If, then

If laughter is the best medicine
and weed makes you laugh

then weed
is good medicine.

Pieces of Pride

Pieces of Pride

My little pieces of pride

what’s left of the whole

will see my ass to hell.

I should have left it all

buried it in the trash

the same way I’ve buried

so many other delusions.

I get so het up about the inconsiderate nature

of human interactions.

It’s as rare as diamonds to find someone

who will offer a human response.

They’re busy, they’re busy, they’re busy…

They’re assholes is what they are

and there is no other explanation

for their crude and crass behaviour.

It’s as if they think I’ve never been busy.

The other day I sent a poem to an editor.

I didn’t expect a response

and I didn’t get one.

A couple weeks later I get a knock on the door.

Shit! Who the fuck is that?

I ask myself.

I get up and answer the pestiferous thing.

There’s some wizened little guy with a shaved head standing there

he’s got a little gold earring in his left earlobe

and a Masai stretched plug thing in his right earlobe.

Very unimaginative that

the little shit.

He’s got tattoos smeared across both his arms

and who knows where else.

Doesn’t he realize that he will never experience nudity again?

Who the fuck are you?

I ask.

I’m Nate Miller

Artistic Editor of The Weed & Scratch Review.

Ah, you…I reply.

You’re the guy who doesn’t have the common courtesy

the common decency

the simple respect

the team spirit

the union with fellow

artists

writers

musicians

the poor and reviled

such as myself

to spend 30 seconds of your time

on a single line response.

Get the fuck off my porch asshole, I hiss.

But I have something to tell you, he says.

Get off my fucking porch before I fucking put my foot a mile up your asshole!

I lunge out the door at him.

He skedaddles down the steps

sidles across the grass

sidestepping the birdbath.

We want to publish you! he shouts

as he backs off toward his bike.

I don’t hear him though

I’m simply sick of it all.

Damn!

I say to myself

it’s too early for a beer.

The last little pieces of pride stick

like spikes in my side.

I’ll be a monk yet,

someday.   

The Fool

The Fool

The definition of a fool

is

one who continues to make the same mistakes

over

and

over

and

over

again.

I am such a person.

It causes me great consternation,

but I plow on

convinced somehow

that it’s all unrecognized

genius.

I’d commit suicide if I wasn’t so

curious about what crap

is going to

crop up

next.

But America is trying to kill me

so I don’t need to commit suicide.

That job has already been assigned

and the hit is being carried out

as we speak

here

tonight.

I keep hoping for an opening

though I can see

as clear as a June morning

on a Sierra lake

that there is no door

no window

no gate

into

the open.

There is a world that lives

in my mind

that will always be

an apparition

hovering in the distance.

I flail against the wall

like a drowning person

beating my fists

till they bleed

until finally I am spent

husked out of my shell

and cast against the stones.

There,

I’ve gone and done it

again.  

Heroes

Most of my life I've had the attitude that having heroes was a bad thing. There was a kind of suicide there, buried in the reveration of another. The subordination seemed to be equivalent to a denigration to me.
All the while I had my heroes, of course.
I tried to avoid having only one, or having too many.
I criticized these 'heroes' when I saw fit, thus absolving myself of the sin of 'having heroes'.
I do have my heroes, however.
Here are some of them:

Claudie
Emma
Charles Darwin
Charles Bukowski
Che Guevara
Charlie Parker
Blind Blake
Louie CK
Lenny Bruce
Knut Hamsun
Fyodor Dostoyevski
Michael Lynch
Louis Ferdinand-Celine
Missippippi John Hurt
Miles Davis
Thelonius Monk
Barry Bonds
...
there are others, of course.
Perhaps I'll add to this list; accrete additional heroes onto my armor...who knows?
Perhaps I'll add to the list in days to come...

Sanctum

A FB post about trout in NJ sparked me to remember this piece. It was written way back in the 1980's and is in my book Cat Came Back and Other Stories. It was also in the South African sport journal The Fishing and Hunting Journal (June 2007).

