memory.

it's a dang good thing i have a good memory.

for real.

because that's about all i've got in terms of sleep.

i mean,

i remember what it's like,

but not from recent firsthand experience.

bloated bellyholes?

now that is a little somethin' of which

i'm explicitly aware of,

from direct semi-aquatic current occurrences.

semi-aquatic?

y'know,

shark gluttony.

except,

where sharks need constant motion in order not to die,

sucking in water to get air-

i do more of a continuous bite and swallow,

with less lungfuls and more mouthfuls-

as if food was the water,

and chompy-chomping on treats was the air...

that's somethin', duders.

i'm just sayin',

i ate three breakfasts in one sitting, with dessert.

i doo-doo that cartilaginous predatory battle-beast sh!t.

my infinite nature is weighs a metric ton.

how can i be so skinny, and live so fat?

***********

yeah,

between yawns and subsequent facefuls of food,

real life still-life posed picture portraiture is poppin' off.

and so is pen and inky drawing,

dead birds,

bitten dogs,

debates en espanol,

and non-stop arthur-making hottness,

and yet, somehow,

there's still only a fraction of what needs doing getting done.

hard work, hard styles, and soft foods.

you'd think we'd have the matters all well in hand,

but,

all these hands over here have teeth,

which equates to wild animal prestidigitation an' that,

and the sleights and slants and slithers of

elusive productivity all get confused

in a rumbling jumble of laughs and tubas.

activity isn't the same as productivity, y'heard?

the difference is the accumulation of results.

of course,

there hasn't been a pause in the production since i landed.

it's just that the object is MORE.

too much, even, would be the preferred amount.

or ANY.

(that would be a good amount if we're talking about sleep.)

in the meantime,

there's only forty-eight or so hours left to get busy.

so we're busy,

gettin' busy-

...more of this;

never quiet, never soft.....

my hands have teeth(marks).

the May Day parade in minneapolis, duders.

so dope.

right by the louderhorn inn, on the way to powderhorn park,

dead smack dab in the center of the sealed-off street.

front flippin' row seats to the big action.

the best part?

no fire trucks, just puppets.

yeah, i know.

the heart of the beast puppet theater gets it IN, kids.

tigers, whales, skeletons, snails, owls, and a whole bunch of

hippies, crusties, weirdies, dirties, and fruitblasters.

my kind of gathering, for sure.

time flies when the fun is gettin' had, too.

in fact,

it may have been the fastest-passed four hours of my whole life.

...and then there was a kick-ass barbecue session into the sunless hours.

grilling, mutha-flips.

hot fire + treats = awesomeness.

several other 'nother kinds of fires were combusting a move, too..

one was even on my face.

mmm-hmmm. not quite spitting hot fire, either,

that implies increasing the distance from the fire from my skin;

it was more of a drooling pitch faceplant.

y'know somethin?

beards are SO flammable, y'all.

yeah.

maybe i'm understating it;

i set my face on fire.

not on purpose.

by putting napalm battle briquettes on the grill.

(there's lighter fluid already in 'em!)

spontaneous ignition swept my face with a towering, glowering inferno.

is it possible to appear confident and competent and communicative

with a fireworks display for a skull?

i hope so.

at any rate,

delicious treats,

warm bowls of fire-marshall-approved fuego,

soda pop,

and several tiers of the social stratum

munching up on all of it

makes for a good day and night.

...........

...and then shamira up and got her face ate off.

those who know the battle-beast of whom i speak

most likely need no further explanation.

those who don't should count themselves fortunate.

for the record,

nothing ends a party more concretely than a

berserker b!tch-bag getting snacked on by a ten-ton gangster pit bull.

that's word.

thus,

some late night emergency dog stitching bobotronics were enacted.

and barbecue time ended in a hail of screams,

hammer-wielding dog-experts (not whisperers, of course)

and mangled meat dog dangles.

somebody out there was making a point:

infinite natures should never be questioned.

some partygoers surmised exaggeration

on the part of the hebrank contingent

as to the ill-advised ferocity of his canine.

