Death Comes In Threes AKA The Third Time’s The Charm

Sometimes the strangest vibes will come sliding across my brain like a melody out of place & remind me of incidents long ago and nearly forgotten. Kind of like my nine months, a pregnancy almost, spent in Indiana. It was mid-summer 1994, one of the hottest summers I had ever lived through, following on the heels of the coldest & snowiest winter season in Fountain County, Indiana.

Having never lived in a rural area other than two college towns in Illinois, both Macomb (Western Illinois University) & Lincoln (Lincoln College), or visited friends who lived in small towns throughout the United States, I never did get used to rural driving, especially during bad weather.

During my brief stint of living in both Attica & West Lafayette, Indiana I thought I’d never make it out alive. It almost happened too, not once or twice, but three times I felt like it was “the end” for me.

The first time came during the early winter of 1994, when I was close to leaving my managing editor position at the Fountain County Neighbor in Attica. Too many head-butts with the publisher didn’t exactly go over too well in my mind. What can I say though, I thought I was doing right & of course it turned out I wasn’t “good enough” for them. Oh well, what was a guy to do, anyway?

Driving to Crawfordsville, the closest & semi-biggest city outside of Lafayette, always took me 90 minutes or so to complete. One afternoon, I decided to take a curvy dirt road that I had driven a few times before. There was a bit of snow on the ground, as well as some on the road and so I thought I could cut my time in half if I took this road down.

It was one of those roads that were cut through the middle of a forest, beautiful trees surrounded each side of the road, though with the snow upon them, made them appear even prettier to the naked eye.

It was in the middle of the shortcut that I had to stop suddenly & that’s when all of my troubles began. My car, which back then, was a 1992 red Geo Prism with a little over 40 thousand miles on it, from all the distance traveling I was doing, going back & forth from Indiana to Illinois and then up to Wisconsin to visit my then-girlfriend and her baby boy and then back again.

A little rabbit had crossed my path & rather than hit & kill it outright, I decided I would try to swerve & avoid hitting it. Big mistake! Once I did that, my car started sliding across the road & then left the road. It kept on sliding until it finally came to rest against a tree on a river embankment. The river itself was only 10 feet away.

I didn’t have any way of communicating to the world I was in trouble, so when I settled down after screaming that I was going to die; I backed the car up until I was back up on the curvy dirt road. It was at that moment that I saw that rabbit hopping along the road. I decided that next time I had to do that, I wasn’t going to play Mr. Nice Guy anymore. Thankfully, there was no physical damage to my car.

The second time death & I crossed paths, was in mid-March, when a major ice storm had dropped a bucket-loads & bucket-loads of sleet & rain & ice and made Highway 52 to Highway 28 from Lafayette to Attica extremely dangerous to drive.

Nonetheless, I thought it would be easy, because after all when I attended college at WIU in Macomb, Illinois, in the mid-1980s, I had ridden my bike downhill on College St. during an ice storm in the Spring of 1985, so driving a car would be a piece of cake. Ah, what wisdom & knowledge I thought I had, as I turned the corner between a silo and a farm field.

Before I knew it, I was flying at 55 miles an hour (or what felt more like 200 miles an hour) at full force like Santa Claus’ sleigh across the midnight sky and landed in a cornfield.

The third time I had met death was the real thing. I had just left a job interview in Indianapolis, Indiana, when I making a right hand turn. An 18-wheeler was doing the same thing same time & didn’t bother to look where it was going. Sure enough a few moments later I heard the crushing of twisted metal & breaking glass only to realize that I was getting crushed by the truck.

I must have passed out because the next thing I knew, I saw a big white room & with hundreds of angels wearing baseball caps and smoking pipes, showing me home movies of my life up to that summer in Indiana.

The weirdest characteristic wasn’t so much their pipe-smoking, but it was the way they showed those films. As soon as they opened their eyes, the movies would appear & then subsequently be screened. When I awoke, the truck driver although ornery, came over to see if I was alright.

As a state trooper rolled up & surveyed the damage, neither of us was issued tickets. We exchanged addresses, insurance company information and went on our separate ways. It is interesting to note that death cycles do come in threes. What it said for me in 1994 says a lot more to me than now than ever before.

The Times They Are A-Changin'-Memorial Day, 2005

While lying in bed this morning, I was listening to the CBS radio network news & I heard CBS radio reporter David Cohen (of New Orleans, Louisiana & brother of my rebbe Menachem aka Marc Cohen) mention the fact that Memorial Day is no longer what it once was. It's a good observation, but then again, that's not a fact I didn't already know.

Rather, it has become a time for barbecues, work around the home & just not honoring the war dead. What's more important anyway, honoring a bunch of dead corpses that fought for wars we as citizens didn't ask for or barbecuing dead animal flesh that no one asked the animals if they wanted to be killed to begin with?

So, in light of that, I'd like to present an old diary journal entry of mine that I wrote 11 years ago when I still lived in the armpit of America, that great old state, Indiana. I too, will be enjoying this weekend off, not so much grilling, but setting up a new computer & getting ready for what I am about to embark upon a great new journey into the stratosphere. Enjoy & I will catch up with all of you dear readers next Tuesday!

Redneck Fever 19.94 A.M.

Friends and pals go home from their neighbors celebrating with beers and cookouts and Hell! Shit! Fuck! It’s not even Memorial Day yet! But I can tell you that stupid dumbfuck mentality is coming around again.

Drink ‘til you drop, in some cases, dead. Act like a jerk. Fight. Argue over something frivolous and you may hurt yourself or get yourself killed. I guess it doesn’t really matter where you live.

Man!


This country has definitely gone downhill. This is America?


The mentality has gone from city to suburban lifestyle.

Drunken rowdiness.

Wave your flag.
Drink your beer.

Spit on the graves of the war dead by taking a day off that turns into a story at the office the next day how you grilled your ass and nearly puked your guts out from eating all that greasy food that you shouldn’t have had to begin with.

Think I’ll just stick to drinking tea, eating burritos and listening to Rush Limbaugh!


Now, that’s how a true American male lives his life.

The Botox Frankenstein Archival Interview Series>#4, Poison Idea, 1989

Editor's Note: The following telephone conversation with Portland, Oregon-based Poison Idea (a quartet) took place in late December, 1989. Their album Ian McKinye, due to the nature of the cover was subsequently censored in England. I found Poison Idea straight-forward and cool. As opposed to my main publication, Cops Hate Poetry, This conversation focuses on the album cover and covers specific details. This conversation was originally done for Variety when I was an intern there, but remained unpublished until now. Interview copyrighted 1989/2005 ©

CB-Charles Bernstein
PC-Pig Champion (Tom Roberts)

CB: How and when was the band formed?

PC: The band was formed in late 1980.

CB: What was the logic behind Ian McKinye (album cover)?

PC: The album cover was to sum up our feelings of hardcore, which has gotten to be straight-edge. The guy who started the movement, a guy by the name of Ian McKinye. Basically his message is don't drink, don't smoke, don't have illicit sex, be a vegetarian, do as I say and how I do. We don't think that's the best way for rock and roll to be. It's too 80s, it's too Reaganish. It's rather convenient that this Ian McKinye guy's conservative philosophy came on line just as Reagan came in. Ian McKinye is a guy who started a hardcore band in Washington, D.C. called Minor Threat. He still lives in Washington, D.C. We don't have anything personally against him; it's more against his ideology. He doesn't like the album, he's upset. It hurt his feelings.

CB: What kind of response has the album received?

PC: Critically, it's gotten rave reviews all over the world; it's considered a real good record for what it is.

CB: Yes, but what about the black tape covering certain parts of the cover?

PC: Oh yeah, it was going to be fully uncensored. It was going to be just as it appears, no black spots, but all the record manufactures in England where the record was made, they wouldn't touch it, they wouldn't print it as it was. I automatically assumed we couldn't do it over here.

CB: What about other instances of censorship?

PC: Our "Kings Of Punk" album band's logo carved in the singer's stomach, that I heard of having cardboard ribbon being wrapped around it...covered up the middle part. On this same album, the lyric sheet on that, the manufacturer over in England didn't like some of the questionable language on there about different people's sex preferences, they censored that. We couldn't have the sheet in there, that was left-wing censorship, as a matter of fact, very left-wing censorship! They didn't want to offend anybody of any sex persuasion, although I don't know why. We took some pornography catalogues and diced up some of the lettering to look like across Jerry's chest (the front man) it said anal shafting, I had a picture of me and across my face it said dog-fucker and we had one across the old bass player and it said these boys are really hung, one of them can even suck his own dick. I mean, these were quotes taken out of a pornography catalogue and they were pasted over us, but the people in England seemed sensitized by all of that and thought we were going to offend gays and lesbians.

http://homepages.nyu.edu/~cch223/usa/poisonidea_main.html

A Letter To Babyshoes>Part 2...Thank-you! Thank-you! Thank-you!

So Babyshoes, it was because of your anger that spurred me off into several different directions. A month after the initial performance of the Ronald Wilson Reagan game, I presented it again.

This time however, the crowd was a bit more receptive and not afraid to show their feelings for fear of being scorned by the likes of uptight prudes who choose to behave like robots because that’s what behavior modifiers tell them to do.

I remembered long & hard the emails we shot at each other, especially after the fact you had threatened me with “your wrath,” f I wrote any poems about your new girlfriend, who was married anyway, which turned out to be an empty promise, designed to scare me, but had the opposite affect.

The experience energized me! Your emails were becoming more & more outrageous trying to explain to me everything I did wrong, just as I explained to you what was going on, your inconsistencies, etc., etc. Basically, if you’re going to abide by the rules, Babyshoes, you should follow them, not bend tem to fit your agenda. Hell! I saw you do that so many times previously too!

After a long absence from reading with APP, I decided to try a comeback & sent you a piece I wanted to read. You emailed me back with a roaring response, oh something like, “Nope. Can’t do it.” What can I say? It was a parody on the death of Yasser Arafat. Parody is parody, but since when did you become so politically correct?

Then, when I arrived at Caribou in mid-November of last year (2004), you cornered me & asked me outside what did I mean I my email I had sent to you & if I was planning on re-meriting myself with you. Re-meriting? Who died and made you dictator?

