old ’un
Category: Writing and Poetry

Seven Days of  Nazi Boxcars

It's strange, the slide
from fields of mental flowers
to fearsome ghetto,
the sound of boots in the night,
the crash of doors
falling inside the head,
the drawing of
memory curtains to hide behind,
the tug of awful hands
dragging from the land
of the sane down
dirty streets to
loading chutes,
soul ushered aboard
ragged boxcar with the
rifle butt of regret,
the stinking press of failure,
the screeching doors
of disappointment,
and then
the ride of fearful wonder,
careening and rocking
further into darkness,
salvation found
only at the end of the run,
a fierce captain with
mad-dog teeth 
eyes vacant as
hell's cupboard,
a banker's grin
painted on plaster face,
directing with swagger stick
the route to take,
a cool shower beneath
dry faucets,
a refreshing breath and
fresh clothes for Paradise
tomorrow a memory
never made.

10:59 PM - 4 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

The Andromeda Pain
Category: Writing and Poetry

I was looking forward to A&E's four-hour presentation of a new version of "The Andromeda Strain," based on a 1969 novel by Michael Crichton. Having read the book and seen the 1971 film, I expected the new version would be tip-top, because of all the special effects and CGI available today. And, the cast was fairly impressive as well.

To say I was disappointed would be an understatement equivalent to saying the Grand Canyon is a big gully or that Sean Penn has an ill temper. Of course, in this age when it's hip for liberal Hollywood to attack the government and military at every opportunity, perhaps I was a fool for expecting anything but the same low treatment in this two-night mess.

I know I was a fool for wasting four hours on this poorly-written flick, which had plot holes large enough to accommodate a good-sized 18-wheeler. Shucks, I think George Clooney's big ego could have squirmed through several of them. I'm not going to waste time detailing the dumb contradictions, but it's playing several more times and if you have four hours you'd like to dedicate to oblivion, take a look and get a few laughs yourself. It's more fun that watching mold form on the shower curtain, but not by much.

The original film had to do with a mishap in space, in which a meteor struck a satellite and infected it with the deadly Andromeda virus. This time around we're lead to believe it could possibly be an evil government plot behind the disaster. Maybe American, maybe North Korean; it's all about moral equivalency, you see, as we're just as dastardly as the North Koreans, at least in the mind of the alleged screenwriter. Or perhaps I should say the alleged mind of the alleged screenwriter, as there's no concrete evidence a mind exists in that gourd.

However, you do have all the elements of a story required to make acceptable "entertainment" today (with the exception of blatant and gratuitous nudity): evil government employees and elected officials; corrupt military officers who have no qualms about sending out hit men to take care of those who know too much; a handful of dedicated scientists who try to sound erudite while muttering poorly written script lines and frowning a lot as the unknown terror grows in the underground lab; and, of course, a heroic news reporter/drug addict (who leaves his stay in drug rehab when he gets the tip) dedicated to finding the truth and exposing all the rottenness that is the United States government and military, despite all their efforts to kill him.

Of course, the good and true scientists find the answer at the end and destroy the malignant substance, even as it has devoured half of Utah and a couple divisions of soldiers and is en route west to munch on Los Angeles. Too bad the corrupt general saw the light and realized how bad he and his government were, because it bought him a bullet in the brain from one of the black ops killers who were thicker than fleas on a coon dog's back and definitely not going to let anybody tell the truth. But certainly the brave lead scientist did snitch to the press at the end, as we knew he would.

By the end point, I didn't care. I was rooting for Andromeda, hoping it would clot the blood of all those fools as it apparently had clotted the brains of producers Ridley and Tony Scott, vainglorious creators of this cinematic mess.

My brain was near clotted at the conclusion, beaten and screaming for relief like Roberto Duran's kidneys following Ray Leonard's well-applied leather body shampoo lo those many years ago. All I could do was stumble blindly toward the wine jug screaming no mas! no mas! and wonder why I didn't drain it BEFORE watching this crap, which would have been the smart way to fly, half brain dead and semi-comatose.

Course, I've never been known for good judgment.

5:02 PM - 7 Comments - 10 Kudos - Add Comment

another oldie but not goodie, circa late 80s
Category: Writing and Poetry

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE GHOST OF JACK KEROUAC

The brick is still here, Jack,
red but growing tired and faded.
The road still stretches on
but it is plied mainly by
sad bandits & malcontents
looking not for a good dream,
but for a buck or two
to take them on to another
buck or two.

Some of us have died
although we still sit upright
and pretend
to be among the living,
we peck our typers & dream of
Mexican nights & soft senoritas
& the great novel lying like
healing balm in
the land behind
our foreheads.

We are sad old shits Jack
& you are well off to be
free of us,
no matter what land
you roam
or what road
you call your own.

Some of us found
the ride too rough
& went away, with
whatever conveyance
was handy
at the moment:
drugs, firearms, cars,
it didn’t matter
what form salvation
took so long as
a final new destination
was found.

Some of us
just walked with
a knapsack packed with
wrinkled clothes
& a few pieces
of paper made holy by
the nights suffering
over them,
leaving behind little but
seminal towels
of past lovers
in dank corners
& dreams of
something that might
have been
but never was
and never will be.

Something
that could have
been sweet stuck to
the roofs of
our brains like
sick peanut butter.

The government
is still here, Jack,
you still stick a penny in
the slot & peanuts
fall out,
except now it’s
a dollar & the peanuts
are stale & nobody
gives a damn,
because the clowns
who rule
don’t pretend to be
anything but clowns,
and the circus is dead
and gone.

If everything has changed,
nothing really has,
so don’t miss what you
left, because it’s all
just like you left it, 

if maybe a little different.

1:16 PM - 4 Comments - 14 Kudos - Add Comment

old poem
Category: Writing and Poetry

slow dance in real time

there are days when i feel useless as a limp dick,
trapped here in redneck land of
fat cops, rock’n’roll hootchie coo,
cold beers & hot shots of kentucky whiskey,
& a graveyard full of the better people around town.

my soul is small-town, my brain tuned down to
the imperfection of the place i am,
here on the edge where the alluvial plains begins
to turn toward the foothills, short of the
cumberland plateau, short of reality, short
of humanity itself.

1:34 PM - 4 Comments - 10 Kudos - Add Comment

Chapter of novel in progress

[First draft, prequel to Parallel Blues, unnamed]

Claudie Longwood straightened up and stretched, looking down the long furrow to the end of the field. He took the faded red bandanna out of his back pocket and wiped the sweat from his brow before more of it could run into his eyes. His back and arms ached from using the hoe, but that was nothing new, he had learned to live with such pain years before. A turn around the well pump, a good supper and a little sleep and he'd be good as new.

The row look about 200 feet long to the end and the weeds were so thick in the young cotton that it was hard to tell one from the other. And there were two more just like it to go.

It was closing in on 3 p.m. Claudie could tell by the way that his shadow angled off to the southeast. There wouldn't be any getting off early this Saturday, he thought. He'd be lucky to get done by 6 and, by the time he got cleaned up and into town, it would be close to 7:30. By that time, all the gals would be paired off with somebody for the evening and everybody would be half lit.

"Hell with it," he said aloud to the broad field surrounding him. "Doan reckon I gotta go to town ever' Sat'dy night."

Truth was, he had his eye on Mary Larkins. She'd come over to Mississippi from somewhere in Alabama and moved in where her Aunt Bessie on the old Campton place. She was a mysterious and pretty woman, black as a raven's wing and with teeth white as sweet milk. She always wore colorful calico dresses and when she walked her broad rump rolled in a way that interested all the boys.

Truth was, Claudie was sweet on her, even if she had given him little more than a glance. Some folks said she was a "mojo woman," that she carried doodads in a tobacco sack under her clothes and she could work up spells with roots and such, evil or good, depending upon the situation. Some of the boys had started calling her "Root Mary," because of the rumor.

