Be Kind, Rewind.

It's good for us to think of all the cruel words that we've spoken
when we fill with rage
and sadness.
Whenever the tables get turned, and when our hearts get broken
and we rampage
like madness.
Whoever holds the knife that gets turned, will be stabbed themselves
and they'll bleed the same
as us all.
It's clever to be flip. It's easy when we're full of ourselves.
Really though, it's a shame
to not call
and be brutal like it's a sport and complain when you don't win.
So next time, be kind
and rewind
yourself back to times when you needed a bit of compassion.
And they just might find
it in kind.

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But Likes Can Oppose

I don't believe that opposites attract.
I don't believe in opposites at all

What could be the opposite of brown?
Of gray?
What's the opposite of a circle?
A square?
What's the logic of that deduction?
Of you?
Are there opposites of Key Lime Pies?
Or cakes?
It's been such a profoundly bad thing
For us.
For humankind to measure things like
their fears
their differences and who has what.
They are
Taxonomists of hate. They are sick.
And still
Taxidermists of fate, make me hurl.

I don't believe that opposites attract.
I believe they cause us to maim, hurt and kill.

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Luna The Rubbish Raccoona: A Cautionary Tale

Look At Luna Raccoona!
Rumaging Through That Rubbish
Counting down the time
Till You're Rubbish Too
Counting on your Penny Well Wish,
Crawling while you climb
That is what you'll do!
From Aimes To Altoona!

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My Violin Case And Some Everclear

Finally, I Set Ablaze
My Violin Case
With Hand-Written Poems Inside

Destruction Surely Does Amaze
So Tells Your Warm Face
All Full Of Tears That You Hide

Quarter Pint Of Everclear
Half Is Fuel For Me
Half Imbibes The Past In Ash

Times Lost In An Orange Sear
I S'poze We Must Flee.
'Cause Forevers' Gone In A Dash

• • •

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James is driving with Mike on the job. This is Mike's first day.

James: "Well you know once, I got from Muskegon to Lansing in just over an hour."

Mike: "Ha ha, oh yeah? That's nuts! That's at least 100 miles per hour most of the way."

James: "It was at least 90 most of the way, with clear roads and low traffic. There was this guy in a Dodge Charger whom I caught up with west of Grand Rapids, and I just got behind him and paced him."

Mike: "Plus you have a radar detector, right?."

James: "Oh yeah. That's what I bought with my first tax return when I turned 16. It was probably the best investment I have ever made."

Mike: "Aren't they illegal?"

James: "Nope! Not in Michigan. I guess they are illegal in places like Virginia, Delaware, and Ontatro."

Mike: "Huh! I didn't know that. You probably don't want to get caught with one though! Like, if you got pulled over."

James: "Well, you don't get caught if you have it, you know?"

Mike: "Heh, right."

James: "It's like, you don't want the fuzz to catch you with a piece. You know? But like, if the cop catches you with a piece, you just fucking cap the pig."

Mike: ::SILENCE::

James: You know?

Mike: ". . .right." (Visibly Uncomfortable)

James: "I fucking hate cops, man. They have power issues. They tend to date small statured women, often Asian. You know, someone that could never physically overpower them in bed. Someone that makes them seem...you know, big in comparison."

Mike: ::Shuffles In Seat:: "I guess."

James: "Women cops...I don't know. They are usually pretty heavy. I imagine they have extremely large dildos. Like freakishly fucking huge. You know why?"

Mike: "Why?"

James: "Because they don't respect anything that isn't physically intimidating. Like, painfully physically intimidating for most women. I'm talking, like...the thought of a bruised cervix makes them hot."

Mike: "Yeah?"

James: "Yeah! I don't think you could be interested or successful in law enforcement if you didn't have power issues. It's pretty repulsive actually."

Mike: "I suppose."

James: ::DRINKS FROM FLASK:: This weekday rush traffic is impossible to tolerate without at least a mild buzz. You know?

Mike: ::Sinks Into Seat::

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"George W. Bush took our assent, and re-configured it, and honed it, and shaped it to a razor-sharp point and stabbed this nation in the back with it."

Keith Olbermann

The other day at work I saw a woman wearing a bizarre tee-shirt. On that shirt was a picture of Jesus, Mary, some saints and a heavenly backdrop. In the middle was a picture of George W. Bush praying, and underneath it said, "We are a blessed nation." I called the attention of my coworkers to the utter ridiculousness of this shirt. To my surprise, they defended both the shirt and George Bush. In that room at that moment, George Bush had 66% job approval and 33% disapproval, which is the exact inverse of what it is nationally.

