i just woke up from about a twelve week long self induced eggnog and scotch coma

a thought how my last entry was going to be it for a while so i could start to edit every poem before hand in order possibly put a book together. but then i had these entries i've been brewing over for sometime now. so sit back. relax. listen to your favorite soothing music. mine at the moment is the new shins and clap your hands say yeah records. grab a colt 45. oh yeah and by the way, you thought i wouldn't mention it did you. you silly, silly person. 14 days until pitchers and catchers.


the boy and the girl who liked hard boiled detective novels


after nine days i have just now started to maneuver somewhat efficiently behind the counter, slinging any customer wants from cappuccinos, espressos and lattes at a small cafe in north beach to putting day old muffins and scones onto paper plates while they peck away at some paperback edition of "revenge of the lawn" by richard brautigan. i find myself stairing into oblivion on occasions or rather thinking of nostilgic times of pictures hanging from the walls here of dead poets and and misentropes of the 1950's and 60's. i imagine they would sit around about like today and talk politics, homosexuality and the general deise of america as they knew it and what they were going to do to fix the problem. i had just moved to san francisco a few days prior to getting my job. i was here for no other reason except change. until an affordable place to live opens up i'm staying downtown at a hostel. if you've ever stayed at a hostel, it's not much but i can lay my head down. i sold my car two days after i arrived. some extra cash and no need for your own transportation with the likes of the muni bus and cable car around. plus i bought a bike in chinatown.

i had only been to san francisco once before. to visit a friend. that was about four years ago this summer but they've since packed up and come back to where i just left. texas. things in my way of thinking go by way of fate. shortly after arriving i wandered into the cafe just minutes after this hippie girl had up and left after a homeless guy come in and pissed on the day old muffins and declared he was neal cassidy. one of the other employees told me just the other day she had just published a memoir about slinging cups of mud and her life and times in a cafe. go figure.

i took over her shifts the next day. it was a decent schedule. but it didn't matter i had a job without ever even looking. fate. i stuck close to the neighborhood after work and go to a dive bar called vesuvio cafe or hang around city lights bookstore and do some reading. for the few times i've been in the bar there's been these two same waitresses working. i was quite a bit older than jenny and just a couple of years older than abbey.

abbey was short, a little stocky, hair the color of a bluebird, piercings in every place on her body. never makeup and a new york giants baseball cap. after several pints of anchor steam, we's agree to disagree about the better old hard boiled detective novels and we'd argue over who was a better signature characte, raymond chandler's philip marlowe or dashiell hammetts sam spade. vwe both dig flannery o'conner, and black and white noir films. after several days and a few drinks she let on about the piercings on her nipples and clit.

jenny had the same weight as abbey but the five inches in height were the difference. jenny stood 5-8, bookish horned rimmed glasses and she had tall lanky legs that would make a blind man see if she was wearing shorts or a skirt. straight bleach blond hair. makeup always done. even if just a touch of blush. she wasn't shy but her personality was dwarfed by abbey's. whose could fill a room with her entrance. i found out during our conversations while waiting for abbey to get off work jenny's dad had taken her to giants games as a kid and baseball fever had stayed with her growing up. jenny read mostly just what was recommended in her book club but abbey had turned her on to richard brautigan. and after waiting on abbey to get off work, over several pints and shots we would talk of historical basbeall your or other goofy topics as abbey would call them.

the two girls had met at college downtown and needing roommates moved in together. abbey had been enrolled on and off and with the perpetual undecided major decided no more classes ever about a month before i arrived. jenny studied a good bit and had about a year left in school. they balanced each other out beautifully.

as for myself, i had made some adjustments in my life the months leading up to the move. i was feeling stagnate. twenty-nine years in one city and thirty being a loaded barrel pointed at me. i made a change. i had wirey build pot belly being the exception that made me resemble a catfish. i have 1950's vintage glasses and wear pearl snap shirts, jeans and hush puppies. i have an unkempt beard that looks as though i could pass for cat stevens and long hair i prefer to wear in a pony tail samurai style, and also a new york giants baseball cap. abbey and i called it vintage but we knew better it was affordable. jenny dressed smartly and had no ventalation in her jeans.

as quickly as i had gotten the job and had stumbled into the bar for the first time the three of us were inseparable. ecept when jenny had school work or classes to attend. those days more often than not abbey and myself would sit around the apartment, watch black and white noir films and get stoned. and it was those days that abbey and myself got closer.