Claudie did not know if he believed any of that stuff, but he sure had more than a passing interest in what she had under that bright calico dress besides 'baccer sacks. 'Course, she was in her thirties, according to some of the other gals, which made her about a dozen years older than Claudie. Some gals liked the younger boys and some liked more seasoned men. He did not know which she was, but he meant to find out soon as he could.

He went back to his hoe, whacking away at the weeds amongst the cotton shoots. It was best to keep busy at such times, made the minutes pass quicker and took away from a long, hot day of work. Plus, he didn't want his daddy or Mista Boots to sneak up and spot him lollygagging with work still to be completed.

Not that Mista Boots had the reputation of sneaking around and trying to catch his field hands not working. No, Claudie had never heard of that happening. Many black folks did not like Mista Boots, in fact hated him. Everybody knew he was behind the evil sheriff and ran things and a lot of folks hated all of them, all the whites. Fact was, Boots Ralston had always been fair to Claudie and his family, leastways when it came to being honest with the crop shares and the credit. The same could not be said of some white landowners-or even some of the few black, Claudie suspected.

Claudie did not plan to spend his life bending over hot soil, fighting for a bare living. Nosiree. He had his guitar and his singing and he was getting good with both, according to what some told him. He was not good as Robert yet, but then Robert had a start on him. Nevertheless, he would keep playing whenever he could and, before you knew it, he'd be the one all the gals were eyeing at the joints.

"Mark my word," Claudie said to the last half of the last row, standing straight again and bringing the bandana to his face. "Claudie Longwood Junior gonna be somebody." He laughed aloud at that, wondering if the sun had finally gotten to him.

Claudie had considerably underestimated the duration of his chore. It was almost 7:00 when he headed to the house, dog-tired. His legs wobbled on the sloping path from the field up through the thicket behind the house. The humidity shot up several more notches in the dampness held in by the woods and he almost gasped for breath in the thick heat. Damn, why did a man deserve such labor? What had he done in another life to cause him to be here suffering as he was?

He stopped at the well and wet himself down with the cool water in the fading day, pumping the handle with his head under it. The cold water cascaded over his broiled skin in a way that was so painful it was delicious. Every muscle in his body ached and he found it difficult to stand up straight after a day bent before the hoe.

"Boy, you done wore yo'self plumb out," his mother fretted when he went in through the back door into the kitchen. She said it sternly, like his mama said everything, but the look in her eyes told him she was worried. "I reckon you done worked all Sat'dy."

"I'm awright, Mama," he said. "Jus' hungry. I sho am wore out."

"Well, I saved you some supper," she said, turning back an oilcloth on the table to reveal a heaping plate of food. "Near 'bout lost a arm with all the snatchin' an' grabbin', them boys eat like a pack of hogs. But I managed to set you some aside."

Claudie dug into the beans and potatoes, fatback and cornbread. All he had for dinner was a little piece of ham in a biscuit and he was starving.

Claudie was used to common grub because it was all he had ever known. When times were especially good, which was not often, they would have pork chops or pork cutlets and rarely a piece of beef roast. They raised a few hogs along, but much of what came from the killings went to sale for extra cash money. And they had chickens, but the consumption of those was confined to Sundays when the preacher came to eat.

And eat he did, old Brother Dobbins. Claudie wondered about how the Bible spoke against gluttony and how Brother Dobbins would almost fight over the last biscuit on the table. He wondered what God thought about a man like Brother Dobbins and his hoggish ways, snatching the last drumstick from the hand of a hungry child. The preacher be a good man, but he got a failin' fo' food, his mama had said.

Claudie had almost said something when his mama said that. In his circles, folks knew that Brother Dobbins liked women more than food. He'd been seen many times coming and going to the home of one of those gals down in The Bottom, a gal that was said to sell meat with hair on it out the back door. He could not understand how his mama and daddy-daddy especially-had not heard about that, or why they did not notice how the preacher looked at his sister, Junie, when he came for dinner. He had that same lustful, sweaty look on his face as he had when he gazed at a golden fried pulley-bone.

Junie, just before turning a woman at 15, noticed it too, but she did not mention it to her folks. She did tell Claudie.

Claudie was not sure he would really kill the old preacher, but he had little doubt that he would beat the man within an inch of his life if he laid a finger on his sister. He was not a violent man and tried to stay out of trouble, but he had been in a few scraps around the juke joints. So far, it had all been knuckles and feet, no guns or strait razors or knives, and he had won every encounter handily.

'Course, he hadn't tied up with somebody like Big Sweat Dawkins either, something he didn't want to do if he could help it. Big Sweat was bad news when he got mad, and it didn't take a lot to get him there. Claudie had seen him whip three and four big men at once without raising much more than his normal sweat, which was profuse enough to earn him his nickname.

Claudie's daddy came in through the back door just as he was mopping up the last of the tater juice with a piece of hoecake.

"You get 'at piece uh work done, boy?" he asked. Claudie noticed the old man had on his good clean bibs, so he had been home a while.

"I did, Daddy, got it plumb to the end. Y'all get finished?"

"Nah, we like one mo' day. I does, anyhow. I puttin' Ted back on the hoe come Monday an' I do the barn work myself. He ain't no help, jus' gets in the way."

Ted was Claudie's younger brother, just 16 and not "work brittle" as the old folks said. Claudie just called him what he was: lazy.

"Well, it a damn shame Mista Boots put y'all workin' on a white man's barn, what with all this hoein' to do," said Claudie.

"You hush yo' mouth," his mother said. "Lawd knows you ain't been taught to talk like that. It them bars you runnin' in, they ruinin' yo' soul!"

"Aw, Mama," said Claudie. "I be sorry."

"Well, ol' man Tabor OK fo' a white man," said Claudell Sr. "And Mista Boots wanted us all to help 'cause his barn burn. They claims it was a nigra what burnt his barn."

"They always claims it was a nigra done this'n that," Claudie replied. "They blames a nigra fo' ever' bad thang what happens, seem to me like."

"You watch yo' mouth, boy," his mother said. "You get round talkin' 'bout white folks an' that shuff be stretchin' yo' neck, I tell you. You hush up."

After supper, it was still daylight and too early for bed. Claudie walked down to the little thicket behind the house, with its open place beside a small creek. The scrub trees there grew together into what looked like a tunnel of foliage and there was a stump about the right height for sitting. It was mostly quiet there, except for the faint sound of the creek running over rocks, or sometimes when the wind moved the leaves.

Claudie liked to go there alone just to sit and think. Sometimes, he would take his guitar and practice on it. Other times, he'd tote his fishing cane and catch a few perch and bluegill, which were plentiful. However, this day he did neither, being far too tired.

He couldn't figure out what life was supposed to be about. It seemed to him that things just worsened all the time, nothing ever got better. As a child, he had paid no attention to anything but playing and having fun-that is, until he got big enough to do serious chores. He didn't realize that he was much different from anybody else because all he associated with were other people like himself, poor blacks. He saw white people and understood in some elemental way that most of them seemed to be better off than most blacks, but that didn't mean anything. It just seemed to be the natural order or things.

Now, he knew different. Things didn't happen that way naturally, no. They happened that way because folks made them happen that way. And usually that was white folks.

Claudie didn't hate white people as a rule. Some of them were evil, certainly, but some of them seemed OK. Billy Prather was OK, even if his brother, Rube, was an evil man and a big wig in the Klan. Billy loved music and he spent a lot of time hanging around the black juke joints. And Billy wasn't much better off than any black person Claudie knew, other than maybe for skin color and the difference that meant. His folks were dirt poor white trash. His daddy had done time for stealing chickens and hogs, and some claimed he was guilty of barn burning and worse. Most blacks would get a kind word from the average white before any member of the Prather clan, with the possible exception of Billy.