Oh, yeah. Where was I? Since last September, I’ve been studying throat-singing, started acting in films & commercials, including an appearance on the History Channel’s Conspiracy program which aired this past March (2005), in which I played a UFO witness & in fact, tonight, I am headed off to a film premiere of one of the films I was in, in which I played a bartender. Oh, and did I tell you I started learning how to tap-dance too?

So what exactly did you mean by being productive in an email a few months ago? Tell me, what have you done lately that’s considered productive? Oh yeah, I remember hearing that you left the bookstore finally, after years of griping, complaining & being harassed & you got a new reading space at a Borders in Schaumburg. Didn’t have much of a choice after your gig was shuttered at your store, now did you?

Well, congratulations, anyway! I even heard that at the new APP gig’s inaugural session, that you wouldn’t let John O’Brien read his signature piece, Carl Sandburg’s “Chicago” poem. What were you thinking when you didn’t let John do that? After all, he is a founding member of the APP. Are you afraid of losing potential Borders customers…oops, I mean APP readers? Well a heartfelt congratulations to you, Babyshoes!

You know something, Babyshoes? That reminds me of that great Nazi propaganda film, you know the one I mean, the one where the Nazis portray the concentration camp Tersienstadt to the international Red Cross & the entire world for that matter that they aren’t mistreating their prisoners. It’s not the same exact thin, but the idealism & the concept is there.

Congratulations for shoving out a good poet for the sake of trying to impress someone! Is that not also showcasing? I think so. Maybe you can re-title it “The Babyshoes Blues Show!” Maybe dress up in a brown shirt, brown pants, steel toe boots, a little army cap & a small black cat-o-nine-tails whip everywhere you travel! Show them who’s in charge! Show them who’s boss!

Most importantly, Babyshoes, I wanted to thank you for that night in June last year when you behaved so irrationally. It got me to thinking how much better of a person I became because of your irrational fears.

I hope to return the favor sometime.

Sincerely,

Charlie

A Letter To Babyshoes>Part 1...Why? Why? Why?

Dear Babyshoes,

It’s been nearly one year, June 5th to be exact since I rocked your world, causing our friendship to go south & freed my soul at long last. It by no means was meant to happen that way, but because you chose to behave the way you did, it seemed there was no other way.

When Ronald Wilson Reagan died, what more could there be a suitable way to express thoughts through a performance, by playing a game called “Pin The Quote In Reagan’s Mouth,” who was deemed a saint by many members of the GOP and mass media combined on the day of his funeral?

When it was my turn to perform at the Arlington Poetry Project open mic & I announced my game, you just went apeshit, particularly when you saw the two customers inside the Caribou Coffee place shoot me a dirty look and stomped out afterwards. No one else walked out & no one else chose to stop playing the game either, which indicated to me that everything else was alight, but to you, it wasn’t as I watched you smoke three cigarettes in 15, a personal high, I bet!

Interestingly enough, your reaction was the same of a manager I once had at Barnes & Noble, where you also worked at the time, who did everything they could to please the customers just so they would stay on or around. I guess you failed to notice that the management on duty that night at Caribou didn’t seem to have a problem with it. It was only you, you, you.

Alas, you chose to blame me & use me as a scapegoat for all of your own floundering troubles. Your anger reared its ugly & filthy mouth afterwards as you followed me out the door & to my parked car after the gig. I am grateful that Pam Jascot was there to step between us, as you attempted to pick a fight with me.

I decided not to stick around afterwards & for good reason. I was even more astonished to find out that not only did you expect me to show up at Ritzy’s, that semi-decent restaurant we always go to after our gigs for dinner & blab for hours afterwards, but you even came back to the “scene of the crime” looking for me. What in God’s name did you have in mind when you came looking for me? To hurt me?

I went home that night, shook-up from your method acting, drove home, stopped along the way at a ToGo, bought a large turkey submarine sandwich & sat outside in midnight sun beneath the stars, while watching the thunderstorm roll inward.

In hindsight, maybe I should have not called you at work that day, you sounded so depressed, so I thought I could cheer you up, by sharing some good news I had received earlier in the day, that of my poem, “Babyshoes Blues” being published online.

It’s easy to see how your misguided anger was placed on me. You told me you couldn’t trust me anymore based on that poem. The mere fact that I made a poem out of your private affair bothered you so much didn’t it? I thought that this poem didn’t bother you; I mean that’s what you told me earlier anyway. I guess you lied to me.

But anyway Babyshoes, what do you think poetry is anyway? It’s based on feelings, experiences and innermost thoughts. Did you really think you had exclusivity rights on a subject matter that you were privately telling others about anyway? So why as a wordsmith should I have held back? Why, as a poet, should I have censored myself like I’ve done so many times before? This time I chose not to & it was published because it WAS & it STILL IS a good poem.

So, what happened, Babyshoes? Did you lose it that night? Did you take all of your lousy frustrations out on me? Did you realize what I performed was not only a blessing in disguise for me, but for others? Why didn’t you question the six other people who played the game? Why didn’t you question management that night? Why didn’t you chase those two people who stomped out of the café that night & ask them why they felt it was wrong? Why did you turn so tightly conservative that night? Why? Why? Why?

Coming Tomorrow- A Letter To Babyshoes Part Two>What I’ve Been Up To Since last year…

God's Tale

Don’t know if God will forgive me for what I do what I say, what I feel, for what I think is true when I stand down, I should be standing up fighting for my rights and all that jazzy stuff. But what calendar does God follow? What are his objectives for me? Are objectives selective as far as his eyes can see?

Battling 1000 positives over 2000 negatives, the putrid factor inside disease, the pitiful germs spread when we sneeze our insecurities into an open room for all to witness, but not believe that God blesses the bad as well as the good; should he not, is unknown. Those who lie with words should lie alone before God. We fight fire with fire in the human theater of Sloven desire. We expect God to forgive us year after year, be cleansed of all of our sins.

But we relent and do it all over again just to be dumb for the sake of being foolish in the most secret sense of being Jewish. The intentions sure are cruel, a rusted crown embedded with bloody jewels. Asking God to forgive when we forget is like Moses and Abraham eating pork and saying they don't regret the sweet taste of pig.

"Uh-uh," she would say. At times she's wiser than me, while other times I am strong. Together we are right, together we are wrong. Together we pray God will look upon our lives and give us a spare rib to plant and just grow. In our fertile lives, in our furtive loves, we do things for a purpose, we do things for a cause. To help, not to hurt but what you do for one is looked down upon as a factor to blame.

"For shame for shame," they shout when they are playing their game. The rules are not the same as they slowly burn you over the open flame. Should God forgive them for what they do to you or what you do to them?

To attempt to expose their hideous sounds the sugar melts, the rabbit has died. The catcher has dropped the ball. The king is dethroned in God's eyes. Should he forgive? Should he proclaim the words and the actions are stupid and lame?

The lessons we learn are too numerous to name. We should just shake hands and start again on a better foot. A stronger root. A man is a mensch in the stench of humanity. A woman is a woman in the antiquity of her mirror. A rash is a rat sitting on our arms.

Charming Charlie accuses; Bargy Margie calls for witnesses; Bunny's intentions are cruel; Catch cannot control the flow of his own drool. Four minus infinity factors standing upright like sexless whores on the streets covered in blood and hate.

God does not forgive when they choose their own fate. God will forgive when they shed their atrocities, one by one. Such a cruel choice. Such a cruel state. They are boxed in oil upon dirt upon rust looking grim.

If God were mean, he'd cast the first stone, give you the Jones, swallow your bones till you saw the first death of the sea. Life goes on, you'd better not compromise the art of the pity party he decrees. For pity is sad when the service you get is filled with much grief.

God only knows so you'd better turn over a new leaf, but for the sake of the quake, the controller is a big freak who commands when he stands upon grounds giving relief to himself, so he can see to others he is a sad clown who chokes on his life as he drowns in pity.

The rabbit is dead, the rabbit has died. For telling a man all that she knows despite the length of her pride, blind to the fact that her face falls to the floor. Begged for forgiveness, while milking a man who said more and then backstabbed him with teeth and her lies.

So the rabbit had lived, the rabbit she has died. The believer of souls adds up the tolls of one side. Before factoring in with whom she confides, but to listen before killing, then reviving the dead is suicide, for death has no mercy when choosing a bride, and the man in it all who thought he was doing her good didn’t think when he did not do what he could inside the confusion came the fear factor, so he died.

Came back to life with a bruised ego and a battered pride. So, God decides to forgive them all, with one multi-conference phone call, telling them to cast their hate aside. Gets them to think without killing the facts they hold like lemon cream pie thrown in the faces of those who refuse to compromise their bittered herbs for a fresh batch of rules for which they must abide. Bunny & Catch play games over the phone. Charlie & Margie are winners in songs and in poems.

Charlie ends the game when Margie yells, “Quit.”

God shakes all of their hands and then goes home.

Some Traditions Never Change-Happy 75th Birthday, Eugene

The Chicago Cubs are Eugene’s favorite baseball team. It seems extremely ironically or perhaps coincidental, in light of the fact that they lost to the Pittsburgh Pirates 7 to 6 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh the same day he was born, leaving an impressionable & scarred memory for life…

I’m guessing it was a warm sunny day when Eugene was brought into the world, it had to have been. The greenhouse factor would not have gone into effect nor would it affect overall weather patterns for the next 60 years or so.

The stock market had crashed months earlier, sending the entire United States economy into a tailspin. Still, Eugene was well-protected by his parents Samuel & Regina. They weren’t about to sell their little adorable & oh-so precious Eugene for a bite to eat.

Eugene’s parents were like most parents of that era. They worked hard at making ends meet, even in times of desperate measure, even as major companies were collapsing & factories were shoving their employees out of work & into the unemployment lines.

Brother, Can You Spare A Dime, was a popular tune as well as theme for the era that became known as The Depression. Also, in the 1930s, lawlessness was in full force, ban robberies were considered commonplace, as well as bank robbers were considered heroes by common-folk everywhere.

John Dillinger was enemy number one for a time, Oklahoma’s Pretty Boy Floyd was a friend to farmers & then there were Bonnie & Clyde, who on Eugene’s fourth birthday were shot & killed during a police ambush in Bienville Parish, Louisiana.

A few months later in a Chicago alleyway, next to the Biograph Theater, Dillinger was gunned down by FBI agents who were tipped off by Ann Sage, AKA “The Woman In Red,” who was Dillenger’s companion to the theater.

