echo / delay

no title yet. working on it.

sometimes i think maybe its a weakness, but one thing i'm good at is giving myself reasons not to worry about going to work.

much too high

How to get the inflation of youth experience under contra

Harassed by pre teens in the subway

One little troll rolled up a Metro and threatened to stab me with it;

leads to variant response fantasy and exasperation with everything.

hates to admit when ____likes anything. like, scared to give away any part of himself. like, he's got no value by liking popular things.

in secret he thrilled to his obscure vicesexpression.

the only thing drinking is good for is perfect dwelling in what's gone. but for everything else, drinking is not so good for.

still, if you really want to, you can dwell safely until you die. slowly die.

went by the bar after work. was a girl there with the same eyes as carla. those coal black liquid eyes. i figured out how to look at them without her seeing me i think.

felt again like i couldn't let go.

____x was there. she looked great. she hugged me and my earlobes were ice cold. her cheek pressed against one and she remarked on it.

what's real and what isn't doesn't change does it?

keith richards is great, but he's got some dogs. "take it so hard" is not one of them.

clues

red

dead flowers

stratford (take me to the station)

we drank foster king cans
by the river before
titus andronicus

Winter

he ran to catch up to her. she stopped and they faced each other, him leaning in, suddenly arrested.

why? what did i do?

she said, i think it's lame that you made the Goat's Head Soup album cover your Facebook photo.

he shook his head and the honesty in his face made her think twice.

she touched his chin and he lifted his eyes to hers. she says, "because that record's so conflicted. It's the end of the Stones and in a way, the end of truth. And you think you can use all that as your avatar? You're just like the rest of them. Making yourself by your associations.

He was dumbfounded. But she had a point.

2010

my old stuff
was better.

tonight's guests appear courtesy of

you think you can just write a poem?

this'll get deleted

suddenly i
don't belong.

december flowers

hollyhocks grow
taller than me.

ageless beauty.

what's so hopeless
is that every failure
feels the same

and how

do you ever
hate who you are.

pron.

it's about
where they put
the meat

ride on

a guy got upset at a girl and threw sugar packets at her and then knocked over his drink, spit on her table and stormed outside. everyone watched but no one moved. then he banged on the window right by her view and pantomimed being stabbed hard in the chest. her date pretended not to notice all of it. finally the bartender went outside and called him to account so he ran.

1923 Toronto

bumblebee

late for work.

say too much
and it's over but
be yourself

vineland

ok, then this is gonna go on for awhile.

Pumpin' for Jill    4:33    Iggy Pop    Party
The Wait    3:34    Pretenders    Pretenders (Remastered)
Requiem for Man and Family    2:34    Andre Ethier    With Christopher Sandes Featuring Pickles and Price
No Action    2:01    Elvis Costello    This Year's Model
Hangin' 'Round (Acoustic Demo Version)    3:56    Lou Reed    Transformer
Downhill Is Downtown    3:49    Deep Dark United    Zettel
My Family    1:46    Jay Reatard    Blood Visions
Shower of Stones    3:05    Constantines    Kensington Heights
I'll Be Your Man    2:21    The Black Keys    The Big Come Up
No Pussy Blues    4:21    Grinderman    Grinderman
Dead Seeds    3:40    Rocket From The Crypt    Group Sounds
Oh, It’s Such a Shame    3:55    Deerhunter    Fluorescent Grey / Oh, It's Such a Shame - Single
True Love Will Find You In the End    1:51    Daniel Johnston    1990
Hand Srings    2:59    The White Stripes    Promo
Choice Blanket    5:11    The Sea and Cake    The Sea and Cake
Wilmington    3:22    Girls Against Boys    House Of GVSB
I Think I'm In Love    8:10    Spiritualized    Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space
Long Distance Drunk    3:43    Modest Mouse    Lonesome Crowded West
You Win Again    4:31    Keith Richards    Timeless - Hank Williams Tribute
People Change    2:55    Nick Lowe    At My Age
Trying to Live My Life Without You    3:24    Brinsley Schwarz    Surrender to the Rhythm
Guilty    2:34    Randy Newman    Good Old Boys
Weedking    2:39    Guided By Voices    Propeller
These Days    3:29    Glen Campbell    Greatest Hits
Thirteen    2:35    Big Star    #1 Record/Radio City
'39    3:31    Queen    A Night at the Opera
If Not for You    3:34    George Harrison    All Things Must Pass (30th Anniversary Edition) [Remastered]
Let Her Dance    2:35    Bobby Fuller Four    Rhino Hi-Five: The Bobby Fuller Four - EP
Under My Thumb    3:42    The Rolling Stones    Aftermath (UK Version) [Remastered]
Vicious    2:57    Lou Reed    Transformer
Antenna    6:13    Sonic Youth    The Eternal
Why I Didn't Like August 93    2:14    Elevator to Hell    Parts 1-3
People Are Leaving    2:38    Robert Pollard    Waved Out
Mannequin    2:37    Wire    Pink Flag
Black Nite Crash    2:34    Ride    Tarantula
Never Mind    2:51    The Replacements    Pleased to Meet Me
Stay With Me    4:39    Faces    A Nod Is as Good as a Wink...To a Blind Horse
Cortez the Killer    7:31    Neil Young    Zuma
Lazy Line Painter Jane    5:51    Belle & Sebastian    Lazy Line Painter Jane
Hey Joe    3:30    The Jimi Hendrix Experience    Are You Experienced
The Backseat    4:22    The Gaslight Anthem    The '59 Sound
Honest James    3:50    Thurston Moore    Trees Outside the Academy
A More Perfect Union    7:10    Titus Andronicus    The Monitor
Yeah We Know    5:25    Dinosaur Jr.    Bug
In the Light    8:47    Led Zeppelin    Physical Graffiti (Remastered)

