- kellywood
The sun threw shadows across Kelly's fingers. She drank her coffee in the yellow morning light. Traffic was picking up on Sunset. She watched the cars. She watched the faces. Young faces, leather faces. There were bobos, cobra kids, cowboys. Sons and daughters of the silent, the great and the lost. Descendants of the atomic bomb but all children of Andy Warhol in one way or another. Kelly was born near the end of the alphabet. With the X, Y, Z. She looked to her fingernails, then to the hills...
- notes from the end of May
"we could have been jazz kids in a jazz age" she said.
it was freedom, pure fucking freedom. and as eyes met, all the things we knew unfolded and opened like thousands of trumpet players opening trumpet cases. the silence of outer space and deep space crept into our room but then - the crack of lightening and the thump of thunder and it was a human sex factory with sex factory music followed by the amber ember of after sex cigarettes and more silence. somewhere shot guns were clinking and clacking and blasting but not in our room - we were just quietly smoking.
i made my way into the bathroom to find god killing one mosquito every 35 seconds and drinking wine. the earth was busy sending ocean waves to arrive on laps all silver and blue. and then the beach boys began playing softly but with a purpose. i peed on the floor. it was an accident. i cleaned it up. "i should start peeing sitting down."
i knew too much. my life was a run on sentence. a complimentary pen from the flamingo, las vegas. a stain glass window, a melody, rain bouncing off a tin roof. i thought about Humphrey Bogart and the way time goes by. i thought about electric light and unlit cigarettes and the bartenders of this earth and the gate keepers and the key holders.
it was a fascination with death as much as it was a fascination with life. i crawled back into bed and "i may not always love you…but as long as there are stars above you..."
- cocktail hour
She was a compact weapon with a gymnasts body - flat chested, great bum. She was wearing black bikini bottoms layered underneath a cheetah print g-string. A real liberty bell. Topless, she would alternate between this updated jazz era flapper dance and crossing her arms over her chest to cover her nipples.
I went and joined her at the end of the dock and we danced, wet skin on wet skin. I pulled her close and felt her hot breath against my sternum. We began a sort of futuristic waltz and I thought about kissing her. She twirled out from my grip and landed with her bum to my crotch and held it there, pushing it against me. It felt amazing. The sun was getting low and the shallows were shimmering and jade. Somebody cranked the stereo. She laughed and spun back around. I put my hand into the small of her back and dipped her over the edge of the dock. This was my summer. These were my twenties. My life was an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel and her long red hair was cascading down , touching the lake water…
“Let’s go back to the cabin,” she said. We could hear the others and the sound of the plastic cooler opening and closing and then opening again.
- river jordan
i know somewhere where the moonlight licks
forgotten, rotten old broomsticks
don't come around here
there's nothing to be found here
i hear the angels own the dry land and
Harvey owns the highland and
don't come around here
there's hardly a town here
can I sit upon your shoulder
as I get a little older?
the water is
colder here
up before the sun has risen
this is my little sacred prison
don't come around here
i'm shackled and bound here
when it comes down to best man wins
and you need someplace to confess your sins
don't come around here
there won't be a sound here
you better look out for the warden
of the old River Jordan
the ghost of Gordon
lives here
- old hollywood hot night
we read our holy books and we stare at reflections and reach out. sometimes to others and others. your body won't lie to you, you know. and tonight bodies lie all over the world on wet ground where crickets buzz and frogs ribbit and lions yawn and snakes slither and it's all perfect.
megaphones and jumbo-trons cool off in the electric after noise. somewhere grace kelly can't sleep and so she sits at her window and makes love to a cup of tea and cary grant does bicep curls in his basement in California in short shorts.
squeeze me fresh orange juice. i'm only a baritone in the morning as i wash my knee caps in a puddle.
soldier on with a softness upon your face.
- just dance
dance because dancing is amazing. dance because you are a dancer. dance because the world is turning. dance because we put a robot on mars. dance because somewhere somebody else is dancing. dance because you like music. dance for elvis. dance for mankind. dance for tigers dancing in the jungle. dance to the soul of soul music on a disc-man in the rain. dance for the tyrannosaurus rex weeping in her grave. dance for honey glazed donuts. dance because dancing is freedom. dance cause your wearing dancing shoes, brother. dance because if jackie wilson was here, he'd be dancing. dance for evolution. dance for the ember on the tips of cigars. dance in the forest on the stoops of deserted cedar cabins. dance because life is a mystery. dance, mother fucker. just dance.
