The Botox Frankenstein Poetry Series>Myth Of A Dream Omitted From A Good Humor Truck

Well again we've come to Friday, an easy and relaxed capper for me, which thankfully ended early for me yesterday, as I am travelling to one of the few universities I attended over 20 years ago! Reunions are so fun...sometimes, anyway, in light of that, I've chosen a poem that I wrote one year after (1987) I left Western Illinois University (WIU) in Macomb, Illinois in 1986, that went onto becoming not only one of my favorite poems that I've ever written, but most requested performance poem, not to mention the mini-opera song it later became! I'll be back online next week with more fun and fantastic stories from my trip and stories of my past at WIU. So with that dear readers, you are getting a real treat of a poem and of course, always, always, always, enjoy!!!

Myth Of A Dream Omitted From A Good Humor Truck

Coldness
Icycles foam from your mouth
Sleeping heavily five months or so
Warm shudders fill your trucknow idling in the alley
Dream of happy thought
Distribution of ice cream pops
To the little kids every spring and summer
And each season you went around
The children grew up faster than you ever did
Those same children gave their children, money for ice cream, pockets crammed with nickels And
Dimes
Little Stevie was the first customer there
He knew exactly when you chimed
Oh yes, those were the days
Of Frosty Malts, Dixie Cups and Blue & White trucks
You no longer idle in the alley
Mass marketing has made your life miserable
And the children, like the dream have melted into a puddle of
Blue
White
And
Red

The Move Toward Freedom Westward>Act 11 (Series Finale)

It took me less than a week to get used to my new surroundings. It was extremely quiet and the neighbors seemed nice enough and with those two pluses going for me, I really liked that and knew it was going to get much better.

Back in the old neighborhood, I was lucky if I was able to even talk to a neighbor or perhaps just the passers-by, the people who picked through her garbage that she used to lie against the fence, that is.

She thought she was being so charitable by doing that, but it brought vagrants to the house and close enough to my apartment that it scared me, for fear, like the break-in of Christmas night, 2003, that it would happen all over again. It also brought uninvited guests, as one time someone broke into her boyfriend’s Jeep, looking for valuables.

Also, I lived within a gang war-zone, what with Evanston cop cars whizzing by on weekend nights almost regularly, sometimes up to four or five within minutes of each other. (see the Tuesday, August 2 (2005) posting of The Unintentional Gift: Behold! The Russian Mail-Order Internet Bride>Act 1, for a somewhat better description of the gang-war zone where I lived in during my time in Evanston) The park where I lived across the street from was always full of gang-bangers, not to mention the place where I lived for so long was a mini-war-zone within itself.

Never could I have imagined in a time frame of two and a half years just living in that hellhole some of the antics that occurred would have even arisen, if it wasn’t for our personalities either not mixing or constantly clashing.

Little did I know about the history of that apartment, until I moved in and little did I know about the landlady and her yapping dogs and should have probably checked her out more carefully before I actually moved in. Little did I know about the neighborhood before I moved there and little did I understand the politics of Evanston and legalities before I arrived as a former citizen of Chicago to live in one of the more progressive suburbs in the Chicago area.

In the time that has come and gone where I have lived for the past 12 and a half months, I’ve enjoyed my life fully; it’s been much quieter, I’ve been much happier and with the exception of the mice invasion earlier this year and perhaps one complaint about my music being too loud during a week-day morning, I’d say, overall it’s been great.

I signed a lease to live where I’m at for a second year last month. The landlord has been exceedingly gracious and kind, even through the mice invasion and last year even sent me a holiday card, which completely caught me off-guard and surprised me totally!

My neighbors have proved to be friendly for the most part with the exception of the one neighbor that smokes in the apartment below me and the neighbors across the alley from me in the residential homes that I had to call the city health department and the city on for feeding stray animals, rodents mostly (I’ll save the story for another blog) and the fire and police department a number of times for holding parties well past 3 a.m. on weeknights and building bonfires without any covering!

During the winter snowstorm we experienced this past January, I never saw so much help and love and care on this mere block that I live on. So many neighbors helped so many others, I included, especially when I accidentally locked myself out of my apartment the day of the big snowstorm and the building manager came to my rescue within 20 minutes of my phone call that I made from a neighbor’s apartment.

In fact, single every time it has rained, I just smile and think of the poor sap that lives in that piece of shit illegal apartment that she still rents out. But I have every right to smile. I’m out of there at long last and that is what matters most.

And there you have it; my tale of personal hell, dear readers.

The Move Toward Freedom Westward AKA The Continuing Story Of My Life>Act 10

It was right about then that the landlady walked out and I told her at first that I was moving all of my boxes into storage; that seemed to put a smile on her face and a spring into her step, but that would be temporary. She then asked for the rent. I told I would pay her shortly, but she demanded that I pay her right at that precise moment.

I knew right then and there of course, the shit was about to hit the fan big time! I faced her in a kind of non-expressive way and said, “Oh yeah, by the way, I wanted to tell you, in addition to moving all of my boxes into storage I’ve decided to move out of here and go live with friends…”

Not surprisingly, her jaw dropped about several inches and that’s when the fireworks began! For every point I made regarding my now quickly emptying apartment, she made excuse after excuse for. She told me I “needed help” and told me there were several doctors in the area that could help me out, to which I countered sarcastically, “No, you’re the one that needs help much more than I do!”

Then she told me that I was acting like a little boy, to which I said firmly, “No! You’re acting like a little girl!” She wanted the last word and I didn’t plan on giving it to her, not this time! I handed her a pro-rated check for 10 days I lived there, to which she whined, “You don’t really care do you,” to which I said, “Nope, I don’t care at all, after all this is an illegal apartment.”

She went absolutely nuts and shouted, “Yes, I know it’s illegal,” she declared proudly... (so, city government of Evanston, Illinois, if you feel like busting someone’s ass, here’s your chance: her name is Aandraya De Silva and her address is: 1633 Florence Ave; it’s a lavender house across the street from Cahill’s, even after all this time I have been gone, she still doesn’t have a proper address on her home and oh yes, I almost forgot, she’s rented out the illegal basement apartment again, so go get her and prove the voters of Evanston that you mean what you say when you enforce the city ordinances!!!)

From there, she screamed at the top of her lungs and threatened me by saying, “If you don’t come back and clean up this place, well, I know where you work,” to which I countered, “Yeah and I know where you live, your point?” Then, she went up to The Toothless Hag and started badgering him with all sorts of bad remarks about me; she knew she was losing the battle and so this was her way to make it up in the two and a half years time.

When he told her to get lost, she went flying into her house, grabbed her daughter, her daughter’s friend and her three yapping dogs (burritos with legs as Zog-19 & I called them) and piled them all into her car and demanded that I move the truck out of her way. We moved the truck... and sure enough, she revved up her car, backed it out of the driveway and flew down the street to wherever she was headed to.

We continued to load and pack the moving truck when all of the sudden, Zog-19 reported to all of us that the landlady had gotten into a car wreck! I didn’t care and the rest of my friends just shrugged their shoulders and kept loading and packing.

Before Twitchy drove the first load over in the moving truck to the new apartment, we all took a break for lunch. Zog-19 went to the local Burger King about 7 minutes away and bought everyone Whoppers, hamburgers & Cokes on the silver ten dollar bill I gave to him. I didn’t have very much money on me that day and figured that the silver ten dollar bill wasn’t going to be worth much more than $10, so I felt it would be better spent and collected by someone elsewhere.

As we drove the first load over to my then-new apartment, we passed her by. I grinned. My relief was well-worn. The move in my opinion went fairly smooth, to say the least after that little incident.

Everyone else left after the final move-in, closer to six o’clock in the evening to be exact, except for me and Zog-19; we hung out in the alley on a few cushions I had managed to snag from one of the two old couches that we had tossed out. The futon had to be dried out from the mildew and rainwater for nearly a week after the move.

I was able to return the moving truck on time and there were no further incidents from that point on. Zog-19 left closer to seven o’clock in the evening and I in turn went to fetch another good friend, Astute Annie who helped me mop up and clean whatever we were able to inside that apartment.

The landlady never returned to the house that night, as we drove up. The house was unusually quiet, which for once I was glad for. Sadly, there was so much mildew and must in that apartment, that it would seemingly make it hard for one to live in it, but since I was longer an occupant there, it didn’t matter at all to me anymore.

We cleaned up the inside for about three hours, just mopping the floors and wiping down the kitchen & bathroom areas, talking, singing and taking photographs to use as evidence later for the terrible water & mildew damage that wreaked havoc on me and my lungs while I lived there & in case I needed the documentation for future reference. Slightly after the beginning of cleaning into the third hour, I said to Annie, “C’mon, we’ve done as much as we possibly can, let’s just get the hell out of here.”

And with that, I packed up my Saturn with whatever I could hold, threw out the rest of the things in the trash or on the side of the fence along with the rest of the furniture I had tossed out, went back inside and took a look around for one last time, said a few silent prayers for the apartment, then got into my car, backed out of the driveway for one last time, dropped off Annie back at her apartment and went back to my new home at long last...

