Thank you for dropping your stories, poems and songs here.
Again, if you feel it this week, go at it.
Even though we do this anonymously, you will still have your collection of stories at the end of this.
okay, enough blather:
THE WORDS
Unsuspicious
spider
disabled
chlorinated
interlopers
-----------------from Stephen King's short story, "Dolan's Cadillac".
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AFTER THE SONG LYRICS 'COCAINE EYEBALLS'
well she's got
chlorine eyes
and she's got
magic ties
to the underworld scene
she knows how to dream
she's not suspicious
she's unsuspicious
she's a weather vane
she's half insane
miles and miles of wetlands
miles and miles of interlopers and pain
the truck's broke down in the old red barn
the moon's just able to come round again
chemical days
chemical days
resolute, resolute,
now disabled getting government aid
spider in the corner of the room, say
spider in the corner of the room, say
go on home now girl
go on home now girl
it's another setting sun
it's another chlorinated haze
going swimming with the dolphins
gone surfing with the sharks
spider in the corner of the room, say
chemical days
chemical days
go on home now girl
with your chlorine eyes and your magic ties
you know how to dream
Words To Go On At The Sugar Trail Motel
I woke up, without words, dry in the desert. I'd been waiting for the man to give me words to go on.This guy James Woe sends out five words a week and we can write back, it's like talking to somebody in code, or in a small secret language. I began thinking of the black widow spider, the spider we learned about early, the one with the red hourglass belly, the one who must see her lovers as interlopers, because she kills the men after. So, I'm waiting, dry without words, looking out toward the old Sugar Trail Motel across the street, with the pool out back, dusty, cracked, filled with old metal pipes, a few sage branches. I remember when the smell of chlorinated water was so strong, it was like the whole world was vibrant and alive. So, I'm going on, living my day by day life, thinking of the musician Olds Sleeper, and his story about jamming around a bonfire in the east. I imagine him to be a trusting man, not suspicious, meaning, really, unsuspicious of others, a lot different from the desert rats around here. Here, we don't suffer fools, as the saying goes, but most men are fools, living their lives half asleep, as if there were interlopers, there's that word again, sneaking up, ready to cut the barb wire fence and invade their land or their ranch life dreams. Ok, I've got to run, the truck's on the fritz again, disabled by the pitted dirt roads, years of hard driving. I've got to fix most everything myself, way out here. I'm glad I got my five words out of the blue this morning. I didn't think I had anything to say anymore to anybody. For days I've been looking out over to the old Sugar Trail Motel, imagining the pool was full of tourists again, and the smell of sweet chlorine water filled the air.
Spider Blues
That's what the old man always used to say, 'whatever'. Just as if he'd up and died, quit on the whole game before he was even gone. Hell, he was only disabled. One of those brown recluse spiders, sneaky interlopers, got him out back, really did a number on him, I guess. It's was like he'd gotten eaten away from the inside out. Folks called him Hard Time Charlie.
I tried talking to him, but he didn't want any part of listening, like I was intruding on his silence, like his silent world was the only thing that counted. Every once in awhile he'd emerge and say, 'whatever'.
Except wait, I remember. Man, it was a long time ago, don't know why I'm thinking of it now, except he was family, kin. Been dead as long as he was alive for me. Anyway, if you caught him early, I mean really early, just after he'd had a swim in the chlorinated pool out back, swimming his laps in his underwater world, it seemed that was the only thing that eased him a bit, made him seemingly, briefly, trusting, unsuspicious, then, just then, and for a little while after, he'd be smiling, be talking, had something to go on, before the spider of the mind got him again from inside.
ELVIS, THE DEMON, AND ME
Elvis had a suspicious mind
I'm not suspicious, I'm unsuspicious
I've got chlorinated footprints
I've got hibernating friends
I've got a spider for a boss
and a monkey was my long-time jones
I'm not a junkie
anymore
I gave the demon
the boot, showed him the door
I was strung out, disabled,
abandonded, neglected, and abused,
but I'm all right now
ain't no jackalopes on my tail
ain't no interlopers stealing the mail
it's good-bye to heart ache
it's good-bye to crying
it's good-bye to Spanish Harlem
it's good-bye to the bad luck blues
Mister, you can hear me or not
believe me or no
I've been dragged down, wandered,
cut loose, set sail, dressed
to the nines from head to toe
but I'm free of the alabaster monkey
free of the jazz player's tone
I'm still dancing after midnight
and I take my name from where I've been
not where I'm about to go
Purgatory
has chlorinated everything
interlopers everywhere
a spider teaches love
the disabled get well here
you are unsuspicious now
you become ready and rest
“Piss into this cup,” the doctor said. His forehead was beaded with sweat, and he stared into my eyes. He was on to me. He knew.
I wanted to remain in a state that would keep him unsuspicious of my infection. Calm. Seemingly naïve. They killed the infected, at least that was the whisper that permeated the waiting room outside.
“Sure, no problem doc.” I turned to go into the adjacent bathroom.
“No. You have to do this in front of me”, the doctor said, his voice tense.
“Wow, didn’t know I was gonna put on a show here today”. I had to maneuver the handcuffs to get at my pants button. I unzipped. Pulled my flaccid cock through the hole in my boxers. Aimed it over the cup. A moment of nothing. The doctor stared. Then, a small spider-shaped creature crawled out of my pee-hole and into the cup.
“How long has this been going on?”the doctor asked, without emotion. Beyond any doubt now; he knew I was a host for the Interlopers.
“You mean arachnids crawling out of my urethra?”
