A Man Walks into a Store

A man walks into a store

And yells about masks

The cashier says ok sir You have to leave sir

That’s just our policy sir

The man yells freedom! Nazis!

Nazis! Freedom!

He pushes over a display

And walks out the door

The man walks back to his truck

He changes his shirt and hat

And drives down the road

He walks into a coffee shop

And yells about masks

The manager says ok sir You have to leave sir

That’s just our policy sir

The man yells Hail Fauci! My rights!

My rights! Hail Fauci!

He kicks a chair

And walks out the door

The man walks back to his truck

He changes his shirt and hat

And drives down the road

He walks into an airport

And yells about masks

The guard tells him ok sir You have to leave sir

That’s just the law sir

The man sings some lines

Oh say can you see

By the dawn's early light?

He rips down a sign

And walks out the door

The man walks back to his truck

He changes his shirt and hat

And drives down the road

He walks into a hospital

And yells about masks

The man falls down

The nurses pick him up

They put him in a bed

He yells freedom! Nazis!

Nazis! Freedom!

The man falls asleep

He drives down the road

And walks into a cave

He sees a tall bird

Standing still in the dark

The bird says hello

The man says hello He does not wake up

The Politics of Cuelty

He felt as if he couldn’t escape the politics of cruelty. It was like a vast, urine-soaked sheet draped across the continent.

The gratuitous cruelty of the internet jagoff.

The lowbrow, flamboyant cruelty of Donald.

The paycheck, crew cut cruelty of the tv “military expert.”

The stumbling and sputtering cruelty of the “proud boy.”

The high school essay cruelty of the right-wing news chud.

And it was all so embarrassing. To see men try to project an aura of strength, but transmit such idiocy - like watching a toddler take a crap in a sandbox.

Charlie Watts died yesterday. He thought how there was more grace in one of his bass-drum-to-snare hits than one of these fools would manage in a lifetime.

patriot [ pey-tree-uht ] noun

in American speech

1 a person dedicated to the maintenance of the hyper-individualist, white supremacist, misogynist, hyper-materialistic, ecology-hating, self-pitying and maudlin traditional American order.

The Virus and the Unreal

No vaccines. No masks. No business closures or regulations. Nothing. Just let 'er rip because... it is not real. The acute pain, the gasping for air and dying alone in plastic tents, the weight of a grand piano on the chest in the testimony of hundreds of thousands, the other ER cases who cannot get a bed, the medical staff reduced psychologically to fumes and shards of burnout, the shattered families, the virus patients crawling back from death's door, the hundreds of thousands plundering through that door - their lungs topping out with fluid and drowning being their final experience on this mortal plain... none of it is real. Not real. Or unreal. Irreal. The only reality is what the believer asserts. Stand them in the ER of an Alabama hospital for the night shift today, August 18, 2021. Let them witness the chaos, the despair, the bewilderment, the howling pain of patients battling a hungry virus -- children, teenagers, college kids, butchers, bakers and businesswomen crushed by the thing from a bat or a lab. Let them watch the nurses and doctors and paramedics try to hold it together as they relive the exact hell they lived one year ago, almost to the day. Let the ideologue watch all of it and still they will say: IT IS NOT REAL. 

Two Squirrels

Two squirrels playing up and down a tree trunk. One with an crab apple in her mouth. One always on one side and the other always on the other. Claws on bark, winding up and down the tree like a lunatic ribbon. Playing that game in the black-and-white movies where the guy on one side of the wall looks for the lady on the other, craning his neck around the edge, just in time to see the empty space left by the lady, craning her neck around the edge trying to spy him.

The Father Spends a Lifetime Trying to Understand the Son

The father spends a lifetime trying to understand the son. The son spends a lifetime trying to understand why the father does not understand the son. He looks out the window. A small red bug walks across a leaf. The son thinks he must just say to the father - I am but the stranger version of you. The you who sat at my bedside and told me adventure stories straight from your head - Bortu the Giant Squid, Andy and the Time Machine. That’s who I am.

