Southern lullaby

And then I was ready
to go to Montgomery,
Alabama, when I heard
the molasses drip
out of your mouth . . .

And I'll go to Oxford,
Mississippi, and all the way
to Dixieland, California,
just for the novelty
of it all, by God.

Stuck in the Middle, Again

Above me there are people who have trouble breathing,
Below my feet is only dirt, settled and done, waiting
for the ages.

-Elizabeth City, NC
June 26, 2012

Cold Weather Places

It is not unintentional that I've avoided the cold-weather places of America. Not long ago I decided that I will never live in a state north of Interstate 40. There's something about wearing layers, not seeing the sun, shoveling snow and getting locked inside for even a day that keeps me from traveling north. 

But my family is not a one to keep a domicile for long. Kin folk live all over the United States: Massachusetts, Ohio, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, New Mexico, Florida, California and, now, New York. So my traveling into cold-weather states will happen.

My brother Kyle graduated from undergraduate school at Baldwin-Wallace College in Cleveland, Ohio, in early May. He got a good job with the Western New York PGA (Professional Golf Association) that was scheduled to start the week after graduation. So my mom, dad, sister Kelly and I helped him move out of the iconic-college house he was living in to the Buffalo, New York, area where he was moving. 

That first day, the sun had not been out. It hid behind a canopy of clouds and the day had turned into night, the Village of Depew, New York, was quiet. There had been a light rain fall since my family arrived in Buffalo. So the streets were wet. 

Only eight hours earlier we arrived from a three-hour drive from Cleveland. It was a Monday. My parents and sister went back to the hotel. The night turned into midnight. I was not tired. My brother was in bed in his new apartment, a very modest studio space on the first floor of a three-story house on a busy street. 

As the night wore on the street grew more quiet. Kyle needed sleep, because he was due at work the next morning. But I had never been to the state of New York before, much less the Buffalo-metropolitan area. I wanted to explore. 

After drinking a couple beers, growing only more restless, the paper-back book growing less interesting against the prospect of foot-traveling exploration, I headed out the door for a walk. 

To be candid, there was nothing about Buffalo to like so far. The sun is a very important ingredient in my life. Earlier in the day, my sister, for some reason, felt the need to inform me that the weather at my home in Raleigh, North Carolina, was a perfect 79-degrees Fahrenheit with only sunny skies. As I had said, the sun was nowhere in site. This is May, for Christ sake. 

Restlessness got the best of me. Only a few days earlier, I finished my second semester in law school. There was a feeling a great accomplishment and great worry as I was relieved to be done with the work that had been dogging me for months and fearing that perhaps I didn’t do well on my final exams. Accomplishment in law school is to a great extent the work one puts into his studies. But there’s also an element of surprise and luck. I also worry about my brains, my faculties, whether they’re enough to get me through these challenges. The work doesn’t intimidate me. Lord knows I tried. But the latter factors are my great worries. They’re the ones that I have little control over (I was born with this brain, and I’ll be damned to die with it too). 

With no exams to worry about, I was in something of a confused existence in this world. There was a huge void. My task now was to move my brother into his new apartment in the state of New York. It was like a mother bird with all her chicks away from the nest. I had been nesting five final exams for months and until my summer job starts in North Carolina in a couple weeks I’ll have little to distract my mind but silly novels and the lure of the dark end of the street. 

Tonight, I wanted to walk down these dark American streets until I found something interesting. 

So I lit out, a little past midnight on what had become the eighth day of March, 2012. At first, I figured, Hell, I’ll go out and buy cigarettes and walk around for a while, return at 1 p.m. and call it a night. 

The night was quiet. There were no people or cars on the street outside my brother's apartment. Even the gas station, where I had hoped to purchase a pack of some arrangement of tobacco, was closed. So I kept walking, shortly passing over a bridge that took me over a small river. Here they probably call these little bodies of moving water creeks, or streams. Where I come from, southern California, they call these sizable bodies of moving water, Mighty Rivers.

There was something very cold about this town. It may just be my perception of these northern states, a sense that it must be so cold here during the winter months that everything should prepare for the snow fall. All the buildings seemed prepared for a harsh winter. But the rain had stopped. There were store fronts all up and down the street I walked. Trees were everywhere too. The complete solitude was appreciated after a long drive from Ohio. 

Later that evening, I met a man named Dwayne who told me that whenever he goes to a new city he says to his taxi drive, “take me to the dirtiest neon-light joint you know.” There was one of these places about a half a mile down the road from my brother’s apartment. A place called “My Little Margie’s Restaurant.” There were neon lights in the windows and a big picture of Betty Boop, that old sultry All-American brunette.

The resistance to these gin-joint places, the better half of the conscience that says, "enter here and you will die," never much sways me from entering, because the other half of the brain that says, "you’ll always wonder if you don’t go," dominates, and isn’t that a bit worse than dying anyway -- never knowing? And so I went through the door.

The first words said to me were, “Oh, there he is.” And all five of the folks who were huddled around the bar laughed. Yes, they were expecting me, or someone like me, someone off the streets. And there I was. 

The five at the bar were as follows: two large bearded younger men who looked like they could handle themselves; two middle-aged woman who were closer to older age than middle age; and Dwayne, the gentlemen I ended up sitting next to at the end of the bar. 

