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2006-12-22T19:07:00.000-08:00

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Ay Papi

2006-06-30T18:09:00.000-07:00

I just watched "Murmur of The Heart" a great french movie about a boy who fuqs his mom. After wards I went on itunes for some french music and found all this french cajun steel drum music. It's rad.

quote of the day

"I got some bad news and some worse news.The bad news is I just got fucked by a man named Tiff. The worse news: I likes it"

The Last Bluesman

2005-03-07T14:24:00.000-08:00

God damn. I was knee deep on a bar stool in a ramshackle liquor house in west Virginia. The path that led me there was straight alright, but I might have wished it was crooked. There’s the old story of losin your girl and losing your gig, and losing it all and hittin to the road and ending up far away and far out. That would be the case here but I never had nothing to lose in the first place. I’ve always been a wanderin.

Inside of this Hole was a splintered bar that cared nothing of your troubles and neither did the man behind it. If a smile ever did grace his lips you’d be sure to feast your eyes on his broken teeth and mutton gums. As for my company, there was nothing sadder than a woman alone in this place. The only thing that looked worse off than the bar. She might have glanced up when I walked in but I never saw it.

It was in these conditions that I was draining away whatver time I had left to breathe this beautiful air. I knew there had to be a cliff around this mountainous region that would gladly offer me up as a sacrifice. And I was bout ready to find her. So when a cough came from behind me and I had to see who was joinin me for my last supper. And what a guest.

A black man, looked to be older than petrified wood with a face as smelt as the unfinished face of a metal statue. He carried a homemade guitar case that had been through the entirety of human civilization and back. Grass poked out of the latches like he closed it up in a hurry and never noticed.

The bartender gave him a look that made me think he wasn’t planning on serving him. Black man sat down and a hundred years of walkin came cryin out his backside. Looked like he’d never met a chair before. He put up some nasty lookin dollars and sat back for his beer. Lit up a cigarette from a broken down pack and took a drag. Pulled it back as I stared at him. Held it in. Stared at him. Held it in. Stared. Let her out real slow all the while staring ahead. Turned to me.

“Where you come in from?” I asked. Slow as sin he spoke, “ Been out around, playin this guitar for the people.” “What you play?” I asked him. “Blues” he replied. Took another drag and wrapped his puffy fingers around that mug of drink.

One after another I laid questions on him, took a while, but I finally found out what he was about. Into this bar, had walked, on my last day on earth, in the last place I’d want to spend it, the last, the very last, the last of the last, bluesmen.

Now here it was at the turn of the 21st century, and I know this area is a little slower with the times, but there was no way it was this slow. He said he played on plantations 80 years ago, for people who’s grandparents knew slavery first hand. And he’d show up, start hitting on the strings and the blacks would gather round him in the fields till there boss gave him the boot.

This was a lot to swallow but if anyone looked a hundred years old it was this man. What had he been doin all this time? He’d been travelin around, all alone, playin backwoods towns and any where else where he could make a dime. And now I had to ask him to play me something. To send me out on top. Give me a good song in my head as I took that leap to the great unconscious. I gave him all the money left in my pocket and said I want a show. Just for me. And for the lady at the end of the bar.

The bluesman finished off his beer in slow time and pulled out the guitar. A thing as opposite as it’s ragged case. It looked untouched. He threw it’s old brown strap around his neck and placed the bottom of the instrument on his thigh. And from the first note that he struck a hundred years of life came coughin and cryin and shinin out.

He played to me for two hours straight, only interrupted by sips of beer that the bartender brought him without charge. Even that gal at the end of the bar looked like she’d taken her first breath since she was 15. He played up and down every feeling any of us ever had. A deep voice, raspy at times but clean as stream water when he desired it so. I felt every memory and every memory I wished that I’d had run through my body. From my eyes to my stompin feet. That room must have been glowin if anyone had opened the door. But it was just us and the bluesman.

And when he broke that last note I don’t think any of us knew where we were. That girl was in tears and so was the bartender. I had so many thoughts and so many feelings that they were confusing each other and I couldn’t even move. He took a sip of his drink and eased the guitar back into the case. Stood up real slow like he was a bout to start a thousand mile walk. Nobody said nothing. He just finished what was in his glass and took a step towards the door.

Now I know things haven’t gone right in my life. From women, to my mama, to a home and something to build it with that never came. And I’ve done damn near everything but take a life though I was planning on it in the coming hour. I know that in between every breath I’ve felt the weight of something I just can’t explain but something that’s a bit too heavy to be worth all the effort to take another one. And I know that I don’t know much of nothing. That I’m sure. But I could not just let this man, this creature this resurrecting mystery, walk out the door.

“Mister!” I called, as his hand was upon the wooden door, seemingly waitin for me to speak. He turned, as slow as he’d been all night, and lowered his chin waitin for me to finish what I’d started. “Mister. Can I join you?” Looked like he pondered it inside and out, like he knew that this was a bigger matter than me just joinin him to the next town. Like my life was about to become entwined with all his remaining days. I could see him runnin through the labrynth of his memories all up to this point and even running into the memories he was gonna have, right up till he died. I could see him him running. He looked me over, no doubt seeing my desperation, seein the blues, seein inspiration. He looked me over and flicked his head as slow as a flick can be, towards the door. I couldn’t tell if he motioned for me to join or just that he was headin that way.

