A Room That Isn't (Downstairs).

Five of seven nights since her haughty, rehearsed sneer:

regrettable vignettes intrude well-earned respite;

spoofing banalities that need no parody

even as a new woman feigns sleep in my bed.

Three floors down in an astral amalgamate space:

reconciliation and reigning in. Once again,

hastily forsaking what’s had for what has gone.

Through a slitted eyelid, I see she finds her clothes,

and seeks an assuring and dignified good bye

with pursed lips, I less than respectfully decline.

• 0 comments. Got something to say? Come at me, bro. »

Thank You, Brown Recluse

She bit my torso while I slept,

feasting away toward my sweetbreads.

Forever ending my career

spearing cold, culled foul carcasses.

Prying from me necrotized love

I could not incise on my own.

Stuffing daily with silver gauze,

opiates, and Scotch; oozing puss.

Giving excuse for frequent steaks

and pondering a life in Seoul

that I never wanted or lived.

And for my thirtieth birthday:

banging upward, a decade younger.

And soon, making some real money

fixing ill devised foreign prose.

She had made my year and my life,

but still, I am glad she is dead.

• 0 comments. Got something to say? Come at me, bro. »

The Pulsar In Your Skull

I believe in the power of human intimacy

but I'm willing to settle for less

Everyone’s consciousness is mangled

eventually, capriciously

diffused throughout the multiverse and pulsing in terror

once and for all

• 0 comments. Got something to say? Come at me, bro. »

What's It Take?

It takes grit to make it in America
It takes more than you have to get what you need.
It takes blood to bleed and teeth to gnaw through bone.
It takes courage to pay down what you can't own.
It takes not only charm but love to Make Love.
It takes gumption to see what cannot be shown.
It takes sight beyond sight to fly without flight.
It takes not dying to keep on not living
and
It takes luck to build again once all is blown.

• 0 comments. Got something to say? Come at me, bro. »

Empty Things & Hollow Rings

Things you
got goin'
ain't goin'
no place
at all.

Maybe
you ought
to go
and get
going on
getting
over
things you
don't get
and will
never
ever
have your
hands on.

And if
you are
fixing
some tricks
to make
it in
the mix;
get to
thinkin
sick things
to see
if that
which is
hollow
also

rings.

• 0 comments. Got something to say? Come at me, bro. »

True Revolution

Today Azlan is celebrating
liberation
from hostile occupying forces.
With a clearer head and mended soul
he climbs onto
and hikes over
the rubble
to see how he can clear it out.

Not soon enough
he will build
a new nation from what is left
and what can be made.

Since it takes less time to count blessings
than it takes to count the casualties,
Azlan makes a rare but sincere prayer
that the world would learn to remember:

True Revolution comes from within.

• 0 comments. Got something to say? Come at me, bro. »

Re: Small, Dry Places

Mr McSaddle:

You'll have to go someplace bigger
and less dry
to see how hot you really get.
And if you really put yourself into it
and I mean
REALLY
put yourself into it
you can burn that place down too.

Best Regards Via Seance,

Robert Frost

The Punishing Netherworld

• 1 comments. Got something to say? Come at me, bro. »

Small, Dry Places

Some things burn too hot to be in small dry places.
The rooms burn down and all that is left
are the dropped and slacked jaws
of
the assimilated, associated, and confused
pacing about the rubble and orange-hot cinders.
coughing clouds of soot and smoke
as they openly wonder how they will build it again
exactly as it was before.

• 0 comments. Got something to say? Come at me, bro. »

Vestigial Organs

I'll tell you something
about careening
through the scenery
with fiends and creeps
out seeking to be mean
and
struggling to be street
living lean
and
thinking on your feet
until you're
thinking with a blade
deep in your spleen;
And suddenly you're less confused
because
you never miss
what
you never used.

www.TheTruthOrSomethingLikeIt.blogspot.com

• 0 comments. Got something to say? Come at me, bro. »

Rib Poem #2

At Saint Francis’ Youth Group
I learned that woman was birthed
from man's rib.
I guess in a sense then,
Eve
was both
Adam's
daughter and his lover;
Which isn't too strange as I consider the things
Cain and Abel had to do
to get a good piece of ass.

TheTruthOrSomethingLikeIt.blogspot.com

• 0 comments. Got something to say? Come at me, bro. »

Rib Poem #1

Baby back ribs
don't fare well against
roasted spare ribs.
If you cook them slow
the meat will fall
right off the bone.

• 0 comments. Got something to say? Come at me, bro. »

Click Image To View Full Size

• 0 comments. Got something to say? Come at me, bro. »

Ides Of July

The Ides Of July
will soon be past.
Breathe a warm sigh
when the haze lifts.
But remember,
August wont last
and warm air shifts.

• 0 comments. Got something to say? Come at me, bro. »

Skewered

I had embarrassed myself
pretty badly.
The stress of secrets and existential crises
made it easy to guzzle
all those creamy White Russians;
which by the way
is comfort food
for drunks.
Sadly,
it had been happening a lot more around that time
so I was becoming more skilled in the lost art of the apology
and recovering some of my repute.

On this particular occasion I used food.
I went out and bought everything:
Some lean beef that was on sale,
red onions, tomatoes,
both green and red peppers.
I made amends among friends
while I made marinade
and while I cut steak into chunks
and the peppers and onions
into pieces are big enough
so that they wouldn’t slip
through the
grill grates.

Rather than angry,
they were mostly worried about me:
True to the nature of too good of friends.
It made me feel even worse
that I was consequence free.