[0000]

i like it
then i hate it

...and she's so young and beautiful

pits

sometimes i get the feeling that Benny's lost faith in himself. I don't know. It's like he runs everything he could like into the ground for any reason. But I've got my own problems so I don't spend much time trying to fix his. I think that's why we get along.

Tonight he's been drinking. It's early so he's only been putting down beers but if you know Benny you can see what's coming. Trouble is, this part's always really fun. And to get here, you sorta know you're going to have to go there.

So he's chatting up the bartender with his usual rhetoricals. ("___?") She sees me come in and I look down at my pockets so I can't aknowledge how she wants me to see her putting three bottles in the icebox for me. It's not that i don't like the attention; it's that i hate being a regular. You can fool yourself sometimes into thinking you and they have something going on, but after a while you have to admit you're just there to drink[pay]. Whatever else happens, losing the bar isn't up for discussion. So you try to not get involved too much.

Anyway, Benny doesn't worry about this shit; he's more of the sprung verse kind. Neatly switching the conversation to the books he knows or the obscure songs you don't, or whatever. Half the time he never remembers anything he says; i wish i was like that sometimes. i wish i could just let it all out. I guess that's why we get along.

blood in my wrist...

rocky top

don't listen for my mistakes jethro

she just didn't want to

ufc? you lie like a rug! 

bullshit. i can name them all. fuckin ground and pound. silva taunts maia. gsp over koschek. the myth of pride. mir sux. lesnar gets on his wife. couture, penn, liddell, never doubt me. admit it!

...I didn't enjoy my night. i am a walking zombie. how was the meeting? 

 i didnt like her.

Why not? Did you at least get some?

she sucked my cock in the girl's bathroom.

thats it?

no pussy blues

yeah, he enjoyed the pics. I'm really setting myself up for heartache. ughhh. but i'm flattered that out of all the porn he could find out there, he wanted some pics of me. that's something. how do i sabotage his relationship?

Hey, young girls are a fucking pain. I know. I see it. I am one. you've already seen the pics i sent him. if you deleted them, well you're just a fool then.

You're having regular sex though? that is pretty special in my eyes. I really need to establish that while I continue to search for that right guy.

This guy I dumped is acting like an 18 y/o girl over our breakup. We were only together a month and he wanted me moving shit in and to have a key. This freaked me out...anyway, he's being mean and cold. it's making it waaaay easier on me. I know breaking up with him was the right thing to do.

okay, quickly, i need a decent topic to write about for my nazi/holocaust class!!!

sun glasses

a girl said to me the other afternoon, as we were talking about the sun setting early and the autumn darkness being deeper than the summer version, she said... the fall dark is my boyfriend.

motive

reduction

[crap]

jump cut

fuck. fuck. fuck.

dont't waste it

i saw this girl in the lobby of my building. she was so impossible. i might as well have been dead.

the sun goeth down

waking up

let me get this straight: i drank 10 beers, did drugs, paid by credit, went to an orgy, quit my job and adopted a cat?

people change as they go.

my word
against yours.

everybody needs the light

pay per view

she exales perfectly, 'it just feels like you're trying too hard to make a record."

...

let her dance

they'd come to count
on cancellations.

there'd been a time
when they would all show up;
when they'd dance in kitchens,
with open eyes.

she's back from new york
and they should see each other.
isn't it good to go back
after it's over, before
it ends?

you could.
but you don't.

surrounded by pinkertons

rollin rollin rollin

"people only play tenor guitars because people wont borrow them at drunken parties to play terrible green day songs"

old days

dope sick

moon
in the afternoon
sky

Puma Blues (...from Zettel)

[hate what i wrote]

hell of a woman

[hate what i wrote]

bare surprise

a love letter to you

[hate what i wrote]

you let me down right

fuck this (true love)

the problem i have is that nothing ends, except it all ends.

undo everything

[hwiw]

men without women

west coast swamp rock

never say die

hard-bitten loner

[edit. 1.0201]

Benny's been obsessed lately with Tennis. Specifically Ricardo González, aka "Pancho". He goes around these days carrying an old wood racquet and he's beening wearing the same white tennis shorts, wrist bands and stan smiths for two straight weeks. Still, his obsesssion with the game hasn't affected his drinking any.

