highlights and low life.

well, duders,
i'm back in the woodsly goodness again.
and i got a speeding ticket on the way home.
escaping at breakneck velocity from the past
will apparently activate the laserbeams
of traffic violation enforcement in massachussetts.
yeah.
nobody leaves with the title, neighbors,
but they do get a fine.
it wasn't all bad, y'all.
on father's day i powered down two whole pizzas
in under ten minutes.
gross?
definitely.
delicious? even more definitely.
that's not it, kids.
check the teleport:

yuuuuup.
harvest skye is gonna be in the seventh grade!
holy sh!t.
it was a terrific ceremony,
and at one point she and maple shared the stage
with the chorus of fifth and sixth graders
to serenade us with sounds of cherubic expertism.
nice.
afterwards, it was emergency tofutti time:

sprankles, in the hundreds and thousands.
i doo-doo that cookie-type hydrox-sox-rox jauns.
how do you put a day like that to bed?
under a thick greasy layer of fried beans and hot sauce!
yeah!

nothing accentuates the need for speed on the way back
like middle eastern gastric backtrack payback.
i hurt myself for you, guys.
otherwise,
what would i have to write about?
it was a brutal 48 hours.
the high spots also included some quality time
with both of my sisters.
i'm serious.
old age and responsible adulthood make for
strange-but-true stories.
after all,
they're the only two mutha-uckers who knew what it was
like to grow up 'hood in south hamden in our house
besides me.
family togetherness ensued.
at one point all three kids,
all three grandkids,
and my ma and the dude were all under one roof
and the world did not implode in on itself.
if anything could've kick-started a 2012 cataclysm,
i'm pretty sure that would've done it.
***********
there is always more, friends.
it's additive.
we put in that hard work,
we get more work.
don't make it look too easy,
or nobody appreciates what's up.
that's showmanship, y'all.
make easy things look hard,
make the difficulties look simple,
and then let the rest of 'em give it a try.
compare and contrast from the first to the last.
without them,
we'd just be us.
i'm grateful for these tests of worth i subject myself to.
i do the right thing when i can,
and i do what i do when i can't.
nature wins, nurture runs the marathon.
sort of like money talking and bullsh!t walking, yo.
it's all really happening;
never quiet, never soft.....7x17

$2.

dear connecticut,
you win.
every single time.
...

daddy.

daddy's house?
no, daddy hex.
that's the real life name for this:

father's day.
i know those dutch duders used those
ghost circles to protect their sh!t.
i wonder if that one was for keeping daddy
OUT of the house?
...probably.
anway,
today is the day.
the one where dads get neckties and barbecue mitts,
and just one lousy phone call from their crummy kids.
so call your old man and tell him something.
i don't care what you tell him;
i mean,
he probably won't listen anyway,
but make that call y'all.
it's the least you can do for the lump
of XY chromosomal ingredients who got drunk enough
to help squeeze the sauce into the oven that baked you.
the majesty of nature, huh?
yeah.
remember,
you can't have daddy issues without daddy.
that's a thing.
*
i try to be a good one.
encouraging. providing. guiding.
all the things the greeting cards say inside 'em...
but it's difficult, neighbors.
no joke.
distance and time are not exactly on my side.
making the most of the minutes i get,
concentrating all those important moments into
the time we have been given.
positive examples are hard to create
when all you know are hard-styles.
try hard, pay attention, and know stuff.
that's the oversimplified set of standards i've set
for my young ladies.
it's the preteen pretty-kid version of just be dope.
i said it, i meant it, i still mean it,
i'm not kidding.
happy.
fathers.
day.
best two out of three?
i'm not exactly father time, y'know?
i'm no papa smurf, either-
i'm more like papa bear, duders:
too hard, too hot, too big.
and if you know your goldilocks like i do,
you'll have to agree.
just right?
c'mon.
***********
did you just say connecticut three times?
i swear i just got beetlejuiced/candymanned.
yuuuuup.
i'm driving southbound and down,
to the place of my birth.
there's a lot of family togetherness scheduled for this week.
tomorrow,
my oldest daughter graduates from the sixth grade.
that's right.
i'm old, she's big, time flies.
tonight,
me and my ma and dad are gonna have some dinner.
it's all really happening,
it's all not very exciting.
sunday mornings start out easy,
but long drives and busy workdays and late nights
make it all more believable, huh?
real life.
father's day;
never quiet, never soft.....

self.