But before I took much stock in the bar, or any of the surroundings, I noticed the girl behind the bar. She was exquisite. The belle of the night. She had short blonde hair and brown eyes that seemed like Hersey chocolate bars, melting by the lights above the bar and into each drink she made, reflecting back and sweet notion of acceptance into this world. She wore a red and blue plaid shirt and blue jeans.

I asked for the beer special. She looked confused. 

“All the beers are $2.50, sweetie.”

“Ok,” I said. “What beers do y'all have?”

“We’ve got Miller, Bud, Labatt Blue . . .”

“I’ll have a Labatt Blue,” I said, not wanting to really get into the whole shitty beer selection they had at this place. 

A quick study of the customers showed that nothing was being drunk that had a price tag above $2.50.

And it is to these cold-weather cities that I attribute their source of great warmness. Even in the dark and the cold, where human beings are stuck living with each other, warmness has to come from somewhere. Not long after the belle of the night brought my beer, Dwayne started talking to me about Buffalo. He talked about the 1990s Buffalo Bills football team that lost four Super Bowl Championship games without ever winning one. "That's why us old people are better drinkers than them," pointing to the two large bearded men at the end of the bar who mostly ignored the old folks as they played video poker all night. The older ladies started telling me that this was a great neighborhood my brother was moving into. "No triple homicides in the neighborhood, right?" I asked. "Not since last month," they joked. 

Then there were dirty jokes.

You see, Dwayne took the garbage out this morning and when I asked what he got from that, he said he got a “hand from his wife.” Someone else said, “Well, that’s better than a clap.” Laughter all around. Jokes like this were common over the next hour. "Do you know what is the curse of the Irish?" "No," I said. "Small, cute penises." Laughter. And one of the ladies, reacting to the food being shown on the Food Network (Yes, the Food Network was the preferred programing), "I only put things that are appealing in my mouth." Laughter. 

These folks battle cold winters together. These pubs are here so no one has to get in their cars and drive into Buffalo. They’re here because Dwayne and the crew are waiting to met a young person who stubbles in, hoping to find some warmth in sun-less Buffalo, with fresh ears to listen to dirty jokes. 

Village of Depew, New York

May 8, 2012

Refections on the Lucerne Valley, Grandfathers

Fiction:

Cooper Handly was a young man, a 20-year-old going on 21, and he was in love, or at least thought he was in love. But, you see, he didn't really know a peacock from a pigeon. The girl's name was Bethany Sarah. She was one of those girls with two first names, like a Catherine Kate, or a Sarah Collins, or a Molly Andrews -- one of those girls. 

The couple started dating in their freshman year at the University of Redlands. Cooper was the first in his family to pursue an higher education. He came from four generations of cattle ranchers in the Lucerne Valley. Bethany was from a family of lawyers and bankers. She went home to San Antonio, Texas, for the summer. Cooper was returning home to Apple Valley, California, about to pull into his grandfather's ranch.

After exiting Interstate 15 in Victorville and taking the side roads, Cooper was driving on a winding dirt road. The music by the Faces was playing on his car's stereo. The beat up blue Datson truck he drove rattled and the dirt and gravel beneath its tires kicked up dust. But the truck was good, like an old dog, it reliably kept on licking its way up the road to grandfather's house.

Cooper pulled up to the house and put the truck in park. Nothing had changed. The wooden cabin was no more worn than it was months earlier. The mountains behind the house are still growing, if only in a nominal way, like all mountains in the west, they shoot out of the arid earth like rooks out of chess board.

Grandfather sat on the porch. It was 3 p.m. His work was over for the day. He didn't do much anymore. Mostly just watched the hired hands round up the animals that needed rounding up.

"Cooh," grandfather said as Cooper approached the porch. "Go fetch us a couple beers and talk to me a bit."

Cooper did just that and sat on a wood bench beside his grandfather's rocking chair. They both opened their beers, taking a couple sips each. Grandfather lit a cigarette.

"When's mama get home?" Cooper asked.

"She'll be back in couple hours to make dinner."

Cooper's mother worked for a seamstress, sowing wedding dresses in Victorville. Cooper had not seen his father in five years. He was somewhere in the Arizona desert, but no one really knew.

"You learn anything from those classes down there in Redlands?"

"Yeah," Cooper said. "It's a good school, you know."

"What classes did you take?"

"A lot of introductory classes, like introduction to psychology, and a basic maths class -- Oh, but I took this great class about African American literature. I'm thinking about taking more literature class."

"Are ya?" Grandfather said.

The old man and the young man were quiet for a many moments. Grandfather put out his cigarette and reached for his beer. He also lit another cigarette.

"You learn anything from that girl you've been seeing?" Grandfather's face did not change, still as strong, serious and unmoving as the mountain behind the house.

"Maybe a thing of two," Cooper said.

Smiling now, Grandfather said, "Well, that's all that matters."

My pup when he was young.

Reflections on Lancaster

It's a desert community in Los Angeles County,

Lancaster, California, a strange

town, you can go through it

on your way to San Francisco,

but if you want a beer, you'll

have to pay $7, because all the bars

are on the outskirts of town --

If you're going to pay that much

for a beer, then you may as well

see helicopter tits on some well-

titted woman at a bikini bar.