nearly a year has passed. i now work at a secondhand bookstore and i've stopped living at the hostel. i now sleep on the roll out 1970's orange couch in their living room and pay a portion of the rent. it's a small one bedroom apartment in the city. the important thing is i don't come home to an empty apartment. jenny will be graduating soon and now has the bedroom to herself. abbey and i sleep on the couch. after graduation jenny plans to do what took me twenty-nine years to do. she's saved up some money and is moving to chicago. she said it had to be a baseball town. abbey and i have no plans to move anytime soon. we'll split the rent and abbey says we'll have plenty of room for more books once jenny moves. but she will be missed.

a year has passed now and we still talk to jenny a couple of times a month. she says she's coming to visit soon. once her job with the cubs and baseball season is over. abbey still works at the vesuvio cafe waiting tables. she still has all those piercings but her hair is now bleached blond. her pierced belly looks even more beautiful four months prenant. we'd stay up late at night discussing the future and possible names for the baby. we finally settled on gehrig for either sex. named after the greatest firstbaseman the great game has ever seen, lou gehrig. myself i still have long hair but my facial hair is at a minium and i still wear those same glasses.

i've now become quite the book dealer. i run the store when the owner is not there. i could always use more space but abbey was right we'd had enough room for more books and our apartment is sick with tewntieth century literature on shelves along the walls. there is a small hallway between the livingroom and the bedroom lined with modern library books, about five hundred in all, some firsts but not many. and there is a book of classic basbeall parks on the coffee table and a photography book of the texas hill country from the early part of the century on the end table. abbey has always been pretty and bright. her interests expand everyday. she still doesn't understand the first edition game. bernard malamu, she says reads as well in a paperback without the front cover as he does in a $3000 first printing. i can hear myself lecturing her, but as long as it's got all the words she says it doesn't matter. simply having such books in life in general and mccarthy in particular ffel good when break out ther beat up trade copies with dog ear pages and you know what you have when you pull your as new copy of blood merdian off the shelf.

when i'm not working at the bookstore i'm explaining the sacrifice bunt or hit and run to her as we watch a giants game on t.v.. we live a modest life. don't get out much and keep a small group of friends.

sometimes these days i find myself thinking of the collected short stories of carson mccullers picturing the cover of the paperback i was carrying around in my back pocket of my holy pants the first day i walked into the bar and met abbey.

i turn over in bed this morning and touch her belly, and smile.


burritos and rain


i've been carrying around these thoughts in my head now for about six months. i'm just now being able to scibble them down to try and make sense out of them. it sort of details my life and times as a resident of the city of san fransico.

it rains a lot here in san fransico. i knew this before i moved out here so it's not very surprising. but it still merits a complaint, just like the brutal texas heat does. every summer in texas it doesn't rain for 200 straight days and during that stretch the temperature tops 135 degrees on a regular basis. all the wretched while, the texas resident is in a constant lather, the local swimming pool is just a giant hot tub full of urinating children and sunscreen residue-truly not an adequate escape from the boiling caldren of the streets, and as accustomed to it as we are, we complain about it, like we didn't expect it.

in texas we have the annual heatwave, in san francisco there is rain, more rain and periodic fog that rolls in some mornings. such conditions make for lazy weekend days of television watching, reading, napping and boozing. so what the hell am i bitching for? it ain't such a bad life... i am getting settled in here now after taking several months. my bus is not as crowded as most, but makes frequent stops, making it difficult for me to read during my commute. like my friend kenny, i get motion sickness at the drop of a hat or the shift of a gear or the swerve of a wheel or the pounce of a brake...

burrito stands on every corner. well not really stands, but taquerias. the burritos here are good- possibly the best food i've had the pleasure of eating, well, scratch that. i cooked some pretty tasty chicken breasts the other night. but i digress. i haven't really journeyed beyond the burrito scene as far as mexican food goes. i am still very partial to tex-mex and the prospect of cal-mex frightens me a little bit, i will now take time out to issue the following PSA (as it relates to the subject of mexican food): if you're ever in san antonio, and you probably will be before me since i now reside in the city of san francisco. go check out the basement of the alamo and then go stuff yourself at mi tiaras near the riverwalk-the very best mexican food in the entire world. mi tiaras, no holds barred, serves up the best charrio beans, the best enchiladas, the best chile relleno, the best fajitas, the best tacos, the best carne asada, the best salsa, the best tortillas. let's see did i miss anything? oh, and the coldest negro modelo you have put in your oral cavity. and if your oral cavity forgets how good all of it was going down, your anal cavity will remind you when it's all on its way out.