The Move Toward Freedom Westward AKA The Continuing Story Of My Life>Act 9

The weekend I arrived home I did nothing but go to work, pack and sleep. It was my friend the Mighty Minister who told me that if I wasn’t 99 percent packed this time as opposed to my last move when I lived in Chicago and at that time, I was only 25 percent packed up, that he wouldn’t help me.

So I packed and I packed and I packed and I packed and I packed and I packed, averaging about five boxes per every 3 hours! The funny and most ironic thing of it all was that the landlady didn’t say a word about all of those boxes that were being placed outside my door. I never even saw her the week she came home and did my best to avoid her, for if no other real reason I didn’t want to get into a confrontation, which is what I was expecting to happen.

Fast forward to late night September 10th, 2004; I was packing at a furious speed and of a rate of up to five boxes per two hours, I was nearly finished! I contacted all of my friends who promised to help me move out and also made arrangements with those who were arriving by public transportation to pick them up by a certain time so we could move my belongings out at a reasonable hour and return the truck on time without me getting overcharged.

I went out late that night for a breather and bought myself a pizza, as a sort of mini-celebration for what was about to occur within the following 12 hours. I also regained back my strength both physically and mentally for what I knew what was really coming.

Saturday, September 11, 2004 had at last arrived. I was awake early, at approximately six in the morning, continued to pack a few more boxes and made a few final surveys of the apartment, figuring out what would be thrown away and what I would be taking.

Moving this time out I felt would be a breeze, as I didn’t have that much to move at all, mostly boxes, a rocking chair & assorted chairs, a futon mattress, three bookcases, a dresser, a coffee table, two computers, three television sets, one radio, electronic equipment galore, sheet music, my filing cabinet filled with both my writing & published works archives, books and my music, which consisted of several boxes of cassettes, CDs and a few stray vinyl records.

At approximately eight-thirty in the morning I received my first phone call from my best friend Zog-19, to tell me he was leaving from his launch pad and would soon be there within the hour to help me begin the pull-out. If I wasn’t there, he said he would just wait until I returned. I didn’t hear any stirring from above, so I knew I was alright for the moment.

It was almost an hour and a half later, about ten in the morning to be exact, when a call came in from my loopy friend and ex-band-mate Lew Brickhate; he called from a pay phone, to tell me he was ready to be picked up from the El and wondered “where there hell was I,” he spoke to me most sarcastically. Shortly thereafter, my mentor, The Toothless Hag phoned me to tell me he also arrived at the El, but would walk to my place and just start moving boxes and furniture the moment he arrived.

So, I went to pick up Lew and in the meantime, received word from Twitchy, another friend who said he’d be on his way shortly. Having said and done that, I had my four moving men plus myself to begin our long, yet short journey westward. When I returned with the moving truck, I told Lew to go inside the apartment and just start pulling out boxes.

The only person missing in action was the Mighty Minister; for some reason he was waiting for a package (a replacement cell phone, I think) at his lakefront condominium that never arrived. It’s too bad he missed out on all the fun and excitement that was about to happen...

The Move Toward Freedom Westward AKA The Continuing Story Of My Life>Act 8

Two weeks before I moved, I left for a performance at a festival in Portland, Oregon, followed by a well-deserved vacation to see my parents, who live in Arizona. The night before it rained heavily, flooding my apartment to lake level this time, but I didn’t really care at that point.

I knew I was going to have belongings damaged and that the landlady didn’t really care. I just counted my losses, smiled and sang, as I waited for my brother Benjy in the wee hours of a late August date, across the street in an empty parking lot to pick me up and take me to the airport.

I did have a restful vacation; something I hadn’t had in ages, due to a then harried job situation I was in and my living conditions which were deteriorating more and more with each day I was living in the swamp.

During my time out there, I went into a local post office in Tempe (Arizona) and changed my flow of mail from my then current address in Evanston to my new address. I somehow knew that the powers that be had for once in a long time, recognized my dilemma and were helping me set myself free at long last.

From my parent’s home in Arizona, I planned, schemed and otherwise hob-knobbed with friends and the moving truck rental agency via telephone and email, as to firming up moving plans and how I was to plan on “surprising” my kooky landlady with the news. I knew from the start it wouldn’t be easy, so I figured casualness would be best...

The Move Toward Freedom Westward AKA The Continuing Story Of My Life>Act 7

In the midst of the summer, the confrontations between myself and my landlady seemed to be more constant; the suggestions for me to get a storage space was out of the question, but she kept up the pace, virtually pressing on top and pressuring me, kept insisting that I had a problem; never mind that she hoarded stuff by the bucketful and kept it all in her garage.

Then sometime in mid-July it happened; I was asleep in my apartment on a late Sunday afternoon, when without any advanced warning, she unlocked the door and came in with one of her ex-in laws to show her where the basement was leaking. I had not been informed nor was I ever told about it either. She treated me poorly and I knew it would only get worse before it got better.

Later that week, I received a brand new lease from her all done up in red ink. The line had been drawn, the curse had been cast and it was all downhill from there. Among the notices she made clear in the lease were; the raising of the rent; no storage space available; pay a security deposit (which I never did pay originally); keep my apartment clean; my box of shoes outside my apartment door smelled bad (how quaint) and I was given only a six month extension. I knew what was happening. She wanted me out; so I decided to give her exactly what she desired, a sort of belated birthday present.

She wrote within the lease that a couple of her friends of hers would be watching her home while she was off in Brazil and expected me to sign the lease when she returned. So if anything came up, like say an emergency, I would be on my own.

It was then I put a contingency plan into motion and began looking for a new place to live. I lucked out and found a place just west of where I lived a few weeks later. It was bigger, roomier, a tad pricier and quiet.

Once I signed the lease of the new apartment, I reserved a rental truck and rounded up five of my friends to help me move. Since I was living on a month-to-month basis already, the lease had expired at least 12 months earlier I didn’t bother to tell the landlady that I was leaving. She didn’t deserve to know anyway, at least not until the day I moved out. I also decided not to tell her I was leaving for fear she would try something crazy which she was extremely capable of doing...

The Botox Frankenstein Poetry Series>72 Hours In The Cold

Well again we've come to Friday, the fantastic little capper for this past work week, which for me this week, it felt like five days treading within the lake of fire! In keeping with the theme of my current series, The Move Toward Freedom Westward AKA The Continuing Story Of My Life, I've chosen a poem that was written during that time period, so you my dear readers can get a better understanding of what a living hell can really be like and as always... enjoy!

72 Hours In The Cold

Bought a big old pizza last night from the local pie factory and brought it back home, just so’s I could stick my feet in the warm mushy dough and thick tomato sauce to keep from getting frostbite
Drank 10 cups of hot tea just to stay alive
Composed poetry in the bathroom
Coughed up blood on Friday and fried it up like eggs, spread it on toasted bread and swallowed it, imagining it was peanut butter and spice
Got chewed out by a boss who said I wasn’t taking enough initiative even though she took more than enough and chased several people away
I am writing a letter to a woman in Florida, sipping tea, dreaming of love while speaking to my mother about being cold and death and yet, I still have writer’s block and cold fingers
Sang a brand new tune in my sleep and no one heard it except for the howling wind, who stole it when I wasn’t looking and sold it for a cool 8 million to Eminem
Keep telling myself that sleeping in my apartment is like sleeping in a morgue
There’s moustache hair swimming like young tadpoles in my now cold tea
My landlady swears that one of these days she plans to fix the heat
I am sitting in a hospital gown in emergency room number nine with a tube up my nose, a wire in my arm and a lubed gloved finger where the sun don’t shine and doctors and nurses are standing ‘round shaking their heads and wringing their hands and are not sure what to do and all I can do is think about is how warm my toes are

The Move Toward Freedom Westward AKA The Continuing Story Of My Life>Act 6

2004 rolled in and things were going alright, with the exception of it being a cold, cold winter that year and it was freezing in my apartment, kind of like walking into a meat locker.

The trouble with my apartment’s heater was that it was archaic, one of those old-fashioned beaters that one needed to turn on the gas and then light up, but since the wind came through a small pipe, it would blow out the gas 99 percent of the time, meaning I was unable to light up the heater for 99 percent of the winter.

As a result, the floors were frozen solid. Cold to the touch like an unidentified dead body lying on a slab in the Cook County Medical Examiner’s morgue. I chose not to complain, because I didn’t want to deal with the landlady anymore than I had to and usually my apartment problems fell on deaf ears anyway, so there was no need to bother.

My pipes within the bathroom sink, shower and sink also froze from time to time.

I opted for another choice instead; two pairs of socks on my feet nightly, a winter cap on my head, gloves on my hands and at least four blankets to cover me. I even bought a large stuffed pizza once a week to act as a disposable heater in order to keep myself warm; one had to be very creative in such conditions, as this cold and sometimes sub-zero temperatures inside the apartment, dragged on for the entire winter.

By the time the spring came I vowed to never live through something like this again. But in the spring and up through the end of summer, I encountered a new problem, spring and summer flooding and wouldn’t you know it? There was a rainstorm every single week from the beginning of spring to the end of summer and of course, the house was situated right smack dab in the middle of a flood plain!