In 1941, when Eugene was a little over 11½ years old, war was declared by his president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt who said the bombing of Pearl Harbor would be a day that would forever live in infamy. It was the subject matter surrounding WW2 that would fascinate Eugene over the course of his lifetime.

As Eugene grew up and attended high school on the northwest side of Chicago, his thoughts turned to the elements. He chose to pursue a career of that involved the modern sciences.

A story told by a then-teenage Eugene (can you imagine Eugene as a teenager?) was as funny then as it is now. In the old days, long before the advent of animal activism high school students used to dissect animals, and particularly in Eugene’s case, it was cats.

So the story goes, one night he brought home a dead cat to store in his parent’s refrigerator & then take it back to school with him the next morning. He had hoped no one would see it, but his luck ran out on him the next morning as his mother couldn’t sleep, went into the kitchen to pour herself a glass of milk, opened the refrigerator door, saw the cat & let loose a blood-curdling scream that could be heard by virtually everyone in their apartment building.

Another teenage Eugene story is, in 1943, Eugene tried to sign up for WW2 by going to his local Navy recruiting office. There they fed him doughnuts & milk, while personnel called his father Samuel, who picked Eugene up & didn't let him out of his sight & the apartment for weeks after that.

As Eugene graduated from high school & entered college, he set his sights on becoming a pharmacist and what a fine one he became! Though he worked at various drugstores & agencies, Eugene excelled at each and every place with vim, vigor and stamina. Most of all, it was his knowledge & his work ethic that brought him to great wisdom & joy.

Eugene met his wife Sheila at college, married her & like most folks had children, five in all. Sure Eugene had his shares of ups and downs over the years, but he always managed to come out ahead of the game. Eugene is retired now & he enjoys that. And why not? He deserves it after all the hard work he’s provided and given over the many years.

Eugene turns 75 years old today. He’ll probably have a quiet birthday with his wife Sheila, receive cards & phone-calls of from his friends & other well-wishers, but most of all, from his five grown children.

The Chicago Cubs are still a losing team, you’d think they would try to win a game for Eugene on his birthday. Surprisingly they did! They beat the Houston Astros 4 to 1 at home in Wrigley Field. Perhaps it was a dream, but Eugene, is still faithful to his beloved Cubbies. Alas, some traditions never change.

Happy birthday, dear Dad, happy 75th birthday, to you...

Sexagesma Sunday AKA The Mass Destruction Prior To The Big Trip Of The Divine Mistress Disguised As A Christian Scientist

They sat together at the table drinking, Sid with his tea & Ted with his café au lait, respectively. Everything seemed to be in house order that is until Sid went back to the counter to get some more hot water for his semi-flattened teabag.

There standing at the counter, just one person ahead of him, was Christy, a rather tall shapeless vestibule of flesh and bones that had succumbed to the Asian Long-Horned Beetle. It was only months before that I saw Ted & Christy at an art performance. At that time, Christy was as energetic as a wide-eyed child on Christmas Day, but now she was packing for the big trip, the final leap of faith into the fiery pits of doomsville, the place where the Second Coming was outlawed forever. The place where the most unlikely of matches were made in Heaven, errrr, Hell, rather.

Time spent in hell was like a blind date, not knowing what would happen next. The cruelest, wickedest, most wanton, yet wildest and most fantastic adventure at your disposal. The only downside was that Hades was extremely hot in spots, while severely cold in other pockets. Imagine being frostbitten and sunburned all in the same day, within seconds of each other!
And the women! What a bevy of beauty and ugliness if there ever could be one! In other words, you could find love, break up, and settle down all within a matter of hours.

And the pairings of musicians, what a sight to be seen, especially at the all-star jam session on Saturdays at 12 a.m. sharp, featuring Fats Waller on stride piano, Slam Stewart on slap bass, Keith Moon and D. Boon on drums, with Allen Ginsberg on additional percussion, Phil Ochs on acoustic guitar, with loads of wordsmiths fighting for stage time, including Jack Kerouac, GG Allin, Easy “Mofo” E, Frank Zappa, Frank Sinatra and Ronald Reagan.

But what did Hell really consist of? Was it more of a stomping ground for restless souls who needed to work out their hardships and difficulties while having a good time with a guilty conscious in the process?

Or was it like a VFW hall where all of the worst veterans gathered, sat around cheating at bingo and poker, drank beer, ate fish, farted, sang “God Bless America,” seig-heiled the American flag after reciting the pledge of allegiance, whistled like ghostly steam trains at young women, berated and belittled their wives in public, collected their monthly military pensions, only to go and blow it on casino riverboats and in that order?

So, as Sid & Ted, went on drinking, out of nowhere, blowing like the wind itself, was Christy. Ted, being the nice person that he was, waved to her in a friendly manner, as she passed by our table. Out of respect and politeness, Ted posed two questions to Christy; “How are you?” and “What’s new with you today?”

As Ted looked into her eyes, a strange phenomenon occurred. Christy’s eyes turned crimson, with splashes of green and black in between. Her glasses fogged up. Her hair stood on end like a porcupine’s quills. Her body twitched and twittered like twisted branches. And her mouth filled, overflowed and dripped white and frothy saliva.

Her cheeks puffed up like a blowfish, ready to strike its enemy and spit out the poisonous venomous words…"Flip off! Leave me alone! None of your flipping business! Go to HELL," she screamed. She left us in stone-cold silence as she walked out the door, slammed her coffee cup down hard on a flimsy table, positioned herself on a plastic chair, whipped out a pack of smokes from her crazy quilt purse, struck a match and smoked her cigarette madly.

She chain-smoked herself through three packs within 45 minutes, averaging one cigarette per minute, per 15 smokes in each pack, while cursing and mumbling nonsensical jive.

In the background, over the café’s sound system, very faintly, but distinctly played music with corny, but oddly enough ironic. “Smoke smoke smoke that cigarette/Puff puff puff until you smoke yourself to death/Tell St. Peter at the golden gate/That you hates to make him wait/But you just gotta have another cigarette,” followed by squeaks, squabbles and bubbles from the bubble machine frequently used on all Lawrence Welk records.

And to think, she didn’t even say goodbye.

Jinxed Jane-A True Account As Told To Me By A Retired Travelling Salesman

In my travels as an encyclopedia salesman, over these past 50 years, I’ve come across many wonderful people and their tales of love and woe and end up with happy endings, you know, the usual “boy meets girl falls in love has umpteen babies and lives happily ever after.” As a traveling salesman, I sold set after set after set of encyclopedias to libraries, firemen, policemen, schools, churches, museums, little old ladies, widows, young couples and so on and so forth.

Now, many folks say that the traveling salesman is as obsolete as the newspaper boy. Frankly, they are right! It was a boring job, but I took it, because I needed to put food on the table and clothes on my back and pay the bills and buy birthday gifts and Christmas presents. I had to make it interesting, so I ended up by giving away premiums with every sale. I realized in the beginning that it would eat up a lot of my profit, but I persisted and soon enough, I had a nice customer base I could live comfortably on, for what turned out to be a lifetime.

Little did I know back then, but I learned early on, that having a gimmick is what makes the world go ‘round. The business world has gimmicks. Something to bring you into the door just a little bit. Enough so, that you will virtually be begging for more and more as time goes on. That is exactly what they want you to believe, that their gimmick is the only one tailor-made exclusively for you.

I collected many stories while traveling on the road and among them was this strange tale of gimmickry that happened to a friend of mine named Jane. Jane was a nice young woman who was one of my earliest customers. It seems that one day, Jane was asked to take care of a couple of pets that belonged to an unfriendly neighbor who was going out of town for the weekend at the time.

“No one will watch my dog and cat, won’t you will please do it for me? I have no one else to turn to and I can’t go unless the pets are taken care of. Won’t you help me out?” this neighbor woman asked Jane.

And of course, Jane said yes, even though she was not fond of her neighbor. So when Jane goes to open up the apartment with the key to feed the animals, she finds that not only did this woman leave no food behind for her pets, but the apartment is completely filthy and the dog and cat are covered in feces and there are flies as far as the eye can see. And the stench was unbearable.

Therefore, Jane ends up taking care of the dog and cat for an entire month. Meanwhile, there is virtually no word from her neighbor. No trace of her whatsoever. So, one day when Jane is feeding the dog and cat at this woman’s apartment, the telephone rings, it is a man from the local sheriff’s office. The officer asks for a name, which she does not recognize. Jane says she is there, just taking care of the dog and cat, can she take a message? Then the officer says, “Well if you see him, tell him his mother is locked up.”

And Jane stammers in horror, “Locked up? What for? What’s going on here, officer?”

“Well I may as well fill you in. Your neighbor was arrested late last month for trying to kill her mother and collect her insurance policy. Poor old woman, nobody in the world deserves a daughter like that," he says.

Jane feels bad for this woman, so she looks in the local phone directory to see if she has any relatives in the immediate area and finds this woman has a son; so naturally, Jane tries calling this woman’s son, only to learn that he is also in jail, but for non-related charges. The trouble is, Jane really loves the dog and cat, but she knows she cannot take them in forever. Therefore, she brings them down to the local animal shelter only to find out later that the animals were diseased and had to be destroyed.

Jane was heartbroken. Well now, Jane came out of that episode virtually shaken, but still okay. This was nothing, compared to what happened to her a few weeks later. I was beginning to wonder if Jane was jinxed or just had a string of bad luck tied to her soul.

Jane meets a man who she really likes. The trouble with this guy though is that he purposely uses her and takes no pity on her soul. He enjoys slapping her around and humiliating her in front of all of her friends, in public. Still, she puts up with this jerk because she has a big crush on him. Unfortunately, one night, she goes over to see him and he is stinking drunk and in the process, she is slapped around, beaten bloody and is sporting several black and blue marks on her face, arms and legs.

So I say, enough is enough and I decide to meet her for dinner the next night and see if I can help her out. Poor Jane. Even though she lives two blocks away from the diner where I was meeting her at, she decided to ride her bicycle. The moment she walks out the door and begins pedaling, a massive thunderstorm appears out of nowhere and pounds raindrops like overflowing river of tears. Two blocks away! Can you imagine that and she comes in soaking wet, as if she had just taken a shower with her clothes on!