Why not?

But, damn, this probably isn't

the type of town its mormon

founders envisioned; check

your gun and gang paraphernalia

at the door. You may not

be wanted here -- "You got a light?"
the small latino man asks, speaking
in one of those muffled latino tones. "Sure."
And I hand him my lighter, the rap
music still sounding like a cow getting
slaughtered in the background, Pow!

Pow! Pow!

"Can I cut through to Kramer's Junction
from here?" I ask as he hands back
the lighter. He shrugs. "Where's that?"

"It's in the desert, east of here."

He looks into the mass vacant spaces
between the stucco columns into the hills.
"I can't stand that woman," he says. "The one
dancing now, she's just . . ." And then he cursed her.

Okey.

Another cigarette lit, and I leave
the man smoking by himself
and get into my car to find out how far
Kramer's Junction was from here, not feeling
one way or the other about these morally
repugnant places and their dangerous
propensities

as long as these wheels meet the road,
they go. 

When yer Blue

There were many things my contracts professor said throughout this semester, some of them I retained, and some, of course, went over my head like flaminyon at a hamburger festival. But there's one thing that I'll always try to recall during dog days, realizations of falsities and those cold, down in the New Jersey toxic garbage dump heart breakers.

He stood at the lectern, talking about the breaching party to some contract, both hands raised and in an intonation reminiscent of the black southern Baptist minister his father is, he said, "Just another shattered dream." His hands came down to grab both sides of the lectern. Shaking his head now and looking down, this man who graduated from Harvard Law and Columbia School of Journalism put on a very disappointed face. "Just another shattered dream," he whispered.

He then stood upright and started laughing. "What happened here, class?"

So what a mantra for life? "Just another shattered dream." They break like icicles smashing on a store-front sidewalk, happening all the time.

Smile, damnit!

Chasing, Catching, But Not Giving

It will happen -- the dog will die.
But today he's chasing a ball
like any dumb dog.

He's old,
still with puppy-dog eyes though,
a serious face, a white stripe

from his nose, between his goofy
eyes, as he takes limped strides toward
the ball,
getting older.

And then it's a struggle, he returns
with the ball, but doesn't want
to give it up, taking a few steps
back, a flaw, perhaps, not

unlike humans, chasing, catching, but not giving,
lovable, though.
"He's got a good bark," Toby says.
The dog barks, and barks

and barks -- he wants us to chase him.
"Damn dog," I say, a beer
in my hand, a cigarette
in the other, taking steps
toward the dog. "You damn dog."

A full-moon night, the moon
looks fuller in California than Carolina,
probably because of the palm fronds,
swaying like jazz ladies in the Santa Ana
winds, this blind
old dog --

"We were going
to go to Lake Alice tonight, weren't
we?" I say,
picking up the ball.

"Yeah," Toby says. I throw
the ball, the dog chases, and then returns.
"Oh, well," I say. "This is fine."

Take her as she is

So you’re a young man,

and you met her at the grocery

store, huh? Alright,

she was working in the meat

department, cutting meat, blood

and fat spilled onto her apron

and dripped to the floor

while she sang the R&B songs

she learned while living and dancing

in Las Vegas. She was born in Cal-

ifornia, moved to North

Carolina when she was young,

had a child when she was young,

talks too much about this Christ

fella who you don’t put much

stock in, yeah? And when she

curses she doesn’t look so cute,

she curse how quiet Raleightown

gets when the sun goes down, curses

her station and curses you -- yet,

when downtown buildings throw

shadows over her blue eyes,

which are as complicated

as the water of Mono Lake,

and she looks into those of her child --

it don’t matter, po’ boy. It don’t

matter, po’ boy, not

one bit.

Milk and Drool

My friend and fellow ex-editor of the Bulldog Weekly and wonderful poet Sara Adams, challenged me to write a poem that ends with "I try not to drool/and take my seat." Here's what my efforts produced:

In the morning,

I eat my cheerios

and watch the sun

rise --

Milk spilling out

of my mouth,

I try not to drool

and take my seat.

The Most Simple Dream

There are a lot of things worth noting in a day; two come to mind, inspired by two favorite writers/philosophers. First, Joseph Campbell suggested writing down dreams because, while religions are myths shared by a society, dreams are the myths of the individual, they're often your unsung mantra, but the soul needs to sing these be whole. Second, Kurt Vonnegut suggested writing sometime funny everyday, because something in this horrible world is going to make you laugh and laughter makes it all bearable in the face of the most unbearable. So there you go. If I have a dream, I'll write about it. If not, then surely something funny will happen, even if it's just something made up, rolling around in my head.

Last night, I dreamed

I was a boxer, fighting

a big-time fight, dancing

across the ring, beating

up my adversary and getting

beat up too. It was ex-

hilarating --

As the lights went dim,

I only saw my adversary,

smoke rise out of the dark

face-less crowd, men

smoking cigars and women smoking

cigarettes from long cigarette

holders, and then

I saw a woman

sitting in my corner,

worrying with hazel

eyes, looking almost purple

in the dark hue --

I was fighting

and she was beautiful.

