Frank's Existential Morning

This routine was a false passage to a greater ease was what Frank was thinking as he traced the rim of his coffee cup with a finger he wished he hadn't bashed under a hammer when he tried to nail a diploma to his apartment wall after he had a few blasts of celebration following his graduation from Guido College.

His best friend Bud Kohlonic had gottenhis sheep skin from there a year before and already he was raking in the major skin, extra layers of green material that helped him finance a new hearing aid and a trip to the Outlet Mall that was normally a prohibitive county further than his bus pass would take him. Bastard got himself a randy crate of fresh possum, Frank was musing, all that Ab shifting and already a girl friend on his arm who also liked singing the alphabet in Korean Markets.

The phone rang but Frank didn't answer it, and then there was a hard pounding at the door,  but Frank didn't go to it to see who was there. He looked out the window and saw that his street had vanished with the stupid rain. His finger stopped hurting--the pulsing, bruised throb was now an itch. Instead of streetlights and satellite dishes on the  eaves of shabby roofs, all Frank could see were clouds, bright stars in black blanket darkness, rainbow bridges to radiating pulsars, a big old eyeball squinting at him. He squinted back.

Goddamn it, I hate lines, he thought. He went to the door and opened it. A large fish with an insane smile on his face was standing there, arriving on time to install the Cable TV.

Burglars Trying Door Knobs

Shouts and screams  from rolled up windows tells me it’s the end of august in a parking lot behind a beach bar that’s about to get robbed, and then shut down by the cops for serving minors, ahem, everyone is rushing  to get ripped and ripped off, jerked off and jacked around, ravaged and raped and taped to the side of a car on the way home along the side streets down alleys in residential neighborhoods that shadow the free way  on the thought that police are at the beach listening for shouts and screams from inside rolled up windows, burglars trying doorknobs,

What I heard was grim. 

“Give it to me, godddd dammnit all, give me allllllllllllllllllllll your love, babykins, I know you want it” he said. 

She wasn't having it.“You’re a slob and a drunk and you’re disgusting, get off my foot , get your hand back where I can see it, GET OUT OF MY CAR!!, JESUS, what the fuck are you about??”

He gave a gruff cough that suggested unfiltered cigarettes smoked one after the other for a decade. “Ohhhhhhhhhhh, baby, don’t be so cold like a cone with no cream to lick from the rim, just love my seething sweet thing and let’s be a noise only god hears on a good night..”

It sounded like she knew him, barely, through circumstance and now made it known the clock had stopped all together. 

 "  Watch the hand, grub boy, GET OUT OF MY CAR!! I’m gonna crown your buddy Frank for setting this up, FUCK OFF! GET YOUR DRUNK FACE OUT OF HERE…” A car horn blared, a door slammed, a car alarm screamed, someone was groaning in the  gravel.

It’s a night of extremes because the car bounces in it’s spot, next to a dumpster, as the bars empty and bartenders check their keys, dishwashers hose down dishes and waitresses do another line of speed to make the night come home faster as patrons roll over each other, going from hugs to handshakes and all manner of gestures that melt into wars that are declared and over without a shot being fired, the moon sweeps the street that fills with loud jokes that wakes the neighbors with swear words and car alarms that make the punch lines a home invasion, there’s nothing else to do after the little and big hands fall where the do
each night about right now.

Cops have their smokes, their batons, riot guns, boxes of chew toys, their back up bottles,  The cars all rock with ignition, roaming hands in the middle of what is now becoming  morning, some fingers trace the line of a thigh , other fingers  fold together, it’s the end of the summer, and there is no more spending money.

The Problem with Women is Men

Liquor store lights enlarge the facts of the night.

Gimmee a pack of goddamn Camels she says,gimmee a fuckin' pack of camels or you can dry hump against this telephone pole.

He tries to kiss her but she turns away, looking into the liquor store at the rack of smokes next to a cash register decorated with permits and checks from dead bank accounts. Bunny heart,he says, how about some MD 20/20 or a couplaquarts of Schlitz, maybe? After we get some, we can go to the high school and hang out at the dance, the band is Gnarly Beast,they play lotsa Deep Purple like it's right offa the record.

Her eyes burn through him the way the store sign burns through the night. I told you,she says, I wanna pack of camels and then I wanna go to the beach where there's a party I heard about. What's with your beer and wine?

