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.