A Character Sketch From "Calipatria"

The following is a character sketch of David Holt from the never-to-be-finished crime noir novel, "Calipatria," I'm working on with my co-editor. The narrator is Ryan, a young man who had just moved to El Centro, California, to teach history at Imperial Valley College. This section will be completely omitted from the final product . . . if there is ever a final product. In fact, the entire narrative point-of-view will be different. This is just a character sketch. Enjoy!

---

David Holt wasn’t all bad. There were only a lot of bad things about him. To outsiders, they saw a young man who was often drunk and unruly. He did some drugs. But nothing he thought was too dangerous, though crystal-meth turned out to be more dangerous than many folks thought. It gave him tempers, which landed him in jail. But he didn’t do anything too bad.

Outsiders saw the bad things, like the time in Niland when he messed up the face of another local degenerate. David used a knife to cut a line from this fella’s ear straight down to his shoulder. The man bled a few quarts of blood, and from what I gathered, he was near death, until a blood transfusion in Desert Mirage replenished what he had lost.

David got a night in prison for that one. When the local authorities heard who he was -- you know, the son of an Imperial County Commissioner -- David was let go. A half-hearted effort was made by the Imperial County Sheriffs to figure out what had happened that night in Niland. The Sheriff decided that David acted in self defense and that the other fella was as much to blame for the broad-and-deep cut along the left side of his face that slid down his neck to his torso as David was. The matter never went before the District Attorney.

They concluded that David was provoked and so he acted. Was that so bad? Was that not natural? If he overreacted, was that not simply a consequence of action to begin with? So be it. It was done, folks were going to think what they’re going to think.

And the man with the broad-and-deep cut did not pursue any legal avenues.

But David couldn’t stay out of trouble in Niland. He stole a dirt bike there only a month later -- well, it was more like he borrowed the dirt bike. It was left unattended near Salvation Mountain in Slab City. David was only going to take it for one ride around the dunes. At least that’s what he told everybody.

David even had a bike of his own. That’s why he went out to Niland to begin with. He and his friends went out there to ride around the dunes. The dunes were complemented by the man-made obstacles (or should we say Holt-made? David and his father made many of the dirt-bike obstacles in Niland). It was a much better location than Glamis ever was. Niland was a local spot, a place where you didn’t have to deal with the coastal brats or the “IE” trash from Riverside and San Bernardino County.

I heard that David drank too much before going on a ride on the unattended bike, which wasn’t really unattended. He found it propped against a trailer in a gas station. The bike’s owner was in the convenience store buying a cup of coffee and flirting with the clerk, a fair-skinned latino woman with eyes brown enough to spill your hot coffee over and not notice any difference except pain, when David set aside the brandy-and-coke soda bottle he was nursing.

Only for one ride, David said.

Except, David crashed the thing, breaking his leg and sliding a disk in his vertebrae. The bike was totaled. David spent two weeks in the hospital. The owner of the bike, who was a fork-lift operator from Colton, demanded that the Holts replace the bike, which prompted the Holts to threaten to press charges of negligence ... or something. And though there was nothing to be said for those changes, David certainly stole the bike, the whole thing was dropped.

But people remember things. A clever colleague of mine on the college faculty nicknamed David the nihilist of Niland. I don’t think that title quite fits David, an appreciation that there’s no meaning to anything might be giving David too much credit. He’s more of a narcissist if anything.

But like I said, David wasn’t all bad.

You see, he fished.

And there are few things more noble than to fish and then to eat the fish caught by a fisherman. David was a part of this fraternity. Calipatria told me he believed in it too. Which is to say; first, he was no nihilist; and second, he was responsible on the waters, studied the waters, cared for the waters, ate the fish he caught and perhaps even thought there was something larger than him in the world that created the waters. I thought this was an interesting side of David, because it showed that he wasn’t so unlike me. My earliest memory was a summer vacation when I was a four-year-old in the Missouri wilderness. My father and uncle fished the entire day at one of the tributaries that fed the Mississippi River. That evening, as the sun set over the small Missouri hills, which were covered by a forest of oak trees, covering the land not unlike the green sweater that hugged my mother's curves as she cooked the fish the men had caught later that night, eating in the dark and smelling the aroma of our food as it hung over the campsite until it was time to go to make camp and go to bed. We were happy. That moment lingering and lingering and lingering into the night and onto the morning.

So the sight of a man fishing made me not only think of the fraternity of fishermen, but my parents too. My father worked hard, fishing was his pastime. He was a professor of ecology at University of Findlay in Ohio. My mother was a school teacher, educating the farmers’ children at the elementary school. She was not too pretty, but when she flashed her hazel eyes and smiled her fat Polish-Catholic smile at my father he did what he was told. They were good like that, exhibiting all the stuff midwestern relationships were made of.

What my mother saw in my father when he returned to the campsite with a pale full of fish was what Calipatria may have seen in David.

She was beginning to tame him during their final days together.