In total, there must have been 20 floods, perhaps more and that’s no exaggeration! Just ask the fellows that helped me move out of this mush-pit, but I am getting ahead of myself for the moment…

The Move Toward Freedom Westward AKA The Continuing Story Of My Life>Act 5

But the next few days the icing on the cake had been applied when I received the following email from my landlady who flew herself off to Brazil without telling me she was going to leave and without having a reliable person to call in case of an emergency. And just my luck; it arrived on my birthday…

“I need to explain something about the basement and your apartment- you have to get all those boxes out of the basement and clean out the apartment. It is a serious fire hazard; I spoke to a Chicago Fire Chief last Monday. If the house caught on fire it would be gone in minutes; the wood is 112 years old.

It is also very unhealthy to live in a mess like that. I suggest you get a storage space for things you absolutely must keep, and rent a small dumpster for the rest. I'm sure the majority of the stuff you will never use and a lot you don't even know where it is or what you have. Please do this as soon as you can, make it my birthday present from you. it just isn't safe- and I have to tell you, coming from a friend, I think you may have a hoarding problem- saving things might make you feel more secure or whatever... but I think you need to overcome it. I hope you have great holidays, and I'll see you next year”

I was crushed and I didn’t need an imposing person who was already a kook from the word get-go telling me what to do with all of my belongings, let alone claim she was being a friend to me, when all she cared about was my money!

And she always left things in the lurch or didn’t bother to tell me anything until it was too late. Nor did she finish tasks that she began either, like say for example the address on her home. It might have come in handy, for say an emergency that might have occurred.

And just my luck; on Christmas night 2003 the golden opportunity arrived! I was in my apartment talking to someone on my cell-phone when all of a sudden I smelled smoke, something to the effect of a roaring fireplace; I opened my apartment door to find that the basement window had been kicked open by a home invader! I made sure no one else was around, looked out the window and sure enough, I saw an incoherent man cussing and shaking his fist at me across the street in a parking lot.

I hung up with the friend I was speaking to and immediately called the police. There was trouble however. The police that responded to the call were unable to find the house due to the fact that there was no address on it! A routine phone call to the police department that was six blocks away would normally have taken approximately two minutes to respond to, but thanks to her mighty fine foresight, it took them approximately twenty-five minutes to respond!

I remember it was fairly cold that night, in the twenties temperature-wise and I stood on the porch in bare feet until they arrived. After they arrived, I took them downstairs to the basement portion and showed them the kicked-in window and gave them a description of the offender. The officers explained to me that I would need something to seal the window back up. I thanked them for responding and led them out of the house.

In the meantime, I went back upstairs and had noticed some mail of hers scattered upon a small table next to the stairway that led to the upper part of her home that included a citation from the city for failing to put a proper address on her home. That was in 2003. Nearly two years later, she still has put no visible markings on her home.

That night, I called my landlady up who was whooping it up in Brazil and didn’t seem to care what was going on back here. It was a waste of time and money for certain.

The next day, I went out to the hardware store closest to my apartment and found matching screws to the originals that were pulled out from the force of the invader. I used boxes to temporarily seal up the window from re-opening. Then I went back into my apartment and emerged with my crochet mallet and a claw hammer, plus some long nails in a jar on a shelf in the basement and busily got to work. I nailed the long nails into the crevices of the window, a sure seal-proof way to keep out would-be home invaders.

After that, I screwed in the screws into the original holes and fixed the window. When the landlady did get home nearly two weeks later, all she did was complain about my supposed mess and never thanked me for fixing her window.

But complaining was part of her mantra, anyway. For her to complain about something, meant that she felt she was perfect and could do wrong. She used the “fire hazard mantra” just as long as she could and as long she was able to. She changed the story at least half-a-dozen times, claiming that a Chicago fire marshal had visited my apartment and told her that my apartment was a disaster waiting to happen.

If indeed a fire marshal did inspect my apartment, he might have also noticed that the ceiling was a little low and that the heater was archaic, leading him to cite her for having an illegal apartment without a proper zoning permit to build one to begin with.

She was previously cited before, but all she did was have the family (her ex-in laws-how convenient) move out, wait another year and then re-rent the apartment out. She didn’t care much about the city or its ordinances; she only cared enough to rent out the space and make money...

The Move Toward Freedom Westward AKA The Continuing Story Of My Life>Act 4

Then there were those days between 2002 through early 2004 when I didn’t get my mail either at all or on time and if I did get it, it would either be covered with some unknown substance or partially opened. This was especially true if the letter or package was either something I ordered or was expecting. At least three worst case scenarios occurred within weeks of each other.

The first incident involved getting a photograph from the Evanston police department that was only located six blocks away from where I dwelled. I had graduated from the Evanston Citizen’s Police Academy (Class 16) and was waiting for what seemed like months for a photograph, but it never arrived.

When I called over to the proper department, they told me it had been mailed out to me three months ago! So we switched addresses to my P.O Box and the photograph showed up within a week’s time.

The second episode involved a magazine subscription that showed up eight weeks late! I was told it was mailed out to me in November, but I didn’t receive it until February! So, as I did with the first problem, I had the magazine diverted to my P.O. Box address and things were hunky-dory after that.

The third difficulty I encountered was waiting for a special-order double CD set of music by Mickey Katz from England that never arrived. I must have emailed the company at least 20 times until we got the situation straightened out! The company required a street address as opposed to a P.O. Box address, but lo and behold, the company at last agreed to send the CD to my P.O. Box express and I received it within a week!

When I confronted the landlady about the mail problem, she at first pretended like it was no big deal, but when I asked for my own mailbox, she told me I couldn’t have one. When I countered her and asked why, she said, “because your apartment is illegal, that’s why.”

I knew right then and there I had to get out for certain...

The Move Toward Freedom Westward AKA The Continuing Story Of My Life>Act 3

Then I started my own investigation online to see if I could contact her. From what little information I could gather from her friends, her mother might have been sick and she went home to take care of her in Kansas. So I started doing cross-referencing online and came up with very little, almost nothing.

And then the phone calls started coming in, asking for her. I said I didn’t know where she was and that I was the new occupant of the apartment and that this was her old phone number. I wished them well and called the phone company to get the line disconnected.

After that, things began to settle down and apartment living was alright. It was easy to go to and from work in only seven minutes everyday. Then in April, 2002 my first incident occurred with my landlady when one of her dogs bit me when I came up the stairs to pay my rent check to her. She stood up for her dog, claiming that “she” (it) was only trying to protect her (the landlady).

In the midst of summer mildew and mold began growing on the floors and a number of my books and pieces of furniture were ruined. One night while I was making myself dinner I heard screaming above. I knew what was going on; it was the landlady again, fighting with her boyfriend whom I met early on; a construction worker from Argentina she had befriended at her job one day, one year ago to whom she proposed to help with his English-speaking skills. The friendship blossomed into romance and although it didn’t sound like much of romance that night, it was. Supposedly.

The screaming turned into screeching followed by loud sobbing and the breaking of dishes and glass. I had to not laugh and found a good pair of strong earplugs and placed them inside my ears. Dinner was at last peaceful for me.

Then one night the floor beneath the countertop began to leak after a routine night of washing the dishes. I looked beneath the sink, looked at the while plastic pipes and then discovered to my horror; several of my pots below the pipes were filled with putrid water. Why? Leaky pipes!

The summer of 2003 had been an unusually cool, yet the floor kind of sticky as I noticed books of mine crumbling. Then one morning I woke up to a wet floor and wet walls.

It had apparently rained the night before and I didn’t know it. This time I formally complained about it and the landlady came downstairs and took a look at it, but didn’t really offer any suggestions, other than telling me I should try drying out my crumbling books and rather sticky and scummy-looking leather briefcases. I ended up losing about $60 worth of personal belongings, but she didn’t care. ..

The Move Toward Freedom Westward AKA The Continuing Story Of My Life>Act 2

But back to the early days. The day I moved into that pristine basement apartment, it was a warm February day. The snow had actually melted in Chicago and it was warm enough that I remember that we were wearing short sleeves, tee shirts I think. As we moved things down below into my new pad, we started running out of room in my apartment; I had a feeling it was going to be a little cramped!

Since there was no real storage space within the basement apartment, the landlady told me I could put the rest of my 100 or so boxes into an empty existing room next to a furnace. That was her idea, not mine. Something else odd about the landlady my two friends Zog-19 & Lew Brickhate pointed out to me that day, that I had since filed away inside my brain. She changed her pants three times within in an hour. I did think that was a little obsessive. So did my friends.

The first few weeks in the apartment were okay, until I was informed that the former occupant’s cats were still there and had yet to be caught. I found out by seeing that my bathtub was filled almost daily with cat poop. It took them six weeks to catch the two cats that were, ironically, hiding beneath the bathtub!

Then one week later, the toilet overflowed; to which my landlady and her boyfriend both responded; "Oh, this is an annual event." Whoopie! I could hardly wait until next year.

Then strange occurrences began to take place. One day, while getting my mail from the front porch mailbox, I noticed a lot of strange mail coming in for the former occupant of the apartment. Seems that the former occupant (Gwen Jema) owed a lot of money. Her friends started calling her phone number that was registered for this apartment. Most of them wondered; where was she? No one seemed to know, not even the landlady.