'F* that noise', replied shamira, calmly.

then she strode out confidently

into the waiting jaws of thunder and destruction.

believers were made, mutha-lickers.

***********

we've got two week's worth of good ideas to get busy with,

and three days to do it in.

i'm guessing a second visit to minneapolis is needed,

later in the year, just to scratch the surface.

it's always a whirlwind tornado tour of the twin cities,

but this time it's completely over the top.

long nights, hard styles, dog fights, and veggie kabobs, folks,

it's all right here.

i am grateful for this time i have been given;

never quiet, never soft.....

parades.

there is something diminished about this dawn...

last night, for a brief moment,

it looked as if the dark skies were perforated by stars

glowing just a bit brighter than usual.

in truth,

it was solely due to the newly created absence of a greater brilliance.

by comparison,

those heavenly lamps shone with greater radiance.

and with that,

there is one less worthy warrior poet among us.

one less competent, capable, confident, cognizant captain of creation.

today's the day.

the same as every day,

it's the may day parade day.

it's sunday.

it's all really happening.

the sun is shining,

the birds are singing,

the winds are blowing.

only dimmer,

softer,

and colder than they would seem any other day.

those winds, friends;

they bring change more than any answers.

i mean,

even the gentlest ones,

the warm breezes,

break up the smoke-ring ghost rings of spirits and memories.

the near-stillness isn't enough to keep the lightest ghosts anchored,

so it may as well be a hurricane.

---

it's inevitable, i suppose.

the finale.

and the ensuing assessment;

'...what never dies is the judgement on how you have lived your life.'

well, well, well.

lived well.

well-lived.

past tense.

the quality of true real-life battle-bard wizardry went to eleven.

there was just not enough of it.

there's no such thing, after all.

sleep easy, uncle ed.

the good night has welcomed you home.

battle hymns and funeral marches;

never quiet, never soft.....

sweet enough.

sugar skull!

on shoes the bottle-flippin' bartender.

actually,

it's on his arm,

not his foot.

his name is shoes.

go easy.

that's the big move so far.

don't forget,

today's the smorgasbord of black spikiness.

so there's that.

mayday. mayday. mayday.

we're going down.

(that's what SHE said)

never quiet, never soft.....

rabbit, rabbit.

rabbit, rabbit, it's May Day.

right round about the midnight hour,

as if appearing precisely to inform us of the passing of april

as time traveled towards the majesty of may,

an actual city-dwelling rabbit bounded by into the small hours

of the dark and stormy night.

april showers until the very last, i guess.

no joke,

the sky was stormy everywhere but where we were.

a smoke ring storm circle of lightning-striking,

with a creamy, blop-stuffed center of viking gluttons.

todd and shawn and i totally tuned up a ton and a half

of jumpin', jivin', friday-nightin' ethiopian brown blop-a-lops.

and once the diaper-bread had sopped up all

the sauce for the second time in a week,

we went to the crackery part of minneapolis,

to a neighborhood i'd not yet seen,

(due mostly to shawn's aversion to those darned uppity white folks).

once there,

independently of the presence of our buddy ryan,

who wasn't home yet,

we had an unsolicited hot bonfire,

an unprecedented antique garbage/heirloom

treasure hunt in adjacent garages,

a firearm assembly line,

and an entirely unnecessary extra slice of vegan pizza.

i also got a complimentary dead animal horn/weiner trumpet.

that's some busy manly man-time business.

a series of successive successful adventures is what's poppin'.

thanks, men.

i needed that.

***********

so,

it's may day.

there're no poles in sight,

no fires of folk life flock life purification,

no flippin' druids,

no communists.

well then,

what DO we have?

tribal.

uh-huh.

wait.

i wrote it wrong;

it's triiiiiibal!

and not just me, either.

shawn has three hours worth of black spikes as well.

that's six cumulative hours of dark, dark, dark black points.

mayday, y'all.

that's a mutha-lickin' distress call.

i don't find it disquieting.

in fact,

in the face of soft saucy sap-sucking spikiness,

i get louder and harder.

y'know,

i dis quieting.

c'mon.

today's the big day.

like every day;

never quiet, never soft.....