“Come on boy” he said. “ I got a show to play come the morrow.” And off I went. Traveling with the last blues man till the end of his days.

My Brother the Assassin

2005-03-03T13:36:00.000-08:00

My brother is an assassin. I never knew this though I'd always expected such. He's climbed mountains in Bosnia and rappelled down buildings in south america in order to do the deed. He's a chivalric man. Stone cold and solid as hell. A computer programmer by day. But the real deal is at night. Weapon of choice is a Steel Cross Bow. He's vicious but only with good cause. You could think of him as a robin hood...but a badass robin hood.

How did I come upon this information? Well I was dog sitting the other day and I went to the closet to find something to clean the stains of shit off the floor that I just scooped up. (the dog did it). There's always a locked closet at my brothers apartment and this sidetracked me from my doodie duty. I took out my credit card and swiped the closet door. And it opened. Inside was the cross bow. Cold to the touch. Everything I thought I knew about my brother was right. He was way too badass to be a computer programmer.

I didn't know how I would break the news to him so I just figured I'd come clean. He walked in the door and I pointed the cross bow at him. Before I could smile, I felt a crushing blow to my kidney. His foot retracted and he helped me off the floor from where I was wheezing and spitting up drool. He threw me onto the couch. "what do you know?" he asked. "Nothing, I was just rooting around". I replied. He looked me dead in the eyes and a smile cracked his ever straight lips, "Well I guess the question now is...what do you want to know?"

For the next 3 hours we sat in the living room, with the movie "The Crow" playing on television in the background, talking about his exploits. He had fought a caravan of arabs in the desert, murdered a prince of a small province in what was the soviet union, and put an arrow through the eye of an owner of a snowball stand somewhere deep in the shit towns of North Carolina. We shared an ice cream carton of butterfinger crunch and laughed until our stomachs hurt badly.

But he wasn't a bad man. Or a murderer. He was an assassin. And only if it met his moral criteria. An assassin of justice. Sometimes laws don't work like they should and then there only one way left. The way of the bow.

Traveling down a wooded path in central america. Not too far from ancient ruins of a civilization that sacrficed humans, especially young girls, he had come upon his target. A local botanist walked alongside a Professor of horticulture from a college in New Mexico. They spoke in words that most men and women would never understand but which had passionate meaning to both scientists. The two men had been bonding ever since the professor arrived four days ago, bearing gits of native american jewlery that he had picked up at the airport before leaving U.S. soil. What a fruitful relationship this could be, could have been, was for the very short time it existed. For in the cover of leaves and brush stood my brother, solid as an ancient statue that had weathered all the wars men could not. With his bow pointed at the professor's skull.

What had this man done to deserve such a fate. That another man would hunt him down like a prized beast, across rivers and mountains, to deliver him his fatal hand. What, in the name of God's Law, had this man perpetrated so that he must be cut down and splayed across the jungle floor, bleeding into a vine that ants ascended towards their heavens only a few feet above. How could my own blood and kin be the cause of such suffering and be the authority of such a sacred judiciary act. I did not know. But I was willing to hear him out, as he is my brother.

Two weeks prior he had received a phone call from a man in Alberquerquee. A man who's name he never knew but who offered him a sum of $40, 000 to find the professor and end his life. And what, my dear friend, my dear brother, had been the catalyst of the whole affair? The man's daughter was a student of the professor's. In exchange for passing his class, which she was failing, he offered her a deal. "Wait on me hand and foot for the next month, between the hours of 7 and 10. What I say, you do. And at the end, you can expect no less than a C." An impressionable young girl, and with scholarship money at stake, she took to the floor with the devil for a waltz.

And months later she was still crying about it. Unable to eat or sleep. Ashamed and a wreck. "It's enough just being 19" her dad said, " but this...this is too much." And like any caring father he got angry. And like some angry men he took to vengeance. And every act of vengeance, needs a weapon.

"Professor Daniels?" A voice called out, in a monotone, from the curtain of green. The professor stopped and looked around, unsure if he had actually just heard his name. But the botanist was sure that they weren't alone. His heart beat through his chest as his eyes darted around for an escape. "Professor Daniels" the voice called out once again. Slower, softer and as monotone as humanly possible. "Yuh, yuh, yes....? Who is it?" replied the professor as if the whole forest was a pitch black room.

Then said my brother, "And for the sin which you committed against Ms. Audrey Kindle, you are condemned to die." The professor's mind exploded with a thousand possiblities. My brother continued, "What is your defense?" The professor stuttered and gasped as he spit out the words, "I don't know who you're talking about." But before he could get out the final syllable the metal tip of an arrow had penetrated both sides of his head.

Now I'm a moral man and I had to ask him...was it wrong what he did? He looked over at his dog, a short-haired brown boxer with a brain the size of a cashew, and stood up so that his belt buckle was in my eyeline. "There aint no right, and there aint no wrong. There's just us on this rock...and I do what I think's best."

And with that he stepped out the door to take that dog for a walk.