SANCTUM

It had been a lousy day, but then, many days are. I got home from work, didn’t bother to shower, just packed what groceries I’d bought into the fridge, grabbed my rod and my few flies, and was off down the river road early on that summer evening. The spot I was headed for was maybe ten miles south of the little Delaware River town I was living in. It was a nice drive, no towns and few houses from Frenchtown to Stockton - just the green hills and the Delaware pumping along next to you. The low sun cast an orange stripe across the rippled water and the warm evening wind filled your nostrils with the smell of the grasses, the trees, and the pungent odor of river mud.

                I knew of a place.

                A little creek, barely more than a brook, cascading down the slopes into the Delaware through a lovely little canyon, a secret spot.

                You couldn’t see much sign of a creek from the road. It disappeared in dense brush back from the road, then went under the road, and couldn’t be seen below the road as it made its final dive into the big river. A little trail, not much used, led up through little willows and berry bushes into a sudden silence, shade, and sanctum.

                It always felt like a discovery.

                The steep V-shaped walls blocked the sun out most of the day. Overhead I could see a patch of crimson gold sky. I was missing a beautiful sunset. Small maples grew by the banks, hanging out over the water.

                There was silence. That shrouded, muffled silence that you find in tiny little life systems like this one. There were a few birds, not many, an occasional ruffle of leaves, a squirrel, and the water. The constant tumbling and dripping and popping and clunking and slurping of that little creek running down to the Delaware from the Lokatong, not more than a mile upstream.

                You had to walk only a hundred yards before you came to the first and biggest pool; a deep oval cup of clear water, eight feet deep, with huge tumbled boulders holding the water.

                There was always a trout in there, sometimes two, but always at least one. I had taken a few out of there to bring home for dinner and was always excited to see another one had taken its place.

                It was tough fishing in there. It would probably be tough for someone who was good. I’m not that good and in those days I was less so. You had to be stealthy, cunning, and very quiet. You absolutely could not let that trout catch a glimpse of you or it was all over. You could try again on the way down. Casting was impossible with all the undergrowth, the canyon walls themselves right at your back. You didn’t backcast, but just kind of flung the fly out there, or went upstream and let it go down with the current to tumble into the big pool like so many real insects did. I usually caught that fish, and then sometimes I spooked his stubborn self and didn’t see it again, even an hour and a half later on the way down. Sometimes I killed the fish to enjoy with salsa soaked hash browns and beer, other times let it go, no doubt to get fat and ornery out there in the Delaware, if it could survive that river.

                There was really only one other good pool in the entire creek but I always found fish in tiny little scoops and pockets, stops on their route down this ladder. I’d perch on a rock above a small pool and just watch the trout darting for its food, or lurking in the shadow of a rock, sometimes just patrolling its tiny realm. I’d catch these by dapping, just patting the fly (invariably an Adams) on top of the water, letting it eddy over to the trout’s rock. I could see every movement of the fish including that twitch of the tail that told me it would strike, almost like a cat.

                Up at the top of the hill was another pool, not so deep as the lower one, but much wider across. There was a six or seven foot falls below it and when you got up on the lip you could look back down the creek and canyon and see the water jumping down through the cool, mossy stillness. I stood there awhile, catching my breath and enjoying the presence of this place.

                I saw three trout in the pool, two holding under an overhanging rock across and to my left, one under a fallen snag, across and to my right.

                I amazed myself by casting once, twice, three times without snagging on anything. The third cast caught one of the trout under the overhanging rock. It darted out from under the rock as the fly drifted past, and fought all over the pool to free itself. After five minutes I slid it out onto the burnished granite, unhooked the fly from its jaw, and decided that trout for dinner sounded good. I killed the fish and placed him off to the side. There was no sense in casting again so soon after all the ruckus so I contented myself by sitting still, listening to the few sounds, feeling the cooler but still warm evening’s air, feeling better and better every minute, tuning in to the lifeline.

                Against my expectations I caught the trout holding under the snag on my first cast. It didn’t put up quite such a fight, and soon my meal was complete – minus the hash browns and beer.

