#beatcascadian

[beatcascadian]

When I go to Saturday Market, it’s hard to tell what I give out, what I sell, and what I simply write. Today’s take home stack, maybe a dozen like these went out. Plenty of help from fellow marketeer, Lax. Shelter from sudden rain.

[beatcascadian]

Rue de la Course

Seemingly monied and not without passive observation, these dawdlers mingle with two blank eyed doglettes under each arm. They hate chairs, they hate this coffee, they hate the sun and each passerby with frothing little teeth and miniature growls. Their owner, in wraparound suns and just as solar red shirt, stares in awe at the single tapping sight in front of him, sitting in a plastic chair around the corner on Oak, paying everything attention.

Three nights so far in this city. What first grabbed my attention were the sidewalks, which are either sinking tiny pits or the crumbling remains of decades past, depending on which block you stand. Watch your feet.

The blinding red asshole on the corner has turned the groups table so as not to have cappuccino disrupted by fascinating words describing the same cups of coffee, the same skateboards and earbuds. Only seeming different because they meander a different space. Same FedEx purple shorts, same price for mani pedi, same red newsprint boxes on the corners covered in propaganda. Same kids in same strollers, same little coughs from little lungs. Same jostling keys and greetings and pharmacy and okay the streetcars aren’t everywhere, and if they were, they’d at least run on a schedule.

They seem to stop and drop anyone anywhere, and weave through the fanned grid with some apprehension toward traffic control devices. Old man got off to wander the center of the intersection, waving at those kids and dodging his cane around the wayward stroller. Streetcar whirs by, another just behind, I see no indication of scheduling.

What next grabbed my attention was the unabashed inebriation of any street within a mile of endless parades, towering two story trains of tractors and revelers, dropping shiny sparkles and rounded lead on any drunken head brazen enough to whoo for them, me.

Same teenage girls passing dismissive glances, while mother in heels flashes back to make sure the horns aren’t directed at them. Another streetcar, again at no particular time, and Perry shows up from the few blocks that way in shades to tell me I seem productive and we should eat something. The old man is digging at some shit lost in the rails, but the kids have been dropped elsewhere. Between the laughs I can’t understand to the smashed up posts and poles and entire vehicles along narrow streets that need no explanation, it is evident that some wave has permeated this town, call it a deluge of hilarity.

-- -- --

In confidence. If you can prove that some real estate is laundered, the gov’t will seize it, and you get a finder’s fee. Fed False Claims where something is crooked, tax fraud... Some 18 year old girl just died because she didn’t have her medicine. I swear, I just spotted that turd from Barn Light... Or at least his maybe younger hipster equivalent. All this talk of laundry is making me want to find out about a rug store I know. Fuckin fighter jet?! Two of them, and the library found out about it, thinking of Kesey Square, I hope they lock it down, but after Katrina, the charity scams... Ask the church! Ash Wednesday, drink the wine of Christ. Paying horrid salaries to Goodwill directors, go to Europe and find these secondhand shops selling American shit, put it on a ship and make a killing. A whiff of crappy bullshit, some perfume, is there another drag queen over my shoulder, hollering at the drunks to get the fuck out of the way, this tuffet won the shit out of Bourbon Street. If you have to sleep in your car, park on an incline, that way the seat becomes horizontal. I never slept at Georgetown, and why would I, Arlington and malls, can’t have anything taller than Washington’s cock. Get students to buy me lunch, girls only eat salad, so take advantage of their expected femininity, there are some rich motherfucking bitches at Georgetown, daddy gives me this and that, but the meal plan is a scam. The same thing at the University of Eugene, I actually like that folks just walk by instead of standing and “Excuse me, sir! Is that a typewriter?” And I just glance.

[beatcascadian]

Pepto Palace

Sarah doesn’t believe that my typewriter has a little tippity tap tap tap to it.

Work hard for the money, so hard for the money. Frothy filthy month rain into pockets from above or below, trickle up and over like a green bridge beyond the moon.

-- -- --

i will not hit two letters at once.

These are the words I’ve always wanted to write.

i will not hit two at once.

please and be pleased bond and be bound. satisfy and be satisfied. SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSsssssssssh. i will go to the ocean.

[beatcascadian]

Kesey Square

Fellow vendors raise eyebrows at punks down the way cussing each other back and forth. Could use a smoke at some point, hey, my first customers!

Discussing hamburger farts, dazzling the thimble’s worth of sunshine we have now is tremendous.

Glad for shoes and interrupted vegan solidarity. Folks coming or going or bother singing songs and writing always and we’re tired and where are the other folks? Isn’t something happening here?

-- -- --

Facing Sizzle Pie today, as if to curse pepperoni, or at least cast its odor back to the bricks. Typical and pleasant, meanders and trash cans, bank towers and dollar joints advertised, soon maybe a companion, but for now, just passing glances.

