An open letter to Monday mornings: Battle rap version

Releasing chunks from sucker punk’s cheeks;
Like a beast, I feast.
I’ll have u thirsty for some mercy
pleading, “please, sir. peace…”
when I'm done spraying sayings, u’ll pray
that I’ll be deceased.
I’ll send u walking with your Jesus.
Call me Kanye East.

From the east to the west,
You’re the least, I'm the best.
Never sleep. Never rest.
I'm the priest; you’re possessed.
U want peace? I'm your stress.
I'm angry bees on your flesh.
Like a knee to the chest,
I’ll relieve you of breath.


I detest you, confess fool.
I'm blessed fresh and dressed cool.
U mess with the rest
and then guess I'm impressed? Dude…
I press thru your tests too.
I question your quest. Who
do u think I am? Sam I am?
I make Fett drool.
Depressed? Ooooh, I hex you
with cess pools, check 1,2’s
and force fed duress pools
of jet fuel and pet gruel.
…so….
U’d best check your spex. Use
Complex tools, like med school.
Reflect on the mess
I suppress like Atreyu.

ka-boomed from the start...

My dream chronicled (and I mean that in the most tediously tedious way possible) the lives of 2 people, who I’ll call Stella and Ella (they didn’t really have names in the dream).
Stella was an Asian recently-ish single mother of a toddler who thought most things were louder than they needed to be.
Ella dealt with her chronic insomnia by creating spreadsheets documenting all of the ways she’s come up with to catalog, index and organize her already massive, yet ever increasing collection of professional grade floor tile samples.
A huge portion of the main scene from the dream that I remember dealt with the 2 main characters returning to a bar where they’d in the last week or so come to find that they loved karaoke. In tow with them was (I’ll call him) Luke (also had no name) a buddy of theirs from somewhere who’s pre-teen daughter would sometimes watch Stella’s toddler.
The night was unfolding to reveal that although Stella and Ella abso-lutely loved their karaoke experience, they were actually rather poor performers. So poor in fact that they had gotten a round of applause when they returned to the bar and a few patrons had designed hand made fan shirts.
Things progressed with Luke failing to convince them that they should neither perform their dream set of maroon5, abba, o-town, with a rick james closer; nor should they engage in keg stands in their sadly chosen clothing choices..
My alarm broke me from this world just after Ella (having fallen during her keg stand after realizing that she both didn’t like Killian’s red nor did she like her loose fitting blouse falling up to flash the mob) had her injured arm hastily bandaged with boards from a wine case and electrical tape…and right before the 2 misfit heroines stepped up to the karaoke screens that would undoubtedly extend their american idol spotlighted reject level of infamy.
So tell me…how do you think I slept?

Roanoke pt. 2

The snowy days are spent gathering wood for the evening fires; fires that once roasted game for celebratory feasts. This winter brings few things to celebrate. The snows make the nights too long and “They” always, always come at night. The bleak cracks of day bring little solace. No longer are the days filled with the gain of our harvest. No longer do we gather together for prayer with a stern word for someone late or absent. Now the gathering prayers are filled with memorial words for the missing faces.
The face I miss most belongs to the good captain. I should’ve held his hand and chose to travel back across the seas. Father always said that a simple choice would change my life. Little did he know that his simple choice, one born out of neighborly kindness, might actually end his life; and not only his but all of ours as well.

Roanoke: pt 1

It was the sound that I imagined angel's wings would make. A roar I heard not in my ears, but deep inside the hole where I hide my darkest fears.
That winter the night moaned with a sinister gale that filled the frost bitter air with a sourness that my fright-crippled mind mis-perceived to smell like twisted promises and lost hopes.
I think that what I really wanted was to hope that they were angels as a feeble defense against what I knew in my broken heart to true.
These creatures; these beasts crawl from nightmares. They swoop upon us, punctuating unsettlingly still nights with unearthly wailing as another colonist is dragged from their loyal flocks and loving family.
These things; these are abominations.
THESE ARE NOT ANGELS...