                It was getting dark as I made my way down, rock to rock, leapfrogging along the creek, exhilarated as I pushed through the brush back to my car.

                A secret unknown place where I always caught fish, and I always caught peace. It felt like a wild place, though I knew there was a farm not one hundred yards from my second pool, the highway below, and I knew the trout were not native but planters who’d made their way down from the Lokatong.

                I wheeled the car around and headed back home.

                It had been a lousy day, but the future looked bright.

On ‘The Greatest Country on Earth’ and American Exceptionalism

On ‘The Greatest Country on Earth’ and American Exceptionalism

It’s the election season (the only season you’ll ever experience on earth that lasts 2-4 years) and we will be hearing the phrase ‘the greatest country on earth’ spewing rather loudly and repetitively from the mouths of Republican and Democrat alike, and probably from the mouths of some candidates from minor and marginal parties as well. It’s supposed to be a kind of unifying, rallying call and those who call it the loudest and longest are deemed to be the ones who love the country the most.

            And that must be a good thing, right?

            Except that it’s bullshit.

            Making that statement precludes this piece from publication in any of the watered-down pussy-whipped rags called newspapers and magazines in this country. It will likely affect my job opportunities, even, if it were. It is simply unacceptable for a wide swathe of the citizenry of the US to utter critical, or even realistic, statements about the place of this country in the world if they seek many of the available jobs; including political office, of course. These dopes that run for office must tire of being endlessly coached on how to praise the country and feign patriotism.

            If they don’t tire of mouthing those platitudes, we certainly do tire of listening to them; those of us out here in the real world.

            But is loving one’s country the same as believing that it is the greatest country on the planet? Is it ever enough to simply think that one’s country is a great place to live and leave it at that - period, full stop?

            If not, why not?

            A rallying cry of a segment of the political spectrum seeks to revive the concept of ‘American Exceptionalism’. What does this mean? It has been said that it means that there is something in the American experience that is ‘exceptional’, unique, special, exalted, elevated to a level that rises above the status of other countries.

            How fucking arrogant and obnoxious can you get? Entire histories filled with pain and achievement, rich and innovative art and music, complex social relations and colourful cultures, vibrant and ancient histories, get cast upon the slagheap so that the puny peons of industry can get exalted to the skies.

            What crap!

            It is no wonder that many people around the globe are not enamoured of the US. How could it be otherwise if the only relationship possible is one of subjection, of subservience?

            Do we, as Americans, really need these concepts and images (myths?) in order to feel good about ourselves?

            I don’t think so.

            It is an odd perspective on life and one that relies explicitly on the belief that others are inferior. It’s a grand delusion that reflects a kind of underlying inferiority complex, where self-esteem can only be found by denigrating others, by putting others down.

            It is a very bad thing I think, a thing which we need to put into the dustbin of history, to grow up out of. Patriotism itself is a debatable virtue, but patriotism that depends on placing oneself on a fictitious pedestal towering above others borders on being evil. It perpetuates divisiveness as a virtue; indeed, even a virtue of the highest order.

            American exceptionalism was perhaps born in the hyperbole of Manifest Destiny – the former colonists, now united in an independent nation, were fated to drive to the ends of the continent, colonizing all that lay before them, capturing all the resources and all the land in order to make the nation that would rise above all other nations.

            The devastation of proud, virtuous, and noble nations that fell in the wake of that massive bout of bullying should be lesson enough on how to navigate the way forward.

             But it hasn’t been, and the revival of a mind-set that seeks to place stupidity above intelligence smacks of the cold fact of continual battle.

            Eyes on the prize people, eyes on the prize.

I Knew Her When

I Knew Her When

I knew her way back when

and I knew then

that she was slightly crazed

deluded,

but brilliant and interesting.

There are people who get tangled up

in a messiah complex.

They become convinced that they have more to offer

than other people.

Try to tell them otherwise

and they lash out,

or grinch up.

I knew her way back when,

and I just found out

that nothing’s changed.