on that sophomoric note and humor, i bid you adieu. wish you were here. i now have some reading to do, some coffee to make, a t.v. dinner to microwave, some nose hairs to clip and a semi fresh relationship to cotemplate.


sunshine acid


i am writing this two weeks into the new san francisco experience. have not yet been fired. then again i am a writer i cannot be fired, i am unpublished. then again, i sometimes free-lance write for the newspaper. since moving from texas i haven't been able to get a hold of any cheap lone star beer. it's dishearting. i was fired from my last job for drinking on the job though. but who needs those damned burocrats, anyway. one thing about my new job- climate control in my area is poor. need to purchase small fan to put on my desk. office taking on more of a sauna-like feeling. and i get hot easily anyway. as i peg away at sensitive keyboard, i sweat like a disgruntled migrant worker collecting sand for shopping mall ashtrays in the 120-degree heat of death valley in the days before smoking was banned in most pubilc places.

speaking of smoking its not good for you so don't smoke, stop. that's my PSA, something i will try to incorporate into my writings from the city of san francisco to loved ones, former loved ones and enstranged members of my defunct greenville avenue drinking tribe now residing with lost followers of the manson family and ex-membership service clerks of the defunct abba fan clubs in various municipalities nationwide.

so speaking of smoking you can't do it in restaurants or bars around here. on one hand, i have a problem with that seeing as i like to light up rolled tobacco on occasion in social settings like pubs, concert halls and houses of burlesque. but on the other hand, the california ban pn smoking in havens of public debauchery does provide a pleasant atmosphere for smokers and non smokers alike to pleasurably conduct the business of hard core drinking, shoulder-slapping, glad-handing and tall tale-spinning. its nice to not have to rub ones eyes in irritation while telling lies about my athletic prowess and relating bogus memories of my time spent as a scholarship student at the harvard business school to perfect strangers over cocktails. well, i've successfully murdered close to ten minutes i was scheduled to spend in a meeting concering my last music reviews for the newspaper. orginally scheduled for 3:30, but postponed until four. it is now 3:57, i pick up my satchel, i run now. as i left you.


standing on the corner screaming in the rain


my thoughts and adventures begin this week with a tale of a young man's cold and wet early morning commute to work in the cold and wet city of san francisco on a day when he forgot his umbrella and almost lost any sanity that remains within the four walls of his mind after all the pollutants he has put in his body through the years, not to mention all of the pointless, unimportant baseball knowledge he has imbibed from countless hours spent in front of the television, pollutant resting in hand, pollutant resting in nearby ashtray, soaking up the sights and sounds and metaphysical powers of the phenomenon we know as baseball tonight.

NOTE: this week a few unwilling and unsuspecting persons connected to the writer in some form or fashion, probably much to their shame or regret, join the legions of unwilling readers to this semi-frequent writer rant is forced upon without warning or apology.

before i continue with the new and most unfortunate things of my life in the city of san francisco and chronicles of my adventures (both real and surreal) in my new home, the city of san francisco. because my dog, chewbecca, no longer resides with me, but in texas, i no longer have a captive audience to vomit my many thoughts upon. that's where these rants come in. consider yourself important, you have taken the place of my dog.

anyway, i leave my apartment this morning and it's gushing rain. ordinarily, i would run back upstairs and grab my umbrella. only my umbrella wans't upstairs, it was at work. so i shrugged my shoulders and marched on. by the time the bus arrived to pick me up, i was drenched. the windbreaker i have been using as a raincoat proved about as useful as a condom in a monastery. as the bus approached downtown, it grew more and more obvious the rain had no immediate plans of letting up. it was if mother nature was determined to piss all over me for being a decidedly militant litterbug as a cub scout. by the time i arrived at work, i was soaked through. and as i write these words to you at 11:38 PST, my pants are still soaked in that most discomfort.

this story begs the question-why should i care?
answer-define "care" and then ask the question again.

which brings me to this weeks PSA: if you listen to yourself, what you just read might sound eerily similar to some of the things you feel the need to dump on co-workers, boy or girlfreinds, husbands, wives, uncles, aunts, etc. on a regular basis things that those people really could care less about hearing, things that, during the course of hearing, allow their minds run adrift and think about something else, anything esle but what garbage you are dumping on them but so adrift that they are unable to issue such periodic acknowledgements as a nod, an "oh, uh-huh," a "really," or a "oh yea," "i know tell me about it." communication, or the lack thereof, is the cause of most of our problems, from war to divorce to business failure to the dissolving of friendship. the relationships we have are sacred, those with friends, lovers and work colleagues. it's vital we realize as listeners that whatever the teller or crower is saying. and if that person is important to us, we should lend not just our ears, but our minds to hearing he or she out, no matter the subject.