Most polls from the last several months put George W. Bush’s job approval in the high 20s to low 30s. More importantly his job disapproval has been consistently around 65%

Less than one-third of all American’s like George W. Bush. We have a national consensus that this guy is a total fuckwit. Yet there is a segment of the population that is holding on to the notion that he possesses a level of competence that allows him tie his own shoes unassisted.

The war in Iraq is not only an obvious failure, but it is the worst foreign policy mistake in U.S. history. As a nation, we are less safe, and less secure than before Bush's belligerent, baseless invasion of that country. Iran, North Korea, Russia and others have exploited our weak position in the world to work for their national interest at the expense of ours.

Nearly 4,000 troops have been killed. Tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians have been killed, and an equal number of American service-people have been maimed. These sacrifices were not necessarily, and in fact they have impeded America's ability to confront its real enemies.

But alas, the Bush presidency is not just about Iraq.


It is about an administration that so much lusts for power and control that in insists that it needs the power to randomly incarcerate American citizens indefinitely without being required to tell them or any court with what they have been charged.

It is about an administration that has promoted a culture of greed through corporate giveaways, tax cuts for the wealthy, and no-bid contracts for companies that profit from war and that keep members of the administration on its payroll to this day.

It is about an administration thats permits oil companies to receive tax-payer funded subsidies while they continue to post record profits, keep refinery capacity low, and gasoline prices artificially high.

It is about an administration with such warped priorities that it doesn't think that taxpayers should support potentially life saving therapeutic stem-cell research, but insists that they should spend $100 billion per year to kill Iraqi's.

It is about a President whom as Governor of Texas refused to commute the death sentences of five men who are mentally retarded, but somehow found the compassion to commute the sentence of Scooter Libby who protected an administration that committed treason through its character assassination of CIA operative Valarie Plame and her husband Joe Wilson.

It is about a President who exploited 9/11, whom took our well wishes and support and as Keith Olbermann has said, "re-configured it, and honed it, and shaped it to a razor-sharp point and stabbed this nation in the back with it."

Geroge W. Bush took a nation at peace, and made it a nation at war with the world.

He took a prosperous nation and gave us the largest budget deficit, the largest national debt, some of the worst job and wage growth we have ever known.

Who are these people who think he is doing a good job? I suspect that it takes the same detachment from reality to deny the utter calamity that is the Bush Presidency as it does to enable a person to deny the existence of global warming, evolution, and Eskimos.It quite possibly could be indicative of a mental illness. Perhaps support of George W. Bush should be added to the DSM IV.

It takes a rare breed to defend George W. Bush. Those who do are an endangered species for sure. They are either too obstinate to die, or too rabid to understand their survival instinct.

The S.S. George W. Bush is sinking. These ignorant predications of support are merely some final desperate gasps for air from those who will surely go down with the ship. I however which that goddamn thing would just sink already.

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The Best Kind Of Work

Is Done Before You Punch The Clock. . .Sometimes.

Since I work in summer recreation, my work week starts on Friday following a Wednesday/Thursday "weekend". It's an emasculating way to live. I was running a wee tad late on the way to my shift, but I still needed a post weekend pick-me-up. It was very important that I get to the Wesco station and buy a large can of energy drink. It was too hot for coffee, and since I don't have any connections in Muskegon I have no access to powerful amphetamines.

Because I had hit the snooze button twice, and had fallen back asleep in the shower I thought that it would be appropriate to pass a few cars on the road. At 7:30 am most people are too tired to drive strategically. I however, drive more strategically as the parts of my brain that sense danger are unresponsive.

The first car I passed was an old man in a Ford Focus. His window was closed, but I could see him yelling at me. Can't the old man understand that I the only sleep I had gotten was 4 or 5 hours the previous early evening during daylight on the beach? Couldn't he consider that falling asleep wrapped in a bedsheet on coarse Lake Michigan sand doesn't compare to his nocturnal oasis that is his Select Comfort Sleep Number Bed™? I figure that is what he sleeps on. He looked like the kind of guy who would buy any product endorsed by Paul Harvey. I imagine he likes Ovaltine too, which is by no means a character flaw.

The only reason I had gotten any sleep was because I had consumed 3 Cuba Libres and 6 beers at the beach. I was so buzzed and exhausted that the girl to whom I had given a beer might actually have been 16, although she was probably 20.