no sleep 'til conway.

werewolf murder brains!

you know it, kids.

rattling around inside my head,

powered by lunar tumescence,

(that's full moon boner-poppitude)

and henry weinhard's epic root beers.

sleeping is in limited capacity,

i wouldn't call it deprivation, though.

what i miss in recuperative slumber,

i regain in worthy and competent conversational creation.

rest seems like a waste of perfectly good hanging out times.

plus,

the real-life is happening all over the place out here.

i wouldn't want to miss out, now would i?

and i think we've worked out the kinks, as well,

and the newly-oiled never quiet art-making juggernaut

is tuned-up and ready to roll again.

the tuba and trumpet disquieting duets are improving as well.

that depasquale girl can really make some noise, too.

dang.

***********

now,

would you like to know what a good thing is?

okay, i'll fill you in;

a good thing it is that i don't panic easily in circumstantial aberrations.

how is this relevant?

you'll see.

guess what i munched up last night

thanks to meryl's tasty dinnertime action?

broiled beets, b!tches.

no matter how cooked up by putting the hot fire to 'em,

they always look like raw bloody chopped off body slices.

with a faintly earthy (read topsoil) aftertaste.

that being noted,

they were delicious, and i even had a second helping.

there's more, duders, hold on....

now, back in the woodsly goodness,

my wifely wonder-woman can't hang out with beets.

she thinks they beat it. off.

which in turn means i rarely experience beetly beauty.

is that it?

not yet, folks...

it also just happens to be a fact of the first order of nature

that i am similar to any desert-dwelling creature in my ability

to go inordinate lengths of time without consuming any fluids.

now,

how does all this tie together in an interesting,

yet cohesive way?

it all distills down to salmonberry syrup.

yep.

you see,

most folks with limited exposure to beets, dehydration,

and first-o'-the-mornin' peeing as a triple threat combo

probably would've gotten nervous, y'all.

yessiree,

it took a second for me to dismiss renal failure

as the cause of the pink motor oil spouting out of my weiner.

happily,

i've been reading my sherlock holmes,

and deduced the cause rather quickly.

...a second helpin' indeed.

color-coded high-viscosity transmission fluid.

of course,

now that i'm reacquainted,

i think i've fallen in love with urine-dyeing dopeness

all over again.

***********

it's not-casual friday at identity tattoo.

the dapper duder from the woodsly goodness

is decked out and lookin' sharp.

so sharp, in fact,

that if looks could kill,

then the cause of death would be slicing and stabbing.

from the sharpness,

c'mon.

you ever seen a horse-faced yeti in a bow tie play a tuba?

i doo-doo that loud, hard, minnesota sh!t;

never quiet, never soft.....

grim perspectives.

what's that sound?

did you hear it?

listen close, and you can feel the tingle of

saturday morning savage seventies sauce.

shhh,

listen:

captain caaaa-A-aave-maaaaaan!

that is, captain caveman...

if you don't know,

you'd better ask somebody.

what am i talking about?

a hairy eggplant with whiskers.

yep.

maybe a toothless bowling ball covered in fur?

yeah.

a barefoot, caped, conscious coiffure?

sure thing.

it's happening.

you'll see.

***********

so,

i had my first day back at identity tattoo,

after far too long of an absence.

were there root beers cold chillin' in the 'fridge?

yep.

and was vegan-worcestershire-style mixed chex in effect?

double yeah.

did some stranger-lady bring in a raging slab of

peanutty choco-loco krispie brick?

obviously.

what does all that mean?

todd lambright is my sweetie pie.

that's what it means.

too bad i'll have to wait until later today to put the

big, wet, lickory thank-you smooch on his shiny dome.

i did some tatblasting, too.

much in the same vein as every first day back at identity tattoo.

the ghost of the red spikes lives on, i guess.

there's even more of all this today.

i'm ready already.

