Migration

The Island Republic of Labrador

I don't want to make the same mistakes of the past, saving money for an implausible adventure, grinding my teeth on the reins of insanity, chasing shadows across the tundra, realizing my checking account is under review for negative balance and then eating cold ramen noodles in a junk yard parking lot while defending my mockery and dreaming of a piano. If I look back into my life with the perfect vision of a crippled man I think the goal was to have something to write about, to meet people, work a variety of jobs, try to assemble a universal perspective, a noble world view that would enrich my writing with authentic experience...and alienate everyone.

Warrants?

Salvation comes in the form of bulletproof vests
warrant check on hobos
drinking in park
less than 24 hours after making my shoe sheath
a lieutenant pulls the knife out
Swiftly
Quietly
Or maybe I'm too drunk to notice
And keeps it safe
While warrants are cross referenced
"Bleacher, Oggy. State of Fuckwad...Warrants?"

And this is how it should be...with
Electricians who have lost their hands in bar fights
and bull riders on toothless bicycles
April becomes the cruelest month
The month of Oggy's demise
The sad end to his affairs
Struggling for guitars and fingers in a Pina Jarritos flavor
Of the month.
Public Intoxication.
Open Container.
Unregistered Moped.
Yankee in a strange republic.
"He's a concert pianist,"
Says Cow Milk pointing at Oggy.
Attitudes and dark glasses.
My Chinese Timber Wolf knife taken by police.
But they left me my shoe sheath
"It looks like an old boxing glove,"
Says the Lieutenant.
And Oggy has a chance to go down in a blaze of glory
Make front page news for two seconds.
But he's a Coward and says, "It was a shoe."

Wasted Land

Wasted Land
FOR T.S. ELIOT*

April be not the cruelest month**
With birds in angry repose
Squawking over seeds casually thrown
By gentle men with senile minds
Young men watching whores on the tracks
With knives in aging knees...

No, cruel is June, the dog heat of July
The police brutality of August.
Makes a homeless man dream of April
And the first signs of Spring fashion
In the panty boutiques on the boulevard
Where vain oil wives go to spend commercial wages
Before the horse flies return with vengeance undefined.

Renaissance

1. Start with a worn out leather shoe. 2. Trim to fit knife.

3. Lace with hemp. 4. Stab leg with knife. Repeat.

 What more can I do? The living history folks of San Antonio inspired me to make a sheath for the knife that was collateral for long ago forgotten loan. It's a Chinese Timber Wolf knife, "stainless", so I'm keeping it. Now I can wear it on my hip in my cool shoe sheath because no one in Texas will make fun of that.

Bedtime Reading: Bleacher and Klein and Wagner

I ought to only read technical manuals at night but the duality of my psychotic complexities demands appeasement on all levels.

"For him, behind every feeling and thought was the sense of the open door leading into nothingness. To be sure, he suffered from dread of many things, of madness, the police, insomnia, and also dread of death. But everything he dreaded he likewise desired and longed for at the same time. He was full of burning curiosity about suffering, destruction, persecution, madness, and death." - Klein and Wagner by Hermann Hesse 1920*