Back then, I immediately knew what I had stepped into; a missing person’s case fiasco, which the landlady proceeded to cover up by throwing away all of the former occupant’s personal belongings. “Why weren’t the police called?” a few of my friends began asking me when I told them. I wasn’t sure. The sure tell-tale signs of the unreported crime were the basement being redone, the throwing away of her belongings and then I thought, “Oh! If only those cats could speak for her!”

I thought about it long and hard; had I stepped into a crime scene? Why had this gone unreported? Why was this landlady overly-nice to me? What else was going on that I wasn't being told about? I'd soon find out and would also begin to answer my own questions...

The Move Toward Freedom Westward AKA The Continuing Story Of My Life>Act 1

The past few weeks have been a real downer for me, so I’ve kind of been in this real pensive mood, listening to Charlie Parker and eating peanut butter & strawberry jam sandwiches, which is something I do when I am feeling sad and blue, but nearly a week ago, on Sunday, September 11, 2005, I wasn’t feeling sad at all, no I was feeling quite joyful as a jazzman, as I silently celebrated my one year anniversary into virtual freedom!

One dreary summer ago, when apartment dwelling for me was a virtual swampland of fun and excitement, what with it being rainy season and I was down and out in suburbia, I received notice from my then current landlady that she didn’t like the way I was living and decided to raise the rent by $75 to a whopping $650 (from $575)!

For on a bright and sunny Saturday, September 11, 2004, I moved out of the flood-drenched basement apartment where I dwelled and so began my climb toward my year of freedom...but back to the story!

Well, I didn’t like the way I was living either. Illegal raids. Water & gas bills that were included in the rent but not paid for on time. Mail never received or if it did arrive was weeks late or opened. Breaking dishes from the house above me. Barking dogs at all hours of the night. Weekly floods. Disrespect. Crazy antics by the landlady.

When I first moved into that terrible apartment, back in February, 2002, I didn’t know much about the place, other than it looking like a nice place to live, since it was a converted farmhouse built in 1891. But, oh! How I learned quickly that it was a moving decision that I would regret for the next two and a half years of my life.

My old two-bedroom apartment in Chicago was terrific; a steal at $550! But alas, it was being turned into condominium property; such was the case for a couple of buildings on that block that I lived on. So I had to go looking for a place and sure enough, there was a space at a house I used to pass by everyday when I used to work my day job at Chandler’s in Evanston in the middle 1980s.

A charming basement apartment beneath that beautiful old purple house I used to pass by so long ago. Little did I know back then what I was about to get myself into; a two and a half year nightmare! But I digress.

Back then, life was miserable. I was still paying off my Saturn, bills piled high like thick salami & onion sandwiches and in some respects I thought there way no way out. So of course, I took this apartment. I remember meeting with the landlady at that time. She seemed nice enough. She sat downstairs with one of her then three yapping mini-Brazilian pinschers on her lap, petted and stroked it as she spoke to me.

She told me the apartment was vacated, by someone who apparently never came back from work one day. Just left everything intact as if nothing was amiss. I didn’t know much about the situation, but she told me she could have everything finished for me by and I could move in early February. Somehow I managed to avoid paying her a security deposit. I never did pay her a security deposit either. Only once did I pay her a partial security deposit, but during a cleaning session she told me about one day, she “accidentally” threw my check away.

Herein the trust for my landlady slowly began to crumble...

The Botox Frankenstein Poetry Series>Eating A Lime

Well again we've come to Friday, the great capper for this past work week and time for another poem for my dear readers! Enjoy!

Eating A Lime

The ant jumped upon my roof
Giving me quite a scare
As I sat and watched the antelopes play an awesome game of baseball
While Jon Bon Jovi was combing his hair
And I was eating a lime

American Yarnprose>The Great American Love Story (AKA Novel As One Page)

The Great American Love Story (AKA Novel As One Page)

When she told me it was over, we was finished. I went home and drank heavily. I didn’t know if I could go on, if I could make it by myself. I drank more. More. More. More. And more, till I couldn’t see straight or stand tall.

We was everything.

Ha.

“The coo some two some,” old Joe from the bowling alley used to call us whenever we came around. We was inseparable. Heh. “The Siamese twins,” Betty the mail-lady used to say whenever she saw us holding hands, hugging and other forms of public affection.

Fact was, we was private people. We didn’t share our secrets with nobody. We talked for hours on end.

Swore that we loved each other until the very end.

Right.

I remember the first time I saw her. She was carrying her books home from the library. Nobody ever gave her the time of day, except for me. Later that day, I saw her at the grocery store, looking through the apples and pears. We glanced at each other, trading smiles. I felt good. Perhaps she did too. That night, I saw her at the corner bar, sipping a cocktail. I asked her what name she went by…she, the same with me.

We talked and talked about everything and nothing the whole night through. We closed the bar. I walked her home. She invited me in, so in I went. We talked some more, though this time nothing made sense and everything was nothing in disguise.

We stopped talking.

We started kissing. Hugging. Touching. Probing our tongues all over each other. We felt each other. Bodies sandwiched together. The temperature rose. We burned! We sizzled! When we made love it was like nothing ever before. A cliché perhaps, but the truth. She moaned, I groaned. I sighed, she cried. I dove she drove. I caressed, she confessed.

We were in love. Deep love. Good love. Passionate love. Burning love. Hot love. Puppy love. Man love. Woman love. Adult love. Couple love. Plain love. Romantic love. Old-fashioned love.

We grew together. Grew like trees. Blossomed like flowers. We changed the world, our world, overnight. She loved me. I loved her. Love is a loving word, though none really know the true meaning. We have figured out that it does mean love.

In the morning, she was glowing, her eyes starry. We made love again, stronger than before. It was what I thought to be a bond, our bodies interlocking forever.

The phone rang. It was her, asking for her albums back. I knew the end had come, but why? Why did it have to end this way? I stared at the liquor bottle and downed another swig. I fell to the floor. The flooding would start soon. I went to get the sandbags, but none were there, just empty bags and bricks.

Blood-shot and teary-eyed, I hugged the bottle and took another swig.

American Yarnprose>We Are A Dragged Culture

We Are A Dragged Culture

Last night, I had dreamed that you could touch my inner smile and I’d be happy for a while. Ah, but alas, oh no! Say it isn’t so! They’ve hijacked my brain and made me go insane. Singing deliriously the songs of that crushing feeling of two middle-aged hearts inside the roach motel. The desperation in the faces of the girls. When, oh when will they ever learn that love is a stab of insanity cured by marriage?

The old negroesque man on the train slobbers about in his seat and says half-mumbly-bumbly, “Fuck that, fuck that. Something just gotta hide. Right on brother, right on. You get that right, know what I’m saying? Get this ass out of the cab. Starting to piss me off....”

Oh the waywardness of assumption. It is so priceless, yet the ass rides alone. So queer, the ass smelled of rotting toads.

I am piecing together my life through an old dog-eared book, when I look up at a beautiful angel and ask; “How do you dance and not get so dizzy? I know that is what I would do,” I say.

“Focus one the movement,” says he. He thinks it’s just practice.

He thumbs through my pile of recordings on the windowsill and I say, “I am listening to recycled music.”

“How is it recycled, “he asks.

“Well, I don’t listen to the same music all of the time, it’s all different titles.”

“Oh,” says he and flutters away on silent feet.

Loshon Hora: Can't Live With It, Can't Live Without It

Loshon Hora has always been there for me, both as a faithful and unfaithful friend. Loshon Hora has in many ways destroyed lives, including my own several times over, but I always make a nice recovery.


Loshon Hora usually creeps in when I least expect it and embroils people, entraps friends, creates enemies, alienates co-workers, entire families and their respective relatives; turns their worlds upside down, thereby creating utter chaos.

I met Loshon Hora several years ago when I was enrolled in elementary school during an encounter I had with a girl at my school. She accused me of calling her a name that I never knew I had said, but I knew she was lying through her teeth because she liked me and plus the fact she did it all of the time as a sort of badge of honor, showing her other friends that she was more important to me than them.

I didn’t run into Loshon Hora again until I was 12, when a vicious and cruel boy said he had heard that I didn’t use soap to wash up and accused me of causing a stink. So to satisfy himself, he beat me up for no apparent reason. Then other boys followed his lead and beat me up for no apparent reason. Still other boys came to my defense and soon there were whole gangs of boys fighting over me just because I never chose to fight back nor ever said a word. Who started it all, you ask? It was my good friend, Loshon Hora.

Loshon Hora followed me into high school and due to Loshon Hora, I was usually picked last for sports teams in gym class at least until my junior year, shunned like an ugly duckling by almost 99 percent of the girls in my high school when it came to asking them out to for either a date or the prom. Is it any wonder why I hated high school so much and just wished to get the hell out of there?