Ok, Camels, he says, but how 'bout maybe Camels ”and• some MD20/20? Go sit on the sand, smoke some, get a buzz, later, well...

Oh fuck it, she says, alright, get both, then we'll go.

I love you, sweet meat, he says.

Don't call me that,she says,how much money do you have?

Five bucks, hey says, oughta cover it. Sure about the beach? Beast kicks out the jams on that Deep Purple.

He tries to kiss again and cram his hand down the front of her jeans as he tries to get a rub in, but she turns again, pushes him back with one arm and swats his groin with a flat slap. Fireworks go off behind his eyes.

You dense fucker, she says, all I want is pack of Camels andyou're off doin' something else. I'm going to the beach bymyself.

She turns and walks up the street, walking near the store fronts to avoid the street lights.

He thinks,go ahead and walk away, bitch, Deep Purple rulesand you don't even know, you're just a chain smokin' Deb wannabeanyway, fuckin' bitch.

He limps away, cutting up a service alley toward the highschool,where he knew he'd find some of his bros in the lowerstudent parking lot leaning against car hoods , feigning  the hoodlum poses of guitar heros under the yellow corona of a streetlight.A pain shoots through his crotch and stops him in hisstaggeringœ.

Goddamn bitch, he mumbles and comes to a complete stop in front of two door garage at the end of the alley. He squintshis eyes on a sign nailed to the wooden garage door, letters dancing through a vibrating haze of pain and real mist, shit, my goddamn nuts ache, he thinks, leaning closer to the sign for no reason other than conquer one obstacle, what's this shit say?

"NO PARKING," he reads, and then blacks out, collaspingbetween two hard rubber trash cans.

There's a gazebo in my pants and the band is playing the Star Spangled Banner.

Name that product

Angry bonzo wing nut Zorba Tuner!
Huh?
Forget about it!
Huh?
Enamel wedge tater formula pipe extractor!
What?
SOLD!!

Eastland, Detroit Michigan

Cars were parked in the sense that the man was seated but there was no one playing chess between the cars only a chorus of alarms sounding under the aqua blue sky that had a tint of rose while the sun set on Eastland, the place where out of towners came to get malled and shopped out of their instinctive credit line.

Brady had no idea that there were no chess games going on between the parked cars, and was surprised that no man nor men could be seen seated in front of tables hunkering on elbows and callused palms over a chess board they hadn't touched. This was not the Fourth of July. It was instead his birthday, a day without the graces a greaseless salad gives you--often times he felt sluggish when there was the wrong dressing on the lettuce, gamy , bittersweet nonsense concocted from Miracle Whip and even grosser things.

Brady liked his salad with a punch of mayonaise, no chaser, and preferred it not chopped up with a knife but cut up with    safety scissors, the ones you find in kindergarten class during art period, the ones that will not cut the skin as you make your erratic, swerving way through piles of  orange and blue construction paper in an urgent attempt to  create a sun that would get a gold star and, Brady's drifting thinking assumed, increase the gravity around the school room and force the solar system to collapse on itself, into a nasty, compressed ball of gung ho. But what of the parked car s , and who left this baby here?  There were odd things afoot in this Michigan twilight. All kinds of things did not spell kosher.

Jesus Belch

Cody wondered why his Dad named him Cody when that brick came through the windshield . A fast dance of  safety glass filled the front seat. The dash board was ugly enough, cracked and cratered from being parked under the sun in asphalt parking lots.

He grabbed his smokes and took out his cell phone, hitting a number on redial.

"Fuckin A, Jesus Belch, Mother did it again and I'm jerked around myself" he said. He flipped down the top and shoved it back into his pocket.

Across the street there was a parade of clowns passing by a burger joint and a blood bank. Cody rubbed his eyes as if to clear away some bits of collected morning funk.

"What's going on here?" he asked no one in particular.

Outside the Target Parking Lot

I'm gonna punch you inna nose and drink your beer and after that maybe you can stick around and get me a KFC Box of Wings, how's that sound for a night's activity?

Morty, you're scaring me.

No good? How about we play "Capture the Soap on a Rope"?

You scare me because there seems to be no bottom to your barrel of banality.

"Barrel of Banality"? I like that. Where'd you learn that one?

In Film Critic School.