Claudie realized there were many things he just didn't understand. Maybe that had to do with his age or maybe there were things nobody ever really learned the truth of. The old folks believed that life was just a prelude to what came next, and if that was so then nothing made much difference. Life was mostly about suffering for salvation, going on through all the doom and gloom in hopes of pie in the sky in the great by and by.

Maybe they were right, but Claudie had his doubts. It seemed to him that a god that could invent the world and the wonders of the heavens wouldn't be so small minded to expect his creations to abide senseless suffering for a possible dream. It didn't make sense that if God's son had freely given himself up to the suffering of the cross in order to wash away the sins of mankind, God would hold it against everybody and extract a pound of flesh from them.

"God gotta be bigger'n that," Claudie muttered to himself, there on the stump in the small clearing by the creek in the dying day.

He ambled back to the house, worn out in body and spirit. The old corn shuck mattress on the sapling frame cot in the lean-to was hard and lumpy as ever, but he was too tired to care. Sleep ran him down like a car too long on the rail crossing.

8:27 AM - 2 Comments - 8 Kudos - Add Comment

Train Ride to Hell -- A Memoir
Category: Writing and Poetry

TRAIN RIDE TO HELL

Have you ever done something and then realized the moment you did it that you had made a huge and probably irreversible mistake?

I have. The first time it really mattered was in August 1958 when, as a 17-year and two-week old fool, stricken with patriotic fervor and an irresistible urge to "Join the Navy and see the world!" I raised my right hand and gave my soul to Uncle Sam.

Of course, I wasn't the only fool in that drab federal office building in Nashville that day. There were a number of other yahoos lined up on either side of me and they had screwed the pooch as surely as had I.

We should have known by the shabby downtown hotel they put us up in the night before and the doubtful quality of the diner where we exercised our meal chits that something was amiss. Surely globetrotting bon vivants expect finer quarters and better food? But certainly everyone we came into contact with knew we were greenhorns, there was no getting around that. I couldn't help but remember the sardonic smile of the old black elevator operator who informed us the night before that he could line us up with some "good pussy" if we had ten bucks to spare.

Good black gal pussy, she'll screw you right through the flo', the old dude promised, his gold front tooth gleaming in the pasty yellow light inside the dirty elevator.

It sounded like heaven, but a spare ten spot was beyond the budget of a bunch of teenage dip shits who had left home with the notion of living by the good graces of the Big Uncle in Washington. If any of us had any sex that night it was via Mother Thumb and her four daughters, the old gals that never let us down, barring severe damage to the spinal cord or an industrial accident involving the loss of both hands.

But before I get too far I should back a little water and straighten something out. I said before that I was filled with patriotic fervor when I decided to enlist. That's not exactly true.

The truth is, it was either join the navy or return to high school for my senior year. School didn't sound too good, since I had an impressive tendency to get in a lot of trouble. In fact, the lard-assed old principal had made a vocation of busting my ass with the large leather strap he kept in his top filing cabinet drawer at the least provocation. I had, during one especially brutal flailing, kicked a handle off his filing cabinet, which didn't bode well for my ass. The bastard made me cry that day, something I've never forgiven him for. Here 41 years later, I still look forward to pissing on his grave someday, if he ever gives up and dies.

I went home that day with my jeans sticking to my bloody ass, but it wasn't all for naught. My dad, who didn't hesitate to kick my ass whenever the mood struck him whether I needed it or not, was infuriated. He called the principal and told him that if I showed up in that shape again he'd personally come and kick the principal's ass all over his office.

That was the last whipping I ever got from the bald old bastard, who'd obviously heard that my old man was a pipeliner and a drinker. As much as the sadistic old shit loved to punish, he must have feared the old man more. I suppose some other poor devil wound up with all the wrath old Lard Ass had in store for me. After that, I just sort of smirked at him when I saw him looking longingly at my shopworn ass, like "I dare you, asshole!" He'd snarl back, but that was the extent of it.

The truth is I hadn't planned to go off to the service alone. My buddy Wayne Wheat was going with me, we were going in on the "Buddy Plan." The recruiter had told us that on the plan, we'd be sent to boot camp and then on to a duty station together. It would be like having a part of the old hometown along with us, some connection to the home sod.

Well, it didn't work out because Wayne failed the written tests. We met the recruiter at the post office downtown, where he had a little office space. He was all spiffy in his sparking white uniform, his white hat raked down at a cocky angle above his right eye. He looked like a guy who had been around some, had ridden boats across the big blue and screwed some slant-eyed gals in Japan and China. He said as much, he made the Navy sound like just about as close to heaven as we were likely to ever get.

You'll love it, guys. Three squares a day, a clean rack to sleep in and you'll see the world. There's a world full of pretty women out there who love a man in uniform, you'll get so much pussy you won't know what to do with it! You'll go all over the world and you'll love it all!

Well, the guy was a lying son of a bitch, and then again he wasn't. The Navy does give you three squares a day and a clean fart sack, but you bust your hump for it. You do see a lot of the world and you get mucho pussy, but it's not a free lunch.

Wayne flunked the test the first time and tried it again about two weeks later. He still had no luck, so I had to decide if I wanted to go it alone or forget it. I decided what the hell, nothing ventured nothing gained. Or maybe I was just thinking about all those ports and all that sweet pussy waiting out there.

The recruiter drove me to Nashville. We stopped in Waverly and picked up a guy named Maxie Wayne Ellison, AKA "Cucumber" and "Red." We gave him the Cucumber nickname later after hearing some of his tales about having sexual intercourse with cucumbers and watermelons. He was called Red because of his carrot colored hair.

Red "Cucumber" Ellison was a goofy-looking son of a bitch and a goofy son of a bitch in fact. Many months later, he contracted the chancroides over in WestPac, picked up the bad bug from some Japanese whore. Red was not caught in the "short arm" inspection after debarkation, a somewhat embarrassing situation wherein we were all marched through the amidships torpedo room and forced to "skin it back and milk it down" for the Doc, who sat on a stool with his flashlight. Doc was looking for claps, for the telltale gleam of pus on the head of Old Dobbin, and spotting it meant at least an automatic 30-day restriction for medial reasons.

Red's evil microscopic bugs were inside and gnawing their way out, but they hadn't made any real sign yet. Later, holes would erode all through the head of his dick so that it looked like a lawn sprinkler when he took a leak. Old Red, fearful of the mandatory restriction for anyone with venereal disease, didn't go to the dispensary for a long time. Some of the old salts, guys who obviously had little medical training, told him that dipping his wick in fuel oil would cure the chancres in no time. These were the same kind of guys who told me as a child that I could catch a bumblebee in my hand without getting stung if I held my breath. Red tried that for a while, to no avail. By the time he broke down and sought medical help, gangrene had reportedly set it.

Old Red left the boat one day and we never saw him again. Word leaked back that they had been forced to amputate his penis and had sent him home with a medical discharge. I don't know how true that scuttlebutt was, but it put the fear of the Lord in the rest of us! Not enough to keep us from getting clap certainly, but fear anyway.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. We're back in Nashville and have just put our hands down after becoming members of the United States Navy. Earlier that day we'd been through the horrible physical exam, which could have been designed by the Marquis de Sade. We were poked and prodded, bled and our assholes were thoroughly examined. We walked around in our underwear for hours, feeling like stupid jerks, trying not to notice that the next guy had a dick about as big as your forearm, while your own puny member tried to back up somewhere inside your belly. We did the "turn your head and cough" routine while a doctor stuck a finger up our nut-sack; one guy coughed directly into the bones' face and got one hell of a ass-chewing for it.

Okay, we're going to clean this space up, said this officious looking asshole about two seconds after our swearing-in hands dropped back to our sides. There are brooms and mop and buckets in that closet over there! Let's turn to and get this place swept and mopped!

It was my first experience with a mop, but it wouldn't be my last. For the next couple of years, mops and brooms and buckets would become mine constant hated companions, because Uncle Sam's Navy was clean if nothing else.