During my long and industrious college career, I was on the 10-year plan, I saw Loshon Hora from time to time, but I did a fairly decent job of avoiding Loshon Hora and was able to grow on my own without anyone stunting or hurting me too much. If anyone caused me any trouble, it was me and me alone for lack of a better action of me just picking out the wrong crowd of friends, wrong career choices, wrong classes, wrong clothes to wear, wrong music to listen to and the wrong girls to date.

I didn’t catch up with Loshon Hora again until I began my career as a writer/journalist in the 1990s and oh, man! Let me tell you something, I saw Loshon Hora everywhere I went, but in some circles, Loshon Hora was well known and accepted as friend verses foe. The mere fact that I saw Loshon Hora more and more every week, told me that in some ways this was catch-up time for Loshon Hora, having missed me for so many years.

But in a way, I was glad to see Loshon Hora again after missing Loshon Hora for all those years in between. Loshon Hora enhanced my writing; gave me tips and bits of information I could have not had or found otherwise and for that I was extremely grateful. With Loshon Hora around, I was able to spit and shine up my short stories, poems, prose and other yarns.

Whenever I wrote reviews or feature stories for newspapers, magazines or publications, Loshon Hora was there encouraging me to spice them up a bit, make them funny, biting, but readable with a hook, line and sinker approach. I listened. I learned. I laughed. Most importantly, I loved my own work for taking this approach. I mean, writing is writing and all, but what’s the use in writing if you can’t have a good friend like Loshon Hora at your side as a muse?

Later, when I began to compose songs, Loshon Hora was right at my side encouraging me to give my work the full throttle treatment, to which I did. My work was full of vim, vigor and zest. I had to thank Loshon Hora fully for that. Even as I blog, Loshon Hora has been right here by my side, always pushing, always encouraging me.

But it was in the workplace most recently that Loshon Hora almost made me screw up. Loshon Hora told me that someone was not up to their usual par and encouraged me to give a hearty heads-up to others. And so I did. But little did I know or realize that Loshon Hora was playing a trick on me; yes, Loshon Hora did so to spite me for payback for all those avoided years.

And then I fell down; fell down hard. But Loshon Hora was there to pick me right back up. And I learned my lesson that day; learned it the hard way. And I also learned that day that Loshon Hora isn’t always correct. Nope, Loshon Hora can be downright mean and nasty and just plain evil.

And the moral of the story should be that Loshon Hora isn’t always right or wrong; I just never know with my friend Loshon Hora; sometimes Loshon Hora can be my best friend always looking out for me or encouraging me and quite possibly my own worst enemy, causing untold amounts of chaos just to spite me. Life is like that sometimes. And so is Loshon Hora.

Cold-Hearted Quakers: Toilet-Paper Capers...Nixon's Not One Of Us Anymore

A long ago in the latter part of the 20th century, when times were lean and small town life in Indiana rejected me like a bad liver transplant, I fled in terror or perhaps it was refuge to a seemingly bigger city closer to where I lived at the time which was Attica, to West Lafayette, home to Purdue University, where living was easier, even though the small mentality was everywhere I stepped within the community.

In March of 1994, I took on a new and yet one of the strangest jobs I ever held, that being a caretaker for a Quaker Meeting House. Overall, Quakers are known for their simplistic values and pacifisms approach are a nice bunch of folks all around, but the Quakers I were about to meet changed that entire image for me and carried it through until a few months ago.

It was back in February, 1994 when I first saw the posting in the local paper for a caretaker position at the Quaker Meeting House in West Lafayette on (Glenn) Robinson Trail, while still living in the apartment complex that was once a mansion in Attica, Indiana.

The advertisement mentioned the rent would be cheap, $175 to be exact, in exchange for light labor duties. At the time I had just become unemployed and was living on unemployment and I thought that WAS the ticket and jumped at the chance.

When I moved in, I began to get a little freelance writing work, but not enough to cover food, so I began visiting the back alleys of churches and waited in line for food like all the others who were poor or unemployed and hungry. It was a re-occurring event that I would visit at least two more times in my life.

I moved into the Meeting House at the end of late March and took up occupancy in a couple of rooms in the upper part of the house, one which included the attic. The Meeting House itself had a few quirks in it, but things seemed to be going okay, as the job duties were spelled out clearly.

Legend has it that the house itself was willed to the local area Quakers by a woman who was rescued from one of the Jewish concentration camps in Germany by an older brother and later married the man who discovered oxygen on the sun. The couple settled into the West Lafayette area in the 1940s.

It was then that I began noticing strange quirks within the Meeting House itself. Strange quirks that included the likes of moaning and creaking sounds in varying parts & times when there should have been no sounds.

Another major quirk I noticed was that several cartons of spoiled milk were left in the refrigerator well past the date of drinking and when I attempted to throw all of the cartons out, I was scolded by one of the two head Quaker women who claimed they needed them to stay there indefinitely. That milk smelled bad and eventually curdled to the point where the stench filled the entire refrigerator and kitchen for weeks after that.

Then one day, I received a visitor who I was told by one of the Quaker woman was the previous caretaker, who was allowed to stay in the Meeting House for up to three days. Those three days stretched out to six weeks! My complaints fell on deaf ears. According to the contract, which was nothing more than a verbal agreement made between myself and one of the Quaker women, my priorities were less important than their priorities and with that, I soon knew that things slowly began to change.

My duties were simple. All I had to do was to shop each week at the local Sam’s Club, buy bulk lemonade, cookies, coffee and sugar and set up the refreshments, paper plates, plastic silverware & napkins and leave the doors unlocked for the Meeting on Sundays and not make noise between the hours of 10am to 1pm. Simple-dimple-pimple. Or so I thought.

During the summer months of which I stayed for nearly all three, I had to mow the lawn, something I had never done before. I broke the lawn mower at least twice when I ran the blades over a hidden sewer pipe within the grass. Sure they were angry with me, but when I had explained previously that I had never cut a lawn, well again that went on deaf ears.

Even though I was shown how to the mow the lawn, my lawn-mowing experience was a lot like cutting my own hair, bad patches of grass in between everywhere. They were no longer amused.
Once I even forgot to lock the door, but it was no biggie for the person who arrived there early with her own key, a key she wasn’t supposed to have. It was from this particular progressive Quaker woman member that I spoke to one day, who filled me in on all the gory details regarding the folks who were running the Meeting House right into the ground and making decisions without having a consensus vote from other Meeting House members. That is why she had a key and that is also why she didn’t go there often.

When I asked about this particular Quaker member, both the women in charge scoffed and said that she was “damaged goods,” as well as queer and strange. It seemed to me at that particular moment that something was going on behind closed doors that they didn’t want me to know about.

It was when I accidentally forgot to refill the toilet paper roll in a Meeting House bathroom that I received by registered letter that my services were no longer required as caretaker and I was given a 30-day notice to vacate the premises.

I was viewed as a troublemaker and that didn’t sit well with either woman, for asking questions was wrong according to them, as opposed to taking orders and not questioning a thing.
I was still expected to pay rent and do chores around the home until the day of my demise, but that’s when I stood up to these crazy Quaker women and told them to shove it!

I never did pay the rent nor did I do the chores, as I had to pack up all of my belongings for the move-out. I ended up moving back home with my parents that late summer and took a job close to home in a bookstore.

To this day, being let go as a caretaker from that Meeting House due to not replacing a roll of toilet paper and receiving a registered letter in the mail still cracks me up. My days in Indiana were nearly over. I was exhausted, yet relieved.

Since that time, I’ve spoken about my experience there very little. In the late 1990s, I wrote a little song dedicated to my experience as a caretaker called “Cold-Hearted Quakers,” which I’d like to share the last lyric line with you dear readers, as I believe it sums up my brief but entire experience with these particular Quakers…

“Cold-hearted Quakers/Toilet-paper capers/ (Richard) Nixon’s not one of us anymore…”

A 911 Joke AKA Pass The Punch Boys, This Round's On Me

So, a man walks into a bar & says to the bartender; “Give me a Manhattan Mardi Gras!”

So the bartender, a little skeptical says, “Heck! I’ve never made one of those before, how in the world do you make one?”

“Well,” the man says, “You take about 2,900 human beings, 343 tablespoons of New York City firefighters’ remains, 4 jumbo jets, 10,000 droplets of Muslim sweat & blood, 16 hijackers, 50,000 gallons of gasoline, two tons of bricks, glass, steel & wood, a third of a cup of former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani’s sagging political career, three teaspoons of Dubya’s fuzzy math, one National Archives filled to the brim with classified CIA & FBI documents, 12 bullion cubes of mixed media, six quarts of Osama Bin Laden recorded messages, 20 over-reactionary national holiday-proposing United States congressmen, 10 million brainwashed hypocritical Americans, 30 pieces of American-flagged underwear, 100 sets of American flag manufactured shower curtains with matching blue stars, half-a-million scared foreigners with American flags affixed in their shop windows, 30,000 greedy American merchants fixing to make a buck off the latest human tragedy and nine Orthodox Jewish conspiracies. Then, you pour all the contents into a large brown shopping bag lined with Wall St. woes, overused words like American patriotism and shake well for 1155 days. After that, you let all the contents within the bag settle gradually into Ground Zero in New York City & pour into several 911 We Will Never Forget-God Bless America frosted drinking mugs & you make numerous threatening toasts to those who look Middle Eastern while professing your falsehoods toward Miss Liberty & God & the good old USA. That is how you make it.”

