Linebreaker - A Literary Blog

Poems, novel excerpts, who knows what all?

[confunkshun]

Thanksgiving 2018

tickle of my peripheral vision a reminder I wrote then lost waking up to full sunlight floaters sailing across my vision from the bright bank of windows to where shadows quiver in fear within dingy molding dependent upon long-dead prayer and rusty brads that is where they go to die dissolution negation a permanent fade and I breathing so little a germinated worm afraid to move not wanting to draw the attention of the Universe but I am as integral to any grand scheme as a pulsar rotating 3000 times per second screaming gamma rays a mystery as unknowable as the first thought of the first animal to think watching jaws bear down in the murk of brackish waters I imagine this primal confrontation as I watch the homeless man solid as a butter-statute take up poses of contemplation a fixture diverting conversation and foot traffic in the Starbucks washing his hands against each other lips working above motionless jaw eyes closed looking in looking in imagining he holds all of creation in each atom in his body a secret he might be able to tell if he weren’t bent in an obtuse angle away from my bland experience worrying about shopping lists vacation bank balances turkey defrosting time and a hunger to be understood by my friends and family lest I be forgotten when I die

[confunkshun]

Reflection on Art, Solitude, and Giving up Playing the Saxophone

So my mood has been shitty lately.  Things have been shitty lately.  Like a reckoning looming over all the proceedings.  Investigations and wildfires.  Smoke in the air.

Most of it are forces beyond my control.  Even though I can’t control it, I can’t remove myself from it.  As you are a part of the vast machinery so am I.

I know that I am stressed when my shoulders start hunching up.  For a second course my eye starts twitching.  Not like Herbert Lom’s character in the Pink Panther movies but just enough to know that my stress is ratcheting up.

There are many tonics to help the situation.  Nothing beats things resolving themselves.  I don’t see that happening in the near future so I must hit the tonics.

Luckily these aren’t chemical tonics.  Booze and drugs wear off and they mesh unreliably with the necessities of very day life.  Improv has been interesting but it’s a variable kind of exercise.  Sometimes I get up and I’m not into it.  There’s nothing like not being satisfied with your own performance.

Sleep is good.  Too much sleep is like being coated in oil: it leaves me feeling gross.

So music.  I don’t know why music is so important to me.  It can do so many things.  Fuels my fantasies, enchants me, incites me, time machine, lover, drug, muse.  Sometimes it can be difficult to find the right song or songs to help me forget my troubles or change my mood but it’s almost always possible.

Today, though, something different.  I don’t even recall what song was playing when the thought encroached.  Earlier I’d been thinking about the headphone I carry around in my backpack breaking so I’ve had to unlimber a backup pair, the set that I keep attached to the electronic drumkit I rarely play.  A half hour or so later I was thinking about a snippet of a dream I had.  I don’t remember the circumstances of the dream or precisely when I had it but I was confronted with a brass instrument’s mouthpiece, like a trumpet or a French horn’s mouthpiece.  That’s all of the dream I remember.  But when it popped back up I had to ask myself, why did I choose to play the instruments I did learn to play and why did I play them at all?

To be factual I played the snare drum in grade school then in 7th grade I switched to the saxophone.  Beyond learning and playing in school and inconsistently practicing at home that’s all the musical training I’ve ever had.

I don’t miss the saxophone.  I mean not at all.  I played it almost every school day for six years and a little bit in college.  Right now I know if I owned a saxophone I’d want to hang it on the wall because they’re beautiful instruments.  Maybe I’d fart around on it every now and then.  But I have no desire to play one.

As for the drums I do own the aforementioned electronic drum kit but I haven’t played it in months.  I do get the desire to play along to music every now and then but that desire isn’t strong enough to overwhelm the inertia of not playing.  The thought of playing is usually enough.  When that doesn’t work then tapping on the desk usually handles the extra urge.  Rhythmic thinking, rhythmic tapping and I’m good.  But that doesn’t answer the question, “why did I ever play the saxophone?”