- laces
the sadness of train stations
and east bound platforms
and rooftops
topping lives licking fingers
made sticky by syrup
one day dead in the ground
but not now
at this moment, alive and well
but blue cause the green has gone gold
the way it always does in late summer
and soon the winds will come down
with all the sex drugs and rock & roll
and elders in chuck taylor’s will reach for flying guitar picks
that poke you in the eye
if your not squinting
the way james dean squints
in heaven
in a pea coat
with a tooth pick upon his lip
- josh munro
we've wished upon lashes
sat with the ashes
we share sunglasses
you don't care
you never judge me
you just nudge me
and say hey man
look over there
we turned a warehouse
into an apartment
you were Bruce Wayne
i was Clark Kent
i liked digging
through your wardrobe
you liked pushing
the threshold
sailing off in bare feet
i'll take the main sheet
load up the cam cleat
you can steer
through the good times
through the hard times
but mostly good times
through the love and fear
i've got a good friend
he's got a kingdom
he stands by me
when I am low
he's like a brother
good god I love him
his mother named him
josh munro
- beauties in the slash
People are always telling me I was born in the wrong decade. Like these days are some burden I've been made to bare. Yes, times are different but things are always changing. I've pretty well dismissed the notion of being born in some other time. It's silly to think that way. Man is man and men are men. Women too. They never change much. All just a bunch longing and suffering and longing some more. To be touched. To be loved...
You could say they were ignorant back then and ignorance is bliss and all that, but it’s better to know things. I’m just glad to be alive. Even if there’s discomfort in the knowing. I know man is capable of some impossible oversight. And cruelty. Hell. That's never changed either. Even God is cruel. Has been since the dawn of time. Leaving us out here drifting. No clue. Teasing us with the starlight and the moonshine. They're right when they say there's no guarantees in this life. It's possible that the sun might just disappear and never come up again. Can't say I'd be all that surprised. Not too sure we deserve another sunrise. And the way my heart just keeps beating. What've I ever done to deserve a heartbeat? One of these mornings it's gonna be just darkness and there'll be nothing left to do except slap on some Elvis and stroke your kitty cat.
I'll be getting around to some things soon I hope. That old Ford needs some attention and I'd sure love to finish the bathroom for Ariel. Should sort out that wood pile first though. Keeping warm for winter... I know when this fog starts lounging in the valley that it'll be winter soon. Never enough firewood. Jackson said he'd help me yank a few yellow cedar out of the slash piles up on the ridge. Not that I need much help. It's the company, really. And I guess it'd be wise to have another fellow standing next to you when you accidentally cut your own leg off with a chain saw. Knock on wood that never happens. Lord knows I've had a few close calls. Nothing much wilder than a chainsaw running on its own ideas. And we have our traditions, Jackson and I. I live for them. Little things, mostly. I bring the marijuana and he brings the beers.
As you turn off the highway onto the service road there's a steel gate. It's good and locked but I got the key from Bill. He does the accounting for the logging outfit and his wife and my Ariel they begun spending sometime together and so Bill and I have become friends. Turns out we have a few habits in common. He gave me the key saying there ain't nobody up that road no more. They've moved up country plucking every God damn tree they can. Of course they always leave a few beauties in the slash. He said if we were to run into someone, just to say that Bill gave me the key and that he's a friend of mine and that'd be good enough. It was good as gold as I found out. Turns out Bill was pushing more than just paper for them fallers and drivers and such. He was the regional go to man for anything you might send up your nose through a straw. I digress. Jackson and I tried not to drink beers on the main road, the highway that is. But as soon as we hit that gate heading for the ridge we'd send a couple cold ones straight down the hatch and usually not stop drinking until the next day.
When we had that Ford brimming we'd take the back road home cutting past the lake and eventually it would spit us out onto the ranch. That kept us off the main road all drunk and stinking. We called that back road the 500. It's a bit steep at points and could make a man feel rather alive. Especially on account of an oversized load. But being full of beer did seem to ease the nerves. That was one hell of a beautiful lake I might add. Jackson had a ski boat that he kept there tarped up on a trailer. In the summer he'd splash it and we'd go skiing in the mornings at sunrise and I tell ya that was one hell of a way to shake a hangover. Doing forty miles per hour across the water in your underwear. Sometimes we'd bring the girls up there in the afternoon for a little booze cruise. We'd putt out into the sunshine drinking sangria or whatever else the girls had concocted and all get drunker than hell. Sometimes the ladies would take their tops off and start splashing about like mermaids on the swim grid. Pour enough wine into them and getting wet was no bother. Damn we loved those girls and we were pretty sure they loved us. So it was hard to ride on past that lake and not be thinking about them and how lucky we were. Jackson told me that when he finally up and died he'd like to be floated out on that lake on a raft and covered in cedar limbs and set a fire all mid evil like a king in his kingdom and I said "That sounds fine King Jackson and I'll be sipping whiskey."