Well, Jane tells me she is “Starving’ H. Marvin,” if you catch my drift and she is really craving a cheeseburger and an order of French fries and she had not eaten for several hours. She works nights and sleeps like a vampire during the day. Well, we give our order to the waiter and the waiter’s face turns sheet white, as he tells us that the diner has run the out of French fries.

“How in the devil could they have run out of French fries so early in evening,” she exclaims angrily. “It’s not even six o’clock and there are no French fries? What in God’s name is going on here?”

So the waiter goes back to the kitchen and talks to the manager, who comes back to our table expressing his sorrow that there are no French fries, so as a token of kindness, he gives her a free large order of mashed potatoes.

Trouble is, the potatoes are rotten and she ends up getting a bad case of diarrhea. What we find out later is the manager says he had spare helpings of other people’s food from leftover plates collecting bacteria and bugs because his icebox busted the night before last. Kinda gross, but true.

Jane died a week later as a result of eating those potatoes. Poor girl, the cause was botulism. That restaurant went out of business shortly thereafter. And me, well, I’ve never eaten potatoes since that time. It is funny how little things like that make an impact on one so great that it changes an entire lifestyle of living.

Ah. Nevertheless, such is life, you know. It sort of reminds me of a strange dark tale about a man named Joe whom I met 10 years ago, that couldn’t find lubricant one day to take care of a rash, so he used salsa, but that’s another story for another time.

In Trivial Pursuit: An Occupational Hazard>Act 5

It is early morning here on Devil’s Island. Many of the prisoners have yet to wake up, but some are already stirring, most obviously besides Mother-Hen Mary, is Broadcast Betty.

Broadcast Betty believes in what she does with such vigor, that she makes it a point to speak to almost everyone about their trivialities, primarily because she depends on it, just as an alcoholic depends on his daily consumption of alcohol.

It is that lone criminal trait that brought Betty to Devil's Island many, many moons ago, the criminal trait commonly known as gossip. Gossip is what makes Betty tick. You can see it in her eyes, as she passes anyone on Devil’s Island by, either glaring at them or peering into one’s cell or even by giving a new inmate “the once-over.”

Betty believes she is cool in approach however she is pathetic in the process. When I first arrived here at Devil’s Island as an inmate, she became a new friend to me almost immediately, wanting to know all about my quirks, trivialities & habits, asking me twice, so she could get a clearer picture & in time turn around later & broadcast it.

She told me early on that Old Black Devil & Groggleman were “an item,” as did Mother-Hen Mary, Toothless Tom & Zombie Zelda, who rivaled Broadcast Betty for a time in gossip traffic, until Zelda was found in her cell one morning, swinging (hanging). Some say it was suicide, while others maintained that Broadcast Betty paid someone to “off” her.

Another characteristic that makes Broadcast Betty so laughable is usually during prison lockdown, one will find her out of her cell, milling about hands on hips with a contorted stern look on her face, pretending to look important, meanwhile trying to pick up any sort of trivial details left behind.

At our particular cell, whenever Loud-Mouthed Lucy has had some sort of attack & the proper authorities have been called in, there’s Broadcast Betty standing around trying to look important.

And yes, Betty keeps lists, lists on everybody within the prison system, even those who have departed from Devil’s Island with or without warning. She would have made a great prison warden if she had only tried harder.

Her connection with the fraternal Goon Twins seems almost surreal, if not coincidental or ironic. She reports directly to Prison Captain Greg Goon, still everyone else calls him Groggleman Jr. for short.

Keeping up with the father-son tradition without prior notice, Broadcast Betty unknowingly & perhaps unwittingly, announced to the entire prison population that he is fathering an illegitimate child. Ah, like father, like son.

Betty is also very loyal to Pseudo-Prison Captain Gracie Goon, who of course runs to Groggleman when Gracie can’t have her way. It’s easier to diss Gracie than it is to respect her.

I myself, as well as others like the Pontificating Princess, Botox Frankenstein & The Thin Man, have all been targets of Broadcast Betty’s campaign of never-ending trivial pursuits. For Betty, it never gets any better than this.

A Closer View From The Crow’s Nest: Tales From My Apartment>Act Two-Please Do Not Feed The Animals!

As a lot of you already know who read my journal, between February & April of this year, I had a major rodent invasion. I killed 17 mice in all & used every method know possible, including standard & glue mousetraps, baited with cheese, nuts and peanut butter, peanut butter laced with Pine Sol floor cleaner, Coca-Cola, multi-grain De-con bars & even plug-in sonar sound-wave devices that only mice can hear & drive them to suicide.

Interestingly enough, the Coca-Cola when sipped by a rodent is supposed to give them gas & also makes them unable to belch. If on the other hand they do belch, they die fast.

Because of the rodent problem, I lost several friends, but not because I lived in the apartment, more because I was a murderer of innocent and harmless creatures.

My co-worker Winina, an animal lover at best, got so mad about it and even called me to tell me that she rarely gets mad over anything, but this time I had gone too far. Too far? Would it have been a whole lot better if I had let them run amok in & around my apartment & destroy it completely?

Then she suggested that if I wanted to get rid of them all I had to do was catch them one by one, grab them by the tail, take them outside & set them free! What lunacy! Did she actually think I had real time to sit there and wait for each mouse to appear and tell them, “Hey, I’m gonna help you escape and give you the freedom you deserve. Let me show you the way!”

Then she suggested glue-traps, a lesser form of cruelty. Well, no sooner did I do that, when I realized that these mice were cruel to themselves. They chewed upon their legs and tails to find their way out of their sticky predicament. No, standard mousetraps are the way to go, it's a more humane way of killing them; it’s quick, fast & painless.

In fact my friend Zog’s younger son Zig suggested I try setting up four standard mousetraps in a cross-shape, just to catch one mouse. Amazingly, it worked! Then of course, there was dearly departed Evelyn who couldn’t be bothered with such things. The great animal husbander had no feelings or understanding of the situation whatsoever. Her best friend Eva even conveyed to me that she wished more mice invade my apartment! Karma swings hard to those who wish evil onto others. At times that swing works faster than a voodoo doll.

But back to the matter at hand; how in the word did they pick my apartment to begin with? As it turns out, my building manager told me one lone mouse had invaded the building one year earlier, but was quickly caught. Still, something had to be attracting them. It turns out a couple of the residential neighbors across the alley from me have been feeding the wild animals (rabbits, squirrels, etc) for several months.

In the past, inside one particular backyard, I have been privy to witness loaves of Italian & French bread strewn across the grass and this past Monday, freshly cooked pasta! Now of course if you keep feeding wild animals, all kinds of critters will show up, including mice, which in earnest do hunt for good food sources and a decent place to live & reproduce in the latter half of the year. Mice are quite clever, in that, they lay a urine trail to find their way back to the food source.

During my nearly two-month ordeal, I found several unplugged holes in and around the apartment that had never been sealed up. that might have been one way they came in. another way, might have been all of the sealed boxes i had yet not put in storage that contained dry foodstuffs. I'll still never know why they picked my apartment out of all the units to nest in.

I spent oodles of hours, time & money to find ways of killing them and thankfully it worked. The positive reinforcement I received by this experience was that I now know what to do when I have mouse trouble. The negative part is I have to constantly watch for their return, especially this coming winter.

I can hardly wait.

Run Jesse Run-Lest We Forget, Behold! The Great Opportunist

''There's no doubt that the Mexican men and women -- full of dignity, willpower and a capacity for work -- are doing the work that not even blacks want to do in the United States,'' Vicente Fox, President of Mexico, Friday, May 13, 2005

Fox made those remarks in Puerto Vallarta one day after his country announced it would formally protest recent United States immigration program reforms which include extended walls along the United States borders & make it much harder for illegal immigrants to get driver’s licenses.

As usual, civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, never a man to waste a great opportunity on putting his two cents in told CNN that Fox’s comments were “unwitting, unnecessary and inappropriate.”

Fox’s own country’s newspapers deemed his remarks as “racist” and “controversial,” as well as many people, including Jackson.

Ah, Jesse Jackson. Such a man to speak such words. Lest he forgets about making such remarks, but yes he did make such remarks a little over 21 years ago to black Washington Post reporter Milton Coleman when during a conversation with Coleman referred to Jewish people as “Hymies” and to New York City as “Hymietown.”

How thoughtful it was of Jackson to think or assume that Coleman would never run or print any of those remarks because of Jackson’s supposed “racial bond” with the reporter.

But lo & behold several weeks later, out came those words came right back to bite him directly in the tongue when the words appeared in another Washington Post article, written by a fellow reporter and colleague of Coleman’s in an article detailing the former shadow senator of Washington, D.C. unstable relationship with American Jews.


Protests a-plenty occurred and of course, Jackson firstly denied he had ever spoken those words and then as usual, accused Jews on rallying together and conspiring to defeat him, another typical stereotype deemed of the “Great Jewish Conspiracy,” fueled this time by Jackson.

Even more frightening was the self-imposed order of protection issued by his good friend and old ally, Nation of Islam’s chief violinist and orchestra leader, as well as known anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan, who threatened Coleman in a radio broadcast shortly thereafter and also issued a general public warning to Jews everywhere, made alongside his good old buddy Jackson's presence, remarking, "If you harm this brother (Jackson), it will be the last one you harm."
A month later, Jackson wisely decided to “give up the ghost” with an emotionally-charged speech filled with self-imposed guilt, sought sympathy and acceptance in the presence of national Jewish leaders in a Manchester, New Hampshire synagogue, instead of his beloved “Hymietown.”

Still at that point, Jackson chose not to distance himself from Farrakhan, which subsequently led to wariness between Jackson and many Jews, including this writer.

For all the great actions Jackson has produced and otherwise served, there is one thing you must always remember that Jesse Jackson is no more a minister than he is an opportunist. It’s a well known concept, that in his case seem to go hand-in-hand. For the record, Jackson did flunk out of Divinity College, so he is NOT a minister.

Anyone can call themselves a minister, including Al Sharpton, who also had made some grievous errors in his past, but seemed to have made up for them later when he ran for President of the United States in 2004 and looked pretty darned good for a time to voters.

Yes people do make stupid remarks, for whatever reasons they feel is bothering them at any given moment, but a supposed national civil rights leader? For all the good that Jesse Jackson believes he has done & those who admire him, there’s also a lot of bad that he has created, refuses to acknowledge and the moment someone attacks him, they are considered a racist. Simple as that. If he enjoys serving the people he serves, then he should act responsibly and accordingly.

