4 Hour Hard On

Here's a video like what U
used to get on VH-1 and/or M
TV too but unfortunately not
anymore.


d a n g !




Glad Girls

STRANGE NOTIONS OF OWNERSHIP

People admonished him
for writing poems
straight into cyberspace.

It's common domain
once you do that
they said,
people can steal it.

These strange
notions of ownership
made him frightened
of the world
that he lived in.



LINES

Anybody in his right mind
lives between the lines...

~~~

Toward the end of
the first draft
of the last novel
he'd ever write,
his concentration
broke down into
one liners...

~~~

Pronounced flat line
on arrival in the
emergency room
he bolted upright
on the gurney
as they wheeled him
to the morgue
& scared the
be-Jesus
out of two black orderlies
& a Venezuelan nurse...

~~~

He mainlined
for 20 years
& then kicked
cold turkey
in a week.

No one who
knew him well
was surprised...

~~~

He convinced her
he loved her,
got her pregnant,
& ran off with
her best friend.

He had a line
that worked
every time...

~~~

He did three lines
off a mirror
& got
ten years in prison
& when he got out
he walked into a
convenience store &
shot the clerk dead.

Just another statistic
in a penal system
with the highest
incarceration rate
in the world.



LACKING RUTHLESSNESS

Lacking ruthlessness,
he went through life
without women.

In old age
it seemed to him
that this shouldn't
be so,
but the savage truth
of it
had him by the throat
& wouldn't let go.

It's Simply The Cycle Of Life

Lately I’ve been keenly attuned to my body’s many systemic mutations.

Buggered by a nagging nostril itch, for instance, I don’t scratch or dig for comfort, but let my splayed fingers stray—like little divining rods along the cheek bone, until those sticky fingertips start to click like a damned Geiger counter, detecting my next notch of tooth decay, and I can say without hesitation or equivocation which black back molar is due to be yanked by my dependable Discount Dentist, next.

Or, sitting at my breakfast nook in the morning sunshine, munching on some stale Granola and cold chocolate Quik, suddenly I might feel the quiver of a benign cyst!-- slithering like a silverfish in my tired guts, my poor tired guts that grind away like one of those 1950s-style Laundrette wet-clothes-wringer-outers, with the dripping twin rolling pins, man, get your digits caught in one of those, and it’s Sayonara Copasetic!—here come the agony screeches and fresh soil for your panties and dungaree breeches go right back in the old sudsy washtub.

You see what I’m driving at?

The Cycle, baby. It's simply the Cycle of Life.

~~~

I thought my ears were immune, though.

For sure, my finely-tuned musician’s ears--they must be immune to this dust mite diaspora of entropy... Right?

My Hear-A-Pin-Drop-At-Fifty-Yards-&-Pop Just For The Fuck Of It Ears on a little hillside rise in the road, riding in a Vee Dub Cabriolet with the top down… In the Cabriolet with my buddy Raymond McCune, and he’s got the dashboard Clarion tuned to some Oldies station, and that’s when I first heard it: Came on hard with the Billy Joel signature song called Piano Man, with the cheese grater squeeze box riff didn’t want to go away—from that day!

I started hearing it all the time--a perpetually-mutating Tinnitus whine, one minute sounding like some Aberdeen, Washington surf hiss, then a rusty calliope, and finally Piano Man himself, screeching and bellowing-- in an Info-Mercial for some tingly cherry-red hot gobbets of Stay-Hard Gel.

That’s when I knew I was in trouble.

My only hope was this Fixer-Upper Kit I bought off the Internet. It’s actually a Speak N’ Spell type of rig, with Lava Lamp, Ear Buds, Dual Ports—the whole works. Here’s what the ad for this Miracle Talking Q Tip said, on the website where I found it:


Get Rid Of The Buzz and Noise In Your Ear

Clarity2

Stop The Ringing In Your Ears!

If you are one of the 50 million who suffer from
ringing in your ears then you need Clarity2!

Free 15 Day Trial
Safe - Natural - Effective
We promise it!


Well anyway--I hooked that Bad Boy up, and this is what happened:

Came an audiologist pitch whistle bill of fare--right there, in the thin air,
so I listened. It came on slow at first--a Close Encounters Of The Third Kind arpeggio, that famous pentatonic melody that also matches the first few notes of Jeopardy Theme, so I listened, as this hideous jingle got transposed to a new key every eight bars--first via Cycle of Fifths, and then totally at random and sort of Chopsticks Chromatic... I kept on listening anyway, dog-eared and drooly in my enthusiasm, and determination--even plucking in tune with my cherry-red Factor 6 string bass with headphone amp which I hooked up in the aforementioned Dual Port of the Speak N’ Spell type device— and then… Voila!

The Close Encounters siren song sped up to an absolute fever pitch, actually hitting D flat number 17 harmonic overtone on the 26th fret of my G String...

Whereupon the heretofore sneaky-diaphanous E.T. Creatures, who’d been hiding in the sub-atomic woodwork, beamed my pale, skinny ass directly into the sunken Orifice Probing Pod of their Mothership.

The Mothership-- which is where I was apparently headed, all along.

I went there, I went there, damned straight—to the place where the music always changes, from chopsticks arpeggios into syrup-sticky bass-heavy pastiches of Barry White and Donna Summer. The aliens, you see, they are teaching me—to go with the Flow, and it’s painful at first, I won’t lie, my virgin ear drums are taking a wicked pounding, but I’ll be a better man for it, you better believe it.

A better man, for the listening.