***********

the best part of eating too much

has got to be the stomach-achy dreamscape.

indigestive delusions up in my braincase all flippin' night.

i always like how surprised i am at 0:dark thirty a.m.

when i wake up sweaty and scared of some sh!t i can't even remember;

before i had thirdsies, and then a cookie or two,

i prob'ly should've remembered to look outside.

full-blown full moon mania, my ninjas.

i think i'm actually hairier and scarier for these three nights a month.

monstrous.

that's the key word here.

in every way.

a regular chimera of conglomerate caustic cacophony.

orangutan, wolf, bear, shark, mockingbird, crow, and rooster.

the constituent elements of pure battle-beastliness.

oh,

all that, AND a F*ing TUBA.

don't forget about the tuba.

a whole day later, and at least six minutes more practice,

and still i'm not one single step closer to viruosity,

but i did figure out how to make it seem louder;

(blow harder)

cockerel, corvid, canis lupus, captain caveman.

there is no such thing as coincidence;

never quiet, never soft.....

aloha, minnesota.

jeez,

i guess i got out of dodge just in time....

i'm serious, y'all.

safe and sound and happy and healthy in minneapolis,

that's what's up.

not an s.w.b in sight,

and super-smooth travels all dang yesterday.

it's sunny and warmish in the middle of america, ninjas,

but there's slush puppy sleet-slop sticking it to new hampshire.

sorry, honey.

but that's what happens when

the hottness gets removed to points west, i guess.

and speaking of the hottness,

what's the single most important ingredient in positivity?

yeah, totally,

it IS vibes.

and what kind of vibrations are the best beach boy good ones?

sound waves.

subsonic bass-boosted blowhard bellowing is in order:

here at the louderhorn inn,

in the interest of positive vibes and good vibrations,

we're rockin' a flippin' TUBA.

big band brass battle-blasters, represent!

just to reiterate:

a mutha-flippin' TUBA!

there was already a trumpet here,

which our flippy-flappity spit-swappin' lips were puffin' on,

but then it all got kicked up another other 'nother notch,

y'know,

to eleven.....

and now this is happening.

you may have suspected i've always been one to blow my own horn,

but now everybody here is blowin' everybody else's, too.

it's like a make-out party,

only accompanied by tremendous flatulent roars.

(on further consideration, i also hope nobody has mono).

speaking of tremendous flatulent roars;

how much ethiopian food is too much ethiopian food?

well,

to answer that,

you'd have to know the answer to this:

shark gluttony.

it's nature, duders.

there's no explanation for it.

so therefore, there's no such thing as too much ethiopian food, either.

unless you ask my long-suffering bellyhole, that is.

that tuba is the least of the thunder-bringers today.

it's good to see all these peoples.

sort of like ethiopian blops,

there's never really such a thing as too much of a good thing.

***********

there will be arthur-making today.

there will be tatblasting in some capacity as well.

there will be too much food,

not enough hours,

and just the right combination of hard-styles,

long nights,

and good times.

heck,

i even baked up a late-night emergency batch of

rock block cookies.

preparedness is the main ingredient, y'all.

i'm ready.

we're ready.

it's all really happening,

starting now;

never quiet, never soft.....

p.s.

a TUBA!!!!

c'mon.

au revoir, new hampshire.

seven o'clock, b!tches.
i'm up.
i'm at 'em.
and it's all happening.
there were rumors of snow inches,
but they ended up unfounded.
so,
it's going on as we wake up here.
the big action.
the jet planes are getting fueled,
my luggage is packed,
and i'm not letting ANY s.w.b.'s F* with my sh!t.
i suppose i'll have to tattoo tomorrow,
but today i'm airborne,
and i'll be arriving this afternoon like a heavy-handed
hungry hungry hippo in minneapolis.
will there be prima nocte shark gluttony a la' brown blops?
yeah.
of course there will.
what am i?
an A*hole.
decibels and decibels of devastation, y'all.
two big mouth battle beasts in one room?
you'd better bring some cotton-balls if you don't have earplugs-
the louderhorn is about to become the deafeninghorn.
***********
the woodsly goodness will have to get on without me for a while.
i'm sure my better half is terribly upset.
sure she is.
what?
she called you and invited you over for a pajama party?
oh.
that's probably just how she deals with the devastating absence
of this much heroic manliness and beard.
the manly beardsliness isn't gone,
it'll just be elsewhere.
it IS possible to overfertilize, after all.
so i'm spreading it around.
***********
this little lull before the big action is perfect.
it's cloudy and calm.
there's tea and toast on the table,
and my wifely hottness is next to me.
i'll miss all this;
i am grateful for this time.
that's enough sweet to sugar up the bitterest bits, b!tches.
dang,
i almost feel sorry for minnesota.
i'm taking something out on it.
tonight.
get ready, kiddos,
i'm on my mutha-flippin' way;
never quiet, never soft.....