My brother played drums and I’m pretty sure he played saxophone.  He certainly plays the guitar even to this day.  So maybe I was emulating him or my mother pushed me in that way or perhaps it was just the path of least resistance.  I’ve tried to play the guitar from time to time.  It gives me no joy.  Make no mistake: I air guitar like a fiend from time to time.  But those perfect fantasies are enough.  I have no actual need to either write music or to play it.  

I do need to enjoy it.  When I think back to playing music in my youth it feels like some of the accounting tasks I’ve done in my life.  Notes, like numbers, followed in a sequence and added up in a satisfying fashion.  But nothing ever spilled over to fire my imagination.  I never wanted to ignite the passions of other people with my music.

It wasn’t a waste of time I don’t think.  There are a lot of hours in each day and playing music in a youth ensemble was fun in its way.  It certainly introduced me to most of my friends.  So I guess I should revise that sentence to: It wasn’t a waste of time.

Since the point I put down the saxophone it’s been at least thirty years.  Many things have changed.  I’ve become much more solitary.  I’ve spent the vast majority of those 30 years in my own head fooling with words, trying to go from making little-a art to big-a Art.  So far, no good.  I’ve also gone from having a good group of friends to a life populated by acquaintances.  With an improv performance happening in a week I am confronted by the fact that there is no one I can think of to ask to the show beyond my immediate family.

Is there an answer in that paragraph above?  That I gave up friends to search for Art?  That the instrument I chose had nothing to do with my love of music and everything to do with being part of an ensemble?  The truth is that there doubtless WAS a reason of why the saxophone but that is now lost to time and the imperfections of memory.  For today it’s just the triggering question that sent me searching through my past so I can reflect upon why I am like I am today.

[confunkshun]

Tied to the Mast

moon nibbled like a pear green skin and gold

there’s a shipment of cinnamon hogs in the switching yard calm their squeals the prophets of their kind never foretold a different kind of heaven heavy in the lungs wet snouts snuffling bliss of tears burning on the back of tongue

we’ll never meet on deserted decks sun brown sails feet burnt mahogany scarves you wore scented with spice ports yesterday’s sweat captured in a kerchief rough rope smoothed by innumerable palms like your breasts in moonlight your eyes of no color the common dreams of men and women held back as ammunition to fire off at the lies we all tell

[confunkshun]

Degeneration

gouge the chin that’s never known stubble break the stalk where it exits the ground - why should the aged suffer the beauty of youth?

my father beat me with a lawnmower blade knocked the rust clots off with my skull laughed when I cried at the ruin of my clothes

I brought you into this world while drunk, he said and I’ll usher you out in the same condition, his rummy breath giving me a minute’s head start

the safest place to be when faced with an inebriate rage is any place where that rage can’t find you cowered tight behind the woodpile or on a train on an endless loop

your youth and lack of possessions proclaiming, here is virgin territory, your bruises whisper, here is fruit torn from the tree softened and ready to eat

I meant it when I said I need two dollars for a place to stay a bottomless cup of coffee for rent on a naugahyde booth a token to show that someone cares at least a little

tomorrow in the wind I might fly off like a kite no strings on me I’m a real boy born into the real world as cold and unsteady as the day I fell from the womb

[confunkshun]

Klaus the Giant

they tell you in grade school you are guaranteed to be the best at something meaning in most cases wiping your own ass or understanding how many marshmallows you can jam into your cheeks until you suffocate but today I reintroduced myself to the man with the toughest eyebrows in the world

you may have seen other brows wilder or longer those shaped as natural topiary and those that move independently of the face’s muscularity but his eyebrows back up the threat of pitiless eyes heated and tempered in the days of corporal punishment then honed within the tripwire jungles of Viet Nam they loom like pigiron knuckle dusters which mutter don’t fuck with me

                                      they’re curved for strength frozen waves grim enough to convince a viking to retreat back into the longhouse for mead and gravlax they threaten violent potential like a shelf of dirty snow looming above a chalet, they snatch at the moon and mock the sun as impotent to harm the orbits they guard they sneer whether the lips below smile or spit they’re quick to take offense and contend without regrets

the man behind the brows is titanic, outsized in every way considered belly, butt, and general height and a capacity for outrage as well, happy to condemn a slow bus driver to hell or toss a tepid cup of oolong at the teaman’s grin in short an asshole but to me always endearing those brows harbingers of enthusiasm for gin and basil and cats and I lost him, misplaced in a city of endless blocks ridiculous like Godzilla tiptoeing dainty among the redwoods