it is also vital as the crower that we realize the limitations of the listeners attention span. this should be easy since all crowers also function as listeners and vice-versa. we always function as one or the other. now then let it roll off your shoulders, i raise my glass of glen fiddich, here's to a better world, a world void of communication breakdown, thus a world void of war, of divorce, of premature ejaculation.


putting the years to bed


the ghosts of my past sit on bar stools of dive bars across the globe
and crush out lit cigarettes into ashtrays and down vodka tonics
and i have never been one to wear pressed trousers
or shiny polished buttons on a nice three piece suit

nowdays a better choice for me is to sip red wine at home
read the daily comics and mix and match a faded plaid shirt
with a arglye sweater with courdory pants
or button a baseball jersey of a past hero up and wait for dinner

and the wine of youth is as flimsy as a cocktail dress on a whore

i was drunk and no one could tell me otherwise and i played catch with myself and my rawlings glove

97 days until pitchers and catchers


the unknown truth about us and paul simon

three guys sat at a bar
and talked about how they were the coolest hipsters on the scene
they were unknown writers, knew their shit
and could converse with anyone about lou gehrig to the string theory

the bartender came by and asked them what they were talking about
"just how we are the coolest hipsters on the scene," one said
"i can see you brought your fan club," the bartender replied
as he looked around and saw no one around them
"see she doesn't even know!" he said

"exactly, how many people would play diamonds on the soles of her shoes
by paul simon in an irish pub besides us?" i replied


you can bring me flowers

just because your beautiful doesn't make you interesting
inhale the atmosphere of people being different
figure out there is no connection
no truth and meaning to life

just take in the simplicities
read a book
go to a baseball game and eat a hot dog and stand
and stretch during the seventh inning stretch
lay in the grass in a park on your vacation
a piece of key lime pie

or learn how to play the kuzoo


the weekly shower


this afternoon i was showering with my old lady
she looked at me and laughed and said
"baby you can't be as old as you are."
"why," i replied
"because you're such a kid." she said
and i drifted off to trading baseball cards again
riding my bike down to woodards pond,
comic books, passing notes to girls in class,
rollerskating on saturday night
and riding in the backseat of mom's brown chevrolet
and dad turning up the radio to an old buddy holly tune

i laughed and lathered up


if i'd have worn a different shirt i'd have been in the picture

light the candles and flash the camera
flip over the matchbook and jot a number down
rumage into your front left pocket of your off plaid pearl snap shirt
and dig out your lucky strikes
you'll have a vodka cranberry as dinner

with this you're just out of the frame


a novel sitting on the nightstand

pierced and tattooed
bare feet in blue jeans with sliver polished toes
she reads a worn down paperback novel in bed
and drinking something out of a straw

she keeps peering over her book at me
then back to her book
the perfect arch conforming gently against the arm of the couch
she keeps staring at me over the worn down paperback novel

not being able to focus on my short stories by paul bowles
asking if she's read any of his other novels
one thing leads to another
falling back after relieving the stress in both of us
i start to drift off

still seeing those sliver toes propped over my shoulders
and that tom robbins novel sitting on the nightstand


smoking procedures

there are 73 of us that work in the bookstore
31 of us smoke
24 of us don't
and 18 of us smoke on occasion generally after we've been drinking

the 31 that smoke must go outside
for there is no smoking in the bookstore
somedays its cold and the smokers must put on a coat
and scarf and brave the cold

the 24 of us that don't smoke tell
the 18 of us that smoke on occasion
when their walking past the window
that they must be thinking to themselves

i'm glad i haven't had a few drinks


i thought only mighty mouse could save the day

a man in maine was returning home from the store at dusk
when two men armed with knives approached him
and demanded his wallet
he refused and one of the men jabbed a pocket knive at his smomach

the man being assalted used a milk jug as a shield
the knife pierced the plastic milk jug
and the assailant retreated
the man then whacked him on the head with the quickly emptying jug

the two men fled the scene in a car
and the man walked peacefully home
thinking of mighty mouse
and how a gallon of milk saved his life

he laughed out loud and said
"i guess milk does do the body good"


if a few words would have been different

for as long as he could remember he'd been writing his whole life for this chance
from the months leading up to the judges letting the rest of the literary world
know the three finalists and the moment the winner was announced, victor tremont
did more than write his way into history.