Oh yeah, I forgot. I'm gonna start a band with that name. "Barrel of Banality". We'll tour for a year, record an album, make a pant load of dirty bucks, and then I'll knock on your door and drink your beer. And then I'll punch you inna nose.

Not until you pay me back that fifty I lent you when you got that ticket for driving over that guy's bag of melon's outside the Target Parking Lot.

You're not gonna let that go, are you?

The Target Parking Lot! Fuckin A.

I'm gonna punch you inna nose right now...

Where's my fifty?

Don't have it. Tapped like a dented keg, Jackson.

Sit down and watch TV, then.

(Grumbles).

Morning Inventory

Yawn. A wide mouthed, stinky, what did you eat last night?!? yawn, a gaping stream of reconstituted aromas. Cigarette in water glass half filled with diluted whiskey. Hate it when the ice melts, no punch, no buzz. Lots of porn magazines, guys on gals on guys on guys and gals and their gal pals and the achievements of the Hard Plastic Industry. Ever read Lolita? Best writing on American motels , ever.

Yeah, I always leave the door open when I turn off the lights; the grind of the ice machine and the comings and goings in the parking lot help me sleep, and something about the silverfish sheen of the headlights cruising across the groaded wall art makes me believe the center of things will hold even when my eyes are closed, a half mile into the Nod.  Ah, you're not awake. Damnitall. Said my piece to a failed applause sign.

Nothing makes me sad like a sandwich still in the wrapper that hasn't been eaten, nor stored in a refrigerator. It's a dead thing that becomes even more dead as the heat makes the cheese and cold cuts gamy like soft calluses . A suffocated rat has more dignity. Marlboros are the best smokes ever, they have the right feel in the hand, the pack I mean, and the smoke itself, wretched burning nightstick enema grind, yeah, they are foul, all the time, like sneering geese on a leash, jack.

Post Coital

Grace tucked in her shirt and zipped up her jeans while her man Jackson moaned from the bed where they'd slept after meeting each other half way on the half awake highway.

His head was under the pillow, each of his muffled moans reflecting each ounce of GrabSum whiskey he drank from the bottle before they turned out the light lamp.

All he could remember was the hard glare of the parking lot lights and the Texaco sign pouring through the window after the room went dark. Ghost outlines lit a path to the bathroom.

Grace, though, felt fine, sticking with her bottled water the night before. It was four AM, a half hour before her shift, and all she could think about was the coffee she'd drink after pulling out from the AM/PM  while on her way to the diner. It was going to be a great day, she thought.

She slammed the motel room door as she left and got into the car.

Jackson woke up and sat up in the bed. The room was still dark.

Why You Fought in Iraq

Nothin doin', ya old punk. There's nothing nowhere in the papers  'bout me having to give you a drink cuz yoiu think a man is free to ask and get cuz he wants something.

Listen here, my man, this is a great nation because the likes of you caught a bullet sent you by the wrong flag, and those freedoms weren't just for me to ask you a sip of your stash, but for you also, my man, to tell me fuck no on this corner when I ask you for the neck of the bottle , my right as well, to tickle your fancy and make you see red...

Back off and keep your claws in what's left of your pants, farmer. Where I was and what I did and how I got back here talking to you about my bottle is nothing we began talking about. We were talking about what movie to see.

Fuck the movie and give a drink, buster, thirst outweights pleasure.

So what you want to see?

I wanted to see some titty movies, but they tore all those places down, the Pussycat, The Aztec, the See More.

See More Theatre? That was in Pacific Beach?


Yeah. Now it's a Clothing Store for punk tats and rats and scabie coated grimmies. Gimmee that bottle or I'll punch  you in the face.

Go punch a clock first, Jack. I collected a lot of cans for this swirling delight, and all the brackishness and backwash is mine cuz I earned with with the smashed tin I turned in, dig it?

I hate punk rock.

That's why I do see movies instead of buying music cuz there are no guitars on mars.

What?

No guitars on mars.

Shut up, man, your drunk. Gimmee a blast.

No , man, I'm gonna find some place to hang it and let go and then catch the bus and go downtown to the Plaza for a movie and a snore. You can get your own bottle.

Fuck it then, I'll do just that. I'll just get a bottle of my own.

Now you're talking.

And then I'll write my name on the ally wall.

Nuff sed.

What you wanna see?

Something loud and crude.

Dig it, brother. Let's motor.