I have always
felt that the heat
and the fire
make us less raw and more full of flavor and tastes
like they make the onions and
peppers sweeter and give the
beef a good char.
And being skewered through
like browning, juicing kabobs
helps us keep it together
as we endure hot orange coals.

• 0 comments. Got something to say? Come at me, bro. »

Too Big For Your Britches

Bruno's neck resembles pancake batter as it spills out of his shirt color while his necktie hangs loose and flaccid. It looked as though it fit him at one time, but he had gotten too fat. He came in at 10:15 AM, fifteen minutes before session and tapped me for all I had learned in the five meetings that I had been in since I had seen him yesterday at 3:30 PM shortly before he left back toward home with the female district aide.

I asked him if he had looked over the position paper I had given him. He said that he glanced at it and I knew he was lying. He asked me if the bill's sponsor had donated to the campaign, and I said that they had. The female district aide had intervened, saying that the bill's opposition would likely give him more for his next campaign, and he went with her as he always does when she has anything to say, which is seldom but still too often.

I had fifteen minutes to explain a days worth of work. I'll have to put the rest of into a position paper and hope without expecting that it will get read. That job had fit me at one time, but I've gotten too big for my britches too.

• 0 comments. Got something to say? Come at me, bro. »

What's Good That's Oval?

What’s good that’s Oval?
Oval is not the same as Ovular
so you can’t say eggs or caviar,
which are obviously ovums, not ovals.
Circles, Squares
Triangles
and
Rectangles
pretty much get it done.

• 0 comments. Got something to say? Come at me, bro. »

What You Can’t Buy vs. What You Can’t Charm

That fellow of yours,
what’s he got going on?
What’s he offering?

You have said yourself
that it’s not a lot.
A pothead without a job:
just how does he pull that one off?
He must be smarter
than I thought
and
how he looks.

I might be a drunk
but at least
I mix a good drink
and I make enough
to buy that
which I can’t steal.
But that’s not enough
to steal that
which I cannot charm.

• 2 comments. Got something to say? Come at me, bro. »

In The Life, A Day.

In the morning, I struggle to gather myself.
With my eyes closed to the spring sun,
I move my back off the mattress
and my bare feet onto the floor.

In the afternoon, I regret skipping breakfast.
Whilst at work, I scrounge for freebees.
Fruit and roast beef?! Not bad at all!
And better than fresh, it was free.

In the evening, I neglect my homework and chores
and instead I drink rum cocktails
or beer while I cackle with friends.
I think that’s what lifes’ meant to be.

In the late night, I stumble a mile back home.
I undress and I brush my teeth.
I move my bare feet off the floor
and my back onto the mattress.

• 0 comments. Got something to say? Come at me, bro. »

Something Good

What do you say we get a little something good going?
You and I should get together
and be good friends in fair weather
since we haven’t got anything
real rolling.
We might as well have us something
that’s good going
while going’s good
and the terms
are
understood.

• 0 comments. Got something to say? Come at me, bro. »

The McSaddle Daiquiri

I don't know many folks who don't like summer time. Show me one and I will throw a strong drink right in their goddamn face. What I really want to talk about though are the drinks that are too good to throw in anyones face.

Last summer, I gave you recipes for the Redneck Sunrise and the Mennonite Lemonade. I never posted a recipe for the McSaddle Daiquiri, which comes as kind of a surprise to me. I wondered what the heat, humidity, fatigue, workplace irritation, and persistent inebriation had done to me.

Why wouldn't I share this recipe with the world? I think that my readers deserve all the good things I can impart upon them. Especially since they check this blog regularly, often to find little more than pedantic contrived bullshit. Honestly though, I feel as though my poetry has developed.

So, here it is. More such recipes will follow because I think the drink recipe genre is one worth developing. Also, I am working on short fiction so there will be fewer poems and essays.

Feel free to compare and contrast the McSaddle Daiquiri and the Hemingway Daiquiri and make erroneous inferences about that it says about the two men.

McSaddle Daiquiri (For Two)

• 8 shots of Bacardi Coco Coconut Rum
• 2 Cans of Strawberry-Lime Jones Soda
• A large lime
  

Mixing instructions:

Shaker: (Recommended)

1. Fill your shaker 40% to the top with large ice cubes. (The larger the ice, the slower it melts)
   
2. Add rum. (Fresh out of the freezer)
   
3. Add a quarter of a lime's worth of juice.
   
4. Add Jones Soda
5. Shake It All About
6. Rim a good glass with a with a wedge of lime, and garnish.
7. Pour.
8. Drink
9. Enjoy
10. Stumble
11. Apologize
12. Repeat.
    

Blender

1. Add the rum, ice cold and fresh from the freezer.
2. Add the lime juice, about a quarter-lime worth.
   
3. You want a good amount of ice. Add 6 or so cubes at a time and crush them with with the rum and juice on a low setting. Doing it on too high of a setting will give you an unusable ice-sludge that will melt too quickly and give you a weak drink.
4. Add the Jones Soda and stir it into the pitcher. DO NOT turn on the blender after adding the Soda, it will foam up and give you the mess of a lifetime!
5. Rim a good glass with a lime wedge and garnish.
6. Pour.
7. Drink
8. Enjoy
9. Stumble
10. Apologize
11. Repeat.

This is best consumed in proximity to hot sand and in view of a cool, cleansing coastline.

The Hemingway Daquri

• 1 1/2 oz Light Rum
• 1/4 oz Maraschino liqueur
• 3/4 oz Lime juice
• 1/4 oz Grapefruit juice
  

Mixing instructions:

Shake with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Ernie H. had an economy of words and also his drinks had an economy of process and adornment. I clearly, do not. I still love him.

• 1 comments. Got something to say? Come at me, bro. »