When her boyfriend showed up, I took one look at him and it was clear that he was no older than 19. "So how old is she then?", I wondered.

He was very polite, he handed me the can and said, "Neither one of us are 21, so. . ."

"Oh, yeah I'll take the can. Thats fine.

" I said I might as well make peace with this fellow, I figured. I don't know what I would think of my life if I put myself in a position where I was competing for a 20 year old girl with a fellow who might have been 17.

"I'm David by the way!" I said as I put my hand out to shake.

"I'm Cody", He said, shaking my hand. He had a confident handshake. Maybe he is older than he looks. Plus he has a really unfortunate tattoo...some kind of symbol I didn't recognize. It was either tribal or faux-alien. No responsible parent would permit this. Then again, neither would any friend, girlfriend,boyfriend, mom, dad, step-dad, step-mother, half-brother, half-sister, half-uncle, full cousin or aesthetically conscious mail-man. But somehow he circumvented all of this and ended up with this black and green thing that could be mistaken for a gangrenous wound left by some high-end panini press.

"Say, you want one?" I asked him while holding up a beer. "No, we're not 21." He replied.

Why is he such a buzzkill? His girlfriend gladly drank the beer down pretty quickly. Maybe he didn't like Busch Light. Maybe he figured that it was going to be too warm. I didn't want to believe that a man-boy would be socially defiant enough to maim himself with a sanskrit design but not enough to enjoy a beer at the beach.

"Well, shit man, it's a lot harder to get a beer if you're under 21. In the U.S. anyway. Did you know that? Are you a tourist? Êtes-vous un Canadien?"

He laughed nervously, and scratched his arm. "Alright then, more for me I suppose. Lord knows I need it!" The girl had a short laugh, but he just kind of looked at me with a look restrained disbelief upon his face.

"How could I escape this awkwardness?", I wondered.

"Well I am going to go ahead and go for a swim." I said as I stood up, stumbling a bit.

I went in the water which was quite pleasant, unlike that scene I had left behind on the shore. I gladly traded the cruel indifference of the open waters for the bizarre embarrassment that would surely ensue on the sand under Beach Bunny's baby blue parasol.

I swam and water jogged about a half mile south, all the way to the rocks. I pulled myself up out of the water; adroitly scaling seaweed covered boulders to get on shore. I got back to the beach, and I noticed that there was a 30-something woman watching me. "That's a good workout, eh?" I said to her. "Ha ha! Yeah! It looks dangerous! Be careful!" She said.

Be careful? Doesn't she know who I am? How could she though? I didn't.

I saluted her in acknowledgment and proceeded to jog at a light pace back to my beach chair. I had to dart around children making sand castles and idiot pre-teens on skim-boards. When I finally got back to my spot Cody and Beach Bunny had said that they are going to take off and that they watched my stuff.

"Oh yeah man, thanks." I said. "Hey, take a beer with you!" I said, knowing that he wouldn't take it even though girl wanted him to. It was petty sabotage on my part, exposing his uncoolness to this makeshift beach bunny of his. Perhaps I would not benefit from this, but I hoped that she would; because she knows that the cool kids drink, and that her boyfriend had just turned down a beer.

The rest of the folks left too, but I was not good to drive. So I laid down to catch some sun. I felt a cold wind at my back. I lifted my sand covered face up for a moment. The beach was virtually empty. I was wrapped in my beach sheet very much resembling Lawrence of Arabia, or perhaps a more avant garde member of the Ku Klux Clan.

I dusted off my sand doused cellphone, which was clutched tightly in my hand. Holy shit! It was 8:30 PM...it couldn't have been later than 4:30PM when I passed out. It wasn't 2 minutes that had passed, it was 4 hours! Apparently I had also had a text message conversation with my ex-girlfriend that started pleasant and got weird.

I tasted my own mouth and nearly heaved. I needed some water. I was sore and tired, but not sleepy. Besides all that had some nasty fucking sunburn, but just on my lower back and shoulders. I knew that I wouldn't sleep well that night.

And that is why I didn't sleep well. The old man in the Focus hadn't considered any of this because just as I was waking up, he was sitting in his off-brand Lay-Z-Boy, watching Wheel of Fortune and eating a Werther's Original. So I passed him, ever the cocky young bastard with my rebellious hair and aviator sunglasses. I made eye contact with him, and shrugged with a nonchalant aspect. I knew he was enraged, but I was over it. I didn't have to flaunt this constructive recklessness, but I did. I had to drive this way at this moment, because I had to get to work, but first, I need a RedBull or a Monster. So I hit the gas.