They put us up in the Andrew Jackson Hotel for one more night, with word that we'd be leaving out for boot camp the following morning. We were all "ordered" to stay in and get a good night's sleep, allowed only to go up the street a block or so to the shabby little diner with its chubby little waitress and so-so food.

We all got together and talked things over that night. There were Red and Jerry O. "Pig" Matthews, J. D. Meadows, Buddy Steve Daniels, William G. Edgerly, J. L. Teets and myself.

Matthews and Edgerly were from Memphis; Pig Matthews was a natural "scrounge," the kind of guy who disliked bathing to the degree that it finally got him kicked out of the Navy. Edgerly was an okay guy, but he looked a little like what most of us would have called a "sissy rich boy." Buddy Steve was from Chattanooga and a big sucker, about six-three. He was about 19 but looked much older, with his big, broad acne-pocked face-- a fact that came in handy later when we managed to scrape up enough dough for a little drinking material. J. D. Meadows was the smallest guy in the group--which naturally meant that the powers that be put him in charge of the rest of us for the trip to boot camp. Teets was a surly, ignorant backwoods asshole from somewhere back up in the mountains, one of those inbred and unfriendly mountain people who doesn't like anybody he's not kin to, although he's bound to be kin in some degree to almost everyone on the mountainside and surrounding hollow of his own domain.

We had not been given a clue as to where we were heading or how we would get there, but we all assumed it would be the training center at Great Lakes near Chicago and we would fly; I'd never been aboard a plane before and I was looking forward to the experience with a mixture of awe and trepidation. There were also Naval training centers in San Diego and in Bainbridge, Maryland at the time, but practically everybody from the South wound up at Great Lakes.

Of course, it did not work out as we assumed, we learned shortly after we were rousted out at about daybreak the following morning. We were bound for San Diego, California and we were going by choo choo train, not airplane; which mean the difference between a few hours on the trip and a couple of days and nights.

While I had been looking forward to riding an airplane for the first time and had that expectation dashed, I was nonetheless thrilled by our final destination. The farthest I'd been west was the four-corners area of New Mexico, where I lived for about four or five months in the winter of 1955 when my father was pipelining. California was the mystical land you saw on "Dragnet," the home of the movie stars. I envisioned it as some golden land where beautiful people lounged around swimming pools, sipping tall, frosty drinks and plucking ripe fruit off nearby trees when hunger struck. And out on the warm, palm-lined streets guys like Joe Friday walked around with Camels hanging out of the corners of their mouths, fedoras cocked at a jaunty angle, characters out of a Raymond Chandler novel looking for bad cats to dust with the .38 Special snug in holsters under their armpits.

Early in the morning we were all bussed down to the train depot. Meadows, as I said the smallest guy there, even smaller than I, had been given a stack of big, brown manila envelopes, our "traveling orders." We had all been told that he was in charge of us and that if any of us created a problem there would be hell to pay when we arrived in "Dago."

We hadn't been under way long until Big Buddy Steve set Meadows straight.

"Lookie here, J. D.," he said, stretching up to his full six-feet three, "ain't nobody tells me shit. So you just mind them fuckin' envelopes and let the rest of us fend for ourselfs."

"Yeah," Pig Matthews offered, "fuckin' aye. I don't play no shit with nobody and I don't take no shit neither."

Pig was not a big fellow but he was stocky at the shoulders and you could tell he could take care of himself. We found out just how well later, when a bunch of guys in the barracks gave him a "scrub party" after he got gigged on inspection for the umpteenth time. Pig wound up scrubbed with the big rough brushes we used to wash our clothes on a daily basis, but it took about 15 of them to do it and he kicked several asses in the process.

J. D., who was a nice guy in fact, sort of blanched at all this attention and threats and shook his head.

"Boys, I don't want no problems, y'all just try not to get into nothin' 'cause they'll have our ass when we get there for sure," he said.

J. D. did not have any cause for concern for quite a while because initially most of us just got into the train ride. On that first leg of the trip, we had our own sleeper car, with little rooms that had seats that folded down into bunks. I got teamed up with Pig, who I'd kind of taken a shine to despite his grubby appearance; he was one of those guys with the greasy "jelly-roll" duck's ass hairdo and with his shirt collar turned up in back like Elvis. He kept the top two buttons of his shirt undone so his hairy chest showed through. He looked like the kind of guy who toted a switchblade--which he was, as we later discovered after we got hold of some booze in Amarillo.

"My girlfriend likes the way I smell," he offered. "Said it made me smell manly." Pig grinned broadly and I could see that his upper two front teeth were laying in there on a partial plate. "Got the sumbitches knocked out in a rumble," Pig offered. Being from a small burg, and not a city like Memphis, I was duly impressed. I'd been in a few group fights with boys from Gleason and Huntingdon, but never a real "rumble."

I had taken one train ride before but I did not remember much of it. That happened in about 1943, when I was two or so. My paternal grandfather was in the hospital in Nashville. My father, mother, baby sister Joyce and I all caught a train the 110 miles up there to see him. Pappaw was recovering from a gunshot wound to his chest, a self-inflicted wound. It came on the heels of an earlier suicide attempt in which Pappaw dived down a well. One of his neighbors saw him take the suicide plunge and fished him out.

Pappaw recovered from the gunshot wound but apparently, the pain got to be too much for him. He had some kind of deterioration of the spinal column and apparently suffered a great deal. He also had "spells," whatever that meant back in those days; years later, I would think that he suffered from what is known as petit mal, the little seizures that cause a person to freeze up and stare blankly for a few moments. Frankly, I think Pappaw was probably a little nuts too. That problem seemed to run in the family since suicide was one of the preferred ways out. One of his brothers went out with a .38 stuck in his ear and another tossed a plow line over a tree limb after eating a can of Merry War lye.

The doctors managed to patch Pappaw up after the gunshot wound and sent him home. About a year later he was helping my grandmother, Mawmaw, hang pictures on the wall of their big rambling house on East Walnut Street, where they had moved after leaving the farm. I think Pappaw was pissed because, according to the family, my grandmother had a doctor "dope him up" and she then sold the farm right out from under him and moved him into town, which he hated.

Anyway, on that particular day Pappaw snapped completely. He smashed in the back of Mawmaw's head with the claw hammer he was holding for her while she fiddled with the picture. He then took her body, lifeless and seemingly dead, and put it in the bathtub; Pappaw obviously didn't want the blood messing up the whole living room. After that left the house and went down into a small thicket that separated Walnut Avenue from Cedar Avenue and hanged himself in the fork of a small sapling tree.

That's where Earl, my mother's youngest brother, found him. Earl was with several men wandering around in the thicket with flashlights looking for Pappaw. Earl was always a nervous fellow and what he saw when he shined the light on Pappaw's face haunted him for a long time. They say Pawpaw's eyes were bulging almost out of his purple face and blood dripped from his tongue, which was thick and purple and hanging out of his mouth. He'd pulled his throat up into the tree fork and then grabbed his ankles and held his legs off the ground until he died. I figure Pappaw wanted to die in about the worst way a man could to do that to himself.

It was a sight that haunted Earl for years. I often wondered if it had anything to do with what later happened to Earl, who plunged a steak knife into his own heart at about 5:00 a.m. on Christmas morning, 1956, in the house were he lived in Memphis. At least that's what the coroner ruled--his death came on the heels of an all-night party and there were rumors that he might have caught his wife in the kitchen with another man. Her fingerprints were found on the knife, but that happened because she pulled it out of Earl's chest. Or so that was her story.

My dad and his brother Roy were both in the army when Pappaw died. Dad was overseas in Europe and knew nothing about it for quite a while. Roy was just about ready to ship out to Europe and went AWOL when he received the news.