Sounds about right, wondering how hard Berners are partying in Portland following this morning’s rally, some arbitrary figures on TV screens telling us who might, just might be our next supreme leader.

Approaching that four o’clock chime, and wondering again about those dollar joints I’m hearing so much about. Is Dandy coming down? Now a poem shared.

These are frightening circumstances, where faces become more familiar with time, we see the same repeating features. Women in 50s with pink and purple locks smoke cigarettes amid cocktails, and a stranger in Eugene for the first time ran out of gas and is trying to roll on. CBD and THC and usual typical conversation, mostly cloudy Friday, downtown and the same.

-- -- --

No one knows how they feel about PVC in swamp coats, art canvas carried to be hoisted and positioned lobbyside, just so, not to interrupt, and a nibble of this, a puff of that, toke that shit, just another sip of those, mystery chocolates and Dolphin RVs, funny sculptures and vape pens.

Daisies and daydreamed dizzying, punk jackets and punk hoodies and snappy jangle strings beside me, obvious out of towners mixing with townies, we’re bored by what we smell and fixate on what is silent.

-- -- --

I’m a dude, she’s a dude, he’s a dude, we’re all dudes. Dig it. We donate more than find contribution, it’s a fair share, space to collaborate without knowing for certain that’s what’s happening.

I don’t really have beef with the giant boxes forming around this place, other than I can’t afford them, and never really like when I can.

We must have more shamen and shawomen than we can count, all wanderers sticking fingers to the sky to test the rain makers. No one’s getting wet, just yet.

[beatcascadian]

MeowTOWN

If I were to actually do mescaline, I wouldn’t actually want to be at a place. Not playing anything, kinda have to pee. Took me a minute for that one, Dave. Yeah. Do the things you haven’t done.

[beatcascadian]

Kesey Square

Shouters try to capture their friends, against all odds they shout names and hope their loved one responds, which they do, and they’re united in a walk to wherever down funny Broadway and this kid can feel the acid and now this kid is tripping, and the dog is not Russell, and I like that sweater guy, and it’s great to see a skyline from the center of it.

-- -- --

Discussing Mardi Gras jailers trying to make a buck and a nug to take home to the kids and wife. Smoky bubbles right where I left them, people avoid this corner like a line of cop cars down the streeted darkness lit bright with red and blue pronouncing to the neighborhood that indeed, something’s up.

Not a spot of attention, even moved grumpy out of the frame of a visitor’s cell phone memory of a statue I don’t think she understood but I moved aside anyway.

[beatcascadian]

Kesey Square

A glorious grey day, we are funny and bright even when skies tell us not to be, shy despite our attempts to communicate, and safe in the knowledge that nothing lasts as long as memory.

A marvelous crowd, dancing wild and singing great tones to the masses, grinning running kids that squeal in bliss, careless and free, mad for the rush of curious wander. Knitted hats and warm layers as if this grey could deepen any second.

Still unsure, but stopping anyway to see what’s up. Everything is up in space, organized celebration falls apart into disorganized existence, which it was to begin with.

Kids engage careless while adults take great strides to not come off aloof or odd, but what does any of that matter? Doesn’t, so dance, dance fools! Dance so the fools become commonplace, this is the common space, make it whatever it could be.

-- -- --

Approaching the one hour timeslot allotted by a disconnected management group, but by simply showing up, we’ve shown them up, look what can be done with a few posts and a few calls to action, suddenly many have become one holistic gathering, and it works.

-- -- --

I’ll tell a story, of finding street poets among drunkards, with bourbon filling the gutters near cathedrals and statues and the muddy Mississippi, dancing to brass, dancing to the beat of a big easy city on the bayou.

I’ll tell a story, of a camp in the redwoods, thinking we just witnessed a Sasquatch, thinking a Yeti was after us with stolen US forest service uniform as a disguise, or maybe just to break into our tent or cooler for snacks that rainy spring break near the shore.

I’ll tell a story of now, when my mind dances around with complete strangers, but I find that to be peaceful and funny and a goofy bliss not found in the walls of my home nor the monitor of my computer nor the rows in my fresh new garden. This story is best, because the now is easiest to recall.

-- -- --

Perhaps my last poem for this space today, the sun has arrived and I’m hungry, another quality donut maybe, frosting.

[beatcascadian]

Pepto Palace

Listening to the 1975 and typing with Dandy with broken margins, and recalling the sounds from five flat typewriters lined across Royal like it was yesterday because it nearly was.

Drives through Olympia only Ben Gibbard could dream, Twin Shadow now, all echoes and dribbling.

-- -- --

Music in the living room, with neighbors. Mirrors and banjos swimming thru sand coloured liquids sending alcohols into space and then joining.