duders,
who is your favorite disproportionate poet?
i mean, really, y'all.
you know i doo-doo that long armed lawlessness jauns,
don'tcha?
gangly dangler i most certainly am,
ungainly gracelessness in form and function-
all duckling, no swan;
all goose honk and no nightingale song;
all hawk and no dove,
all crow, no scare...
extenuated extremities, attenuated attentions,
insidiously insinuative sinews, malfeasant marrow,
and great big paddle-type hands and feet.
(keep reading, there's a picture, eventually)
i'm like frankenstein's monster, my ninjas.
assembled in the semblance of man,
but definitely something subtly different.
a mimic, a mockery, a close-but-not-quite
meta-maudlin caterwauling composite creature
born to bring bad news, worse luck, and terrible times.
it seems as if the architects of my secret universal purpose
put me together from spare parts
culled from children's books-
albert the albatross's wingspan,
ichabod crane's physique,
rip van winkle's beard,
wee willie's winkie,
horton's elephantine ears, nose, and faithfulness (100%)
rumplestiltskin's F*ing face, an so on...
you get the idea.
as if some sort of pen and ink shel silverstein nightmare
leapt from page to flesh,
possessing a penchant for alliterative prose and versatile verse,
peppered with punishing puns aplenty...
neighbors,
feel free to jump in and cheer me up at any time.
i'm not fishing for compliments,
i'm chumming the flippin' waters.
awwwwwwwwwww.
self-aware, self-deprecating portraits are what's up.
check the teleport:

ugly on the skin,
pretty from within?
c'mon.
there are ways to break that surface tension;
a shave, haircut, two-bit bits of two-cent opinionated
hemming and hawing and haberdasheried hard-styles-
but,
loud fresh hardness is engraved on my bones,
and written all over my face.
that's deep-etched, ingrained, get-busy business, y'all.
real talk.
i may be broke and busted.
actually, in fact, i am.
i may also be low on the hot-or-not ratings,
and persona non grata at parties across the planet,
but i'm off-the-charts when it comes to the hottness.
yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup.
like, when it's time to bring that fire and lightning?
i go to eleven, b!tches.
that's a thing.
you know what i say, you know what i do:
stay ugly, stay dope.
believe it.
***********
friday night is date night?
maybe where you sexy people are...
but not when you're all oyster and no pearl.
(which is just a shiny booger, anyway)
how will i fill the holes in my summer social calendar?
uh-huh.

with sprankles.
simple solutions are sometimes the best ones.
i'm a grown-A* man, y'all,
and i will eat sorbet every flippin' night if i want to.
with neon rainbow sensitivity tubes all over it.
don't be haters,
you guys can have some too.
*
free falling.
like some tom petty sh!t.
it isn't really free, though, is it?
it all costs somethin'.
terminal velocity?
we got that.
it is no longer possible to plummet any faster;
never quiet, never soft.....

self-explanatory.

this teleported tidbit should require
absolutely no description:

come on.
neighbors, that's what's up.
sometimes,
even when it's sunny and seventy degrees
and in most other ways an atmospheric disappointment,
catering to motorcycle enthusiasts and outdoorsmen,
there's an uncontested contestant competing against himself
for an interest-sparking shot at
one of my fabulous prize packages.
yuuuuuuuuup.
like high-energy high-decibel verbal abuse,
warm caffeine-free diet soda-pop,
and a slice of vegan futuristic mocha pie.
and then,
instead of another 'nother generic turdblaster tattoo,
i get to activate a little bit of my reserve nutrients.
that's how and why expert realness gets poppin'.
exceptions rule.
that's a thing.
***********
right this very minute,
it's all really happening.
it's the present tense.
c'mon.
present.
tense.
both present and accounted for, y'heard?
yeah.
there's a palpable anxiety in the rarefied air up here.
a combination of leather, barbecue, and exhaust fumes
is blowing on the wind.
if that's the answer, y'all.,
i'm done asking questions.
i've got just three more long, lonely, terrible days
of celebrating (read as: enduring) the suckiness
of two-wheeled motorized weak-sauce,
and then i get to go down to connecticut.
the home base of nancypantsery an' that.
awwwwwwwwwwwwww, man!
frying pans, fire, whatever, my ninjas.
from bad to worse and back again,
that's the recipe for road warrior poetry.
the toll roads are the least of the price i'm paying.
however,
family togetherness means making the best of
the moves being made-
i've got peoples who need me,
and i go where i'm needed.
anything less would be less than worthy
of the heroic virtues and values i'm all about.
*
oh,
and by the way duders,
it's flag day.
whatever that is, we doo-doo it.
now hoist that sh!t,
and let your freak flag fly.
long may it wave, mutha-'uckers;
never quiet, never soft.....