I remember looking in the coffin set up in the living room and asking my mother when Pappaw was going to wake up. He looked awfully still, that stooped little man with the big ears and big hands, hands that had once brought a lard stand full of newborn piglets into the house for me to see.

Pappaw's gone to be with Jesus, somebody said. It didn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense to me, but then Jesus was always supposed to know what was right.

After the war, Dad and his brother pissed away all of my grandmother's money, a small fortune at the time, on booze, gambling and Harley-Davidson motorcycles. She totally recovered from her injuries in time. But that's a story for another time.

At some point long, long into the train ride we were all jammed up together discussing whatever it is that greenhorn kids let loose on the world discuss. All of a sudden, it looked as if we were coming in from the desolate flat plain across which we had been traveling for an interminable time to a spot of civilization of some sort.

Big Buddy Steve slid the window up and stuck his big broad face out. He looked a little bit astonished.

"By God boys, we are in Armadillo, Texas!" said Buddy Steve, very awestruck. Buddy might have well just said we'd just landed on Mars so far as most of the boys were concerned. I'd lived in Texas and New Mexico too a couple years before on the pipeline thing, so it wasn't that big a deal for me.

Of course, Buddy Steve wasn't too literate. We were actually in Amarillo, but that was close enough. We also learned that we'd be getting off the train for a stop there and when we returned we would have other accommodations.

It was during the stop at the Amarillo depot that the subject of obtaining alcoholic beverage came up. We all fiddled around in our pockets and scraped up a few dollars; all except Teets, who hadn't taken part in anything the rest of us did, and Meadows, who was scared shitless.

"We can't do it, boys," said J. D., nervous as an old wet hen. "They'll have our asses when we get there!"

Needless to say, J. D. was out-voted by the rest of us. And so Buddy Steve, who appeared the oldest among us, took the money and set out looking for liquid refreshment.

I wasn't a complete cherry when it came to booze. I'd sneaked liquor from my father when I was very young, 10 or 11 years old. Once, when we lived in Stephenville, Texas in the summer of 1955, I had drunk a whole fifth of Seagram's Golden Gin. My parents had gone to a nearby Texas town called Mingus, a place of many nightclubs, with a number of other pipeliners. When they returned home late that night, they found me lying in the kitchen floor, stone drunk. Dad was sorely pissed--probably more because I drank all his booze than anything else. But there was also something close to pride in his voice when he later asked, you drank the whole damn bottle by yourself?

After that, back in Tennessee, my buddies and I managed to scare up a little drinking juice occasionally. Sometimes we'd chip in and get a cab driver to get us a six-pack from the local VFW Club, the only "legitimate" place where alcohol was sold at that time. I learned later of all the numerous "bootleggers" scattered about town and at one time, following my navy years, became one myself for a few months. I wasn't real good at it, however. I tended to drink up all my profit.

And once, one of my friends stole two Pepsi bottles full of "moonshine" from his brother-in-law. Jesse Morgan was my friend's name and his brother-in-law was a member of the local police department. The corn whiskey, known variously as white lightnin', 'shine, white mule or mellow corn came from a raid--it wasn't unusual back then, and perhaps still not that unusual, for cops to divvy up the "evidence" they had seized from the unsuspecting.

Anyway, Jesse and I took those bottles over to the ball field, our usual destination at such times. Sitting in the high weeds in the outfield area, we drank both bottles. Before long, my face was flushed and my tongue as thick as a Memphis phone directory. I would have done well to "slap my ass with both hands."

I went home with plans to sit on the front porch until everyone went to bed, because I knew that one look at me would tell the tale. Unfortunately, my younger brother Jerry came out on the porch and got a whiff. He'd smelled whiskey on dad and knew what it was right away. He indicated in no uncertain terms that he was going to tell my mother. I tried to talk him out of it and then threatened him but it didn't work, he went straight in and tattled on me. And of course I got my butt beat for it.

But my mother wasn't around when Buddy Steve came back aboard the train, a huge grin splitting his face. He had a paper bag in his arm and you could hear the bottles tinkling together.

"I done got us some vodka and some of this stuff," Buddy grinned, pulling out a big bottle of something. "It's called snaps, I reckon."

What he'd gotten was peppermint schnapps, which I'd never heard of at the time. But it didn't make too much of a rat's ass because it was booze and booze was what we wanted!

By the time the train got underway again several of us, basically Buddy Steve, Pig, Red and I, were pretty well underway ourselves. Meadows and Teets were out of the loop and Edgerly took only one small, wincing pull on the vodka before deciding it wasn't to his taste.

After that point a number of hours of the ride are a blur. I vaguely remember going through Santa Fe, a sparkling little adobe and stucco city nestling in the mountains of northern New Mexico, squat Spanish style buildings gleaming in the roaring August sun. At some point during that time Pig Matthews withdrew his stiletto switchblade shiv and carved up several seats, throwing the stuffing all around the car in which we were riding. I would come to realize, later after boot camp when we were both stationed in Hawaii, that Pig had a far worse drinking problem that I at the time, although mine grew substantially over the years.

We were in Arizona somewhere before the booze and its effects were completely exhausted. When I say "effects" I mean some addition to the intoxication; I don't think I really sobered up until a day or two later. I'm talking about that point where you stop getting drunker and start sliding back toward the world of the living.

An old black porter discovered the damage Pig had inflicted on the seating and he made it plain: He was going to have to have a few bucks else he would have to report us to the authorities in San Diego. The booze had pretty well expended whatever wad most of us were toting, but even Meadows kicked in on the bribe money--after all, he was in charge and his ass may have been more on the line than any of the rest of us. We scraped up something like twelve bucks or so, which seemed to satisfy the old guy. I don't know how the damage was ever explained, but we never heard anything more about it.

At some point, unbeknownst to us, we crossed into California, the Land of Milk and Honey. Things got a little greener as we went on and we began to pass areas of civilization, as evidenced by the buildings near the tracks. After a while we were to see something off to our right that totally amazed me--there stretching like an endless blue sheet was the Pacific Ocean, falling away into the distance until it became one with the blue sky and puffy white clouds. I had never dreamed there was so much water in one spot on earth as I saw then and it suddenly dawned on me that before long, I would be riding big ships on that wide and awesome sea. It was a powerful thought for a 17-year-old loose from home for the first time and just beginning to feel the first tinges of some new freedom never before known, and hardly even imagined.

That illusion of freedom proved to be short-lived, however. Before we knew it the train had screeched to a halt and we were gathering up our meager possessions and preparing to set out into the golden California sunshine. And we did so, only to be greeted by a mean-looking son of a bitch with what I later learned were boatswains mate, second-class stripes on the sleeve of his white uniform.

Okay, god dammit, let's fall in a rank right here! Hustle it up, we ain't got all fuckin' day, move it, move it! Your ass belongs to the uncle now boy, get it in gear!

Up to that point, I'd just thought I had screwed up. Now, I knew it for sure. All of a sudden seeing the world and getting a lot of "strange stuff" didn't seem all that important.

That was just the front end of what was to come.

7:51 AM - 6 Comments - 8 Kudos - Add Comment

Another old newspaper column, circa ’97

THE KING--GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN

Can it be true? Can twenty years have passed since the King's heart gave up its valiant struggle against all those deep-fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches and he crashed face first off his porcelain throne and died there on the lush bathroom carpet at Graceland?

I guess so. Time flies when you're having fun and I've been having fun for years. But it doesn't seem like twenty of them have slipped away since Elvis slipped the surly bonds of earth and took off for parts unknown.

Once on the anniversary of John Kennedy's assassination I wrote that practically every American could recall vividly what they were doing when word flashed that JFK was dead. And, while the death of Elvis was perhaps less significant in terms of social impact, he was nonetheless an icon of perhaps great dimension than was Kennedy.