I was riding high and free on the vacant road until a taupe Mercedes failed to calculate my speed and distance and pulled out in front of me, forcing me to hit my breaks, which brought my speedometer under 20 MPH.

I slapped my steering wheel in anger. "What the hell is wrong with you!? Do you take pride in obstructing a mans destiny!?", I yelled. Either I had channeled the ghost of General George Patton or my lack of sleep had made me prone to megalomaniacal hyperbole.

I had to pass this guy on a road that might have or might not have had double yellow lines. "Any law I break now pales compared to letting an asshole in a taupe Benz slow down traffic and impede the liberty of the peasant class!", I figured. I was doing it again! I was Che Guevara on four wheels.

"Been Swank" by the Von Bondies was playing on my iPod through my cassette adapter. I turned up my music and then I passed him. I looked at the driver out through my passenger side window with a condescending smile. I recognized this guy as a lawyer from town, though anyone else would have seen his jheri curl, and his 1970's porn-star mustache and would have understandably guessed that he was the owner of a moderately successful carpet store. He leaned his body against his door and banged his hand on the window like he was an ape at the zoo and I was playing keep-away with a banana through the cage.

I pulled up to the Wesco station and parked. I was walking and saw through the corner of my eye that the lawyer was pulling in. I cascaded through the store as though I didn't notice. I reached into the cooler and grabbed a Monster. I was thinking about getting a doughnut as I heard someone yelling erratically at the other side of the store. "Hey!" It was the lawyer, trying to get my attention. I pretended that I didn't notice him "Hey!" He says as he walks up to me.

I looked at him and said nothing, still wearing my sunglasses. Apparently this is a sign of contempt and disrespect, because an Amusement Park where I had once worked had told us to take them off when we talked to people.

"Okay!" he said. "Be a smart-ass! I'll just call it in!", he said.

"Hmph? Pardon?" Call it in? He's not a cop! He said "call it in" like he was just going to add it to the big list of things he calls in to someplace. He had no witness, it's my word against his! Besides, I'm not sure I committed a crime. He was more dangerous when he pulled in front of me and decided to drive at a pace that was just a hair above idling. Who is to say that I didn't smell cheap scotch on his breath? How could anyone trust a man whose scalp looked like Borat's pubes? Surely no one who was sober would be yelling in a rage in a busy convenience store like this at 7:33am. "I have witnesses", I said diabolically just under my breath.

"Double yellow lines!" He said to me from a distance about an aisle away. I walked up to him and noticed that he was about 5 inches shorter than me. I recognized his shirt and tie from a J.C. Penny catalog. Apparently he had spent all his money on the taupe Mercedes.

"Those lines are there for a reason!" he yelled with anger and fear in his voice. He is used to confrontation, but he isn't used to a big Irish bastard like me staring him down this close. I said nothing and stared into him, struggling to contain my grin on my otherwise expressionless face. He dashed away like a squirrel does when you walk to close too him.

He put his arms up into the air and said "Be a smartass! I'll just call it in."

"Alright man, thanks for the advice!", I said. I thought about asking him his LSAT score, because I was fairly sure that my most recent number was higher than his. But I went to pay for my Monster, I had wasted too much time on this guy.

A man ahead of me in line aged about 55 he had a concerned look on his face as he was looking at the lawyer erratically get his coffee from Wesco's rather elaborate beverage station.

"Can you believe that douchebag?" I asked him to break the tension.

"He's a pretty prominent attorney in town with a lot of connections to judges, you might just apologize while you can." he said.

I had asked, "Apologize for what? The guy is a bully. You can't appease a bully, man. Remember the Rhineland?" The old man shrugged uncomfortably. I suppose that he didn't remember the Rhineland. I considered the possibility that this kind of complacency might pave the way for a 1000 Reich. But I don't suppose that is the sort of small talk you make in line at the Wesco Station to a man who just wants to get a refill on his bucket of popcorn and leave this madness behind. Little did he know was that the real madness laid within the man who was eating popcorn before noon.

"If he is such a bigshot, why does he smell like J&B at 7:35 AM?", I asked. He pretended that he didn't hear me. I chugged my Monster and drove off. I got to work well on time but I knew that the most important work that I had to do that day was behind me.

Maybe If We Mixed Them, There Would Be More Peace In The World

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