When they drop me off, in a year or so, on the peak of Mount Tamalpais in San Francisco Bay, I will be able to declare, once and for all for all mankind:

WHAT A TREAT THAT WAS!
I LISTENED DO YOU HEAR ME
MOTHERFUCKERS I LISTENED!!

~~~

And so,
I listen, still.


I listen.

For the changes.


For the changes.

From the book, Old War
published by Houghton Mifflin
(c) 2008 ; by Alan Shapiro
All Rights Reserved


Country-Western Singer

I used to feel like a new man
After the day's first brew.
But then the new man I became
Would need a tall one too.
As would the new man he became,
And the new one after him,
And so on and so forth till the new men made
The dizzy room go dim.
And each one said, I'll be your muse,
I'll trade you song for beer.
He said, I'll be your salt lick, honey,
If you will be my deer.
He said, I'll be your happy hour,
And you, boy, you'll be mine.
And mine won't end at six or seven
Or even at closing time.
Yes, son, I'll be your spirit guide,
I'll lead you to Absolut,
To Dewar's, Bushmills, and Jamison,
Then down to Old Tanglefoot.
And there I'll drain the pretense from you
That propped you up so high;
I'll teach you how salvation's just
Salivation without the I.
To hear his sweet talk was to think
You'd gone from rags to riches,
Till going from drink to drink became
Like going from hags to bitches,
Like going from bed to barroom stool,
From stool to bathroom stall,
From stall to sink, from sink to stool,
From stool to hospital.
The monitors beep like pinball machines,
And coldly the IV drips,
And a nurse runs a moistened washcloth over
My parched and bleeding lips.
And the blood I taste, the blood I swallow
Is as far away from wine
As 5:10 is for the one who dies
At 5:09.

Exquisite Corpse has returned to Cyberspace!
A poem of mine, "google-somethin'-somethin"
is published there. E C Link

From the book, “The Poetry of Our World—
An International Anthology of Contemporary Poetry”
Edited by Jeffery Paine. Published by Harper Collins
© 2000; by Chairil Anwar; All rights Reserved



Me

When my time comes
No one’s going to cry for me,
And you won’t, either

The hell with all those tears!

I’m a wild beast
Driven out of the herd

Bullets may pierce my skin
But I’ll keep coming,

Carrying forward my wounds and my pain
Attacking
Attacking
Until suffering disappears

And I won’t give a damn

I want to live another thousand years



Willingness

If you like I’ll take you back
With all my heart.

I’m still alone.

I know you’re not what you were,
Like a flower pulled into parts.

Don’t crawl! Stare at me bravely.

If you like I’ll take you back
For myself, but

I won’t share even with a mirror.



Tuti’s Ice Cream

Between present and future happiness the abyss gapes,
My girl is licking happily at her ice cream;
This afternoon you’re my love, I adorn you with cake and
Coca-Cola.
Oh wife-in-training, we’ve stopped the clocks ticking.

You kissed skillfully, the scratches still hurt
--when we cycled I took you home—
Your blood was hot, oh you were a woman soon,
And the old man’s dreams leaped at the moon.

Every day’s whim invited you on, every day’s whim was
Different.
Tomorrow we’ll fight and turn our backs on each other:
Heaven is this minute’s game.

I’m like you, everything ran by,
Me and Tuti and Hyret and Amoy…dilapidated
Hearts.
Love’s a danger that quickly fades.



Four Miscellaneous Aphorisms

Living under the Japanese, we had to act—it was doubly nec-
essary, at least to keep our minds and our senses alert, to counter-
act the atmosphere that surrounded us, to keep from losing our
self-respect.

An era of “isms” is a one-sided party for one-sided dancers,
what I admire is the violence, the passion with which they
brawl!

Message for the younger generation: wisdom and insight
aren’t enough; you’ve got to work up energy and enthusiasm.

We’ve got to find our compensations and complexes for our-
selves. Compensations and complexes: a huge warehouse, the dark
home of our real hidden self.

DIVIDER BOX
by Shane Allison
(c) '08 ; All Rights Reserved


Acrylic small plastic divider box
Acrylic finger sizer small plastic divider box
Acrylic flat nose plier finger sizer small plastic divider box
Acrylic ring mandrel flat nose plier finger sizer small plastic
divider box
Acrylic white gift box ring mandrel flat nose plier finger sizer
small plastic divider box
Acrylic large velvet pad white gift box ring mandrel flat nose
plier finger sizer small plastic divider box
Acrylic shiny metallic hat box large velvet pad white gift box ring
mandrel flat nose plier finger sizer small plastic divider box
Acrylic medium velvet pad with easel shiny metallic hat box large velvet
pad white gift box ring mandrel flat nose plier finger sizer small plastic
divider box Acrylic small velvet pad medium velvet pad with easel shiny
metallic hat box large velvet pad gift box ring mandrel
flat nose plier finger sizer small plastic divider
box
Acrylic round velvet pad small velvet pad flat nose plier finger sizer small plastic shiny metallic hat box large velvet pad white gift box ring mandrel medium velvet pad with easel sizer small plastic divider box
Acrylic mandrel flat nose plier finger velvet pad white gift box ring shiny metallic hat box large finger sizer small plastic gift box ring mandrel flat nose plier large velvet pad white plier finger mandrel medium velvet
pad with easel sizer small plastic divider box






A word I had to look up, after reading Shane's poem:

Mandrel:


1. A spindle or an axle used to secure or support material being machined or milled.
2. A metal rod or bar around which material, such as metal or glass, may be shaped.
3. A shaft on which a working tool is mounted, as in a dental drill.