Stupid remarks take on a whole different connotation. To some they are just stupid and ignorant; others in a politically correct world would deem them as racist or controversial. Have we become that robotic that everything that is ever uttered out of someone’s mouth is racist and controversial automatically?

Did Fox mean what he said? Well, in a way, low wage jobs aren’t exactly desired by everyone & I have seen immigrants from many countries taking the jobs that no one (whites, blacks, Asians, etc) seems to want to be doing anymore.

Even Mexico’s foreign relations secretary Luis Derbez, related that President Fox’s remarks were not aimed at racism, but was trying to emphasis that Mexican migrant workers are making valiant efforts to the United States and that their role in aiding the United States' economy in that way, “is a positive one.”

To make the remark he did was a bold move, it wasn’t a wrong thought to exercise, but to Jesse Jackson, who often forgets about what he says & then turns around to say that Fox’s remarks were inappropriate is just plain ludicrous.

So keep at it, Jesse. Keep trying to make remarks that make you look like a bigger man than everybody else, but instead, makes you look and sound more and more like a hypocrite. I’ll be the first to admit it, however, that this is one of the more beautiful characteristics that I admire about you the most, dear Jesse.

Tickets To The Monthly Policeman’s Ball, Other Creative Crime Capers & Treasured Kodak Keystone Cop Moments

Every month after the 15th or so, a strange ritual takes place across America and that is, cops look as if they are doing their jobs…almost. Driving east along Howard toward McCormick between now and May 31st will be a challenge to some motorists for certain.

There, in one of the several vacated buildings parking lots along Howard (and close to home), sits a blue Skokie police cruiser with its motor running, hoping to catch a speeder to fill their monthly ticket quota.

Having attended & graduated from the Evanston Citizen Police Academy a few years ago, I have heard different instructors, both former and current law enforcement officials say there is no such thing. Well, if that’s so, then why do we see so many police officers out and about in heavy rotation after the 15th of the month? Incidentally, the first speed trap in America was established Evanston, Illinois, and a suburb just east of Skokie in 1901.

Speed traps are what keep police departments in the black nationwide. It is a natural fixed income for law enforcement’s never-ending battle to keep a regular flow of money in their coffers. It is a wonderful way to keep departmental revenues rolling in the dough, whether they care to admit or deny such things. Or it could be viewed as another form of creative crime.

Ah, creative crime. Creative crime is nothing new for law-men; they’ve been working hard at it for years, everything from roadside safety belt checks, sting operations to enforcement of obscure laws, such as jaywalking.

Although cops have been painted up over the years as heroes, that image has been tarnished over the past several years with more and more reported outbursts of police brutality, the most famous of these beatings came with Rodney King and the chaos that followed, after the officers who committed the actions were acquitted…initially.

Seemingly, after 911, their image changed yet again. The average police officer became a TV star, thanks in part to all of those idiotic cop reality shows and the biggest, yet lamest program, COPS.

Speaking of cops and TV, I had mine own similar experience over 10 years ago in 1995, while driving through the northwest suburbs of Arlington Heights, then into Mount Prospect, where an Arlington Heights cop pulled me over for having a loud muffler. Can you imagine any crime more creative than that?

After pulling over on the median strip as he had instructed me to do, he steps out of his squad car, roaring, “Are you trying to be a smart-ass!”

I politely responded, “No, you just told me to pull over, so I did.”

He then instructed me to pull off the median strip and pull into the residential area immediately that was adjacent to it. No sooner did I stop the car & when Officer Friendly pulled up behind me, step out of the cruiser and remark, “What’s up with your backseat? Looks like you have all your worldly possessions in there.”

That was it! I felt that cop went over the line so-to-speak, so I copied down his name, badge number and decided to shoot a letter in triplicate out to the Arlington Heights chief of police, the Arlington Heights mayor and the Arlington Heights city council.

A couple of weeks later, while working at the corporate bookstore (the job I held at the time), I received a phone call from the assistant deputy to the Arlington Heights chief of police. The phone call from him was refreshing to say the least! He apologized to me profusely about the officer in question, stated he was out of line with that remark & promised me, not only would the officer be disciplined but would have my letter be placed in his permanent file!

It’s no small wonder why I haven’t been pulled over in Arlington Heights since. My opinion of police officers has changed over the years as well, from good to bad to good to bad to good and to bad again, where my keystone cop meter currently rests.


That terrible nightmarish image of that cop exerting his egotistical power behind his badge will forever haunt me, so to me, the fuzz is the fuzz is the fuzz is the fuzz is the fuzz. Just as a pig is a pig is a pig is a pig is a pig.

Collective Poetry Writing-The Process Beforehand

There are times before writing poetry or a poem, that I collectively take notes, either through sketches or brief paragraph descriptions, then write out whatever it is that I am writing about. Rarely do I type them out on a pc, as most of them are hand-written & then filed away in unmarked evelopes or folders & put into either a filing cabinet or someone else inside my apartment.

A couple of weeks ago, however, I actually found an old set of typewritten notes on my old IBM Aptiva hard-drive and decided to bring them out to show those who might know or understand these processes of writing poetry a bit better, to be more specific, mine in particular.

As it is that I am a trained journalist, most of these notes look, read & feel more journalistic. I'd have to say that my own journalistic skills came into play into my own short stories & poetry into the late 1990s, after I had closed the door on one careeer and moved into the phase of another.

Lately, that thinking has changed. I am moving closer & coming full circle again. my journalism skills intact and I'm feeling much better about choices being made overall.

Here now are a set of rough-sketch notes from the Columbia Space Shuttle disaster of Saturday, February 1, 2003, with a completed poem to follow...


Columbia Space Shuttle Disaster Notes/Saturday, February 1, 2003


A spark coming out of it and then we heard a boom

A fire in the sky southeast of Richardson

It scared my herd of cattle and sent them stampeding into the pasture and beyond

I saw four lights and then the earth roared in laughter

An apartment fire in Plano, Texas, apparently caused by drifting debris from the shuttle

Space shuttle has blown up in re-entry in earth over in Texas on its way to Florida, 9:17am eastern time and broken up into bits and pieces. Included first Israeli, too much emphasis on this, there were 7 human beings, including, one African American and one Indian woman and and four Caucasians.

East Texas space shuttle smack down kaboom high-speed

No terrorist attacks possible

2nd in seventeen years all that’s philosophical until we find out what happened we will not launch another shuttle

all 7 astronauts aboard the space shuttle Columbia have been killed, it had been flying at 12,500 miles per hour at 200,000 feet altitude (38 Miles High) all communications have been secure, broke up over the Dallas-fort worth area.

Search and rescue teams have been alerted and dispatched, looking for debris

Clear blue skies painted in steam smoking wreckage in fields

Sonic booms what is NASA waiting on? Space shuttle contingency drones on

The president has been briefed and will be returning to the white house from Camp David and will be returning via motorcade as it is too foggy to fly

Texas Louisiana border they found an arm and a hand and other debris

NASA has lowered its flags at both the facilities in Houston & Orlando

38 Miles High

I dreamed this morning of you
Your smile as warm as the summer sun
I saw your eyes shine and then shut as if to tell me you loved me so
And then the earth sneezed, clear blue skies painted in arced in vapor and steam
A Texas farmer said his cattle were frightened by a sonic boom
Smoking wreckage and flesh flambé’ in lone star fields
Sirens and reporters everywhere
A fairy tale come crashing down
And then I knew for sure you weren’t coming home

Character Witness (For Bard Zimmerman)

This is the time of year that I dread most often, the time when I have to say goodbye to friends that have helped me with my inner struggles over the several past months. These are part pf those moments one tends to hide beneath the surface, their inner most thoughts & feelings to the rest of the world. Being a writer and poet, otherwise, I can do that at times.

Sometimes I can disguise these struggles as metaphors or produce characters that could actually be me or someone who represents a former likeness or image of me. Sometimes these kinds of characteristics are easy to spot. Other times they are not, unless of course someone is actually looking hard enough to spot the most obvious clues.

My writing is based upon mostly on observations I have made throughout the course of my life, some so mundane, yet commonly ordinary and others, more complex, complicated and striking, that for me to describe an experience might take several sessions, perhaps months or even years to examine, let alone release the incident to an unsuspecting world.

In character sketches of one kind or another, I try to pull the most simplest of observations I have made of a particular person and make it their biggest fault or downfall, even if the experience has been classified as common everyday ordinary action such as a loud & dainty sneeze.

The very idea of exposing one’s most inane detail and making it a focal point of a character is far more untypical, than say pointing out a character’s strengths, achievements, awards, successes, weaknesses, struggles, failures & shortcomings. These I have learned throughout the course of my writings has unnerved people, mostly expecting something completely different and are then caught totally off guard.

Reactions are interesting. Some are vengeful and choose to attack me personally for exposing an observed moment and perhaps, unconscious traits, while still others are left dazed & confused and are not sure how to respond to my notations.

My ability to put two & two together right away and even two & two and nine & nine even quicker, should let those who believe they are faster and wittier than myself in the ability to describe are sadly mistaken.

Details are what makes or breaks a character. Simple details so small or miniscule is what I “live” for, what keeps me in stitches and for that matter, keeps those who believe they know it all and are perfectionists to the hilt, haven’t met their match with a masterful, prolific writer & observer whose overall job is directly calculated to keep them precisely in step or suspense. Obviously, it’s working. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be where I’m at today.

If descriptions were tailor-made to a person’s likes & dislikes, what would be the purpose in that? It would get to the point of being too predictable & what fun is that? Variety is the spit of life. Be in it; don’t wish you could be in it.

Sigh.

My only concern, however, is I just wish I could describe myself a bit better to others, when it counts the most.

Old Cocoanuts

Old Cocoanuts (This was originally published on the website: http://www.greylodge.com/)

People wander empty streets like old hobos looking for a freight train to get them home. Empty individualism blends together, like meaningless words fused together in a poem.

Holidays lay strewn like the clothes you slept in last night. Same old stories, same old fights, about how everything becomes nothing with an Easter basket full of blight.

Mumbling on meandering means not who you slept with or with what broad with whom you did score.

Weep upon the incantations of a minister who makes promises and bottoms up empty like a holy criminal pimping for a religious whore.