junius worth, one of three finalists,
suffered a set back known by many literary figures before him.
for victor tremont, then a 32-year-old author, writing "jesus rides beside me but
doesn't buy any smokes," meant winning the pulitzer prize for fiction in 1997. but for junius worth, his book "all i gots two fives," about a bartenders exploits of banging waitresses in public restrooms--left him an entirely different legacy.

those who knew him say he never recovered from missing the pulitzer that fateful year because he was never nominated again. mr. worth was a "wordsmith, his prose was only matched by hemingway in this century,: said mr. dillard, a literary critic for over 35 years. " but
that particular year he, along with the other finalists were over shadowed by mr. tremonts book. which happens to be the best novel in the last 15 years."

his wife, abbey, attributes not winning that year "an accident of timing, a twist of fate," he always said. he had been writing his whole life for that moment. "it was my best work. but i didn't get it."

he was a perfectionist, enslaved to details and committed to writing several hours a day.
he often told his wife, "life is all about timing." through the years he wrote several great short story books and did win the flannery o'conner award for short fiction in 1993 with a book titled
"wait just a second i've got correct change and other stories." but like many writers winning
the pulitzer would valadate his career.

his publisher remembers that, right after reading the book, he said, "this is the one that could take the pulitzer," and it was and still is a great book.

but from that moment on, mr. worth "was never quite the same, and never has as much confidence in himself," says his wife, who descibes him as "feeling let down. by fate. timing, i guess. after losing he felt like, why have i woked and struggled so hard to finally get the book written and then not get it?"

his editor remembers mr. worth as being "bitterly disappointed...that he didn't get more recognition. but mr. tremont's book is clearly the better book. things like that happen in this business, but he just couldn't deal with it." mr. tremont says, he wrote the "perfect" book, "and you have to give him credit for that."

obviously, mr. tremont's is judged to be better by all standards, and that's a shame because mr. worths book was and is great.

john mcknight agrees. he had been a pulitzer juror before, "if i would have been judging that year i would have been tempted to give a double award,: he says.
"both once in a lifetime books."

but mr. worth never felt redeemed. he died with a depression that went untreated. and wht? was he depressed? his wife claims, "it was mostly due to not winning the award that year."

the once-eager writer became a man with "no drive," she says. instead of writing being the passion it always was, it quickly became "just a job." a tendency toward being insane grew worse and worse by the year. "junius somehow felt god cheated him," she says.

whatever the cause, in the years after finding out he didn't win. he alwaysw had a complex. he drank harder, and chain smoked. mr. tremonts book was sought after from all over the world. and published in fourteen languages. and he made a lot of money. junius just had to sit back and take it, never fully compreding, i suppose, that it was merely timing, and there was nothing he could do about it. mr. worth was this great prose writer who took writing seroiusly. this was his way of life. he truly was a great writier.

mr. tremont has gotten to revel in his newfound celebrity. but after his book won, he found each book being judged by a harsher standard. every book he wrote was measured against fictions ultimate award and his first book. he estimates he has made tens of thousands of dollars off the book and was optioned for a movie. and he signed a new three book deal.

just a few months have passed since the mentally depressed junius worth "completely lost it" and shot himself with a rifle just as, hemingway, the man they compared his prose to did in 1961.

16 feet of freedom, jay farrar is my personal god and i watch atom ant religiously

103 days until pitchers and catchers, more new ones and the last one are the vows from my wedding day

six feet of darkness


sometimes it comes and taps you on the shoulder
others it creeps up while you are murdering time
occasionally it hits you like a passenger train
as you drink a beer slumped down on the couch watching a baseball game
but it always comes in some form or fashion
and you pray to someone or anything that might listen

passing out with hemingway on your chest
hoping the sun will rise soon
but the time comes when it is easier to pass away
quietly in the night than to hope for impossible things


or loneliness


early in the morning
late at night
he would talk to the walls or shadows
after several drinks
and he would field questions from either or himself

barron
desolate
solitary confined
except for the bars

and the sun creeps through the blinds
like a criminal
and wonders through the day
nothing to do
nowwhere to go
no one to see

he walks the streets
cars, people, bikes fly by as if standing still
and he is not there
so as the sun sinks down again
he is now back inside his house and there's a knock at the door
turning up the radio
lights a non filtered lucky strike cigarette