“Yes. That’s what I mean.”
“Six days. .….But I smash everyone. I don’t let them live, doctor. I want to get better.” I was trying to sound sincere; my nerves were on edge. I was closing my pants with shaking hands and my eyes burned with chlorinated worry. I wanted to be strong, but my insides melted like wax. I felt like only a lump of flesh.
No words, only movement. The doctor took the cup from my hand, turned and opened the incinerator door. The spider within had already doubled in size, and from inside the plastic cup—frantic, scratching movement. In a half hour, it would be as large as a full -grown man. I knew that, because six days ago I failed to disable the first one that had emerged from my bowels.
He stared at the wriggling, growing creature in the cup.
“Your not the only one,” he said sadly. He placed the cup in the incinerator, shut the door and hit a few buttons. Noise from inside. Tiny Interloper screams that built to crescendo, and then the sound of bloody-mass frying. Then silence as the machine stopped.
“They are living inside you now,” he said bluntly, as he quickly jammed a hypodermic into my leg. In an instant, the white light above me seemed to flood the room with pain. The world was spinning and melting. My veins felt icy. Blackness overtook everything.
Old Hawk
I was working the tar bucket with Old Hawk Feather, the Native American artist, way out in the desert. I was on a journey, a search, and some friends had told me to come to these mountains, and talk to Hawk.
"Hawk," I said, "I don't know what to do next." We were working on his roof, tarring it up. Hawk Feather was a sculptor, a painter, and he was building a monument to the native peoples, their culture and their art. His house was the sculpture, with wildly painted designs, and images of Indians, animals, sacred symbols.
Hawk Feather looked at me. "You're not the first kid to come out this way, you know."
"I know. I've thought a lot about what to do. I've talked to people. I've thought of working with the disabled. I talked to Ben Leary, the entomologist who lives over in the Mojave Desert. He's an expert on the Monarch Butterfly, and some kind of spider, and he's done studies on the ring tail cat, a nocturnal desert cat."
"Keep stirring that tar," Hawk said. "There are many ways to contribute. Me, I worked as a deputy sheriff, believe it or not, for many years. I've got a brother who has a pool route over in Vegas. You buy a pool route, keep the customers' pools chlorinated, work in the sun, be your own boss. Lots of ways to help."
I looked over at Old Hawk Feather, his skin lined and weathered. I was feeling bewildered, unsuspicious, yet bewildered. "You're kidding about being a sheriff, right?"
"No. Community is where it's at. If you can find a way to help your community, that's gold, right there. You can be an artist, a sheriff, a cook, it doesn't really matter, except you need to have the right mind set, the right attitude. I look at the world as divided up, those who are working for the community, and the others, interlopers, who are just out to take, take for themselves."
The sun was bearing down on us. Medicine Canyon, Vision Canyon, Dead Horse Canyon, all part of the Tonapah Range, were off in the distance.
"Go on up into the mountains. There's a cabin, Rockslide Cabin we call it, stay there, think about things, let your mind rest. Sometimes answers come when we slow down and let quiet enter. If you see the herd of wild horses, that's always a joy, and I take it as a good sign, a sign of grace, a sign of good things to come."
I did see those wild horses. Maybe thirty of them. The word that came to mind then was 'majestic'. I didn't know exactly what I was going to do with my life, I likely wasn't going to be either a deputy sheriff or a pool man, but I came back and I knew I wanted to stay connected to the sun, the mountains, to the sunrise, and maybe, I'd find my way.
SINGING
intolerable heat
late night chlorinated pool
swimming lap after lap
your drifting heart
spider web blues
in the deep end of dreams
unsuspicious methods
beaten down words
cascade dark
summer not even here
interlopers, regulators,
disabled and distracted by desire
wasted on the horizon
forgotten by morning
headlong into sideways truths
fortunate and dedicated
distraught and divided
singing into the night
singing with the legendary moon
The laundromat is a funny place. We talk about airing our dirty laundry, metaphorically, as a bad thing. Tasteless, undesired, unpleasant. But then at the laundromat, we do it. All our grubby jeans, our skid-marked underwear, our holey socks and yellowed wife-beaters, dragged screaming into the bright sunlight and aired. Aired like they were never meant to be.
I used to like the laundromat. I'd go with there with my husband, and we'd talk and read and do crossword puzzles while the machines swooshed and churned and beat on our clothes to wring the nastiness of life out of them. A disabled man was the caretaker of our regular place – nice enough, smiled hello but left us alone. Not a watcher, the man was unsuspicious, at least of us, and let us have our quiet.
I was unsuspicious too, of that quiet. We smugly talked, sometimes, of how we got all our wash done at once, instead of load by agonizing load, like the schmucks with a W&D in their homes. As if that most basic of paired appliances was a step backward, interlopers into the sacred ritual of folding all our socks in a public place. The chlorinated scent that meant he'd been overzealous with the bleach, the wee spider or two that occasionally meandered up the windows facing the narrow street: this was our kingdom, our haven of righteousness.
Interlopers, indeed. There would be interlopers – well, one, anyway – soon enough, making sure to disable our relationship, setting spiders of distrust advancing from the corners of my life. I bleached the past, chlorinated my memories to cleanse myself. I ended up too dry from the treatment, folding all my socks in public, alone.
The blue beetle was adamant that things were
better once they had been effectively chlorinated.
But the spider remained not unsuspicious – although
she did feel kinder toward the interlopers.
‘Clearly,’ she thought, ‘their intent was logical but the
outcome seems to be becoming progressively more disabled.’
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