The Girl With the Tattooed Neck - pt 2

Scunny snapped to consciousness. It was the same snap as the twig under the heel of a closing pursuer and filled him with the same amount of comfort and solace as the snap of forearm bones courtesy of a jr. high bully. Never the less, it brought him back to wakefulness. Scunny was torn as to whether or not that was a good thing. Lately he could barely call what he’d just awoke from, sleep. It was in no way restful or recuperative and it’d be an offense to all nightmares to call them dreams. He’d been conscripted as the sole punch bunny in a continuing series of the most horrible intimate scenarios his subconscious could seem to scrape up. The happiest of which came yesterday afternoon wherein he was the single survivor of an overturned bus accident and he had to lay pinned beneath the twisted hemorrhaging bodies of all of his once closest friends and relatives. It was the least horrific of the recent lot because at least one of the faces had received a wound a la the joker and he tried to lie to himself that it was a real smile. He had to lie to himself in his dreams. What a wonderful life.
At least today wasn’t rainy. That meant he could somewhat stealthily hunt down that girl with the neck tattoo with no worry of public steaming to draw attention. Instead today was a hundred % sun-shiney.
Since “then” sunny weather feels sub-zero to Scunny and that Slayer hoodie was all he had to fight it away. He kept to the shadows when he could and ran shivering when he couldn’t. Like I said; ‘somewhat stealthily’.
Scunny made his way back through Overtown and past Ambassador Park on his way to Packy Lawson’s place. Maybe Packy or somebody Packy knew had something on that girl. ‘What was her name?’ Scunny asked himself during one of those sun-chilling jogs.
If Packy didn’t know anything, he’d hit up Rob Raven’s tattoo shop down on Mackenzie. That neck tattoo looked kinda tribal and very custom. If anybody would know about it it’d be Rob Raven. He knew any and everything about ink. He even had the quill they signed the declaration with he was so into rare ink.
So the plan was Packy’s, then Raven’s all while avoiding the sun and sleep.
That night when he was hooking up with that girl with the tattoo neck he’d thought, “my life has finally become a dream movie.” But since then nothing has been farther from the truth.

so there i was...#6 (part 2)

...and just like that, it was done.Lives had been changed forever and my beach front condo in eternal damnation had been secured.
One hand still quivering with well deserved and heftily earned guilt hung at my side as I braced the other hand against the beer and vomit rusted corrugated metal wall that stretched down that side of the alley.
I rose slowly and apologetically. My head whipped to the side looking for whatever had made the suspicious noise that i was wishing I could have heard right at that moment. Then it all would've been like a movie and I could just sit still, wait for the credits and slip out with the innocents into the darkened lobby.
But this was no movie, despite its marked horror, and I'd heard no such sound; mysterious or otherwise.
It was as if even sound itself didn't want to associate itself with what had just happened here. There was nothing to ever cloud my memory of the event; no flickering lights, passing cars or errant sounds. No other conscious being, through whose perception, I could fog my own recollection. No, I was alone in my utter honesty of what I had just done.
At full posture I looked down at my deed, wishing I could have felt something. And when I couldn't...I turned and walked away; into a pitch blackness that virtually beamed compared to my recent darkness.
2 minuted from now, there'd be no trace. Nobody would know that I had even been there...
2 hours later, half the world would know of what I'd done and 2 decades later lives polluted by my hand would still be broken.

insomnia...

insomnia...

insomnia old man
let me take u by the hand
as u dance me round and round
till the moon, she comin down
lead me on your lonesome walk
preach to me your Folsom talk
insomnia, insomnia, insomnia

screaming whispers in my face
pass no dreams into my grace
will i ever win your race?
insomnia
have no prayers for the sun
i sit awaiting ev'ry one
got Churchill's black dog on the run
insomnia

insomnia old girl
got me floating in your world
by the river's muddy deep
poor man Buckley lost his feet
will the sweetness of the dream
ever cut your bitter sting?
insomnia, insomnia, insomnia

(chorus)

toss and turn or do i sit
curse at you and beg u quit
Sisyphus rut in my pit
your stone keeps rollin
up and down, then down and up
with your never empty cup
your feast of famine where i sup
till soul is swollen...

insomnia old friend
just a kite in your storm's wind
cut the string, let me pretend
that i am flying...

so there i was...#6

so there I was with a sharpie in my hand, standing over this...someone. looking down at this unconscious figure heaped and huddled together in that damp alley. I'm not sure how they had ended up there, nor am I sure that it's even for me to contemplate. All I know is that fortune, great or dis, brought me here to bear witness to this person and, in as much the same degree, brought forth upon the night this thing that I must do. The remote approximation was not lost on me that things were both and completely in my hands (specifically) whilst totally being out of my hands (situationally).
With an inhalation deep enough to engulf the world, I steeled my self, detached my soul and knelt to do what knew I must...