it's night or loneliness


the dead minds of men, skim milk and the young lolita


it was raining and we were at a coffee shop downtown
you with your latte with skim milk and i straight black joe
we sat at a table near the front
"via chicago" by wilco came on the jukebox
we got up and walked to the middle of the front and danced

i thought about the moment and how it could be the start of something
shortly thereafter, you collapsed around my way of life
the innocense of your young body would lay next to my naked one
your pedals cloaked over me like a flower

we couldn't get any closer
and seeing your pictures now
takes me there
to then

you wearing my cowboy hat with your horned rim glasses
it was a different time and place
nothing else mattered
except when the next time we were going to see one another

it was poetry and everything else


all the sweethearts of the world are out littering the bars


as i lay in bed hungover
someone outside my window yelled out
"it sure is a typical, beautiful spring day."
and i thought back to the night before as i rolled over
about how three beautifully tanned girls at the bar
signed their tabs at the end of the night
as if they were synchronized swimmers



WEDDING VOWELS


without you, dearest dearest i couldn't see or hear or feel or think-or live-
i love you so and i'm never in all our lives going to let us be apart another night.

-zelda to f. scott

if you are not too long, i will wait here for you all my life.

-oscar wilde


as the years go by


i'm not writing this in a dark chicago blues bar
or from a boat basking in the sun off the florida keys
or even the right field bleachers of beautiful and elegant fenway park
although i have seen and been to all three

i am writing these futile words
just a few meager days before our wedding day
in our house that because of you now makes a home
where i have the nightly pleasure of hunkering down into bed next to you
after an evening of watching baseball, you knitting by my side
and of course the daily comics

and i should know who i am by now
but i feel i'm leading someone else's life somehow
yesterday i played the part of ted hughes
and you are sylvia plath
i hand you robe as you step from the bath

last week i was a six toed hemingway cat
living at his home in key west
and meowing at all the tourists
trying to tell them stories

two months ago on a hot summer day
i was a man in his mid-to-late fifties mowing his yard
wearing a brooklyn dodgers t-shirt
and thinking back on october 5, 1955
when vin scully spoke the words he had waited most of his life to hear
"ladies and gentlemen, the brooklyn dodgers are the champions of the world."
and on october 8, 1957
leaving a sad, broken hearted 10 year-old boy behind

and fifty some odd years ago
i was kerouac sitting in cafe trieste in north beach
having an espresso
and pondering "on the road"

today i lead my life as an aging hipster
with a pynchon for indie films, fiction literature and baseball
i now see the backside of six a.m. rather than the front
i drink oceans of coffee to come up
and vineyards of red wine to come down
i drape myself like wallpaper with the daily comics
i pull my trousers up high
buckle my belt tight and wear hush puppies
and worship at the alter of buddy holly

i am surrounded by two indoor cats
a dog that's six pounds of dynamite
and several feral cats who we have conveniently
or inconveniently named and feed on occasion
for when there are no mice to catch

and although age doesn't matter
i want to apologize in advance
for probably not making it to our 50th wedding anniversary
but i will try my best
in the mean time take solace in the road getting there

and when i am very old
and you have to help me with the crossword puzzle
you filling in the letters
rat, pig, bucky and satchel will no longer be in the daily comics
you will read me the new characters of the day

and many years from now when you are still my young beautiful bride
and it my time to go
you are holding my hand, my baseball glove is on the other
and my rangers cap on my head
i will tell you i am too young to die

but that you were the greatest double play partner one could ever have

i've gotten an old lady, my dog has a wardrobe and i past a lady driving and reading the bible in the car next to me and smoking a cigarette

so after all that and the fact another baseball season passes and no world series trophy for my poor pathetic rangers but hey my buddy jay is happy the cardinals have brought home their 10th trophy to st. louis and it had been since 1982 for them. so congrats to them it's always good to see a team that hasn't won it in a while bring one home to their fans. especially great baseball ones like the cardinals have. so this off season as i ponder the 2007 rangers rotation. i will still kneel next to my bed every single night and pray to the baseball gods that next year will finally be the year. this will be a giant off season for the rangers with trying to hire a new manager and putting a contender together and signing the right free agents. so with all this maybe i will get back to blogging more so the two readers i have can have something new to read on more frequent occasions.