Big Ed's

Outside, cobblestone streets

and small doors and swine odors

Inside, wooden floors and old

ladies serving grits and coffee

Flags from the state of North

Carolina and the Confederates

Hanging from the walls, pictures

of a moonshine distillery

After a long night, Patrons bravely

keeping their food down

Raleigh, NC

1-11-2012

The Good Life

When Judge Manning sat

at the bench during a motion-

hearing recess at the Superior

Court and warned

the law students to not

drink booze after taking cold

medicine, because after passing

out in your wife's lap

you'll spill your whiskey all over

the neighbor's carpet; it said something

about my American Dream,

anyway:

Get born and keep warm,

taste the good things, corn

whiskey and chicken wings, see

the pretty things, like orange blossoms

and women wearing blue polkadot

blouses in early April, and

find God in the living, marry

a pretty woman who will give birth

to two beautiful daughters and die

testate, but still leave

something -- art and love --

to the imagination.

Raleigh, NC,

4-9-2012

Pretty Little Women

Instead of Church, the pretty little woman,

who, not so long ago, was a pretty little bride,

walked to the coffee house with her pretty little children,

and husband on Sunday. Another pretty little woman

stopped traffic, crossing the street to get to a pretty little car

in front of the Baptist Church -- the men all stared at the pretty little woman.

So me and Pancho smoked cigarettes

and drank cheap California wine late

into the night. Then there were girls

we talked about, it rained a little too.

But that's alright, we were drunk

and the women in our minds were fine --

they weren't going anywhere, and neither

were we. But

that's alright.

What Warsaw to Oaxaca means to me

A Mexican family of five stands outside of the Catholic Diocese

talking to a Nun. She looks pleasantly at the Young Child; these

are My kin, She may think to herself. And I think this is true, from

Warsaw, resisting the Communist regime into the 1990s, to Ireland,

resisting British oppression for centuries, and all the way to Raleigh,

resisting popular hypocrisy and those ideas turned into laws to turn

the Mexican family of five, who only wanted to be as American

as they can be, away and back to Mexico; but they're My kin, the Catholic

Nun thinks (She is holy if She thinks this, and I think She is holy); they're looking

for the Lord, the Protector of freedom for some, who is most truly understood

by those like the Mexican family of five, for they know the Hero's journey,

like a Buddha, like a Yogi, like a Christ, and like a Trucker, trying to find

His way home; This is home -- Brothers and Sister.

Raleigh, NC

3-29-2012

An Economic Breach

Contracts class was cancelled this morning,

so I took my coffee to the porch, where

I smoked fine North Carolinian tobacco

out of a hand-made maple pipe and watched

the sun rise over the cement factory, a train

rolled by, tooting its horn -- a 19th Century

industrialist would stare at this site in marvel,

finding a certain beauty in American industry, but

now . . . hell, even now there's a certain beauty

in the way the sun reflects off those metal chimneys . . .

a bird builds her nest in a tree in the front yard

and the children hustle down the street headed

for school, and I guess I should too for a meeting

of the minds. But this exchange of time in class

for time on the porch was time well spent. Now,

that's consideration.

Raleigh,

3-27-2012

Talking to D-Bob's Poem

Talking to my California Hat Band bandmate Dylan Freude's award-winning 2010 poem "Catechism in Lord Dear."

What is it about peanuts,

cotton, dogwood, pine needles,

magnolias, and sweet tea

(The lovers sat quietly,

but the porch light is turned off

as I return with beers, they're

not so quiet) that makes rain

-- plat, splat, clat -- seem so much

like an Iowa sunrise

in early June, light shining

over modest-breasts-like hills

and corn fields to Des Moines?

(Because, if You said I Am,

I'd say, I Am, too. If you

said, I hear church bells ringing

I'd say, I hear church bells ring

ring ring ring ring ring ring

ringing! From those modest hills

to the Carolina ocean,

I'd hear those bells ringing, but

the lovers and the flowers, too!)

When the music pours out doors,

trumpet goes, a woman cries,

law books read, some coffee

drank, crescent moon shines through clouds

and it's the Sunday before

Easter, you can tell, the street

is washed clean -- pagans chose

holidays so well -- and I'll

then, maybe, try to answer

your question (but I'll be more

sure tomorrow as desert

tortoises grow older, I Am,

too).

Raleigh, NC

3-26-2012

Greens (after the storm)

Young Lady cuts

her salad, piece

by piece -- Carolina

Sunset splashes

the still-wet grass as

blonde as her hair, she

eats a chunk

of bleu cheese,

smiles to her friend,

and waves her non-

eating hand to

a cloudless sky.

Raleigh, NC

3-19-2012

Dreams of Angels and Their City

Sometimes, when I'm sitting here

with a workload like a locomotive,

I think about how I'd be pretty damn

happy, living in a Los Angeles bungalow

somewhere in the San Fernando Valley,

next door to a place that makes motion

pictures -- dirty films -- and love

sounds, the hills burning in the summer

like the devil on heroin and then turning

green, like they're virgins all over again

in the winter (things are so backwards

there), and hope springs eternal.

(The song that inspired these homesick blues, "Time Spent in Los Angeles" by Dawes)

Raleigh, NC

3-16-2012

An old man tells stories, cigarette

hanging out of mouth, no signs of

regret, smoke rises and the tobacco

gets lesser with time, he says

the 88-year-old mother of his

still lives in a tin-roof shack

in the mountains of western North Carolina --

O and his old-boy accent belongs there too! --

a real woman, this man's mother,

disappointed because she only

killed four squirrels this year,

damn unusual winter, warm too.