so there i was...#5

so there I was at chic-fil-a watching through the window as my kid played hide&seek tag with what seemed to be her best friends in the whole world. Best friends that she'd known for all of about 15 minutes; friends of all shapes and sizes; friends with bowl cuts, braids and faux-hawks; friends who were nearly heartbroken when it was time for everyone to go. Through this window I saw hope for a future greater than now in a world where this kind of playground acceptance of open arms and open hearts will be the world that not only they know, but that we all know.

so there i was...#4

So there I was; jokers to the left of me…jokers to the right. But I should’ve expected it since I was at the first Comicon since The Dark Knight came out. However, if 1 more fanboy in line with me for the restroom asks me, “why sssso seeeeeeerioushhh?” I’m gonna unjuggaload a keg of faygo soaked insanity on this clown posse.

so there i was...#3

So there I was, a newly-minted one-day-old college freshmen partaking in that oldest of freshmen dorm traditions, the fire drill...but it wasn’t like the movies .I’d been expecting semi-nude co-eds clenching algebra homework so tightly they’d be unable to hold onto their reservations or inhibitions. But like I said, it wasn’t like that. It was mostly a sausage fest, but then I saw her…there amongst the rest sharply dress in her ever so perfectly stained papa john’s shirt and visor…Esmerelda. Oh my heart did sing that day of the lovely Esmerelda. (read her name tag) In that brief 27 minutes that felt like nearly half an hour, I pined for her. And she pined for her $17.28 that some guy had been heading to his room to get when the alarm sounded. I could’ve stared at her for hours. I mean like from across a bar, not in that direct creepy way. And then the magic happened, our moment in the sun…(really in the sun. like 4:30ish on a Tuesday afternoon)
She looked at me but for a split of a second. Now I don’t know if it was the Ace Ventura 2 boxers or the “Hairdressers do it with do” t-shirt, but she smirked at me and I liked it. I was cranking up the courage to walk over to her and ask about the pizza specials then I heard it…the trumpet of doom for this, our just budding love. She looked away and swore and screamed yes!
My eyes followed hers and I saw it then…the shiny red firetruck. How could I compete with a shiny red fire truck and $17.28 plus tip?
I was crushed and my hatred of people in red suits was cemented…darned fire trucks.

so there i was...#2

So there I was doing my weekly water color with my left-over deep fried PB & sardine sandwich, when I looked up and saw the 9-legged half bull/half panda alien with an octopus made of fire for a head. He was roller-skating around the abandoned golf course playing his klezmer cover of “inna godda davida” on his triple neck steam-powered banjo.
Not sure this story is gonna get more awesomer than this.

so there i was...#1

So there I was getting the cast cut off of my right foot. The nurse asked how I’d broken it in the first place. So I told her…zombie robot shark ninjas riding monkey dragons were chasing me through my kitchen. I was running to my room where I could jump through a space portal to Giraffe-fish Island where I kept my samurai sword made of frozen gold.
I was doing a side knee elbow kick flip and just as I was about to swing around the table to block some arrows with a pizza cutter, I slipped on the lazer beetles that the zombie robot shark ninjas had released.
I slid, twisted my ankle and as felt the bone snap in my foot I only barely missed being hit by arrows. Luckily I could grab some cans of old possum soup to throw at the zombie robot shark ninja in the front. I hit him right in the neck and his head exploded setting off a chain reaction that destroyed the other zombie robot shark ninjas, the monkey dragons and lazer beetles as well. My family was saved and I got to get extra bacon and pickles on my ice cream pizza.
The end.