For all the press hyperbole and talk of mystical Camelot, Kennedy was simply a political hack; oh, he was a charming hack, a handsome and dashing hack, even a heroic one, as his exploits as a young Naval officer well testify. He was rich, young, talented at what he did and everyone--except a few Republicans--loved him.

But Elvis was The King. If America had royalty, it wouldn't have been the Kennedy Clan mounting the royal stand in Washington. It would have been Big E and the Memphis Mafia holding court, except he would have scorned the Capital in favor of a seedy roller rink on Union Avenue, or the Mid-South Fairgrounds. His motorcades would have been the whole pack on Harley Hogs, and he wouldn't need the Secret Service; his karate moves might not have been as impressive as he'd like to have you believe, but the old boy was generally armed better than your average federal agent, with six or seven pistols on him most of the time. But, unless you were Robert Goulet, that didn't matter much.

Whoa. I wouldn't want to leave the impression that I was a huge fan of the musical Elvis, because it wasn't that way. I liked the early stuff, sure, that mid 50's Sun Records jive that Elvis copped from the blacks and made "respectable," or at least respectable enough to get air play on white radio stations. There's a lot of resentment still evident in guys like Little Richard and Chuck Berry, who claim they were doing it first and just not getting the exposure, and there's more than a little truth to their complaints. But, without Elvis, they would never have made it at all, so they should thank the white boy who mimicked their style and made that kind of music palatable to the masses.

You see, folks make the mistake of trying to judge Elvis simply as a guy and what he did as music of some fashion or another. But that totally misses the mark as to what was happening at the time.

Elvis wasn't a person, he was an Event, a Happening. The generation before mine can talk all they want about Frank Sinatra and the giddy effect he had on the "Bobby Soxers" during WW 2, but compared to the mania surrounding the advent of Elvis that was nothing. And if Elvis didn't actually create rock 'n' roll, he was undoubtedly the impetus for its mad dash into the consciousness of the youth of that time, and all those who have come along since-- I'm not counting the Beatles, because they just filled the void vacated by the King when military service more or less put an end to the real Elvis era. After the first couple or three years, everything that came later was just skating on legend.

I remember coming home that August day in 1977, there in the stifling heat of the Southern California desert, to find my wife at the time mightily upset. Before I could inquire what was wrong she let me have the dreaded news.

"Elvis is dead," she whined, big tears rolling down her cheeks. "I'll never get to see him now."

It didn't seem possible. But then, after a little thought, it seemed right. Some people are just too cool to ever grow old and they seem to know it. The King was going down hill badly in his early forties, Lord knows what would have become of him with twenty or thirty more years of cheeseburgers and meat loafs. The icon would have become huge as the Goodyear blimp and too gross to remain King-like.

Yeah, Elvis needed to die and that's what he did. He apparently had an assist from a number of pill pushing physicians, none of whom were named Kevorkian. But that's the way she goes.

The King is dead. Long live the King. I don't think we'll see another like him.

9:07 AM - 3 Comments - 8 Kudos - Add Comment

chapter of old
Category: Writing and Poetry

(I may have posted this before, not sure since I have too much crap here to find everything. If so, sorry. And no, all those weird words are not typos.)

COOL BLUE AND GLOOM

What was he doing in that tank in that place so hot hot hot and world of slime? No fingertip holds there in the nothingness of his whitehot brain -- globs of thought sponge stuffed into his ears to hold in the liquid putrid jive jizz spunk pouring from the ruptured membrane of his memory sac, shot through with whitehot thoughts until the dura covering evaporated in a steam spray of vibrant agony. Thump thump thump went the piledriver piston pumping up through the purple psychotic madness of his mind pistole and out the flowerstem stalk top part of homegrown dumbass called in his frame of reference "Bioblowback," but known to the doers and shakers who controlled the handle to the air supply in his nest as "Quasijizzomatic-repulsion" -- a sick thought to those who had experienced it, like the feeling of soul shits pouring down the spirit's pantleg in spurts of mindwringing sureness, as if aimed by the gods who aimed moonbeams in a different place and time. Yes, he knew that once in a different tank and in a different time, but all the same the location and time having been retrogressed or moved forward at the whim of those who controlled the handle --those sorry bastards with leghair noses and breaths fouler than a toilet sucker's in the scuz morning! -- O, (he thought) screw the mad morning world in all its asshole cornflakes agony and stiff mustaches covered with rancid starch!

The tankfield is where you belong. Grovener, that mindless toadsucking geek with eyes like a dead ferret and bristling blackhair hands like yellow tallow and dead gum tree roots, mellow madness in his approach toward finality. Up in the tankfields with the rest of 'em, Johnny Boy!" All the while his shoestrings whistling concertos from believe it or not and bopping cadence with the sound of thump thump thump coming from Johnny's Boy's pistol packing pistol, as it were.

Holy fuckin' shit! cried Texas Bill Garver, a downhome laidback cowfuckinsumbitch from the plains of Amarillo nowhere where the buffalo roam or did before Big Buffalo Bill backed them all up to plastic stumps and broke them, a Texas shitkicker with a 100 gallon hat and size 99 boots, feet bigger'n Lubbock and a set of balls like two Sherman tanks tossed in a gunny sack, what a wild prick!

I'm atakin' over the goddamn place! Texas Bill was heard to scream one bright night as he transferred to manureland from the realm of new clothes -- it is always daylight in the tankfield and especially at night when the sun has died and gone to somewhere or the far side of ..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />New Jersey, whichever comes first. My eyes are like granite and my grandmammy jacks off dogs, Texas Bill screamed out to a Senator who had wandered off the beaten path in search of extra bucks and chanced strictly by chance across Emerald Shitland.

Grovener the hairnose toadsucker blew a fresh toad's head and conducted the legislator around the muckpits and shitsuctions and up past the locked vaults where the broken-faced ballbusters sat in geometric symbols and hummed the top 20 tunes to the accompaniment of a wet board applied across the face of the Holy One. . . .Just some final truth on the way, Johnny Boy!

What'n hell's goin' on here? the Senator had the gall to ask mired as he was ankle deep in shitland refuse pumped up from the overflow valves up past the North 40 to the world of old shit and dead dreams. Somethin' mighty fishy here!

Grovener spits out the toad's head, looks upwind toward the cavehole where Miranda his toadwife orgasm machine lives and twitches his hairleg nose in the tuna wind there in the afternoon of midnight and says, That's my wife's pussy, sir.

Well, pardon me all to hell for bringin' up something so uncomfortable to you!

Forget it sir.

Like hell I will! A case of fresh cupleg tree frogs should undo the damage, shouldn't it? I'll have a box sent right up!

"Thank you, sir, you're more than kind.

"Bahmotherfuckinhumbug!"

"Yes you are sir don't deny it.

"Well if you insist young man, I suppose I am.

What Grovener can't know is that the legislator's memory circuits have been sucked dry by carcinomatic outlaw cells getting ready to kick some big ass inside his pointed and bald gourd and no sooner does the promise escape through his lying pussysucking lips than it is forgotten along with all the other jive the noble man of government has been laying down on the public for the past umpteen days. What Grovener doesn't realize is that within sooner or before the good Senator will be laid out like yesterday's haddock with plastic eyes beneath the dome of the capitol building and the masses will file by and piss upon his remains for the crook he was and became and lynch several people who dared speak kinds words of him, including his mother. Grovener doesn't know all this but Johnny Boy and Texas Bill found the handle to that interesting bit of information clinging to the walls of Slime Tank 2 or was it 3 and they decided to make good use of it for what it was worth.

I feel like a stoned mamahuncher! Texas Bill said, high as he was on shitfilm fumes and stagnant nitro wafting up from the nether droppings. Boy that frog sucker is flat fucked!

Johnny Boy is still quaint in some ways, never pulls his brainstem or squats in dim corners and makes foul breeze like some of the cruder immigrants to Emerald, some there who wouldn't have sense enough to come in out of a pissrain or shitstorm. I don't know, Texas Bill Garver, if that's such a good idea.