I walk into the bar after work and Benny's sitting in his usual spot and he's in the middle of one of his great "In Defense Of..." routines. The place is otherwise empty and the bartender is a new girl that doesn't know how to get out of the line of fire.

I pull up next to him and order a beer. Benny's got two modes of talking to women: lecture and complaint. Neither works particularly well but then you'd have to be a special kind of girl to really get him. There aren't many of those in the world.

Benny's in full stride:

-- Sure, Federer's amazing. I mean, he's AMAZING. but we're talking about a guy here who Sports Illustrated declared that if the world was in peril and humankind's very existence depended on the outcome of a tennis match, the man you want on the baseline would be Ricardo Alonso González.

I smile a little about this. Benny loves this line. LOVES it. He mixes up the quote as well; adding his little personal touches each time.

[TK]

maybe it's me

why don't i
like anyone?

1934

Ain't Life Grand

silly rabbits

gun club

you are forgiven

sixx

666

motivation

[redact]

you back down
every morning.

what's up b?

ugh. i guess i'm listening to tom petty and that talking part to start Here Comes My Girl is how i want to speak.

yeah, or put on open all night.

yeah! fried chicken on the front seat.

wow, nice.  you know it!

oh yeah.

so what else?

nah, i got nothin.

alright.

you can't see

benny shows up with his pockets full of backstage passes. his army coat i notice is actually on fire. well, it's smoldering and he reeks.

= we can't serve you benny, you know that.

Candy's working and she'd normally slide benny a carbomb but they installed cameras over the break and now you can't do anything.

- just a half shot of bailey's Candy.

benny doesn't even look to see that she has to say no. that's what i like about him.

winning streak

god damn auras.

iraqi styles

- Have you seen "Julia" with Tilda Swinton ?

-- no but i LOVE tilda swinton. she plays a bad angel in Constantine (otherwise an unwatchable movie) and also the puffy ammoral lawyer in Michael Clayton. the scene where she is putting on her creepy brown girdle while rehearsing her closing remarks to shareholders is hot.

- She was fuckin' great in Michael Clayton. In Julia she kidnaps a kid and wears a black mask, also Hot.

voice

i am insulated
nothing special to say
nothing comes into my space
i never leave
i don't hurt,
i don't win, but
i don't lose

(you always lose, pard)

marshall the stacks

F.W. is back from Warsaw and he's jet lagged from the flight. His arrival is unexpected.

A hasty assembly gathers at the usual spot.

You can always come back, but you can't come back all the way, says bob dylan.

we're all there. but things have changed. For ten years we had a reliable arrangement, all of us peers. Then one day it was different.

There were babies. And loans.

There were break ups. And jealousies. And failure.

Some talk later, the others depart to pursue their lives. F.W. and I move to bourbon. I happen to have an extra ticket to Ricky Jay's Arcana and Oddities Exhibition at the Bathurst St. Theatre, so we have something to do after we're asked to leave the bar.

F.W. was never much of a talker. But i can tell he's not impressed with Mr. Jay's demonstrations. His agitation seems centered on the middle aged futz sitting next to him.

Before he can start any trouble with the effete, i make a point of passing him the salt shaker.

Later that night we're outside the theatre and Nigel Erdmann is introduced to us. We know each other from ten years before when i rejected his novel. he nearly immediately moves to strangle me but we escape through a hedge.

best show

mercy little rocker

.

looks can kill

gonna go out

things that don't last as long as i wish they would:

highs
haircuts
the stash
jeans
good body
nights
deadwood
new
22

corn fields

where
you been
bailey?

sex

we need two of each other
one to fuck and one to love.

will not sing a hateful song

etobicoke, ontario

i want drugs.

(this is how the trouble starts)

i want women.

(this is how the trouble starts)

i want money.

(this is how the trouble starts)

(i want a clear conscience)

i trouble.

likes to unlike

she says, the lord in his wisdom salted his works.

he nods over the ashtray; he doesn't care, but they share habits so they pretend to listen to each other.

bottle talking

walking
home from
someone

i earned
my yellow
teeth

down the long road

... sorry i didn't make your event.

[redacted]

good morning

life is not confusing yourself for smart.

little august

it doesn't help
that she looks like
kim deal

summer

certainty against faith

i'm getting close to 40. i can tell this matters to me because i've started waking up earlier in the afternoon than usual. There's this feeling of things slipping past me at a rapid rate; a slipstream washing over and by me. I would raise my palms against the wind, to try to feel more, to push it back a little. But it's just pebbles in a river.