yellow.

i'm not into hospitals, anyway.
going to see my duders in there doesn't make it any better.
if nothing else,
my decision not to drink is firmer than ever.
believe it.
liver and onions ya'll.
these days, they both make me cry.
jaundice is a hard F*ing style, y'all.
no matter how brave you are,
you're still yellow.
ouch.
---
a day on the road,
an afternoon in the hospital,
and too much pizza in my bellyhole.
not that it should come as any surprise,
but it's very taxing to go back to the sh!t-salad.
connecticut kicked my butt, again.
and a little bitty crappy yappy dog
who resides at my ma's house kicked my sleep cycle
around the bend, into a wide-awake cycle.
man,
you just can't bash a dog that isn't yours,
especially if it only weighs five pounds;
...not even at 4:30 a.m.
sixteen hours in connecticut, my ninjas,
always feels more like six hundred.
what better way to follow up a long drive,
a rough and tumble failing health hailstorm,
and an indigestive evening without sleep,
than a righteous road trip back home again.
to tattoo all day,
pack all night,
and head back out yet again.
whirlwind poetic warcraft is on it over there.
---
i've got a reckless full-moon battle boner poppin' off.
life needs livin',
revitalization is on the menu,
and i've got the next ten days away from the woodsly goodness
to supercharge the barbarian batteries;
minneapolis is gonna get pounded.
hard.
i've had a whole month to meditate on which moves to make.
and i've come to a decision;
ALL of 'em.
i mean,
eleven is as eleven does, right?
i figured as much.
yesterday wasn't easy.
and with no sleep and a heavy heart,
a hard head, and a hollow feelin',
today wasn't much easier.
tomorrow, though, mutha-lickas,
tomorrow is going to be great.
louder than ever,
harder than diamonds;
never quiet, never soft.....

the road.

try and name three things i got yesterday.
what?
no,
not arrested, crabs, and banjo strings-
waaaay better than that;
try these on for size:
a trophy,
a case of potato chips,
and a gift certificate to one of my favorite restaurants.
...not to mention some obligatory stacks of extraneous loot, too.
word up.
that's how the worthy warrior poet's society does it.
...with treats.
and all in all,
those are some pretty good treats, too.
what can i tell you?
my clients are ON it, y'all.
everybody wins when it's tatzappin' time up here;
and we've got a reciprocal cycle of
gratitude and generosity goin' on.
that's good stuff.
it's viking science, and barbarian artwork all dang day long-
my regular duders know how to hang out, it would seem,
and it makes me try even harder.
(now you ninjas know the secret to a great tattoo relationship)
treats!
***********
harvest and maple and i are headed back to the nutmeg mire.
vacation is most certainly over.
driving all morning?
great news.
hospital visitation all afternoon?
even better.
pizza and falafels?
well,
there'd better be some bright spot on the horizon.
because when that horizon gets bright tomorrow morning,
i'm back on the asphalt trails.
connecticut, my ninjas.
it unquestionably goes to eleven,
but that's on the lameness scale.
by the time that you read this, we'll be gone;
another 'nother day,
and night,
away from the woodsly goodsly wifely hottness.
me and the little lady had better get at least a snippet
of quality time before i barrel into the formerly friendly-
currently semi-standoffish skies.
there seems to be an imbalance,
too many hard styles,
not enough pounding.
c'mon.
ah well,
there's always monday, yeah?
i'm always missing the ladies in my life, duders.
one side or the other,
one way or another.
no good byes,
only fare wells;
never quiet, never soft.....