Getting old is getting old like the ringing cell phones inside purses and coat pockets who cannot survive in this world all on their own.

It’s tough enough scraping together cash for a steaming cuppa of plain pekoe tea. As a member of the working poor, I abhor the movement of the upper-class rich, who dine with cigarettes and cell phones within reach. Believe me; the rich got more money dripping from their pockets, than from the average honeycomb of the average bumblebee.

The rich got a racket going. In days of old, you never had to pay for a spread on your toast or bread.

You’ll never find single women wearing long-brimmed hats with flowers in corporate coffee shops reading Anais Nin or writing poems. On the other hand, you will find homeless men in dirty overcoats, who pretend the place is a library and “borrow” books for free.

The body is a temple, so please give it a rest. Be happy with what you are given and try not to enhance your image just so you can look better than the best

The rich, well, they milk their habits like a cow that’s been pumped from a little too much. They throw their money in the trash, like it means nothing.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Money is money as long as it is well-spent on trinkets, vacations, food never eaten, and fur skin coats collecting mothballs on a rack in some abandoned warehouse.

Looking out over the railing, I watch a little speck of dust just floating. A piece of dust carries nothing, as it floats with ease in mid-air. The rich think of nothing of flaunting big bucks for their cars, their clothes and their mutant wares.

I wake up in my bed every morning, so refreshed and reborn.

The rich pay and pay to keep themselves gay, to prove that money indeed buys them happiness, like old coconuts fallen from a palm tree, always wanting more.

The Revolution Begins…Off The Pig: An Occupational Hazard>Act 4

I could feel the anger rise like steam from a sewer during a sub-below winter morning from off my temple; the denial of yet another parole request turned down flat at Devil’s Island. The way I figure there is now only one way out of Devil’s Island and that is of course, prison break!

I will have to plan this prison break quietly, so quietly in fact, so that I will arouse no suspicion, especially beneath the noses of the fraternal Goon Twins, Josie Peppermint, Groggleman & even Twitchy, who is so in tune with everyone else’s life except his own.

Once upon a time, good old Twitchy was inadvertently responsible for me being locked into solitary confinement & had permanent 24-hour prison guard surveillance assigned to me after he made a remark about a private subject between us aloud within earshot of Groggleman, who in turn considered me a security risk & locked me up right away.

Twitchy came arrived onto Devil’s Island about a year or so ago after being caught in a major sting campaign, “Operation Free-Dumb,” an interesting little operation that netted several criminals throughout the world. Poor Twitchy, if he hadn’t been so greedy, he never would have been caught, but then again, what do you expect from a man whom when he sees the word “free” takes full advantage of the offer? It’s anyone’s guess I suppose.

Twitchy’s a smart man. Sometimes a little too smart for his own good. They don’t like smart criminals here on Devil’s Island and will stop at nothing to make attempts to dumb down an entire prison system, just to show the inmates who is in charge; the true idiots; the true fools; the true jesters who dictate what we the prisoners of Devil’s Island are allowed to do, say or behave.

Unlike myself, Twitchy, Va-Va-Voom, The Minister Of Sinister, Roger Dogma, The Thin Man and a few others that shall remain nameless until which time I will reveal them, who have experienced this treatment and are able to recognize it as such, to go along with the program, just as Johnny Vegas does, whom Josie Peppermint praises so highly and mightily, us six and those nameless others, plus those who have gone before us, in our own separate ways have come together as individuals.

We understand that harassment, torture & belittlement are all part of the long-range plan of action for treatment on Devil’s Island. But no longer! Heads will roll! Arms will be twisted! Bodies will burn in the riots to come! We will not be beaten bloody, beaten into submission, beaten into a pulp or beaten and accept what you have to offer any longer!

We will not be turned back at the gate when you threaten us with punishment! We will stand up as one! Become united as a human nation of one in your tepid & quasi-orange prison walls and knock them down as we march forward and past you!

We the prisoners of Devil’s Island have at last spoken! Off The Pig! Off The Pig! Off The Pig!

A New Dawn Emerges, AKA This Is The Part (For Orson Welles)

He is angry. Upset. Sick and tired of doing the same old thing day in day out. So he said to himself, alright! That’s it! No more! The final nail on the coffin has been hammered in, if this isn’t a wake-up call to him now, he doesn’t know what else will be.

It’s time to move onward, ahead of the game he has desired for so long, but has sat on his laurels and waited. What is he waiting for? No one else is going to do it for him; he has to do it for himself. No one but one deity has given him the signal, the sign to move ahead, go forth with a project that he abandoned so long ago, because the struggle was just way too much.

In the beginning there was life and plenty of it, now it has shifted to the pond of stagnation & it doesn’t seem to be moving any longer, almost as if it’s take a permanent vacation; a dirt nap.

Where was it that he first arrived that he has now taken residency in? Where did he once belong to that he no longer feels right in? Where did he once fly to and build his nest that he has now outgrown? Where did the original ideas and dreams he had go to? Where did the thoughts, feelings & sensibilities he once ran miles for on any given day, now walk over whenever he feels like it?

Did he become lazy in his focus? Did he become lame? Did he become forgetful in fear? Did he adapt to surroundings that no longer feel like it should feel? Did Orson Welles finally arise from his grave run up to and reach behind him, slap him on the back and gleefully say, “Welcome home, Charlie my boy, welcome home, I knew you had it in you to finally realize that your great potential far outweighs a dozen like theirs.”

In his own life’s recollection, there have been similar situations where he has awoken from the long winter’s nap that he had been taking, only to realize that it’s not going to get any easier or better until he makes the change. And the change starts immediately. This hour. This minute. This second.

The part of the mind that had been comatose like a flock of sheep being tended to by some Average Joe is no more. He ceases to exist. He goes home to feed. He is packing up, pulling up his roots and not looking back. And for the first time in a very long time soon he will be able to say, he will be an extremely happy, happy, happy fellow.

This Is The Part (For Orson Welles)

This is the part where I don’t write
This is the part where I don’t sing
This is the part when I don’t dance around the room with a girl on each arm
This is the scene where I don’t cry on cue, even though I’m supposed to
This is the woman I’m supposed to live with even if she can’t make a commitment
This is the world I’m supposed to understand with all of its predicaments, complications and frustrations, but I just can’t plug them all in, watch them explode and just walk away
Ahhh, but alas, this isn’t what I meant to say
This is the tea brewed for me
This is the soul I was meant to love, yes, it’s mine
This is the part that is supposed to be so fine
This is the dream that flies so high like a birdie, kind-a purdy
This is the vein that pulsates at the drop of a dime in the jukebox sublime
This is the part where I don’t write
This is the part where I don’t fight
This is the part where I eat my way into the language past death
This is the part where I’ve parted, destined not to return again
This is the part, this is the part where I start, I middle, I end
This is the part; this is the part where I don’t write, where I bid the old self a final goodnight

Box Camera Flashbulb AKA God Bless America, Everybody Always, Stars & Stripes Forever Etc., Etc.

Beneath the boilings of the American underbelly lie the carefully stitched jobs that no one ever wants or be in the position of having. These include burger-joint flippers, donut shop sweeper-uppers, grave-diggers, tele-market researchers, garbage pickers, beer-tenders and the pawnshop dealer and its various spin-offs; thrift store carrier and antique collector.

Behold the great outstretched arms of the pawnshop dealer, the single most responsible man in the world who accepts with no qualms every single solitary piece of unwanted Americana and turns right back around sells it to someone else. The pawnshop broker is similar in theory to the thrift store merchant, who takes unwanted bits of life and places it the shelf for sale.

The trouble with this theory however, is that there are true sharks in the water, chomping at the bit, waiting for the bucks to roll in. Antique dealers behave the same way. See something you like that’s in the crappiest condition you’ve ever seen it in? Does it have the word Beatles, Jack Kerouac or Frank Sinatra on it? Well, you can bet your bottom pant-leg that the price will shoot way up the beanstalk and out past the curb.

Pawnshop dealers however, have always been given the cold shoulder, the bad vibe, the negative stare, because of what they do and that is, something like, sell your late Uncle Harry’s 80-year banjo, when you know you should have never sold it, but you needed the money, for a price that was less than attainable.

Yes, they have their array of instruments and the usual assortment of lousy CDs of bands you’ve never heard of or like will never hear from again, mountains of pc monitors, jars of kitschy jewelry, watches by the cartful, bowlfuls of coins, medallions, diamonds, stereo equipment and boom boxes and loads and loads and loads of other American crap that no one can use anymore.

But like corporate regional bookstores, every American pawnshop has its specialty, its part that makes it a pawnshop to remember. In the South, it’s nothing but country and western crap, boots with pure cattle-driven spurs, confederate flags and lots of guns to choose from. In the Midwest, it’s a little bit of everything mixed together like one great big mish-mosh of hobo stew.

In the East, it’s buttloads of guitars and amps and drums and DJ equipment and turntables and rust buckets full of fishing gear and netting (well, maybe further than New York perhaps for that stuff). In the West, it’s relaxation time with battered sets of golf clubs and worn sunglasses and vinyl records and cassettes and just about anything else you can think of.

The pawnshop in theory is perhaps one of the greatest innovations of the past century or two. Got something you don’t want anymore? Just dump it off at pawnshop and maybe if you’re lucky, you’ll get a bit of green paper for it too.

Haunting thrift stores before they became fashionable in the late part of the 20th Century was my favorite pastime, much to the chagrin to my parents and my ever-changing merry-go-round pocketful of girlfriends, who like my parents never could understand why I’d even want to buy a suit that perhaps a man had died in, old beat-up hats, when there were brand-new threads in the shops calling out to me?

Because I knew then what I always have known, that fashion is a true recycling statement. What looks good now won’t be so fantastic six weeks from now. Of the many thrift stores that are in existence now, very few, still portray the old-fashionedness of what a good thrift store is and that is, a dusty moldy-mildewy smelling, bug-infested shop that makes your pants itch after sitting on their floor for merely five minutes.

And what a panoramic view there is too. Aisle after aisle after aisle of funky porcelain mugs, plates, toasters, coffeemakers, dog-eared paperback novels, mismatched chairs, dinette sets, scratched records, loud ties, stretched brimmed hats, stained under-armed longed sleeve shirts, dresses, blouses, skirts, socks and underwear, tee shirts, moth-eaten furs, ugly art and I mean ugly portraits of children, clowns, dogs, cats, bridges and houses, tangled recording tape, bruised beds, junk jewelry, crazes and fads of past decades and if you live in a certain city, then you’ll most certainly see the mutant remains of it.