So, the bartender says, “You seem so excited, absolutely excited.”

And the man says, “Sure am! Sure am!”

Then the bartender says, “Well then, why do you (look as if you) want to vomit?”

American Yarnprose>Checkmate

Checkmate

I lean over to taste the fruit of tomorrow that I want so much but would rather let it rot in the opportunistic ritualistic timeframe just as happy couples are giggling over coffee and conversation at Starbucks. I pretend that I am sad, but realize in the world in which I must live, I must also create, spawn and die.

The fates, which I hold in my fingertips often, freeze me out from the reality of the locomotive timetable that huffs and puffs its way down the train tracks of veins, nerves and molecules.

In becoming the man that I am, I have chosen to live a semi-righteous path filled with shadows, skeletons, bones and crafted words pouring like flames from a rooftop in the wee hours of night.

The need becomes a hunger and the hunger becomes a lust and the lust becomes a pain and the pain becomes a desire and the desire becomes a love, a love which I have no cure for, like slaughtered caresses dripping the finalities high and dry.

I think of those quiet boyhood moments which are more or less gone, gone in the way of the milkman and the young newspaper delivery boy I once was.

My new age strikes a resemble to a scared child facing his first time alone and away from his parents. Details are sketchy and sometimes I think I don’t want to remember those times, as they are too painful to recall and too embarrassing to speak of.

A long time ago, I went rolling down the street talking to myself and sipping wine, hoping I would be noticed, but alas, I was a poor muttering bum in the nostalgic alleyways of the gone and forgotten. So many of us this time of year. How pathetic it seems and yet it is all true. Never a home for us. Perpetually roaming the streets and alleys in our minds hoping to find a heart and a little tender love.

Well. I guess what is said is true. I don’t say much here. I just watch and observe the madness all around me. Madness in the hall. Madness in the toilet. Madness in the closet. Madness in my bedroom. Madness on the telephone. Madness in America. The list goes on and on, but you get the picture.

My birth, a symbol of the furtive state of humankind, discriminatory chooses to protest against women, children, spacemen, Indians, cripples, coffee mugs, pills, poems, songs, pencils, records, teabags, newspapers scattered and piled high like corned beef on rye, sports, snobs, dust, fat cells, breathless teenagers, Christmas, Easter, St. Pat’s Day, fireworks, soldiers, politicians, Texas, Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and above all, Indiana, world capital of the lunatic bible-thumping Quaker-crunching, KKK- stumping, and basketball worship humping lowlife.

I once knew a man so deep he was drowned. Sex was his savior. He wanted it so bad; he could taste its fingertips in his mouth. No faith, no glory tells your sad, sad story.

Checkmate.

The Botox Frankenstein Poetry Series>Young Buddha-For Steven Escoffery

Well at last, once again it's a Friday, the great capper for this past shortened work week and time for another poem for my dear readers! Enjoy!

Young Buddha-For Steven Escoffery

I fell in love with the man and his ice cream cone
I felt my fate tested
Blessed faith restored
He got through my darkness
Knocked me off my trembling feet
The expulsion of truth,
Somewhere trouble don’t go
Where to fit in would fit out
Ain’t what he’s all about
Like the boys in norman rockwell
Painted all pretty and gay
The machines are off and running
Never made it up as I went along
Took weeks and weeks of practice
Before I was able to write a song
To the beat of meditation
Playing with empty orchestra
The heartfelt composer, waving baton
Leading zen-monk ghosts
In 4/4 time of “1-2-3,” “1-2’3.”
He wants him to hear the composition with out fear
Of failing to please his master
For whom the bell tolls
Inside the heart he was given at birth
Young buddha sits beside him
Praying for time to practice his skill
Deepened enlightenment
Weeping heavy rain

American Yarnprose>Winter Makes Mad Monsters And Great Storytellers Of Us All

Winter Makes Mad Monsters And Great Storytellers Of Us All, I Guess

It’s after midnight in the town of the blues.

Three afro-teens hail a cab on downtown Wabash Avenue and blurt out as the cabbie puts the taxi in park, leans over, unlocks his doors and pushes his right back door open, “Do you go to Cabrini?" (Cabrini Green-AKA the most famous of all Chicago housing complexes for the supposed impoverished afro population of the city)

The trio laughs and snortily giggles like English schoolgirls.

The downtown plazas illuminate faded Christmas memories like an out of tune Upright.

I am waiting on an underground platform, taking notes of solos, couples and groups’ conversations, piece-by-piece, bit-by-bit, bite-by-bite.

I have always wondered about the art of the public conversation. Talking publicly, yet the words are echoed privately between friends. Omissions. Public embarrassments. Achievements. Secret lives and loves. Lies and deceit. Gossips.

“Hey! Want a newspaper?” this guy in gray down puffered coat says to me.

“Wow, man! That paper is getting passed ‘round to everyone,” his companion remarks.

“Gives me something to write on (to use as a lean against),” I say, accepting the tabloided newssheet.

Reading ‘bout the new football league, his companion remarks. “You can be a stripper in a topless bar and then be a cheerleader the following Sunday.”

“You did it right, you did it wrong,” the drunken college frat boy babbles on while pointing to first, presumably his girlfriend, a tall beanpole with Barbie doll attributes, then to his best buddy.

“What is a groundhog anyway?” a gray-coated, blue-jeaned, pony-tailed blonde with nerdy glasses and gray clogs asks to a blue-coated, gray-panted, gym-shoed crewcutted boy, presumably her friend, leaning against the railcar door.

“Like Andy took 10 times,” the drunken frat boy shouts, while poking his best buddy madly like a meat hook through an animal carcass. Neon lights caress one another, playing, a ‘tag-you’re-it’ game, as the train raggles by.

Faces in the railcar are humble, tired and sullen. Some are dour. Others look disinterested. Still others are puzzled and pale. The people sitting behind me needed to die in order to live again, I thought. They need to immerse themselves in the lost land of ape life in drag, where Buddha meditates quietly in pink snow fog, bound and gagged.

“Holy shit! One dollar off,” a mister says to his missus. “I only say it (that) when I go to the men’s room,” he chortles, provoking a light “Hahaha,” response from his soul mate.

Snowflakes crochet beneath pale lamplights on empty pavement.

As I make my way down the steps, past the coffee shop and home to my apartment, I overhear a philosophical man speaking to a group of college boys walking the other way in a.m. 1:30 Chicago dusk.

“God created us in different skins, but he gave us the same souls.”

Winter makes mad monsters and great storytellers of us all, I guess.

The Ax Of God: You Be The Judge!

I’ve often wondered if there is such a phenomena as an “act of God.” Apparently there is, that is of course if you are God-fearing and believe everything you read in the Bible, Torah or other religious texts. There is however, an explanation for everything, even UFOs and ghosts.

In flood & disease-ravaged New Orleans and all points south and north of it, there’s at least one organization that believes Hurricane Katrina was an act of God, but it’s not the usual governmental legislative branch or non-for-profit agency.

Nope.

It’s one of those right-wing fringe Christian groups based out of the great United States city of brotherly love, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, of all places who call themselves “Repent America.”

Michael Marcavage, the director of the organization seems to think that God called upon the heavens to deliver this most catastrophic storm that slammed into the southern Gulf coast nearly nine days ago, killing hundreds and possibly thousands in the long run and also leaving thousands without food and shelter as a warning to the city of New Orleans itself, for hosting what Marcavage calls a tolerance for welcoming “the wickedness in their city for so long.”

This wickedness includes events like "Southern Decadence", an annual gay celebration which in 2004 attracted well over 125,000 partiers into French Quarters section of New Orleans. According to Marcavage on his website, this event “Has a history of filling the French Quarters section of the city with drunken homosexuals engaging in sex acts in the public streets and bars.”

Marcavage continues his rant by writing, “Last year, a local pastor sent video footage of sex acts being performed in front of police to the mayor, city council, and the media. City officials simply ignored the footage and continued to welcome and praise the weeklong celebration as being an exciting event."

He then emphasizes that Hurricane Katrina put a stopcock (plumbing device) into the annual sin-fest, as it happened to be scheduled between Wednesday, August 31, 2005 through Monday, September 5, 2005, the same time just as an act of God occurred.

Marcavage then accuses of the past three mayors of issuing city proclamations welcoming visitors the world over to their city for the annual festival of lewdness.

"Although the loss of lives is deeply saddening, this act of God destroyed a wicked city," says Marcavage. "From 'Girls Gone Wild' to 'Southern Decadence,' New Orleans was a city that had its doors wide open to the public celebration of sin. From the devastation may a city full of righteousness emerge," he declared.

Now of course we all know that New Orleans was also known for its annual Mardi Gras celebrations in which tens of thousands of drunken men would party in the streets to exchange plastic beads for women to expose their breasts and to engage in other sex acts.

That’s nothing new.