Tough, he says, patting his knee, tough

is life, a bullet through the leg, Vietnam,

four inches from the artery, wouldn't be

sitting here, but for that miss, fate like

a young man and fast cars, speeding hurriedly

down residential streets and into a lamp post

killing his passenger. These war stories

and young-man stories make me the saddest.

Raleigh, NC

3-12-2012

Bob Dylan Blues

The humanist dreams of narrative

In a coffee house there's a kid

who brags of his misery

he likes to live dangerously

and when bringing her name up

he speaks of her farewell kiss

to me, oh, this story is as old

as a ponderosa pine and human-kind

history. But it bares repeating,

because the street is busy

and the smog is dirty and there ain't

no beauty in any of the daisies,

no more, no more.

Raleigh, NC

3-10-2012

Un-Duh-Feated

I finally made it to the big screen! This is a film that took second place among 36 or so teams in the Inland Empire 48-Hour Film Project. The good people at the Johnston Film Collective created this wonderful film about the desert-dwelling folks of Mentone, California.

Enjoy!

Watch here!

The Best Band I've Seen in Raleigh, so far

(Ponderosa at Slim's in Raleigh, NC)

The most beautiful woman in town,

wearing a brown leather vest

over a white blouse, blue jeans

over boots of Spanish leather, wants

to dance and she's standing next to me --

blue eyes, blonde hair, not too skinny, beautiful,

really, and she's drunk. But she's with the dude next to me,

wearing a black-leather jacket and hair

as blonde and long as her hair, douchebag. Not inconsequential,

the music this band plays only sounds better,

the psychedelic stuff sounding like a lost journey

somewhere on Highway 17 through South

Carolina, the country stuff sounding like an innocent

love, suddenly turning not-so innocent and the rock

stuff just sounding like manhood in full -- the most

beautiful woman in town, dark lights, loud American

music are too much for one night, one more PBR

and a bus ride home, please.

Raleigh, NC

3-7-2012

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, in Beaufort, South Carolina

The Good

Late morning, the sun was near high noon when I pulled my car into a meter-parking spot in downtown Beaufort, South Carolina. There was a light breeze, the flags at the end of West Street were waving high and proud on the sound. That crescent moon and palmetto tree against a dark blue banner may be one of the prettier state flags among America's fifty states.

It was still near the beginning of my spring break, a Tuesday, and I had just left paradise, Fripp Island, South Carolina, where an old bosom buddy spends his days working for the extremely wealthy. It was a weekend of playing golf, drinking, spending time near the beach and then drinking and shooting-the-shit evenings away.

But now I was en route to Columbia, the Palmetto State’s capital, where I would have some wholesome recharging before heading back to Raleigh for a week full of studying. I was in Beaufort for coffee and coffee only, that brown liquid much needed for the three-hour drive.

At the end of West Street, near the sound, is a little coffee house in an old building. Beaufort struck me for its beautiful old pre-Civil War houses, palmetto and oak trees and the Spanish moss hanging liberally from their branches. It was like somebody took a snap shot of 1830s South Carolina and recreated the town. The coffee house was no exception.

When I walked into the coffee house, I was greeted by two ladies who worked behind the counter. I ordered a large coffee, a coffee cake and a banana. But then I asked of the girls, “What’s good in Beaufort?”

First, one of the girls corrected my pronunciation, “It’s B-you-fore,” she said. “Not Bo-fort. Bo-fort is in North Carolina.” Then she started to tell me what’s good in Beaufort.

It was the home of Robert Smalls, a freed slave who learned how to make ships (whatever that type of craftsman is called). He commandeered an important war ship in South Carolina and delivered it to the Union navy. He then went to the north during the war and made a fortune crafting and building warships and merchant ships for the Yankees. After the war, he came back to South Carolina and served four terms in the United States House of Representatives. He also helped create the state’s public education system.

In Beaufort, he bought the house he was raised in and that his parents and relatives were indentured to work for generations. The last family who lived there were the ones who freed him. And he did not forget this, he allowed the woman -- his last owner -- to live in the house until the day she died.

This was the good in Beaufort.

The Bad

As all Americans should know, the Union army did a good deal of unjustified damage to the south. General Sherman burned every city his army marched through, including great burnings in Atlanta, Georgia, and Charleston, South Carolina. Except, he did not burn Beaufort.

My barista, who I’ll call Rosie for the sake of this story, said that the reason so many of the historic houses still stand is because when Sherman’s army headed toward Beaufort the residents there heard about the general’s scorched-earth strategy and left town. The Confederate army, which was nearly defeated, left the town. Its residents packed up what they could and left for the country, or perhaps even Fripp Island, if it wasn’t already controlled by the Yankee navy.

Sherman had a weary army by the time he got to Beaufort. He needed hospitals, mess halls and roofs for his soldiers’ heads. So he did not burn Beaufort. He used its old buildings for hospitals and utilized them for other military uses.