a new one &
110 days until pitchers and catchers


the woman at the bar is going to be yesterday's news


it's a greek tragedy or at least the events seem to be a writer of tragedies
very rarely do you see it
but sometimes and i hate to see it happen
grown bartenders crying
it's usually the waitresses
on a bad tip night or they're a month late

sip your scotch and water
that slut made too strong
she kills with kindness
then douses you in gasoline and lights you aflame

leaning against the bar
he'd talk as if knowing ernest hemingway
after the shift she has a small glass of wine
her cigarette smoke coiled upward from the ashtray

somewhere a girlfriend opens her legs
and gives him meaning
that's what you love her for
and when your sister visits
tell her it was just an accident

you were cold
i was colder


avenues


i haunt used bookstores looking for old magazines
in which the elusive j.d. salinger might appear
and i lap up hemingway's 88 poems as though a dog were at his waterbowl
he writes one dated key west 1935
as this one could be dated san francisco 2006

while you lay in bed half asleep our last night here
i sit in the buena vista
the first irish coffee house in the u.s.
peoples voices hang like smoke at the bar
and the golden gate bridge sits over my right shoulder to north beach at eleven o'clock

ordering bailey's and cofffee of course i think how i can never be your
ted hughes, raymond carver or even tom wolfe the lesser
and back in santa fe at the table next to us one morning, our first there
i overheard a women say baseball lends itself to the moment-a particular moment
more so than any other sport

i finished my last bailey's and coffee and paid the tab like many nights before
and thinking about what the women in santa fe had said
reminded me of something robert frost said "poets, are like baseball pitchers.
both have their moments. the intervals are the tough things."

the elevated train clatters toward wrigley field and the conductor monotones "addison is next, and stand clear of the opening doors, it's a beautiful day for a ballgame."
hours earlier in new york the yankees are playing in the house that ruth built
and in boston johnny pesky waves to the fans as he throws out the first pitch
as trains in those cities drop off fans near those sacred ballparks

i button my coat as i leave the warmth of the bar
the streets here run as grids
and the ballpark is downtown
and there's so many cafes they punch drunk you

i walk to the cable car exchange
and wonder how in a free society
some people don't want to experience a hot dog at the ball park
or the seventh inning stretch

i hum "take me out to the ballgame" as i pay my fare

rocky and bullwinkle were the precursor to the simpsons and i pound my mitt nightly

the rangers are so close to first and this poem is so new as me pushing the publish post button.

whenever you are ready, i will follow

the weekend you were gone
i covered that particular saturday morning
with rocky and bullwinkle & friends
& an old billy wilder movie "the lost weekend"

i sipped my coffee, with contentment to be alive
content to be a part of something
choked down my spinach scone
and petted the cats

later that afternoon i was off for my usual early evening jog
it hasn't rained much here lately
but today it did but only for a short while
and when it did i thought about that unusually short stay in paris
for hemingway, nine days, in 1934 when he met katherine anne porter for the first time

it had been an early cold, evening
when sylvia beach introduced them inside
the ledendary shakespeare and company
he rushed in wearing an old raincoat
and a floppy hat pulled over his eyes
as she and katherine were chatting
and told him
i want the two best modern american writers to know one another
standing still, hemingway looked hard and expressionless at porter

though time has proven that that their skills
as short story writers are equal
he felt challenged yet again and offended
to have this unknown writer & a woman compared to him
she thought to herself she had seen all the bullfights she had wanted to she in her lifetime
she preferred joyce, yeats and james as writers

they faced each other for a full ten seconds
and not exchanging a word
he turned silently
and hemingway bolted into the rain from the shop

during my jog
i stumbled across a tattered copy of ralph waldo emerson's essays
in the dirt
it was quite the romantic find
when i got home i read it & started to underline it immediately

tonight i dream of how it would be to sit
in front of my underwood typewriter
to tell the reader when my feet stopped pounding the pavement
every single night to the bars
i got a call from hemingway himself
telling me thanks for all the extra booze that was now available

i'm staying in at night
a newly mellowed recluse, i told him
that's good enough for me
so i'm turning the streets back over to you, hemingway

sunday morning, coffee for one
and the lonely breakfast table starts the day
my cereal sits getting soggy by the minute as bucky and satchel try and make me laugh
and this morning i realized i don't want to be here anymore

fed up with the situation
i want to be in the south of france serving some snobby frenchman
overpriced lattes and scones in a cafe
and after work be able to climb on my bike
meet you at our small apartment
and get drunk on cheap french red wine

but i sit here on a sunday morning in america, alone
thinking of how i murdered my last few hours of my 33rd year
ordering a scotch and water that was well above my head at that point
and how there will never be another new calvin and hobbes

i think about punching the wall because i am so old
i promise not to punch too carelessly
and how i would scrape together all my nickels to buy success
if i ever had the chance to write like raymond carver

i finish the sunday comics
this time without much laughter
rat and pig have proved futile
and as i finish off my afternoon
listening to vin scully call the dodgers game as i doze off on the couch

i know already my life with you has been beyond beyond
and there's nothing beyond life i'm seeking
i just don't want to leave it behind
although i wouldn't mind being dead

if i could still be with you

three reasons god made trees: to give us books, to give us baseball bats and to give us shade to read books about baseball

just as god created adam and eve. the beginning ones.