baffles, buffles, blinds.

hey neighbors.
i wished for rain.
you know what that means, right?
yeah-
i don't see a cloud anywhere,
except directly over my head.
awwwwwww, man.
i've been trying new things.
like redrawing old clip-art.
sort of like this:

uh-huh.
i'm a little out of practice,
and i mean to remedy that situation.
every day i draw a bit,
every day i write a bit,
every day i chomp at the bit.
time only flows one way.
forward.
it's all going according to plan, i suppose,
even if the plan is universally secret and vast.
(i personally always keep a backup plan, just in case)
***********
the circuit is broken,
the flow is interrupted.
the energy is only moving in one direction.
time takes time,
and space requires space;
it's not a circulating current, kids;
it's a lightning-striking bolt of electricity.
it may fork,
but it still heads towards the same general area.
real talk.
the connections are interrupted,
and the lights aren't coming on.
huh?
i'm giving y'all a glimpse into the revolting
high-voltage realm of miscommunication.
be easy, ninjas-
i'm as competent and capable as ever i was,
albeit still as convoluted and cryptic as i have to be.
conversations keep catching,
not like being grasped,
but more like getting snagged...
or maybe like something virulent-
that's communicable, y'know?
i think that's irony.
keep being crippled and derailed by snags.
both obvious and unanticipated.
you see, duders,
there are two sides to discussions:
ebb and flow,
wax and wane,
give and take,
speak and listen,
explain and comprehend.
you get it?
you got it.
but what about when the same exact sh!t keeps
stalling and sabotaging the semblance of sense
being made out of sounds pronounced in sequence
to symbolize complex concepts and underlying themes?
mostly,
b!tches fight with you.
yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup.
obstacles, y'all.
overcome, overthrow, evolve.
i'm on that modulated frequency, frequently,
type of improvised intelligent interaction sh!t..
variable wavelengths and bandwidths and amperages
of adaptive modern combative techniques.
fight fire with lightning i always say.
i probably won't ever be understood,
but i won't stand underneath someone else, either.
side by side, or not at all-
that's the way it has to be;
never quiet, never soft.....

coffee and chocolate?

it's called mocha, b!tches.
recognize and respect that sh!t.
telportational delights?
check 'em:

yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup.
fancy pie is good for you.
mini-baby choco-chips AND sprankles.
i doo-doo those twice-as-good-type jauns.
homemade crust?
i can't believe you even had to ask, A*hole.
that's eleventh-level bake shop futurism.
coffee, chocolate, more chocolate, a little cocoa,
and then some more chocolate, just to make sure.
relax, neighbors-
it's deactivated with decaffeination, too.
i'm not tryin' to never ever sleep, y'know.
and i'm not trying to hurt myself or others,
i just want some sweets to compliment my bitterness.
word up.
***********
the fat lady is audibly carrying a tune, kids.
y'know what i mean?
i think it's a love song, too.
a manatee-sized mermaid
with a four-alarm siren-song.
-
luring me like a wrecker to a wretch,
i can't refuse, i am refuse.
come crash on my teeming shores;
circles collapse in on themselves;
rings of smoke, blown through and apart-
giving up the ghost,
the spirit road goes down,
memory lain...to rest.
-
awwwww, man!
that is so expert,
and so not expert.
real life, mutha-F*ers.
the hardest styles in the gentlest whispers.
i write words.
i right words.
i rarely write the right words.
it's all really happening;
never quiet, never soft.....

woden's day.

hey duders,
it's another 'nother day.
i think it's a baking day.
the the house isn't that warm,
the hottness hasn't been activated,
and the oven could use a preheating.
yeah.
definitely a baking day, y'heard?
chocolate magic funtime treats,
for everybody, and their faces.
the process is the whole point.
the path is the goal.
and then there's yum4tum treats afterwards.
c'mon.
*
i didn't plant it in my garden, but it's there-
whatever this thing is,
it's expert.
teleport:

uh-huh.
even the weeds in the woodsly goodness are dope.
i guess it's called orange hawkweed,
at least according to my
new hampshire naturalist's guide to native wildflowers.
smart.
it just showed up to be dope.
that's word.
***********
ummm,
are the rainbow sprankles infecting me
with fancy-pantserized cookie-cutting seahorseplay?
maybe.
i mean,
i have been reading a sh!tpile of olden days-type poetry.
wait a minute...
...poetry?
yuuuuuuup.
i know.
most of you just don't get it.
that's cool.
me neither.
but i am aware of what's fresh.
those old mutha-'uckers brought the thunder.
probably because they didn't have modern
technological distractions to dilute their powerful sauce.
even the light and little itty-bitty bits
had that furious force in 'em;
check these four lines of flavor:
-
"A hater he came and sat by a ditch,
And he took an old cracked lute;
And he sang a song that was more of a screech
'Gainst a woman that was a brute."
-
c'mon.
haters gonna hate.
and b!tches gonna b!tch.
my ninja P.B.S. knew what was up, kids.
oh, you like it.
or, at least, you should like it.
...alas!
this is not what i thought life was.
(^that's another good one)
neither is this:

awwwwwwww, man.
oak tree miscarriages!
baby acorns who didn't make it full-term.
of course,
that same tree has about a billion more chances
each and every year to pass on it's potential.
a few failures don't impede progress,
and that woodsly totem can't even walk.
so we've got NO excuses, kids.
that's a thing.
***********
wednesday is hump day for some.
you and i both know better, though, huh?
yeah.
more like humpback with a hunch day.
awwwwwwwwwww.
bloated and bumpy, beached, breeched and breached;
it's a sore, seared, and sullen way to span a day.
but it sure is really happening anyway.
neighbors,
there's not enough poetic pie-baking to change any of that.
it's just What Is.
hard styles,
crisp crusts,
soggy bottoms,
and a healthy dose of brown.
i think i'm gonna get some chocolate mouse turds.
those sprankles are just what's missing;
never quiet, never soft.....

sweet sixteen.

umm.
so, yeah, kids.
i'm reppin' another 'nother dose of the dopeness.
check the teleport:

spranks, again.
yuuuuuuuuup.
a way-less impressive high-noon scoople
of  berry-flavored purple sh!t,
with activated rainbow-refracted prismatic sugar-cyclinders.
it's expert, y'all.
for real.
and they're always rainbow.
i doo-doo the ones that don't look like rodent doo-doo.
because i've got a parade's worth of gay pride inside.
huh?
someday you'll find it, kids.
the rainbow connection.
for lovers, for dreamers, and, well, y'know...me.
that's the brightest spot in a brightened-out day of
impenetrably dark moods and modus operandi.
the spiritus mundi of neither the mundane nor the ethereal
have deigned to include me in today's designs.
huh?
i'm out of place, in time and space, neighbors.
just sayin',
i worked on my day off,
i tatblasted some stuff,
and i've got a date with destiny.
or maybe just a chance to hang out and eat pizza
with my good friend and coworker wayne.
dining alone gets old immediately,
and eating enough is easier with company.
the styles are hard,
and the truths are ugly.
i can't promise that tomorrow will be any better, either.
there's rain in the forecast, though,
and that's something, at least.
small joys and minor gains,
it's all really happening.
deficits and detriments and hungry skin and bones;
melancholy marrow and petrified pores,
all aching for the call to regenerate,
revive, resuscitate and rescue the sense of touch,
the sense of self,
and the sense of wonder missing these long months
from the woodsly goodness's embrace.
i can't feel it,
i can't taste it,
i just remember it all.
a ghost of a smoke ring in a circle of light,
a full moon and a new moon
and both waxing and waning slivers.
jeez,
this one took on an unexpected downturn, huh?
yep;
never quiet, never soft.....7x16

spranks.

i'm wasting away.
for serious.
somewhere in these last weeks,
i slipped past slim,
and starved my way to skinny.
like,
ribs and femurs and that.
like an animate hairy skeleton that looks like
a preserved mummy of a missing link
in the chain of the developing homo sapiens
evolutionary human genome chart.
i didn't just write that, did i?
oh, yes, i did.
somewhere there's an olduvai artifact,
or a sangiran fossil,
with a striking similarity to my present state of being.
ugh.
i need some bulk to fill out my frame,
and fill in the holes and blank spots everywhere else.
it shouldn't bother me to shed unnecessary weight,
but i've lost one-hundred and two pounds,
plus whatever i don't weigh anymore, too.
but, neighbors-
don't despair.
i'm taking action.
the next step should be obvious:

sprankles, ninja.
mutlicolored sorbet seasoning,
with sparkly, sorcerous rainbow-spectrum sugar
on raspberry syrup-water ice magic.
yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup.
sticky fingers and brain freezes and sugar rush crashes.
that'll fix whatever's wrong, right?
of course it will.
 ***********
who are we kidding, duders?
i'm just not feelin' it.
what?
i'm not feelin' IT.
the interconnectedness of these
overlapping concentric circles
of spirit and memory.
the idealogical framework of the
secret universal plan.
or any kind of plan whatsoever, even.
uh-huh.
ninjas,
i'm getting more of a resonance on that first stanza
of the second coming type of sh!t.
it's yeats, A*holes.
look it up.
(seriously, though, i'm not asking: look it up)
i'm thinking it's more a random spattering of
cosmic dust and debris over here,
and maybe more over there,
with good and bad luck F*ing off in the middle,
y'know?
awwwwwww, MAN!
i thought that the back-ups and contingencies
of woodsly goodness and that fresh-to-death,
from now-unto-death-do-us-part-type sh!t
would've activated some sort of failsafe protocol.
...nope.
it's a chaotic suckballs sh!t-salad smearface,
and i think i've made it safe to fail, instead.
there's a fifty-fifty fallout of functional dysfunction
and disjointed joint efforts and effortlessness.
what does that even mean?
it means that whatever the big picture is,
i sure as heckfire can't see it for the overwhelming details.
and it's spreading-
at least we can agree we get a choice.
right?
if it's our true story in the telling,
and our real life in the living,
and our magic moves in the making,
and we're clearly being antagonized proactive participants,
(main mutha-ucking characters, y'heard?)
who do we want to be?
the lonely laird of his own family feudal futility,
the abandoned baron of barren inauspiciousness,
(c'mon- those're pretty good)
OR,
the barbarian battle bard of worthy warrior poetry?
don't even hesitate.
we all know what's up;
never quiet, never soft.....111

this isn't good news.

birth and death?
what the F* are you talking about?
oh.
well, maybe stop looking for meaning, duders,
and just look at the picture:

skull-acorn redux.
i've been redrawing old images,
honing, tuning, refining, and redesigning
all the kinky stinks and stinky kinks out of 'em.
i much prefer the new hottness.
that's a thing.
i'm composing prose in glyphs of gypsy encryption.
if you aren't a raging stormswept savage,
you'll probably need a translator.
trust me, though....
the i's are dotted,
the t's are crossed,
and so are my eyes-
c'mon.
bleary, teary, weary...
all that.
i've been busy,
staying up late riding nightmares
into infinite insomnia,
and then waking up early to reenter the world
of hard-styles and brutal truths.
i write these memorandums to the spirit of
active participation in the interest of preserving
some small sliver of the ghosts of worthy warrior poetry.
i'm sayin', neighbors-
really real immersion in expertism exists,
woodsly goodness persists,
weak-sauce waterbabies resist,
and real life documentarians subsist
on a steady diet of gratitude, generosity, and honesty.
 it's all happening, all the time;
all at the same time, even.
i'll keep reporting the deeds and derring-do and doo-doo butter
as long as my spindly spiderfingers can tippity-type out the
true stories of what the F* is going on around me-
cross my heart and hope to die,
cross my fingers and hope it's you instead.
yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup.
**********
it's sunday,
and it's sunny,
and it's F*ing biker d!cktard week,
and they are out in full force in their full regalia-
with a heavy accent on the gay in the middle.
yeah.
i hate it.
like, secretly studying shamanism and sorcery.
just for the annual summoning of a swarm of vermin;
an unholy host of indeterminate pest and nuisance creatures,
to clog roads, mire tires, and flow like a hungry wave
of all-consuming unstoppable righteous fury,
to stop up and then whittle away the nancyblasters
on their steel horses with mandibles and claws,
until only scratched chrome and chipped bones remain.
hard styles are, in fact, my flippin' specialty.
i've got a molten core of thermonuclear disgust firing it's
ions and protons into protected space.
the radiation, however, of my white-hot hateful heart
is glowing through my pores like a punched-tin lantern.
a toxic patterned picture of professional polka-type dots.
yeah.
if i knew what i know, and i wasn't me?
oh sh!t!
i'd keep clear of the fallout from today's sour mood.
it's super-sunny, and sorta warm all over the mountains-
it's also dark and cloudy, and pretty forkin' cold,
but just on the inside.
i'm making wishes and ouija-boarding for bovine ghosts
to manifest and mangle the meathead men wearing their skins
over their legs and arms, but not their butts.
chapped buns from A*less chaps?
they deserve it, duders-
a simple spell to reanimate those tanned-up wrappers,
and give them a shot at squeezing a life for a life.
it's highly unlikely,
but it's definitely where i'm at;
never quiet, never soft.....