Modern-day thrift stores (in this writer’s eyes) are the new robber barons of culture. They are pristine and clean-smelling. They are given more popular names like “Strange Cargo” and “Vintage Vinyl” and “Collectors’ Choice,” names that will draw the younger and more hip-to-rich crowd in to buy their overpriced McDonaldland-style trinkets just to pay the rent.

A mere piece of plastic with the word Beatles on it, no matter what the item is, will be jacked to the max, as many of these young sharks are in it for the mere purpose of the buck, even though they soft-soap their image of selling nice vintage memorabilia to nice people. It’s all a financial gain. A numbers game. Crunch those numbers and crunch them fast.

A few months ago, I got chased out of a pawnshop by a dealer who didn’t want someone else dressed a little bit funkier than he was, to give the joint a little atmosphere. It’s not the first time and it sure won’t be the last. That old image of pawnshops being the perfect place to dump a “hot” piece of property, by a seedy-looking character apparently hasn’t shaken itself off quite yet, like a flea-bitten dog out in the rain.

Pawnshop dealers despite their appearance are much like the wealthy Wall Street brokers, always selling, never buying. Keep yourself a little stash to lie on until the heat stops leaning.

God bless America, everybody always, stars & stripes forever, etc., etc.

Dear Mom: An Open Letter For Mother’s Day, Sunday, May 08, 2005

Dear Mom,

On radio, newspapers & the Internet (I specifically left TV out since I don’t watch it), the subliminal message machine has all been the same, Sunday, May 8 is Mother’s Day, so buy your mother a trinket that she’ll likely forget within three weeks time. Buy, buy, buy. Do it now!

Funny sort of thing about Mother’s Day, too, why do we even need a holiday to celebrate our mothers to begin with? Why not a holiday that celebrates our family instead?

I believe that a majority of people find their mother & father, brothers & sisters within their own lives, let alone go out and buy them a bit of materialism that is not necessarily, that will sit around and collect dust that in the long run, might be given away, trashed or perhaps sold on EBay.

Although I can’t speak for everyone, just me of course, I find bits and pieces of my own family in my own life everyday, from the moment I awake, to the moment I retire for bed each evening. If you cannot see it in my face, other than the most obvious looks part, i.e. “you look so much like your mother!” then you will find it in my actions, my personality or in the words I use or write everyday.

Besides, my family, brothers & parents & sister (whenever I hear from her, last time was about 10 years ago), don’t expect me to spend any money on them, in other words, they don’t want gifts from me. They are just happy enough to have me in their life & to receive a phone call or email as the case may happen to be, once in a while.

I do call my Mom & Dad about two or three times a week & that seems to be just fine with them. We talk about the usual stuff & I always read my blogs to my Mom since she has decided not to go forward into the 21st century & get a computer with Internet service like the majority of the world, but that’s alright with me.

She prefers the old-fashioned method of writing letters by hand & that’s just fine with me. I’m slightly out of practice with it, but once in a while I do write a letter to her. Writing letters by hand is an art. I used to do it a lot until the Internet came along and well, I stopped. In any case, Mom is a true artist in that sense.

Mostly though, I rely on telephone, because I like the immediateness of it all. It’s a quicker way of getting the message across, as opposed to a letter which could take up to a week to respond. My Mom’s okay with that too. She doesn’t mind the time it takes to arrive because in her mind, the love between mother & son will always be there, no matter with or without a telephone, Internet or other forms of communication.

Love is forever and always. Thanks for being a good Mom to me. Happy Mother’s Day, Mom!

Love,


The Mishegas Master

The OCTOBER Sisters: An Occupational Hazard>Act 3

Here on Devil’s Island we have our various gangs, the most notorious of them are the OCTOBER (Obsessive Compulsory Terrorists On Blood-Etched Rituals) Sisters, simply know as the OCTOBER Sisters.

The three OCTOBER Sisters came in at varying times to Devil’s Island and although the prison system can be one gigantic place to fraternize in, all three women has managed to find each other within a relatively short period of time. They are named the OCTOBER Sisters for good reason, as each has earned a distinct title on their own without even trying!

First, there’s Abominable Amy, the illegitimate child of the infamous Abominable Snowwoman & Groggleman. Groggleman has fathered numerous hideous & extremely ugly & mean children, including the fraternal Goon Twins, never apart for more than 20 minutes at a time. It is sad to note, however, that Groggleman's illegitimate fathering techiniques although unwritten law & common knowledge here on Devil’s Island, has not been widely-reported as much as it should be to proper prison authorities.

Abominable Amy found her way into the system after leading a relatively quiet life in a remote part of Devil’s Island. What trapped her finally was her own omission of smoking too much, a crime punishable for life on Devil’s Island. Abominable Amy never says that much, she does what she is told, which according to some on Devil’s Island is a result of Groggleman’s constant bad habit of badgering his children even when they haven’t done anything wrong!

Then, there’s the frightening Mother-Hen Mary, the smartest of the trio. Her worst, yet widely-known trait is what gave the OCTOBER Sisters their name to start with, that being her awful obsessive compulsive disorder, always mothering, always waiting on others, always specifically choosing to walk a specific pathway, just to be close to inmates she waits upon, hand & foot. Sadly, this is what brought Mother-Hen Mary to Devil's Island for life without parole.

Often, when other cellmates are in another part of the prison system, Mother-Hen Mary makes it a point to tidy up their cell. Other times she will do little favors, like trade packs & cartons of cigarettes for food & clothing, just so she can give it to her best friend & bosom buddy, Loud-Mouthed Lucy.

Loud-Mouthed Lucy is the most complex & complicated of the three OCTOBER Sisters. Loud-Mouthed Lucy, my bunkmate for the past two & a half years, has been anything but helpful, as she already riddled with bad luck & loads of leeches attached to her body, she continues onward, claiming that she’s “a survivor.” With a walking stick, she stumbles around the prison & prison yard like a lopsided bag of hay.

Her bad luck, based mostly on bad choices she’s made in her life have afflicted her mind one way or another. Lucy’s crime against humanity that landed her on Devil’s Island was being sentenced to life without parole for raising her voice uncontrollably with no visible means of stopping or controlling it. It is to the point where everyone can hear her & being inside a prison where the walls tend to be made of steel & metal, sounds can get a bit echo-y.

There are other prisoners who do chit-chat & chatter, but none to the extent of what she has incurred. Everyone within the system can hear every single last word, breath or sound she utters. At first I was able to live with it, but then severe complications set in. My ears bled hard from the shrill volume alone. I used varying devices such as cotton, bits of yarn & old cloths to cover my ears, but still the blood kept flowing.

I have even asked Loud-Mouthed Lucy to quiet down her voice several times, to which she has always responded, “well I’ll try,” but only does it for a brief moment and then begins screeching like a wounded animal left to die on an empty road.

Loud-Mouthed Lucy’s one & only designated job on Devil’s Island is that of cigarette girl. Inmates & others flock from all over Devil’s Island to her, mostly trading and attempting to bum cigarettes from Loud-Mouthed Lucy.

Loud-Mouthed Lucy’s life has always been in agony, in other words there has always been something terribly wrong with Loud-Mouthed Lucy. Pain should have been her middle name. She always likes talking to everybody, but not everybody always reciprocates and that is truly sad.

Too many people abandoned Loud-Mouthed Lucy by the wayside, both outside & inside Devil’s Island, still she carries on. Perhaps that’s why Loud-Mouthed Lucy has screeched so much, just to draw attention to her plight. Sure, she is always friendly & kind-hearted, but she gets burned so quickly & easily that she accepts whatever people do to her, carte blanche.

I never have understood why Loud-Mouthed Lucy has subjected herself to this kind of abusive behavior. God only knows I have tried to help her steer clear of trouble. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t work. Like many others here on Devil’s Island, both past and present, I’ve become too frustrated with her and have just given up. She seems married to her abilities & rightfully so. I appreciate Loud-Mouthed Lucy in ways that are almost indescribable, but in other ways I cannot stomach, because it is so gross.

The OCTOBER Sisters or Nicotine Queens as my good inmate friend Roger Dogma refers to them as such, have always smoked together in the Devil's Island prison yard, always yelling, always screeching & most of all, always obsessing. Witnessing the OCTOBER Sisters is like witnessing an unruly mob of demonstrators being loaded into a police paddy wagon, after a session of rocks & bottle hurling at a politician.

Together, the OCTOBER Sisters on Devil’s Island are a powerhouse packed with punch & vigor.

Individually, they are as thin as icicles hanging from the prison roof.

And ice-cold too.

Kick Me Kike Me & Jew Me Down

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day. Though I feel very, very fortunate that none of my known relatives perished during that time, it will still remain a terrible human tragedy for years to come. Having said this, I’d like to share an anti-semitism account with you dear readers, that for the large part only a select few know about & up until today my parents knew nothing about.
When I was seven years old, I had an afternoon newspaper route, delivering exclusively the Chicago Daily News & a few Chicago Sun-Times. The route was close to home and the money was good. When you’re seven years old, the money is always good.

On my route I encountered many friendly people & dogs, had a lot of loyal customers who were always happy to see their paper-boy delivering their newspaper, come rain or shine. But then there were some very mean & hateful people too, mostly older kids who used to tease me about my weight & take my newspapers away from me & in effect hold me hostage. In particular, there was an older man; I am guessing he was in his 20s, that every time he saw me, he cursed me out.

He cursed me out and spat at me, calling me a “dirty Jew” and “kike,” among other choice words. It bothered me, but then I usually let it go. But then one day the worst case scenario occurred. This man casually walked up to me, Snickers candy bar in his hands & said not a word. I continued to deliver my papers, until he blocked my path, ripped open the wrapper holding the Snickers candy bar, chewed it up quickly & then without warning, spat it in my face, laughed to himself and walked away.

I just stood there with bits of Snickers sticking to my face, mixed with this man’s spit & I suddenly burst into tears, crying most of the way home. I didn’t understand it at all. Why would this man who hated me for my faith commit such a horrible act? I never understood it at that age. I never told my parents or the rest of my family because I was ashamed. Why was I ashamed? I don’t know. I just was.