second best

i was drunk again late one night
lying in bed trying to sleep
feeling as if a cat had shit in my mouth
when the guy who lives across the street
started yelling at his girlfriend outside
cussing at her and then pushed her down
i watched this go on for several minutes
possibly going over and punching his lights out
but then he would know where i live
so i rolled over and caressed the girl next to me
the next morning the phone rang

and it was my girlfriend
at that moment i knew i was just as wrong as the guy across the street


i bet she's pierced as well

i noticed a girl in a cotton dress
at a bar downtown
and she would be absolutely beautiful if she'd left
the tattoo shop an hour earlier


insomniac alcoholic

he held the soaked drenched sheets with his trembling hands
as he lay there admiring a picture of marilyn monroe
on the wall at four in the morning
with an empty high ball glass next to his bed on the nightstand

up stand the crown

the ashtray says he'd been up all night
and he smashed another butt out at 7:13 A.M.
opened the icebox for another vodka and swallowed it down in a cracked cup
after another day and night in dismal paradise

three martinis, fourteen white russians, twenty-seven cigarettes
and a scrapped up back from being pulled along the street by a friend
because he wouldn't get out of the middle of the road
after his vodka he got in his car, not even changing clothes

drove to the bar that allows drunks to come around at seven in the morning
drains his eyes and wipes them on his shirt sleeve
as he pulls in the parking lot
he opens the back door, sits down at the bar and puts another drink to his mouth

fumbles in his pocket for a cigarette he looks like a train wreck killing 53 people
typical state
he finishes his drink and orders another round
should have stopped hours ago

but he just can't stop


please send the priests and paramedics

i stay up writing and it's 4 A.M.
no one wants to listen or to try and understand
the neon signs outside the bar appear as christmas lights to me
and everything recreational for me
all comes down to the drinks, the drugs, the women
and the nights in a bar downtown that invade my life on a regular basis

these virtues make up everything that stitches my soul together
but few people like me yearn for the cities darkened moral fabric
i think back to earlier in the evening
looking at pathetic patrons of the bar
wondering when does it change
times, thoughts, and the effervescence that dictates the turmoil that is my existence

and at around 12:30 A.M. lucille the waitress brings me a budweiser
she is in her seventies and cannot hear
she reads lips
but i had asked for a shiner bock
my friend was drinking budweiser
she gave it to him and said that she just drove him to drink
i told her she had just led a horse to water is all

as last call was over the neon lights dimmed against us
like the fading memory of an old carmen miranda movie
it's now 4:22 A.M. and raining again
as i finished that last sentence

and the masses are asleep

i need to discontinue to stopping my car like fred flintstone

alas, another new one. if you can read this please comment


i would follow you into the dark


this morning although i am not sitting there at a table
having a waitress with a foreign name bring it to me
i drink cafe du monde coffee
so instead of beignets, i have apple and cinnamon oatmeal
with a side of berries and cream yogurt
all the while, i sit and pour over
the weekly movie section of the paper
trying to figure out which indie i will take in this weekend

another part of me feels saddened
by the fact that calvin's parents could never see hobbes
as nothing more than a stuffed tiger
i take another sip of cafe du monde coffee
look up and vision numberous strangers walking slowly by
on their way to the next point of destination in the french quarter
and local artists applying their particular craft
around the park in front of the st. louis cathedral there

and i think how i wear my hush puppies
as if they were $200 winged tipped shoes
and until you walk a mile in them
you cannot have any idea
what it is like to slide into bed at night next to you
lay your head down and know
the mona lisa weeps for your beauty out of envy
that the sun rises and sets
knowing it cannot compete with you

i will tell you this
all relationships die
some quicker than others
for instance my putting pen to paper
this is it
these are the last words i will write down

i can no longer tolerate melville sitting up in his grave
and laughing at me hysterically
so tonight in honor of melville and all the others
i will light a cigarette and take another sip of a 4-in-the-morning beer
i only put pen to paper now to echo these final words to you

i am embarrassed by my sentimentality and paltry poet within me