Ears on fire! 1.6.11 edition

from the sonic masterminds that brought you the highly anticipated and even more highly appreciated "NeveroddoreveN", comes "Long Drive Home". I got a link to the soundcloud.com page[ http://soundcloud.com/longdrivehome ] a little over 24 hours ago and most of my waking listening hours since have been devoted to the tracks there looping to my ever increasingly delighted ears. As with their last submission, the songs have a fresh, edgy sound that i can see appealing to a wide demographic of listeners. The vocals ring out melody lines you'll be trying to sing along to before the song is over. And the harmonies of the guitar riffs intertwine in that oh-so-wonderful way that made their last effort such a joy to listen to and even more enjoy live.
I'm eagerly awaiting the release of this album as i feel it will be well worth the wait.
thanx again guys for truly great music.

ish i think is cool 1.4.11 edition

as i sit here and wait for my new site to upload it self to the server, i'm dropping this bit o' knowledge.
about 2 weeks ago i was perusing one of my favorite locations out in the allwhere netherverse; xkcd.com
whilst there i saw something about a webcomic called Questionable Content. seeing how xkcd makes me laugh, i figured i'd give this other site a chance as well.
so that was tuesday (2 weeks ago tonight)
i started at the beginning and this past sunday i caught up to where he is now.
i caught myself laughing out loud at least 1000 times. sometime so much that i startled people around me.
it has been some of the best and funniest (and actually informative) reading i've done in a long while.
but now i have to wait to see what happens each day instead of reading 40 or 50 pages at a time.
this is gonna be the hardest part.
however if u've got the time and the abdominal muscled to laugh that much i implore you to grab yourself a bottle of "Midnight Hobo" and visit:
http://www.questionablecontent.net/
u won't be sorry...unless u are easily offended by things, then u might wanna just ask me what happens.

listen to some deathmole and learn what professional disdain is really about.

Keller

I was wrongly arrested of a crime I didn’t commit. So was everybody, right? Sounds soooo familiar. Then I was quickly tried, convicted and sentenced to die by the crooked judge who set the whole thing up to cover up some illegal international dealings. That’s a little different, right? No? Well how about this part…I was strapped to the table and given a super induced drug meant to kill and erode my body so that there’d be nothing left in case a decent attorney or righteous judge saw my trial records. However things didn’t go quite as planned. After watching me get injected, the judge and his cronies left the building. A few minutes later things began to go awry. The chemical mixture had an unforeseen effect on my body and caused my head to explode. I know this because I felt it when it happened. It really sucked. Then the weird thing happened, well the first of soon to be many weird things happened. I’d read that after executions or violent deaths, sometimes the victims souls or spirits remain near the body to protect it or seek vengeance. It seems that this is what happened to me; the close part, not the vengeance. And I stayed really close. So close in fact that I never actually left the body. I realized this when the 2 fellows sent in to clean up the mess my medical anomaly had induced began to handle my body. At first I was a little disoriented as you could imagine; head exploding and all. Had kind of a migraine, but not your typical migraine, it kinda floated around my head (or where my head had been) like a Bootsy Collins afro. Anyway these fellas set my body up onto one of those cushioned benches u always see in medical facilities and began to clean. As I sat there I began to come out of this fog and it was as I was watching them. Not from the stereotypical movie-fied floating aboveit all method, but from where I was sitting on the bench. I kept wanting to tell them that they had missed some bits. For some reason, this thought (can you think with no head?) bothered me and I wanted them to collect all of everything. Well one guy went to grab one of my sneakers that had come off in the ordeal (yeah I called it an ordeal. It was my head) and decided that he was gonna just sit it on top of where my collarbone was protruding. I kinde felt disrespected and tried to knock the shoe out of his hand. And guess what?... I did. Hooooly (expletive)! Did he freak out. The other guy hadn’t seen this and was knocked down as the first guy scrambled back in his overwhelming freaked-out-ed-ness. So as the second guy…ya know what, I ended up communicating with these 2 guys so I know their names. The first guy (the recently freaked out one) is Harry and the 2nd (recently knocked down guy) is Joe. As I was saying. As Joe rolled over and grabbed Harry shaking him to try to get him to chill out, I realized that even tho I didn’t have a head, I could hear things just fine. I could think somewhat normally (although there was a mass of unchecked questions swarming around my ex-head like gnats during dessert at a late summer bar-b-que) and I had a small range of motion that I could feel improving. However, the only voice I could manage to generate was my internal dialog. Ya know, the one everyone has; what you’re reading here. Joe eventually turned around to see me trying to stand and just watched as if he’d seen similar things before. Harry asked him why he wasn’t freaked out as much as Harry felt he should’ve been and Joe simply replied, “I grew up in the French Quarter, I seen worse.” I got the feeling that Joe really wanted to help me out as he calmly returned my shoe to my outreached hand. It was more difficult than usual, but I did manage to get it on correctly. Joe was a swift thinker and mentioned that the next shift was gonna be coming on soon. I waved my arms trying to get Joe to hand me his clipboard and realized that I looked like every stupid zombie from almost every b-movie I’d ever seen. Then it occurred to me, even with no head, I could also see! I could see, in all of its gory glory, my ridiculous zombie arm movements. Maybe I should’ve been more understanding of their plight. I imagine I’ll see quite a few things differently now. I mean metaphorically speaking, not just because I had no real eyes anymore. Joe seemed to know what I was after (his clipboard) and handed it over. I tried to write a note communicating to them. What I tried to write was, “ Thank you for my shoe. My name is Keller.” But what actually came out was, “tHayoff mNSHeo` mAAnom si kElllrr.” Harry looked and said, “Great! A foreigner dead guy! S’all we need.” But as I said before, Joe was a swift thinker. He gave me back the clipboard and suggested that I try again. I did and I took more time this time. This time I kept it simple, “sHu. THanx. mE. KEllr.” Writing was more difficult that the shoe had been. Much more difficult. I was something I was going to have to practice. Joe read what I’d written and I could tell that he understood because he said, “You’re welcome for your shoe, Mr. Keller. Now we need to get you out of here before somebody else shows up. If you would please lay here on this gurney and I’ll sheet you up until we can get you someplace safer to talk...err…convers…ya know. I understood and did as he asked. Laying there under the sheet I could feel it against what would have been my upper shoulders and that felt weird to me that it wasn’t against something that was more face-level. I was sure I’d get used to it. I began to “figure” that I’d have to get used to a lot of things here in the near future. But for now, I just laid there listening to them finish up their cleaning of my ordeal (yes I’m going to continue to call it that, thank you very much) until I felt a bag being placed under the table on which I was laying. Then I felt a push on things. We were moving. Joe’s ever-calm voice detailed things. “We’re gonna run you down stairs Mr. Keller. Orders are to cremate you, but that don’t seem quite right after the last few, so I’m gonna augment some documentation and we’re all gonna take a ride in the company van. I don’t know about you but I could use a cold beer.”