But still, Sherman was the bad. More southern cities would be as gorgeous as Beaufort but for his scorched-earth policy. Furthermore, southern reconstruction certainly would have been much smoother. This still effects the region today. Rosie explained that the Civil War is so real when you hear family stories about land that was taken by carpetbaggers and estates that were burned to the ground. The Union had to win that war, no doubt this is a better country than one divided. And war is always going to be awful. But Sherman was bad.

The Ugly

No, Rosie was not ugly. But her personal story was.

Rosie was the type of person who talked to fill a room with words. If you asked her a question, she’d answer ten more. And she had a story for everything. She was a pleasant person to meet in a town where you don’t know a soul. After getting my cup of coffee, and after I told her I was a law student, she began telling me about how she needs a lawyer.

She hasn't seen her husband in a few months. She left him after he beat her. He has since hired a lawyer. She needs to hire one too.

I didn’t inquire too much into this personal ordeal of hers, especially since I’m not supposed to offer legal advice until I've passed a bar somewhere.

It was an ugly story. And I won't get into it.

Epilogue

We then went outside to smoke a cigarette. She offered me one. The Coffee House was not busy.

“It’s a beautiful day, huh?” she asked.

“There are many of those here,” I said.

She nodded and as I left she said, “watched out for the cops on I-95. They like to pull people over there.”

I didn’t get a ticket.

Coda

Bob Dylan’s song about melancholy days in the American south, “Mississippi,” was stuck in my head and playing on repeat on my car’s stereo all the way to Columbia:

“Well, the devil’s in the alley, mule’s in the stall
Say anything you wanna, I have heard it all
I was thinkin’ 'bout the things that Rosie said
I was dreaming I was sleepin' in Rosie’s bed

Walkin' through the leaves, falling from the trees
Feelin' like a stranger nobody sees
So many things that we never will undo
I know you’re sorry, I’m sorry too

Some people will offer you their hand and some won’t
Last night I knew you, tonight I don’t
I need somethin’ strong to distract my mind
I’m gonna look at you ’til my eyes go blind

Well I got here followin' the southern star
I crossed that river just to be where you are
Only one thing I did wrong
Stayed in Mississippi a day too long.”

“Mississippi” from the album, “Love and Theft.”

Privy to Conversations and Love Songs

Today, in a period of only an hour, I was either privy to some of what I estimate to be the most essential conversations a person living in a community in the American South can have, or overheard the conversations of others who were essential to this community. Here are excepts of these conversations:

LESSON 1: You never purchase whiskey alone, even if you want to

There was a man wearing a thick flannel coat standing behind the check-out counter at the ABC Store in Cameron Village, a shopping center in Raleigh, North Carolina. As I approached with a handle of Virgin Bourbon whiskey, he said, "You know, I'd pay $30 for that stuff."

The man was only about 5 feet 5 inches tall. He was clean shaven and wore blue jeans. He appeared to be a friend of the man working the check-out counter.

"Yeah, it's good stuff," I said.

"No, I mean it's really good," he responded.

"This is the third handle I've purchased since I moved here a few months ago. And I have to say, it's better than anything you can purchase for $20."

"It really is," he said, pausing for a second, presumably to make sure no one else in the store could hear what he was saying besides me and his confident, the clerk. "Hell, it's better than anything Jack Daniels makes."

"And it's only, $12."

"You can't beat that, especially these days."

The man behind the counter dutifully performed his task, scanning the bottle of whiskey, not saying a word, not checking for my ID, and I was aware of this, wondering how old he thought I was.

"A man came in here the other day and bought each bottle on the shelf," the friend of the clerk said. "He said he was from Virginia, and they don't have any Virgin Bourbon in Virginia."

"Virgin is good stuff." With bottle in brown paper bag and a wave g'bye, I walked out the door.

LESSON 2: Community and the Good-ness of a place

Just as I was opening the door to my car to leave the ABC Store, a voice as deep as California's desert valleys boomed behind me, "Where in California are you from?"

My car here still has California license plates.

I turned around. It was a large man, casually dressed, African American and standing next to the red truck parked next to me with one hand on the hood.

"Southern, southern California."

"Oh, I'm from southern California too," he said. "San Diego."

"Riverside," I said.

He nodded and asked, "How long have you been in Raleigh?"

"I've been here for a few months. I'm here for school."

"Do you go to State?"

"No, Campbell School of Law, over there downtown."

He nodded and said, "You know, I like it a lot out here."

"Yeah, me too. The people are great."

Again, he nodded and said, "And the weather is not bad. When I left California, everyone asked, 'why would you do that?' But the weather is not bad here, you know? It's never too cold. I have family who live in D.C. and when ever they come down here, they always say it's so much warmer."

"Of course," I said, leaning in a little now. "You can't beat San Diego weather. It's certainly the best anyone can ask for, 75 degrees all year round. But there's so much more here."

"Yes, oh yes, there is. You can't judge a place until you've been there."

He then went on to explain, convincingly (as if I needed convincing), that so much of our perception, prejudices and judgements of places are based on the media. He said that you have to live in a place to know it. And these places will surprise you more often than not with their good-ness.