But Marcavage adds his own insult to injury when he claims that Mardi Gras inspired the now infamous "Girls Gone Wild" video series. Then he goes off the beaten path when he just happens to mention that “Furthermore, Louisiana had a total of ten abortion clinics with half of them operating in New Orleans, where countless numbers of children were murdered at the hands of abortionists.”

Now what does a supposed act of God have to do with abortion clinics anyway? Not much if you ask me. Actually, I don’t usually comment on abortion rights, seeing that I don’t have children or the ability to carry a child. If I did, I would, but since I don’t, I won’t.

Then he winds up his comparisons by stating that New Orleans “has always been known as one of the "Murder Capitals of the World" with a rate ten times the national average.” I don’t know where Macavage gets his facts, but the last time I looked at a chart for the top 100 murder capital of America, New Orleans was in the bottom half of the chart, making it miniscule and pale in comparison to the likes of Chicago (the murder capital of America in 2003), New York City, Los Angeles, Gary (Indiana), Detroit and a slew of others.

Marcavage concludes his diatribe by stating, “We must help and pray for those ravaged by this disaster, but let us not forget that the citizens of New Orleans tolerated and welcomed the wickedness in their city for so long. May this act of God cause us all to think about what we tolerate in our city limits, and bring us trembling before the throne of Almighty God.”

To me, that’s stretching this act of God a bit too far, but then I started thinking about it and wondered aloud to myself what other acts of God have I stumbled upon, witnessed or read about and soon they started to add up.

Since there have been so many acts of God, I’ve decided to narrow it down to four that have a significant meaning to me, though to others may not mean all that much.

(1). Was it an act of God when millions of Jews and other ethnic groups were exterminated by the Nazis during World War II?

(2). Was it an act of God when lifelong Cubs fan Steve Bartman grabbed a fly ball headed for the foul line meant for Moises Alou to catch during 2003 playoff game between the Chicago Cubs & the Florida Marlins, thereby adding to the world series curse?

(3). Was it an act of God on September 11, 2004, when my ex-landlady got herself into a car wreck down the street from her home after exchanging hateful words to me while I was moving out of her swampy basement apartment?

(4). Was it an act of God when Little Margie got into a morning car wreck about a month ago the night after she told me that she had been carrying on a affair with a married man for the past four years and I reacted both angrily and upset?

Nobody knows anything for certain, but I believe in the miracles and mysterious ways of Ha-Shem. Don’t you?

Little Margie's Demon

Little Margie had been living with a demon for the past four years, although in some respect it been a little over 20 years. This morning when I least expected it, Little Margie phoned to tell me, “I want you to walk away.”

I knew then it was over; the demon had won its coveted prize; Little Margie.

20 years is a long time to spend pursuing a demon, but there are women in this world who seemingly pursue passions that may never come to fruitarian. Such is the case with Little Margie.

“What do you mean by that?” I asked Little Margie. But I knew better than to ask. A cold shudder had already passed over my entire body and the rest of me just shut down, followed by a flow of silent tears.

In restless dreams I walked alone

Narrow streets of cobblestone,

'Neath the halo of a street lamp,

I turned my collar to the cold and damp

When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light

That split the night

And touched the sound of silence

My co-worker Cat, who sits next to me, knew something was wrong; she didn’t have to ask, as she had seen me behave like this a few times before. It was etched in my face; written on my skin, the grey hairs were popping out all over on the top of my head and beneath my chin within my beard.

Right away,
My hurt turns to anger for
I know what this means
There is nothing to look forward to
There is no future
When you’ve gone

Minute by minute I think and then ask myself aloud, “Why are you asking me to leave when it’s you that is really leaving?” There is no answer. Only the ripple of sounds in the air now gone soft.

I remember when I first met Little Margie a few weeks before summer. She told me to come over to meet her and she would look into my eyes and tell me if there was a match. After a brief walk around the neighborhood and then back up to her place, we talked and sang songs to each other. Mid-way through the conversation, I asked her if there was a match. There was, Little Margie said that night. Or so I thought.

Our times together were short and even though she revealed to me one night the demon that she had been pursuing her and vice versa, we moved ever forward for a time pursuing each other as we rolled along.

I’ve tried to keep my head above water this day, but after that morning phone call, the rest of my day was shot.

The demon, an older married man had pursued her on and off so it seems or maybe it was the other way around or maybe it seems like something completely different and I dreamed all of this up or maybe it’s just some terrible bad nightmare and all I’ve been doing is sleeping my life away…

I made it halfway through the day, when my good pal Twitchy came up to my desk, handed me a tiny screwdriver and said, “Here, you’ll need it for the Furby.” So I grabbed it, worked for another few hours and off I went to lunch mid-afternoon.

Inside my car, I screamed and cussed and ate my lunch and worked on the Furby, but not in that order. Everything was mixed in between, like slow intervals of time that gets messed up when you fuck with something that was so valuable at one time over several moments becomes worthless.

Kind of like Little Margie.

Her voice sounded so distant this morning; almost foreign and cold. Not the Little Margie I knew. Then again last week when I spoke to her before the weekend and mid-week, she seemed to be at a distance and told me to be patient with her.

I always was.

I knew something was wrong. Not sure what, but I knew something was going bad, like spoiled food when there’s a power outage and you have to order pizza instead.

There are days in your life when you know what to expect and what not to expect. This was one of those days. We all have demons that pursue us, sometimes we can beat them and other times we join them, even if we know in our hearts and minds that they are not what is best for us.

Demons taste good. Demons smell good. Demons feel good. So good sometimes that the feelings are overwhelming and we can’t hold back because the power is so strong. Sometimes older demons are hard to shake especially when you pursue a stringent lifestyle, while still following your goals and wanting to open your heart to others.

That’s Little Margie for certain.

I hold nothing back; no anger any longer. Just sadness. Sadness that will find its way through the slippery slopes of time and disappear into the abyss like so many others.

I disdain demons. I disdain demons like I disdain Adolph Hitler, Louis Farrakhan and every other evil person in the world. And there is now a new demon that overtook Little Margie that I truly disdain, but for now, they belong to the ages.

A little later, during my drive home, an old song of mine pops into my head, one of my earliest from the mid-1990s, I believe. Somehow it seems appropriate, given the situation that has fallen into my lap.

Coincidentally, the song title is called Green Eyes. The story behind it is simple; it weaves a little tale about someone, presumably a woman who is being pursued by a demon, who in the end is captured and held hostage by her own fears.

Walked in a valley of monsters
Where captive spirits run free
Where sentiment is the enemy
And fear conquers thee

Into prisoners we become
When we take away a life
A life no chance we dare to wear

Like a banner upon our chests
Torn to shreds, pretend it’s nothing more
And we get on with out lives

I walked in a valley with monsters
Where captive spirits ran free
Where sentiment is still the enemy
And fear conquered thee
And fear conquered thee
And fear conquered thee


As much anger and hurt and frustration I feel right now, as I bleed myself dry, I know that I’ll miss you greatly and something terrible Little Margie.

For beyond tonight, there is no hope left.

My Thoughts Regarding Labor Day: A Personal Message From The Mishegas Master

I’ve often wondered what the real purpose behind Labor Day is. And so today in a sort of belaboring way (no pun intended, dear readers), I’ve sought out the help of the Internet, which so willingly and freely gives of its time. I found this definition by Wikipedia, which I’ve placed in italics and quotations.

“Labor Day is a United States federal holiday that takes place on the first Monday of September. The origins of the American Labor Day can be traced back to the Knights of Labor in the United States and a parade organized by them on September 5, 1882 in New York City.”

“In 1884 another parade was held, and the Knights passed resolutions to make this an annual event. Other labor organizations (and there were many), but notably the affiliates of the International Workingmen's Association, many of whom were socialists or anarchists, favoured a May 1 holiday.”

“With the event of Chicago's Haymarket Riots in early May of 1886, president Grover Cleveland believed that a May 1 holiday could become an opportunity to commemorate the riots. Thus, fearing that it might strengthen the socialist movement, he quickly moved in 1887 to support the position of the Knights of Labor and their date for Labor Day.”

“Labor Day has been celebrated on the first Monday in September in the United States since the 1880s. The September date has remained unchanged, even though the government was encouraged to adopt May 1 as Labor Day, the date celebrated by the majority of the world. Moving the holiday, in addition to breaking with tradition, could have been viewed as aligning the U.S. labor movements with internationalist sympathies.”

“Labor Day is generally regarded simply as a day of rest, and political demonstrations are rare. Forms of celebration include picnics, fireworks displays, water activities, and public art events. Families with school-age children take it as the last chance to travel before the end of summer. Some teenagers and young adults view it as the last weekend for parties before returning to school.”

“An old custom prohibits the wearing of white after Labor Day. The explanations for this tradition range from the fact that white clothes are worse protection against cold weather in the winter to the fact that the rule was intended as a status symbol for new members of the middle class in the late 19th century and early 20th century.”

One would expect that some of the more traditional aspects of honoring laborers would survive, but oh no! Not in the world I have lived in for more than 43 years of my short life, I have watched with great alarm United States Presidents such as the late Ronald Reagan bust up the air traffic controllers union, thereby screwing up the entire system, among other things in his great presidency!