[confunkshun]

The Real Estate

waking the grapevine with a blade attacking its knuckles splintery on the trellis severing the mainstem in twain watching a silver rill of heart sap patter the dirt guilty not to drink of its vitality producer of sour grapes better suited for hurling purple splatters on white picket fences machinegun chuckle a bunch disturbs the ivy undergrowth another alleycat hightails it for a safer yard calluses torn off on a handle no money for a tiller all those green plastic soldiers separated from the platoon unearthed mummified as the old garden vanishes wind teasing at agrarian leanings fingers of grass rattling a derelict chickenwire barrier having escaped the guilotine of razorback and trench edger sweating for the equity of a home buyer ignorant of the joy sifted as dust into the naked swingset rope painful stain on the patio where skull lost to concrete not even noon on an October weekend history chipped away almost too fast to remember empty as the rainbarrel a rich landscape cut back to zero

[confunkshun]

Despoilers

such a pretty girl - that’s the nicest thing that’ll pass their lips

their lust is attached to their poisonous eyes they walk like they have dead babies in their pockets

you don’t see them often in person their re-touched images recite their mantras

there are ecosystems seen in the back of their black cars unseen outside of a bacterial veil around a vent at the bottom of the ocean

they take vacations on the backs of boys promised candy their manicured nails grip a spine like a butcher collecting a debt

they join no club there’s no qualification beyond the ability to inflict horror brazen-scented aftershave redolent of apathy and universal loathing

breed with me they shout, take on the seed of my shame the universal solvent full of a currency that buys nothing

you’ve never seen a lack of substance defended so fierce the path to the blackness of oblivion is decorated with their tobacco teeth

[confunkshun]

Ghosts of Alzheimer’s

the disassembled engine parts jumbled massive to minutia fingerpaints of grime on crumpled towels

the bow unstrung, flaccid

a photograph album unlabelled, out of order the styles of decades, mustaches and shoes, splayed like a mis-shuffled deck

someone’s portrait on the wall presented without context while an older version putters around talking about people no one knows bent on anxieties slain long ago come back to haunt an unmade mind

[confunkshun]

Steam

circling the minarets birds play in the dragon’s fire clouds illuminated by an unrisen sun

an old woman wearing red rubber boots kicks at a scrim of ice atop the puddle below the drinking fountain

the park bathrooms are locked the soup kitchens cauldrons gong empty useless as office buildings heated on Sunday

joggers are sporting rugged beards January thighs bared to every element dashing through the snapping of stiff homeless bones

an old man squats undignified behind a barren bush negates the entire world doing his necessary when the police appear they choose not to catalog the crime

[confunkshun]

Splitting the Game Day Crowd

Considering the divisive quality of the inland wind lifter and bringer of pollen and dust now bee-less and cold companion of Autumn it keens and pushes for the hollows of the human body probing mouth, nose, eyes for access dialing up chilly vortexes in the ears it intones: in time you will fail and instead of pushing against your body I will flow through your bones.

The slayers of men and butchers of beasts stagger on the sidewalks showing the phases of bruise: purple, green, yellow.  They’ve been to the temple of booze and drank from the font then take their disorganized parade to the glass palisade angular and black like a demon’s mouth they pour themselves inside to watch millionaires sacrifice their bodies to the tradition of grave circuses

[confunkshun]

Seattle City Limits

there seems no end to the bus ride the riders seem cast from a multi-cultural clinic advertisement they cluck like chickens all around flaring into laughter squabble

every street we take is a clogged artery every trace of humanity has run alien I can’t fathom how this came to be

sidewalks crowded corner to corner new buildings screaming European names Tivoli, Hellespont, Punta del Este the sun is setting into the jagged teeth of above-ground electrical poles and dog-earred trees leafless and feral

dowdy storefronts are graffiti canvases another form of communication missing me but I understand the need for shout those taggers were there - they put in the time slapped up their terrible, impermanent art like we do, like we all do

this used to be my town, an exquisite contradiction not caring if you moved here until you arrived then demanding you pack up and leave those of us actually born and raised here ran the cracked streets and pocket parks like albino deer with bloody velvet on our antlers

now it's all been signed over to a new generation hungry for the energy that’s already gone looking for the future at the end of the line

