchingly funny I may have ever lived. The napalm was now sinking from my hollowing gut, down towards my rectum. It felt warm in first class all of a sudden. I felt trapped.
I did that thing where you try and suck your stomach in, and hold back the anal air, trying to reverse pucker a sphincter muscle or two, but it wasn’t working. Each passing moment brought the contractions closer together and I knew I wouldn’t make it the next three hours without some relief. I made the toughest decision a twenty-five year old half hippie could make in that situation; I had to let it out. I had to let them out, the ghosts two tacos bell Grande, minus tomatoes, pinto’s and cheese with sour cream and a regular order of nachos. That and Heineken mustard were creeping down the lower part of the inside of my back. I glanced feverishly around the cabin. It was shiny and new looking. The flight attendant was working us with the cart and the rest of the passengers weren’t even done boarding. There were three couples besides us, and they all looked like happy and conservative newly-weds. This would not end well, I thought. Turning towards the window to stare at the men packing our bags beneath our airship, I made the terrible decision to let one slip. I really had no choice. I thought I was about to pass out. My shoulders were tingling, my mouth was getting dry, and my stomach was turning into a quite unfamiliar knot. If I didn’t let it go then I may have not seen my beloved Jamaica again, so out it came; the heavy-warm and silent flatulence. I felt like I had just given birth, although it was really just the beginning, the would-be mucous plug to my boiled egg-impregnated belly. Sandra was the first to get caught in the web. It took a minute, as these types often do. They hang near and then expand slowly. She leaned over to me and whispering softly in my ear she asked “was that you?” The only correct response in this case, gentlemen, is always “HELL NO!” She spoke further…softly now, but with more volume than a whisper, “well, somebody needs to go to the bathroom.” She intended for whomever had “dealt it” to hear. Three or four minutes must have passed, it couldn’t have been more than five when I felt the second sortie leaving the hanger; into the hatch went the munitions. I struggled again, but not with such vigor, and then I let go of a good one; a proper, phantom “one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi, three Mississippi count.” Seconds later she nearly erupted, but she still kept the majority of her anger close, her chin to her chest as she said quietly, but audibly now “Damn, somebody is sick or something, ‘bout to make me sick!” I started to laugh a little inside. It was like the old joke about a guy in a chair with a dog underneath. I was getting away with it. By this time, we were in the air. The pilots were making the announcements and behind the curtain over my shoulder a woman pushed a slightly different cart to the well mannered passengers back there. I thought about it, but not really. I was twenty five and slightly high. I finished the second free champagne baby and moved onto another cocktail. Bloody Mary number three had me feeling slightly normal again. I was waking up.
I thought I was done with the trench fighting, but that was only because my buzz increased at a slightly more aggressive rate than did the awareness of my situational flatus. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves; Sandra was looking around, out all of the windows and smiling. I was smiling. We soared through the clouds, almost above the sun it seemed. I had never seen the clouds from there before. They were golden about the edges and it was almost like flying through some manmade tunnel of shape-shifting cotton candy clowns. I could almost taste the fresh squeezed juice at the bar around the corner of my boss’s house; the view from the cliffs, and the goats tied up as nature’s lawnmowers. In that instant I was in heaven, flying high in the friendly skies. I was proud, I bitched us into first class and here we were, and then it happened. The pick of the litter came up from the pig’s teat and I had to struggle to keep from squirting myself. As I clenched, one last fireball rolled slowly through the tube and out from under my lap, into the magic air of a first class honeymoon. Sandra was pushed too far. She jumped to her feet and began to rant. “Somebody in here needs to control themselves! I didn’t say anything the first couple of times!” she yelled “but one a y’all is NASTY! GAAWWWD!” and I was now fighting another urge. I wanted to laugh out loud. I had her, and she was now screaming at six perfect strangers. I chewed on my tongue to avoid laughing. There was absolutely NO WAY that I could let her know it was me after her explosion. Sandra was great, I really liked her, but she had a reputation for these types of outbursts, but so what? I had a reputation of leaving a job before I started. We were young and sexy…well, she was sexy. I smelled like a sulfur mine.

My dumbass boss Todd turned out to be right in the end. We were fighting an hour into the two weeks, and it only got worse. I remember the end coming at the airport in Atlanta, waiting for the final connection to get us home. We had a fight over who would get the last Bloody Mary. We only had enough between the two of us for one airport drink, not even a double for a dollar more. We broke up a couple of days after we got back to Babylon beach. We stayed friends though. Years later I revealed to her that it was me that blew up first class that time, and she nearly neat my ass. I couldn’t help it; I had so many opportunities over the years to tell that story. Every time, before I even got halfway through my listeners would be doubled over holding their guts, and I would be laugh-crying as I hyperventilated to get the sentences out. On one or two occasions I am pretty sure I made girls pee themselves a little, and when you’re growing up in a cold world that doesn’t give a fuck, the food we have is poison and our elected officials are trying to rape us at every turn; isn’t that what it’s really all about? I choose to think so.

home in sight

i railed around the rooms
like on feathers of metal and wheels
of static

adrenaline

a-
dren-
a-
len.

i spoke much
and feverishly;
and i stood,
finally
before my washer and dryer,
in the room where we keep
recyclables and
the cat eats...and i wept.

and the tears were like
a homecoming,
and the feeling that a twenty-five year
self-imposed sentence
had been finally lifted.

my shoulders dropped,
and i wept...
for the long walk, the dead friends
and the wild flowers.
i wept for the fact that
even this;
that most
magnificent
of miracles is
yet,
just a chance.

and then i sat down, and i began to write, again.

the ghosts are real after all, light is

how lovely to see
a street lamp draped
in shadow:
proof that all
we know
merits
reconsideration.


-the ghosts
are real
after all,

light is dark
and dark is
light.

both are ever-present;
effervescent.

the Mourning dove

a freshly fallen
sky and
no-one's gaze turns
up to
watch goodbye

wish upon that star
that's dead and
never understood
the life you are

the Mourning dove

a freshly fallen
sky and
no-one's gaze turns
up to
watch goodbye

wish upon that star
that's dead and
never understood
the life you are

the Mourning dove

a freshly fallen
sky and
no-one's gaze turns
up to
watch goodbye

wish upon that star
that's dead and
never understood
the life you are