This was a president almost everyone was fooled by becase he was such a good actor. And this was only a small bit of the damage he wreaked upon the United States and abroad. I bet that most of you didn't know that Reagan wanted to reverse the law with regards to the presidency, in which a person currently only serves two terms.

Had Reagan reversed it, there would have been disasterous results for certain, as we've now only experienced through his funeral which appeared more like a Hollywood film production and like most Americans (myself excluded), even those who call themselves liberal, democratic or independent, ate it up and took it for face value, even if they criticized him in the past! That's pure hyprocrisy, but I'm straying just a touch.

Then of course we have both George Bush Sr. & Jr. who don’t seem to ever really want to help out the labor movement; they’re into union-busting and that’s just plain wrong. Think I'm kidding? Well, just go out and ask someone in a union, they'll tell it like it is!

Labor unions have kept America strong and responsible for its worth and value. But then again, people with money believe they do the talking anyway, right?

If President Bush or any other future president, U.S. congressman or senator really wants to help the labor movement, they really ought to raise the minimum wage from the current sad state of $5.15 an hour to a more liveable wage. Surviving on minimum wage an be lethal, if not also deadly.

And oh yes, I am sure that company bosses & owners are worried that higher wages means that they can’t afford anything, including health insurance. Well, that might be true, but I think it’s a line of lunacy unfurled by greediness when you think about the hundreds, thousands and in some cases, millions & billions of profits they’ve reaped from paying their workers so low a wage.

Some companies and their collective personnel won’t even give raises to their employees even after years of good service, claiming that it will break their bank, meanwhile spending money on themselves and their expensive cars, homes and golf clubs or spending it on frivolous items like lounge chairs or dictionaries to give to their employees near the end of each holiday season.

Happy Labor Day, dear readers!!!

The Botox Frankenstein Poetry Series>Fatboy

Well, once again it's a Friday, the fantastic capper for this past week and time for another poem for my dear readers! Enjoy!

Fatboy

Fatboy.
Fat!
Boy!
Boy! Is he fat! Fatter than a house!
Size circus tent. Fat ass, fat as in pleasingly plump
Overweight, heavyweight, heavy freight, heavy load, hot and heavy
He’s so heavy....
He ain’t heavy; he’s my brother....
fatfatfatfatfatfatfatfatfat
Can you pinch an inch, Fat-boy?
Awww, look he has leftover babyfat
Pig! Piggo! Piggie!
Everywhere, there’s lot’s of piggies...
Oinker!

From size 32 to 42 in a matter of years
Held hostage by my own worst fears
Hey! Look at the fat kid run!
Haw-Haw! Look at the fat pig go!
Hey tubby! Hey chubby!

Overeating through diets
And even though the label says lite
Just like the beer you drink
The popcorn you chew
And the meat you eat
Chowing down on half the calories doesn’t count
Especially if you hoard more than the proportions
More lite is fat, now just imagine that

I’m a full-figured man looking for a mega-ton woman
Because that’s all I ever get
No slim girl have I ever met
Has ever been that nice and it all ends up
To calling me fatso
Time after time after time
Hey! Are you livin’ off the fat of the land?
Jumbo the elephant, Jumbo the elephant....
Elephant-tushie Sidney

All I ever heard was slim and trim at age 16.
Trimmed corned beef. Dietetic Jell-O.
Dietetic chocolate birthday puddings with a candle in the middle
At age 26, when my mom asked me
What is it most that I would like?
Mark my words, make no mistake
A chocolate-frosted candle-glowing
Calorie-inflated birthday cake

Society thumbs their noses
At a pretty fat girl holding roses
Unlike the skinny fashion whore
Who can slip off her skirt faster
Like some slim ballet master
Been Fatso-Ghosted,
And Fats-Wallered
Shoved around and Fatty-Arbuckled
Had my share of Minnesota Fats
And all those stupid references to fat-cats
Tired of those jokesters who ask me
How long have you been pregnant?
Or
How unhealthy you look.

Just for once, I sure wish I could be someone’s teddy bear
Oh, to be loved by someone who doesn’t care what I look like
And doesn’t believe that it’s a sin
That I have so much stretched skin
Fat? So!

Doubt In The Hills Of My Assassinated America

I’ve been having a lot of doubts lately, doubts in these here hills of the Americas where I live, breathe, squat and swallow. And it only seems to be getting worse. It seems to me that only now the rest of the United States is catching onto the fact that our country are going to hell in a hack and has no chance of getting the redeeming qualities back, unlike what the Chief Executive Officer of the USA who lives on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue keeps on reassuring us all otherwise.

The premise is this; there’s an unfounded war going on in two foreign countries that have never harmed us, although the entire 911 episode seems to indicate otherwise, yet I am still having serious doubts that the attacks made to the World Trade Center (Twin Towers) in the financial district of New York City were aimed at us entirely or perhaps aimed instead toward the family of George Bush, whose connections with oil and murderous deeds raise plenty of suspicion.

Let me back up a bit first; in order to get the economy going again, then President-elect George W. Bush Jr., back in the early years of the 21st century gave us a tax break; sent those of us who qualified an extra $300 or $600, thinking that most people would spend it, thereby lifting up the economy. He was wrong of course, as most people like myself saved it for a rainy day.

Then 911 hit and the economy seemed to go into a tailspin. Lots of folks were laid off including my brother Louie, companies went bankrupt and a general mood of paranoia set into the country. Still, everyone wondered what was coming next?

There was a promise by Bush to find those weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and to get rid of the evil terrorists that so brutally attacked our country just like they did on December 7, 1941 in Pearl Harbor. But of course, those times back then it was a real threat of war, not a small-scale outfit so Bush could appear as if he knew what he was doing.

But he didn’t then. And he didn’t find those WMDs either. So, he decided to invade Iraq anyway and make Iraq his, for after all Bush likes to play cop-dictator just as much as the next world leader. And he promised he would find Saddam Hussein too; he was “Gonna smoke ‘em outta his hole.” Besides that way, he could avenge the entire act of getting Hussein for his father who in a previous timetable during his presidency and another small-scale war had let him go.

Sounds like a wrestling tag-team doesn’t it?

Yet still, where was the guy that was behind 911 attacks, Osama Bin Laden? Where had he disappeared to? Why did Bush let him stray? Or did he have him at some point and just let him go? Nobody knows for certain. Or perhaps ever will.

Then the war dragged on. And on. And on. And on. And on. Protesters demonstrated nearly everyday in the beginning of the war, but it dwindled, perhaps a few protests were scheduled here and there, but nothing in between.

Then in 2004, for some strange reason, after a good and long and well-fought political campaign season between incumbent Bush & Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry, including three debates in which Bush looked as good as O.J. Simpson did when he kept telling reporters that someone else killed his ex-wife and not him, Bush was re-elected president.

And he continued on with the terror war; kept on putting more and more money into a losing battle. When asked if he had a target date for pulling out, he seemed to have no clue as to when that might be. And his friendly staff all stood by his side, not offering us any concrete answers. No news is good news, right?

Bush kept saying how the economy was turning around, how better it was becoming. From a personal standpoint he was a boldfaced liar, as through my position in the world as a throat-singing industrial spy, I knew that the economy was moving anywhere fast.

Unemployment was going up again. More manufacturing companies were going out of business, getting swallowed up by giant corporations or the operations were being moved overseas because of cheap labor.

Then gasoline prices started to get out of hand, up to the point today where they are now at least $3.19 a gallon!!! My own state’s attorney’s office is finally getting off their collective half-moons and investigating price-gouging; it’s about fucking time! Then Hurricane Katrina hit and BOOM! There is true chaos in the Gulf region of the United States; dead bodies piling up from New Orleans, Louisiana to Biloxi, Mississippi.

The spread of putrid disease and violence breaking out over the smallest of things, including a fight between two siblings in Mississippi that resulted in the brother shooting his sister in the head over a bag of ice! One million homeless people and we’ve only gone halfway through the hurricane season.

Rising gas prices without stopping anytime soon. Wars in Iraq & Afghanistan with no set goal in mind to pull out and bring our boys back home. Over 1,800 have died for absolutely no reason other than the flimsy excuse that a proud commander-in-chief like Bush telling Americans he’s doing it for freedom. Whose freedom though…Americans or his buddies that run the oil refineries?

So now we’re in a true mess, what does one do? It’s like every bad dream that I could have ever imagined and it gets worse every single day, period.

This is the man who was re-elected to lead our country out of despair and look what happens…no surprise there. For those of you who re-elected Bush, I truly hope you are happy with the way our country is being run straight into the ground, I hope you’re proud of what you did and what little money we have left that is being systematically drained for a losing war. Thanks to those of you who have assassinated my hopes and dreams for a better United States.

Pardon me for a few brief moments as I recite the Pledge of Allegiance to re-affirm my beliefs in my America.

I pledge alienation
To the fag
Of the United Snakes of non-existent Amerikkka
And to the Republican for which it stands
One nation
Under “Bob”
(Split open like a pea pod
Testing by some scientist
To see if we as a nation can swallow it whole)
For freewheeling libido lawsuits and unjustifiable means to and end for none

Whew! I feel so much better now.