[confunkshun]

Drunken Milestone

tilt your head back, close your eyes breathe in the night air heavy creep of car exhaust, sweat from working all day, a rare wetland full of swamp odors.  you hear choirs of frogs in polyrhythmic battle against the slowing pulse of engines cooling in post-midnight air

reach out with your hands, sharpen your index fingers, touch them tip to tip - such an easy thing to do when young, coordinated, and holding easy dominion over both your body and those around you: the most important person in the world. husband and father - the man who hung the moon

here they come, finger at finger, rushing together like the tragic hero’s heart and the bullet cast by destiny to stop its beating: hold your breath miss - try again - miss.  open your eyes to a new existence where the engine still cools, frogs croak, and father knows best is no longer necessary

all those days past, stacked in sequence, building business acumen, bank accounts, a loving marriage, an enviable home, then one day your child passes by not twenty feet away never looking up not only not needing but not wanting an old man’s advice

have you been drinking sir - well it seemed like the best way to dull the pain - please turn around and place your hands beside your back - all this without the courtesy of a blindfold or a cigarette:  click inevitably all good things must end

[confunkshun]

Visit Original Link

Spoken Word Artist Jonas Dodge speaks his truth

[confunkshun]

Politicians

they swarm to the trap drawn by the sour that shabby fermentation a taint just a thought beyond moral

a compromise first of taste then of conscience they gather at the brink detect neither danger nor consequence so go in

a jar a funnel a hint of rot they drop straight in and can’t figure out how to leave the same way

drunk on plenty with all they ever wanted within easy reach they have been acquired

is it sad when a creature who has everything dies of thirst drowned by the excess that they crave

their bodies don’t scare the next generation truly they breed like fruit flies these pests theses servants of their own ambition

[confunkshun]

The Remainder

she ceased to exist as herself became the lipstick ward of his soft smile - in reality a spike, a ready stylus, hungry to carve a new tune into her as-yet unlined forehead. and how he sang, under her window, under her skirt, soft to her parents, loud to drown the doubts she kept – so broad, like an Antarctic landscape, and as empty

he could not tell her how much he loved her because silence doesn't translate into words: he was adrift he insisted, not unfaithful but with the arrogance of an only child he claimed her a prize he was owed a house full of white walls where he counterfeited her agreement to his plans adventure boozing and clandestine dating plus a continual hunger that kept their bank account lean as a derelict puppy

for his birthday she considered the question what do you give a man who has everything - somewhere among the video games and sweaters she realized he just takes what he wants and sloughs off the consequences like snakeskin like a condom brimming unexplained atop the bathroom trash

she made him leave without a suitcase and yet he managed to take part of her away with him she spent cold morning hours assembling inventories picturing the woman she'd dreamed of sculpting herself into never noticing the details etched with care had been smudged and blunted into a spindly mess barely able to stand on its own

[confunkshun]

Coffee Shop

rat on the cold pavement a dash across the patio is a lifetime long, especially when you’ve heard dry feathers coasting above your precious body and the quiet double-click of talons extending down

the golden glow of civilization is a welcome harbor a rat will suffer the screams and prim revulsion of humans no longer in caffeine meditation but dancing shaking and twisting their bodies away as if their lives depended on it

[confunkshun]

Landscaping

we’d been all the way up Mount Index scrambled across granite blades to that place in a bowl of rock where warm beer transmutes to nectar

tired and naked in a basin of old rainfall pinned flat by serenity able to think only one thought at a time our pulses synchronized with a pulsar in Vega

when the orange ball started to parabola down we took cold chisels from our packs to carve away the civilized scat names and dates and braggarts’ traces

working like engines well  into the night lanterns hard and bright as icy calligraphy made a mirror of pond and sky and though tempted we vowed not to try and make sense of the lines

who came down that mountain at night just those done for the day having given all looking to feed their blisters to icicle streams bellies filled with thin air and razor flakes