I’d never drank before, but I think that right then if I could’ve, I may have taken one. Just to clear my head ya know…cept..well..ya know. As we rolled out of the room, Harry, still a little freaked out, (and not an Ivy League graduate) asked if everybody who was French could speak to the dead. I would’ve laughed out loud…ya know if I’d had a mouth. Joe paused his pushing and I could imagine him looking at Harry and placing a comforting hand on his shoulder as he said, “Yep, we learn it in grade school.



2

“Shore is weird; him not having a head.” This might have been the most in tuned statement Harry made the whole first night that I knew him. He’s right, I said. But it being only in ethereal was-head, it wasn’t really said at all. I looked around for something to try to express this thought; alas the company van (as Joe had called it) was neatly kept and held no errant scraps of paper. This could become a problem. But I had an idea. I made what I believed to be the universal symbol for ‘telephone’ and hoped Harry would understand even though I no longer had an ear nor mouth to complete the charade. Harry had a brief moment of clarity and said, “I think he wants to call somebody.” Then the spark vanished, “whoever he calls ain’t gonna recognize him tho with no face.”

The Girl With the Tattooed Neck

Scunny hugged himself against the cold he felt in his bones as he stood under the flickering marquis awning of the Haskins Blvd American Standards Cash&Pawn. He whispered through clinched chattering teeth his wish that this infernal drizzle would stop falling. It was as if the rain 'knew' and fell for the solitary function of torturing him.
Scunny caught a whiff of his reeking Slayer hoodie and almost wretched from the stench of it. He heard a slight chuckle begin to rise from his belly at the thought of it. Scunny had never been one to support, even crossing the street to avoid the panhandling gutter punks he'd see around Ambassador Park or outside the Riley Towers. He’d often speak of how they gave the whole neighborhood a funk and now, because of 'this', he stank more awfully than the worst of them.
He'd shower if he could; he had no fear of soap or a good scrubbing. But for some reason he couldn't yet fathom, 4 days ago any moisture that touched his skin would instantly sizzle or steam off in seconds. He was sure that it had something to do with that girl with the neck tattoo that he's hooked up with at Packy Lawson's party. He was determined to find her and hoped that in doing so he'd find out what she'd done to him and most importantly how to make it stop.
if only the rain would cooperate..if only...