Women. As hard as i try to focus on my work, or my drinking, it's women that consume me. They arrive so unexpectedly and just as i realize what they've done, they leave. I suppose it's fitting that my best moments with them have come in prisons and cemeteries.

This last one, she was a sneaky knockout. I never saw her coming, but now i can't stop seeing her leave. What are they thinking? Women.

My work? Well, let's just say i'm no overachiever. But i've learned to accept my pace. I've learned that sometimes, there can be only moments. That they can't last is the tragedy. That you have them at all is your art.

This last one, we had some moments.

city blocks

the arc of triumph

/cut

the gathering concern

just before sunset, Sunshine finally shows up. almost three hours late. alone.

she slides in across from me at the picnic table and roots around in her purse; all pastey and shakey curtained by liquored-out hair.

'so, where is he?' i finally have to ask.

"not coming."

'not coming. this is unbelievable.'

she gives me the sideways death stare.

'what went wrong?'

"you don't want to know." she indicates a crushed cigarette. "gotta' light?"

'no. i quit.'

"i liked you better when you smoked."

'what's the difference?'

"all the eye contact."

i take a deep breath. 'you know, there's an envelope to all this. to their patience.' i try to make it even-handed, 'everyone is aware you're under pressure Sunshine, but there is gathering concern...'

no reaction unless you count the predictable stonewall. a heavy silence crept over the deserted parkette. mastering my panic ins't one of my strengths and she knows it. i crack as per usual.

'we're fucked now, you realize that? it's complete calamity. are you registering this Sun? please, tell me what you think my options are.'

"yes!" flourishing a found match she ignites her 100. "don't be so dire Siggie. it makes you unattractive. life is a comedy remember? you used to say that."

'please, just tell me what went wrong. tell me something i can tell them.'

she laughs out a smoke plume. "tell them it was food poisoning."

anti-climax

Beans and Puddin'

_draft..011.01_

Everyone is exhausted. Morale has bottomed out. Wry amusement centers on the quickest way to die. They're just kids.

Puddin' keeps unconsciously tugging her big brother's shirt tails. Terrified to lose track of the only one left. He is overwhelmed by her slight fingers and vise-like power.

No one knows what's going on. No one knows why these terrible things are happening. No one knows how come they're the ones that are left. But for Beans in this moment, he knows that his next decision will mean the difference between question and silence.

He's fifteen. Just made his regional track squad. His mom would tell you that he's an introspective boy. He reads Irving Layton and Twilight. He made his own bike. He catches fish.

His father took him to the gun club on his fourteenth birthday. Introduced him to the skeet and trap shooters. Taught him how to produce his own shells. Let him call "pull" and obeyed him instantly.

No one knows why the invasion happened. But Beans is ready. Pull.

hud

atlantic city

i come home late and beat but i'm hoping i can get some work out of everything. just as i get a glass set up, i hear the knocking on the basement door.

benny's wrapped in cigarette smoke and rolls sideways into my place, landing deep on the sofa.

"maybe i just can't be around her", he says. i fix us two whiskys and put his tumbler in front of him.

"she was there when i got there. i didn't plan it this time".

Benny is hung up on coicindences and happenstance. Like every jilted lover, they see their ex in everything. recurring times, street names, tatoos. it doesn't matter the stretch, benny gets convinced with any co-incident.

"did you say anything to her?"

"nah, i made the bartender put on Atlantic City and then i left"

"you left?"

"yeah. What the fuck was i supposed to do?"

Benny is a good guy. He could be someone. but he never seems to be able to handle his emotions. I get tired of him sometimes.

ball don't lie

the lower half

used to hang

she puts on born in the usa and more people know it than you'd think. know all the lyrics. know the stalls and the big drum hits. he makes her wait before thunder road. they need to hear badlands and rosalita first. those suburbans.

maybe it's not true that they know less than him, but it seems that way. overhearing the stupidest conversations about rockband destroying musicianship, or the horror of unisex toilets. it's enough to make you understand the right wing.

he keeps asking for darlington county even though they're past the third track. you know that this record was written by a guy in his thirties. you can lie on you floor in your bedroom at 14 and think you know the lyrics, but at 38, when all the words come back crisp and in time to impress the old blondes lining the bar no surrender controls the pace of your heart like fear or her.

we keep drinking, one after another. right out of the icebox, the bottles are wet and slide just enough to make it fun to sling them around. her giant brown eyes seek out the rough ones around the bar and he likes her poise.

you only get this for a quick moment. you only live at the bar for a short while. but you can always tell someone who has. they've got it.

TCB

coffee and cigarettes

warm beer cold women