I held that account inside me for the next 25 years until age 32, when a friendly & trustworthy person gently coaxed the account out of me. Since that time, I kind of choose who I tell this account to, because in this day and age of political correctness and right-wing fascism, you kind of have to watch your back. On the other hand, I don’t talk about it all that much either, because still, to this day it gives me tension headaches.

Sometimes I wonder how parents can teach their children such intolerance of other races, other genders and other lifestyles. Perhaps because they don’t know any better or are afraid that they might get to understand the plight of others based on acts committed by ignorant people. By today’s standards what happened to me would be considered a hate crime.

There are other issues I wonder about too, such as how can Jews who have been tortured or belittled for their race & faith, sit back and say they hate ALL Arabs, Muslims & Germans, without making a concerted effort to understand that it is not all of the members of a particular group that hate Jews so much, it’s just a few bad apples.

Again, this is one of those bad habits that seem to be passed down from generation to generation. Nobody’s perfect. But don’t you think it’s time we start somewhere? If there’s one lesson I’ve learned from all of this, is to turn hate into love. Learn to appreciate the beauty around you even if it hate. Hate is love in reality & vice-versa.

There seems to be some confusion among some people about what anti-semitism and anti-zionism is. Simply, an anti-semite is one disdains Jews, while an anti-zionist is one that believes Israel doesn’t have a right to exist. I am thinking about this one particular incident several years ago, where a Chicago anarchist poet by the name of Joffre Stewart was kicked out and banned for life at Chicago’s Green Mill, the original home of the poetry slam, by host Marc Smith who at the time said that Stewart was an anti-semite. But Smith was misguided in that thinking.

Stewart doesn’t hate Jews; he just doesn’t believe that Israel has a right to exist. Stewart & I are good friends. He knows I’m Jewish & he doesn’t hold that against me. I don’t hold his beliefs against him, whether I agree or disagree because that’s his right to believe in what he wants to believe in. I respect him for that. And that’s a start.

We as human beings have to start understanding and respecting each other even if we don’t agree with someone else’s opinions at some point. Why not today? Isn’t it about time we love our racist/prejudice neighbor instead of hating them? We can learn a lot from their fears. I hope that if you’ve had something horrific happen to you in your past, like me you will have enough bravery to come out and tell someone about it. It does wonders for the soul and the mind.

Keeping that in mind and seeing that this is Holocaust Remembrance Day, I thought it would be quite appropriate to publish these two poems that I have written, the first one deals with the Holocaust, while the second one focuses on and makes fun of all of the Jewish stereotypes I have dealt with over the course of my life as a Jew. Enjoy.


Stinkpatch 321456
His blue eyes saved him
From wilting in the ovens
The brown eyes
Black eyes
Green eyes
Oh how they fried, fried in ovens like bird
Carved on the plate for dinner
And he cries for the tattoo on his ass
Cries for those who have fucked him, laughed
Cries for the rabbis
Who asked him to pull down his pants
Cries in his vodka, cries on his desk
Cries in my hands
In my hands like a baby with a tattoo on its ass
Smells the smell of burning feathers
It’s no wonder why he has asthma

Jew Me Down

Jew me down
My tolerance level low
Do you like me for who I am?
I just gotta know

Do you hate me 'cause I’m a Jew?
Do you tolerate me in the workplace?
Because you kind-of-sort-of have to?

I’m a Jew, I’m a Jew
Yes, that's true
Hate is not a word in my vocabulary
Love is a word seldom heard
In the mouth of hypocrisy

We own all the banks
Horde money like miserable old cranks
We’re Jews; it's what we're meant to do
Steal your money and spend it too

Our car of choice is a Jew-canoe, that's Cadillac for short
We’re doctors, lawyers and pacificists
Hey! Did you know that Jack Benny, the Marx Brothers & Henny Youngman
Were Jewish communists?

Ford and GM served Hitler’s well-oiled war machine
Behind the enemy fire
Lined their pockets with golden teeth
Rang up the dough on Jewish typewriters

We still tolerate
The anti-Semite and those who hate
Pity for the one who spits out the stereotype of Jewish American prince
And princess

Although Jesus was Jewish
The Jews are still to blame for killing Christ
They call us the great-horned devils
Which explains why we hang our hats on our heads every night

Cleanliness is the name of the game
I must prepare myself for the Jewboy hour
Scrub thyself down
And take a Shabbos shower

So you say
You want to Jew me down
And Jew me around
Jew me this and Jew me that?
Oh and by the way, I live in Jewtown
I ride transit with my special little Jew pass
That takes from me everything that I own
It’s such a deal, motoring first class
Where I sing the Jew-me, Jew-you blues all night and all day
And if you stick around
I’ll probably say,
I’m a Jew, I’m a Jew
Yes, that's true
Hate is not a word in my vocabulary
Love is a word seldom heard
In the mouth of hypocrisy

Bing! Bing! Bing! Remembering Mark Farano 1965-2003

It was nearly two years ago when I received the phone call at work, two weeks after the fact. Mark was dead & his mother had just now found my work number in his Palm Pilot, so she claimed. It didn’t matter, I still couldn’t believe it and I was still reeling in shock.

It was between February, 2002 to late May, 2003, that I didn’t have a phone due to circumstances beyond my control, which was much debt. It was a critical time in my life. No phone, yet I had an email address & plenty of money to spend on calling cards & occasionally the crazy landlady would let me use her phone.

I had known Mark since my college days, mainly my last two and a half years at Columbia. He was a year behind me. We had met at the school newspaper, in the fall of 1989, both as hungry as ever, looking for adventure and at that newspaper; there was lots of adventure for certain.

At the start of my career at the newspaper, I was the official office boy for the newspaper, via a work-study grant. My previous work-study position was that of a teacher’s assistant for a prestigious director of Columbia’s Center For Black Music Research, though I felt it was more like a glorified envelope-stuffer most times. Although being the paper’s office boy was my official role, it turned out as the rest of the editors would learn that I was a damn good writer too, doing an occasional article or opinion piece, but back to Mark and I for now.

Mark became the paper’s education & financial beat reporter & also one of the many favorites of the newspaper’s advisor. How Mark and I clicked, I’m still not sure how or why, until it was a downstate car trip to the state’s capitol in Springfield, Illinois the following spring (1990). Driving past cornfields and cattle can be boring, but not us, as we traded stories, our secret desires, dreams, goals & ideas. It was at this point I first learned of this character he had made up named “Mulligan Moose,” which I later learned was a term used for moose that could not grow a complete or full set of antlers.

Then I learned of another word he used to blow off steam when all hell broke loose for him. He’d yell, “BING!” at the top of his lungs. So that’s what we did all over Springfield, was yell “BING!” in bars, at the state capitol and out the car window, scaring the living daylights out of innocent bystanders, while we laughed hysterically.

I graduated in June of 1990 & he continued on for another year, until he graduated in June of 1991. Unlike me who took the summer off after graduation, Mark secured a job straight out of college at First Analysis, a financial institute located in downtown Chicago, at Sears Tower, a job he held for 11½ years, rising through the ranks. He started off as a newsletter editor & ended up becoming a senior vice-president & analyst,

Over the years, I’d go meet him downtown at the Tower & we’d go meet for lunch or dinner or just hang out. Before we’d go out, he’d take me up to his office and show me the magnificent view of Chicago’s west side, in particular, the United Center from his window on the 101st floor.

And, he’d come to my job sites too, and hang out with me, including my reporter position at the Des Plaines Journal. One particular morning I had come into work cheery and happy, but my editor Todd Wessell, just glared at me. When I turned on my Mac computer for the day, I saw a little file that was titled, “note to self.” I was curious about it, opened it and saw the note that read, “Smile the end is near.” Todd knew about that note because he had a nasty habit of going through people’s computer files & deleting what he felt what we didn’t need. Pretty nice of him, huh?

When I saw that message, I realized it must have been Mark’s work. Mark was freelancing at the time for the newspaper. I thought it was kind of funny, but the paper’s assistant editor Ted Saylor didn’t think so, as he dragged me out into the hallway away from the rest of the reporters & asked me very loudly, while shaking the printed note in front of my face, “DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THIS?” I said no, and Ted’s response was, “Todd thinks you’ve gone crazy!”

When both of them found out Mark had done that, he was let go from freelancing for them & was subsequently banned from the newspaper for six months. Years later, Mark & I still laughed hysterically about that incident.

Mark lived with his mother the entire I knew him, his father was never a topic of discussion, so I left it alone. Whenever his mother went on vacation or would go somewhere, I was allowed to come over. His mother never did like me, I could tell in her voice. Mark never spoke about it either way, but also said it didn’t matter what she thought anyway, but I somehow think it did. She thought I was a bad influence on him, giving him all sorts of strange ideas. Oh! If only she knew!

We’d usually have dinner on his condo’s balcony overlooking the twilight and talked about old times, our jobs and our writings. Mark was a prolific writer whose interest was in medieval & historic subject matter, while I was heavily steeped in beat generation stuff and everyday ordinary mundane observations. He was a connoisseur of classical, opera & jazz music, a commonality shared between us, as well as rock and roll too. He also had a love for horses & owned two of them, Big Buster & Red Buster. Often we went riding together.

Fast forward to mid-March, 2003. We had been trying to get together for the past several weeks, but due to his severely busy schedule & my hectic one, it seemed like we never could get together at all. He was out of town almost every week, flying to a different city within the United States for his job. We were determined to meet sometime in April of that year, but that never materialized either.

Finally, we set a date down in stone, Sunday, May 18th, my jazz vocals teacher Jackie Allen was performing down at The Old Town School Of Folk Music in support of her then-new album entitled, “The Men In My Life.”


A few weeks earlier, Mark had told me that he was planning to retire at age 40, build a house in Carpentersville, just west of Chicago, bring his mother to live with him & have a specially built barn for his two horses. It was particularly sad, in light of the fact that his mother was slowly turning blind and only a week earlier on April 29th, she had retired from the high school system where she had been employed for over 20 years.


Unfortunately, that meeting never happened. On Sunday, May 4th, Mark suffered a massive heart attack after swimming several laps in the pool at a local YMCA in Des Plaines, Illinois. He had complained of dizziness & then collapsed. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Mark was only 38 years old.