LESSON 3: Aim low, miss high, buck meat stays good for two years

The true destination of the afternoon was my barber shop up in Five Points, a quaint neighborhood just north of downtown Raleigh. My barber is a daredevil, crazy man, who jumps out of planes and fishes semi-professionally. His barber shop, located under a pharmacy/diner (think circa 1950), closes for weeks at a time as he goes on fishing trips far off the Atlantic coast, or goes on vacation to skydive with naked women in Puerto Rico -- and he as video evidence to back up these perilous and nude adventures. For privacy sake, he'll be referred to here as "John."

When I walked into the barber shop, John was talking with two other gentlemen. Or rather, John and the other gentleman were listening to the third man talk. This man wore a hunting shirt, or at least I assume it was a hunting shirt, because where the left breast pocket should have been, there was a stitched figure of a deer and two flags, one of the old Confederate States of America and North Carolina flag.

He was an old man. Hell, they were all old men. I was the youngest in the barber shop by at least a quarter century.

As I sat down in one of the chairs, John looked at me and said, "This here is a buck story."

The man talked about approaching a deer, getting within only 10 yards of it, before pulling back his bow and shooting the arrow and nailing the damn thing. He went into more detail than that. But it's all I remember, frankly.

The other man sitting on the opposite side of the room was a man I had met before. We appear to be on the same hair-cut schedule. He has three adult daughters, two nurses and one lawyer. He used to be a cop for the city of Raleigh and he was a part-time butcher for a grocery store in Cameron Village back in the day. He was retired now.

The hunter and the butcher then talked about deer meat. The difficulty for the hunter is skinning, packaging and freezing the meat before it goes bad. Most of the time hunters are in isolated areas, hours away from anywhere that can freeze the meat. But once the meat is frozen, it can stay good for two years. Buck meat is unlike beef, because it has less fat, so it can stay better longer.

Lesson 4: Detective fiction was a whole lot better before CSI

Perry Mason was on the television while I was getting my hair cut. Perry and another fella were looking at the rear of a car. A woman was found in the trunk. But the two sleuths were just poking around.

"If this were modern-day television, there would be CSI people everywhere," Johns said.

"Yeah," the other man said, watching ol' Perry poke around, looking at the bumper. "Back in the day the detectives you'd to tell that a woman was the killer by finding a dent in the spoiler."

Lesson 5: Man massage

"I've never had a man give me a massage before," a woman said to her two girlfriends as they walked on the sidewalk. "I liked it."

And then I was out of earshot, having walked passed them. I went into my car, turned up the music to hear Leon Redbone sing, "Bart began to sigh, and told the moon a little tale of woe.

"Shine on, shine on, shine on Harvest Moon."

Sound from the recording studio

Trumpet music spills

into this strange winter

heat and into the street

as I smoke a cigarette

and watch the smoke rise

and dance with the breeze

into the naked trees, catching

it like a dream catcher

dangling outside

a trading post in the desert

somewhere on I-40

all the way home.

Raleigh, NC

2-22-2012

Son of the West

I’m still getting used
to the the customs
of the Land. Today,

I was pleasantly
mistaken for a
Rhett, pleasantly.

Raleigh, NC
2-19-2012

Redux

Two, a couple, two-pointer in a college basket-ball game -- two chimneys

on the brick Catholic Diocese, Two blues musicians, playing

guitar and harmonica (and is that the Holy Ghost!?), praise be to everything

good. In my neighborhood, two scuff marks on beige columns

and two pretty girls, who live next door and two

brown leaves left on the tree (winter be

damned!), lingering bravely above a telephone wire, which is connected

to a pole and the rest of the world too, and two, on and on

and on.

Raleigh, NC

2-18-2012

A Brand New Day

As the sun rises I eat

Cheerios by the window,

and next door the neighbor arrives

home from the night shift, working

as a nurse at the hospital

in the neonatal ward.

Raleigh, NC

2-6-2012

Seven months gone, by and by

Orienting myself was the most important

first step -- the only first step -- before

I started kicking the beige column on my front

porch, watching a black scuff mark

grow

grow

grow like the smoke

from my cigarette as the fire

burns

burns

burns, all these things will

disappear into the North Carolina

night with the ghosts who dance among

the wine and spirits of yesteryear.

Raleigh, NC

1-29-2012

Winter

White paint covers

the graffiti

that used to

be on each wall of the men's restroom

at the coffeehouse where I studied

law and such.

A cold wind blows

down these empty

streets and through leaf-less trees in this town --

my town, alone and missing some-

one so much.

Big blue Texas sky, sun rise in the east, day break

Maybe I can drive you crazy

all the way

from Amarillo to Mexico

and then back, me singing bluegrass

songs and driving the old 1992 Black Bronco

and you kissing my ear --

She smiled, too

There's a girl who the furniture salesman speaks to

this morning -- maybe he, or maybe especially he,

wants coffee and sense of community at breakfast

and before work. Blue, brown, red and beige houses

are in the neighborhood across the street, visible only

because the bare, spiderweb-like trees

lost all their leaves. It is winter here,

(Now, don't forget to wear your coat!

she says as he gets up) so smoke climbs

up and out of chimneys and disappears into the big

Carolina-blue sky like a girl whispering truths

into an ear of a furniture salesman,

"and, by the way,

the grits down the street

are so

much better than the ones here."

Raleigh, NC

1-10-2012