'Course you don't boy, that's what makes it such a good idea can't you see the reasoning to that Johnny Boy? Texas Bill has a way of putting things clear even if Johnny Boy doesn't understand what they mean.

Yeah, so what are we going to do?

"Shitstorm boy, shitstorm!

Johnny Boy knows what happens when two turds collide and it's worse than the scuz lining on Slime Tank 4 with its green funk moss and sticky death stench. Johnny Boy packs a pawful of high-grade Essence Three up his hairless nose and at once feels the sides of his brain swapping places crawling and slithering, the dura and the cortex and all the gray jelly swirling around inside the bonepan like British gin in a blender. Figures leap and dart across his shattered brain field like psychotic ballet dancers doing Swan Lake on a stage of jagged cans razor blades broken bottles dried and stiff condoms, holy Moses! Nubile young dream lasses jump up and smear his lips with non-existent hairless cunts, laugh with eyeless sockets, make breeze with non-assholes. . .Johnny Boy lurches and leaps among them giving off a smell of onions and dead shit, screaming and moaning and crying in the dead fuck night. Hold that fuckin' tiger boy! he hears Texas Bill Garver scream from somewhere offstage right, and Texas Bill jumps into the mental fray boogying like an escapee from shitsuction section 8 -- I got my mojo workin'!

Johnny Boy leapfrogs up a purple back all the while dragging his balls across wartskin and his hands become feet in the twilight of cuntsmell and hard dick. Come to the church in the wildwood! Texas Bill cries, at the same time grabbing a leering skullhead and sousing his semi-hemi balls deep into a gaping eyesocket. You've heard of fuckin' face son, well this here is how you go about it!

Johnny Boy wipes green cunt juice from his childlips and worries for Texas Bill's immortal soul there in the funk steam. . .a rotten way to go, caught up in the flying fucks and fart flackfunk - not the way a real man would choose to go so long as his balls were hanging low and from where he stood Texas Bill was OK in that department, it would take a lowdown dwarf to walk unharmed beneath Tex's flopping scrotum. By god Johnny Boy this is the life!

A vision in damp burlap dances by Johnny Boy. . .long skinny fingers wiggle at him.. . long skinny fingers push up pert melon tits toward his boylips. . .long skinny fingers slip between ghostly thighs and come up covered with green liquid cuntstarch. . . long skinny fingers wave this beneath his nose. He grabs them and licks like a popsickle on dying flesh, drops to his knees and is straddled across the face, smells honey and almond drippings in his hairless nose, runs his century long tongue up into a claypit of molten sunlight in asbestos-lined cuntwalls and is reborn somewhere within the hellhole cavern of his fermenting brain. . .

That's it son, you got the handle now! Texas Bill cries to him, but his words are sucked up in a thermal fartwind of cuntwall funk and lost to the bright night sky. Above the tankhole skimming clouds like fat meadow muffins rimmed with spraycan heavy cream skip through the pissyellow wail of shitstorm freefall.

What Texas Bill doesn't realize is that Johnny Boy is in the beginning state of Bioblowback which will lead to proper Quasijizzomatic-repulsion brought on by glitterfuck. . . that's when the shit hits the fan! Tank dreams swarm up our of his tortured cortex and deep brain wrinkles and boogie like mindless sailors with nerve tissue that terminates near the rectal muscles causing, as it were, shitstorm bloody flux, which is the first downwind stage of Bioblowback. . . God knows it gets rough!

Shitsuction tanks suck! Texas Bill yells and laughs at his own joke even if it's not funny in light of the cuntwall funk freefall shitstorm. I ought to be on TV Johnny Boy I am so fuckin' funny!

Johnny Boy jerks his face away from the greenslime cuntdrippings feast and looks up into the smiling face of Freefall Death and feels the bloody flux flush in one mighty surge out his fundament and across the bottom of the slimpepit tank.

Freefall Death takes him by the ears, dragging him through the slime and his cries and pleas fall on deaf ears. . .Texas Bill Garver is much too busy pushing dead and rotting brains out bone earholes with his long slimy Texas donkey dick to hear or care. Up up up Johnny Boy goes, up through the blowing howling shitstorm up up past eternal daylight to night, up to a place with no green cuntstarch and twisting tornado fuckwinds, up up up to a peaceful tank where the slime is cool blue and the days come in two parts, bright and dark and warm and cool, quiet and loud. There and not there.

Johnny Boy is happy for a moment even if he does miss Texas Bill.

Even as he was balls deep in eyesocket skull Texas Bill was surprised and shocked to see young Johnny Boy succumb to the bluefunk explosion of glitterfuck.

And who in hell can a man trust anymore and especially up in the shitlines with a toadsucker like Grovener in command? And it's a crying fucking shame when the wartlips fuck with the Essence Three causing terminal megalomania and bluefunk explosion without even a legal hearing, fer Christ's sake!

Get that motherfuckin' frog outta yer mouth and talk like a goddamn man! said Texas Bill to the wartlip toadsucker in command of Shitsuction Tankfarm 3 or was it 4. Fuckin' with a man's passport to pleasure ain't no way to get a relationship off on the right foot, frogface!

I suspect you are referring to the problem with the high-grade Essence Three, Grovener said around the frog's ears.

You can bet your sweet ass I am!

No need to get upset, Tex, spat through wartlips. After all, you were a great hero of the Caustic Wars if I'm not sadly mistaken and I seldom am I'll have to admit.

Son, I been in 9 world wars and caused three of the motherfuckers myself! I led the shitstorm on Mexico City and I got a line of ribbons that reach from my capbill to the bottom of my big Texas bullbag and every one of them says the same thing --Texas Bill Garver is a mean mamahuncher and may be hazardous to your health! Think you can deal with that?

I may have to confer with command on that one, from froglips.

Where'n hell you been, feller, command went up in a pisshail some time back, the doings if I'm not mistaken of a Ruskie by the name of Fydor Jakoffski who runs a little tankfarm on the sub-tropic fringes of Sibera. . . A wild sumbitch that Jakoffski!

Grovener the toadsucker is taken aback by this news . . .It seems command never sees fit to confide in their own trusted souls!

Well Tex I'll have to check into the validity of that information as you can see the memo must have slipped past, someone in the lower echelons, fucked up as it were I suppose.

Texas Bill Garver wrinkled up his face in a sneer that brought to mind death rictus in a chimp's anal muscle, put the forefinger of his right hand against the side of his nose and blew a string of shiny snot and residue of Essence Three (high-grade and fucked with) across the blue gloom.

I've heard all that shit before in a different time and place and it don't mean diddly shit to me. . .just a way to put a man off! I want some goddamn action on this and I want it now, so I do!

No need to get upset Tex, channels, we must go through channels in light of the way things are done.

Can't you get it through that fuckin' thick wartskin, there ain't no fuckin' channels! There ain't no command left! Jackoffski, remember?

Well Tex that's just a rumor at this point, we have to maintain the illusion of chain of command even if there is no command, surely you can see that.

Hide this shit from my granite eyes! Texas Bill Garver screamed in disgust, and beat big feet (size 99) back to Tank 2 or was it 4, thoroughly pissed with jabber about non-existent chains of command. Hoofing back he met the old space ranger P. Paul Purvis leaning on his skimming hose and gazing off into the blue funk twilight, one hand cupped across his forehead like an Indian scout on a spotted pony looking for settlers to fuck with.

May be pisshail in them clouds, don't look good back yonder and all we need's a shitcyclone to just about do in this place for good and always! said P. Paul.

Don't fret about the weather, we got other problems. . . Johnny Boy's in Bioblowback through glitterfuck, the handle is in danger and command is fucked! Tex advised him.

You don't say? Ain't life a bitch sometimes!

You ain't takin' this serious enough, P. Paul, this could spell big trouble.