From the Point of View of Others

Moby Dick from the eye of the whale

King Lear from the dew near Dover

Jack and the Beanstalk from the white of the bean

20,000 Leagues from the waving coral fans

Apocalypse Now from the dark of the river

Stagecoach from the ribs of the horses

2001 from the fire of the stars

No Lockdowns, No Masks, No Vaccine - An Alternate History Novel

 

It's interesting how it went, first, "I'm against lockdowns!" And then, "And I'm against wearing masks!" And then, "And I'm against the vaccine!" OK, cool. You're against lockdowns, masks and the vaccine. All three. Quite a trifecta. Think of an alternate history novel where no countries did any of those things and all schools, all businesses, all public areas continued as normal, full steam ahead. What would it look like? Who would and would not be here? Would I be typing this? Would you be reading this? Would you or I be on month number six or nine or twelve of the hell slog of Long Covid? How about doctors and nurses and healthcare workers, EMT's? Who is alive and who is dead among them? How many more have PTSD, have quit, have shattered relationships, shattered lives? Where would each of us be at psychologically and emotionally with no shutdowns, no fabric masks & no immunizations to block this thing? No shut downs, no masks and no vaccines. Let 'er rip. How does that alternate history novel read?

Roberto Bolaño's Fiction - A Glimpse of Catholic Fascism

The fiction that has most permitted me to understand the psychology of fascism - a virulence that is asserting itself anew in the US and elsewhere - are the works by Roberto Bolaño that I'll mention below. RB was born in Chile and spent part of his childhood there, before moving to Mexico with his family. He returned to Chile at age 17 in order to take part in the exciting social changes occurring around Salvador Allende. He arrived just in time for the savage and mass-homicidal coup d'etat being carried out by General Augusto Pinochet in 1972. RB escaped being executed by a Pinochet firing squad only when a soldier who recognized him from childhood permitted him to flee. The Pinochet movement was rooted in European Catholic-style fascism. Reading Bolaño 10 years ago, I had no idea how relevant his observations would be to what was coming to the US. Fiction permits the telling of history through a series of interior experiences. As such, it offers truths unavailable through other forms of expression. The translations of Roberto Bolaño in English are very good. Also, his prose in Spanish is clear, direct and declarative - nothing like the feverish baroque of some fiction by Garcia Marquez, for example. A student of Spanish with a high intermediate level should read RB in the original Spanish.

Among the excellent fiction by Bolaño that deals with fascism in Latin America are the following works:

1. By Night in Chile (short novel in the form of a ticking monologue)

2. Distant Star (short novel in the form of a ticking monologue)

3. "Mauricio ("The Eye") Silva" (tour de force short story spanning continents and decades)

4. "Sensini" (tour de force short story spanning continents and decades)

staying where it's at

interesting to think about how we drink the same water the dinosaurs drank / none of the earth elements ever really go anywhere / they just shift places / same thing with carbon / there's not more or less carbon out there / it just changed places / it was in plants and animals like ferns & dinosaurs / then they died & broke down & their carbon went underground / we dug it up and burned it up / now that carbon is up in the sky & it's starting to burn us up & break us down & all the other plants & creatures we love too / you really just can't move stuff around like that / sometimes stuff just wants to stay where it's at

Rahsaan Roland Kirk

roll rahsaan

rolling out of ohio

make the lions smile

saxophone clusters

mile after mile

gut bucket stride piano wiles

sawdust symphonies beguile

bop to swing to stride

the stritch glides

and the fearful hide

sing into the flute

of worlds which collide

call thee kokopelli

spirit of hunchbacked hopi

who flies the earth with flute and sees

manzello tangerine melodies mellow

as a cubist formation of horns

form a grand central station

born a new nation

in inflated teardrop orchestration

the orbit of elvin's snare drum

rounds saxophone solar trick sums

jaki's black key meteors stun

richard davis bass runs

what orchestra on a hill?

what mystical dreams of will?

despair? kirk brings lunar repair

a rare bee

brewing honey

from flowers of we

and secrets

never scared easily

kirk pulled melodies from trees

snatched rhythms from the breeze

willow weep for me

as we ascend in ecstasy

pillow keep my dreams

we’ll seek them in night’s reverie

are you ready to go? because

“we’re going everywhere”

green is the color

of my true love's mind

yellow the color

of the saxophone climb

a spiral sign

a nautilus shell

curves a bit like a horn's bell

finds three horns

are better than one

oceans of impetus

all rise with the sun

saxaphonium to tenor

switch to the stritch

leave a hole in the melody

where the moon can

break

through

and a star

fall into

wherein

we can

reach you

"Living in These Hard Times"

Great lyricists. I think I knew one. My best friend when I was in my early 20s was a writer and musician named Tucker Katonah. He committed suicide at age 25 in 1990, but 31 years later I still think of lines he wrote back then. Tonight I'm listening to the BBC Radio 3 program Music Planet and it features stunning music by an oud player named Joseph Tawadros. It reminds me of words from Tucker's song "Living in These Hard Times," which had a killer chorus: "LIVING IN THESE HARD TIMES / LIVING IN THESE HARD TIMES / LEARNING HOW TO PLAY THE GUITAR..." But each time, he would switch out the musical instrument with a different one. One of the choruses, he sang, "LEARNING TO PLAY THE OUD..." We recorded some of our songs on a $20 Fisher Price, black and white, kids video camera in an abandoned apartment in Portland, Maine (below) before he got really sick. It was me and Tucker and sometimes our friend Seth. The band was called Boring Films Discorporated.

another parker (for Ricardo Aleixo)

what if there were

another parker

called shirley or jean

who also traced

harmonic shapes

on top of show tunes

at such velocity

only she was

even more reticent

couldn’t play outside

her rented room

attended five spot gigs

by dizzy and kenny clarke

clocked their sonic soaring

in her mind

elaborated on these

in the rented room

or off the stern

of the staten island ferry

late night

notes sent out

at the speed

of racing

high birds

who heard her

below

another sister

of them

'79 in the City

When the bullying got so bad that I actually heard myself asking my father, “Do you think I died and have already gone to hell? Like, I’m in hell now?” my folks and I decided it was time for me to transfer out of Catholic school. I switched midway through seventh grade and was eager to make new friends. Joe and Gavin were rock heads, fans of several groups whose grandiosity I couldn't relate to -- Kansas, Pink Floyd -- but I wanted to hang with them, so I ended up listening to some stuff and going to some shows where I felt like an impostor. Boy, were Joe and Gavin excited when "The Song Remains the Same" Led Zeppelin concert documentary was going to screen at the Oriental Theater. They built it up as being a near-religious experience of awe. One of the great nights of my life was on the horizon, they told me. It was 1979, I think. We sat toward the back of the theater, the 8-foot tall seated Buddhas beaming their red light eyes from arched alcoves up and down the sides of the theater. We were probably the youngest kids there, at 12 years old, and late-1970s hippies from the Midwest possessed a simmering menace, contrary to the peace & love beads stereotype. There was percolating tension in the air. The movie starts and there are those skinny long-haired men in Zep projected at heights of 20-feet tall each on the giant screen. The double neck guitar. The glazed eyes and sweaty faces. The film was playing for all of one minute before the restless hippies started yelling, "turn it up!" The projectionist didn't hesitate. The volume went up all the way, into eardrum–rending, distortion territory.

"Does anybody remember laughter?" What the fuck was Robert Plant talking about? This concert was the least funny thing I had seen in my life. There were dream sequences of John Paul Jones playing a towering pipe organ surrounded by candelabra and John Bonham wearing a pinstripe suit and toting a Tommy gun for a bank heist. When the bullets started flying, the victims were spigoting multicolored blood. It was a projection of the bad acid trip I would mercifully never have, having figured out at a young age that my subconscious existed quite close to my conscious mind and that LSD might incinerate what remained of the scrim between the two realms. Nevertheless, I felt the movie singe my neural synapses absent any drug besides a large Sprite. We exited onto Farwell Avenue. There were multicolored neon signs and I could make out the contours of a German pub across the street. “…uznt ‘at great? ‘ucking A,” Gavin or Joe said. We walked next door to the diner for French fries with gravy and a shake.