Nobody knows the troubles I've seen, son, the old wrinkled space ranger said. I've lived through shitstorms and pisshails and blowbacks and suckdowns and glitterfucks and celestial scuzwind and bloody flux and even universe collapse. Ain't too much bothers me anymore.

Holy shit! Universe collapse?

Damn straight son, and that's a bad scene, one of the baddest of the bad if you know what I mean and I think you do, being as you are a decorated hero of several flareups of your own.

I've gotta go somewhere and think this over! said Texas Bill. He crawled up under a pump piston unit on Tank 1 or was it 2 and stuck his massive feet into the air to get a funk tan on the soles while he mulled over all the latest info blasting into his brainpan.

And where he wondered was Melody J. J. Badbox, his main queen bottom lady from another era who had sworn eternal liking and promised to never share her badbox with anyone but the long-dicked Texan with a faceful of hero medals?

Just like a goddamn female splittail to split like a rotten board when the going got tough! Couldn't be counted on in a clutch! Probably straddling a shitscooper's face in a minority tankfield somewhere, the worthless bitch!

Two hours later (if time had existed) with blue tanned feet soles Texas Bill Garver was called to the domain of the toadsucker and given the goodbad news.

New soul by the name of Melody J. J. Badbox coming on line in the p.m. Tex, Grovener spat around a fresh cuplegs. Claims you are an old friend from the other and demands to see you post haste upon arrival, eh what. What say old boy?

I say you ought to lay of 'em fuckin' English frogs, Grove. But that's cool.

Good enough! I shall inform the young lady forthwith!

Texas Bill was knocking the hockeydoodie off his freshly tanned kicks with a highpressure pisshose when he heard the warning whistle and saw the blue jelly falling in from the east like a turd dropping from a tall cow's ass and said to himself: hotdamn a feller ain't got time to get hisself presentable what with all the hustle and bustle of a shitsuction tankfarm!

Melody J. J. crawled out of the splattered jelly mass and shook the glowslime off her hairtips and looked around, her violet eyes coming to rest on the hulking form of her former lover, that big-dicked Texas bullballed wildman by the name of Texas Bill Garver.

Lord fuck a duck and it's you, you big prick mothersticker! she cried, sprinting across the slime field full tilt with a 1000 watt smile blowing neon from her lovely chops, her mighty fine jugs bouncing in the funk breeze like a frog's haunches on a long hop. Tongue my cunthole you horny old bastard! she squealed, doing a half cartwheel and flinging herself upon Texas Bill, her long smooth thighs slapping around his ears and clamping down until the sounds of the shitpumps melted from his head, while her own knowing lips assaulted his differential.

Quite a greeting, J. J. m'girl, Texas Bill said, spitting out a dab of blue jelly.

It ain't like we don't know each other, she replied. Let's grab an empty tank and pump some puddin' big boy!

Later baby right now we gotta check in with the frogsucker that runs this shitfarm get you settled in you know.

Well OK, but the fact is I've been dreamin' long and hard 'bout that mamapacker in your jeans big Texas Bill, you heroic sumbitch!

That was used to be not now, I'm just a common shitskimmer like all the rest in this place, he answered. That notion took some getting used to even for him.

Big boy there ain't too many common shitskimmer hung like you are, don't try to shit an old sharecropper!

Sitting with his balls awash in mellow warm saltwater somewhere in the bluetank gloom, Johnny Boy commenced to wonder and began to think of what had transpired since the hairleg nose toadsucker had consigned him to the depths of depravity or the heights of magnificence in which he now found himself, as it were.

And where was Texas Bill that wild shithead shitskimmer in this newer and bluer realm? he might ask. And where was the odor of blowhoses and pressure pumpers and funk skim? he could think if so willing.

As a matter of fact and of fiction it had been longer than forever since Johnny Boy truly had one inkling as to what was really going on, and even longer since he had truly given a damn. It was one thing to be one place and then the other, or this place and that to put it a different same way, if he were so inclined and might add if bothering to make the comment in the first place, which was probably the second place anyway.

Scuzfumes rose from the surface of the blue neon water and climbed like psychotic panda bears up the hairless tunnel of his facenose. They were not unpleasant and would have reminded Johnny Boy of the thick sweet smell of fermenting shad lying on a flood retaining wall near Cairo, Illinois on a hot July day in another frame of reference, had he ever heard of the place or cavorted there in the Mississippi geenlight days. Unheard of, scuzfumes sweet as rotting fish!

Well what was the place, and where, that was the question or the answer to another question not yet raised. Johnny Boy began to recall the concerto played by Grovener's shoestrings and heard the tune come out airless through his twitlips and hairless facenose. . . little peeps of tweet tweet toot toot and beep beep. . . left eyeball green-brown and blue speckled blinking counterpoint. . . left earlobe twitching rhythm. . . balls marching waltz time in warm blue heavywater. . . a caccaphonic parade of pieces and parts strutting with some barbecue to a brassankle band playing death boogie. . . the back of his neck smiled with ivory teeth and waved a trumpet with mouthpiece bloody. . . wiped its brow with a dirty snotrag. . .slowly did a slidestep in spitshined kicks. . .peeked through the keyhole of his mind and made notes on the fracas within. . . flipped the bird to a passing sparrow tweetybird and eagle and received one in return.

Yeah, song is madness Johnny Boy decided, gloom blue and cool as he was. The sounds of shitsuction hoses and the suck of feet in fecal muck were more to his liking, he decided. Back in the land of Texas Bill Garver, back before the shitstorm and the other shoe dropping, no laces to whistle faceless tunes.

No hairnoses around here. No nothing or so it would seem although obviously there had to be someone or something, he thought he decided -- such decision were hard to make in bluefunk heavywater gloom with an Essence Three hangover peeling the toenails back from blueskinned feet.

Johnny Boy squinted down and rolled his eyes up and counted dust motes on his eyelashes like he had done back then when such things still mattered. One two three four five. . . there comes another one. When he tired of this he had the option of watching flicks on the backsides of his eyelids --maybe pack his hairless nose with a pawful of Three (popcorn with mindmovies!) Hold that butter and salt, causes sclerosis of the brainstem don't you know son! Sounds like Texas Bill that will bullball shitskimmer, that good ole cowboy sumbitch! What a man! What a dream in somebody's mind! What a turdtapper!

Well hell, cool it for a while and enjoy the funk gloom. . .never know when things will change. Too many changes too fast too often and mostly too silly. . .who gave a good shit anyway?

Johnny Boy closed his motepeepers and slipped into a dream of the other place while visions of furtrappers galloped the soft flesh and tearjuice on the backsides of his peeper covers. Whatever it was, it was good, or bad, but it was it.

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the bluff
Category: Writing and Poetry

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10 year old newspaper column on Judson Crews
Category: Writing and Poetry

A Conversation With the Old Poet

This past weekend I spoke on the phone for about 45 minutes with a living legend of sorts. And it was uplifting to learn that, even at the age of 80 years, Judson Crews is still mentally sharp as a straight razor. Such things give a little hope to those of us rapidly approaching the "Golden Years."

Crews, who lives in Albuquerque, has been beset with physical ailments in recent years. He hasn't been able to write for the past six or seven years, at least not creatively. He spends most of his days now sitting in a recliner in his apartment reliving the past in his mind's eye, which is still strong and vital as ever.

He worries that his work has been forgotten, although obviously that's a concern misplaced--just punch his name into Yahoo's search engine on the Internet and see the volumes of files that come up from the University of Texas at Austin and the University of New York at Buffalo, both of which have archives on his work and correspondence dating from the thirties to the early eighties.

I first encountered Judson in 1984 when I was publishing a small "underground" poetry magazine out of St. Louis. I learned recently from Harry Calhoun, a mutual friend and fellow writer, that he was indeed still alive and kicking and in fact living in the sam