there were two nonfictions a scifi three National Geographics four commierags and a partridge in a pear tree on his motel room table

his friend called the magazines commierags

                                               he would he was apolitical

he told him Being apolitical is like being asexual

Ouch. he replied humoured You trying to hurt my feelings?

No Im trying to pique or disturb some semblance of insult disgust or outrage given our political climate

You ought to settle on one of the three. A scattergun works on birds, not big game; I’m big game.

Big game Nahnot so much You treat politics as a game asif you arent invested  though you are and noninvolvement hurts your investments

                         Be it politics or sex

Ohno, I’m invested in sex. I buy a couple girlie magazines, maybe three, each and every month.

Dates

Dates?

        For the price of one date I could afford several mags and probably a couple skin flicks that would last me for months.

You forgot Kleenex

Fuck Kleenex, I use a sock.

he was such a spendthrift 

                             women hadnt inspired or excited him in a long time

he felt that was because his friend never sought the right womandidnt seek a woman who would be a complement to him he always sought to compliment them

invariably they lead him around by his nose

far more often than by his cock

2147,  Sunday,  8  3. 20

1318,  Reggae Friday,  4  9. 20

$188K -- killed

the coward-in-chief

                    https://www.msnbc.com/the-reidout/watch/-what-is-wrong-with-you-malcolm-nance-blasts-trump-for-insulting-fallen-service-members-91158597912

“suckers” “losers”

                        theres no money in it

2151,  Reggae Friday,  4  9. 20

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/multiple-news-outlets-mirror-report-of-trump-denigrating-veterans-91166789918

Dadu! she yelled from in the kitchen to him in the hall where his granddaughters caught him coming out of the spare bedroom Care for a cup of coffee now, or did you want to wait a bit?

Cawwfee he yelled back Thank you

                                        An you two knuckleheads the way youre acting I might think youve had too much caffeine

Grandpoo! they chorused

Too early in the morning girls Ive told you if youre going to call me that Ill shut you downignore you

Grandpoo!

he parted them a hand to their chest and gently pressed them to the walls

                                                                               Excuse me ignoramuses

they tried to grab his arms to hold him but he slipped them and under a hail of Grandpoo Grandpoo Grandpoo at his back he went up the hall into diningroom where through the pass-through he could see his daughter drying a coffee cup to fill it for him

Good morning love

she smiled widely her dimples deep  her mothers dimples   he could only wish he had dimples

                                                                                                       Good morning, Dad, sleep well, dream?

Yes Yes Yourself  Sleep well and dream

Yes. Yes. I’ll pour your coffee and we can sit and talk, share our dreams.

Good Then Ill take it you had pleasant dreamsbeen a bit

Yes. It has been a bit. A wonderful dream. I dreamt of Mom.

seventeen years later Mom made his throat tightentears work into his eyes he wiped them quickly his daughter didnt see

     How fortunate are you Did you recognise her right off

when he dreamed of his wife she came to him as a different woman rarely herself a different woman who had her hazel eyes which belied her as theyd speak

Yes, right off. I was walking Spirit and she waved to me, hailed me, and crossed the pasture toward me. I walked towards her and we embraced and kissed. I held Spirit’s reins and we walked him hand in hand.

she set his black coffee on the table before where he sat set her cup down pulled out the chair and sat

Spirit and Mom In the country It cant get any better than thatcan it

she smiled huge

                  I’d have to think but I don’t think so . . maybe if you were there too.

In a dream as rare as Mom visits me unlikely

Maybe. Though I appreciate your unlikely to an absolute like never.

Boom A philosophical morning begins

                                         But before I forget he reached over and took her hand I love you 

I love you.

he leaned towards her she met him halfway they kissed once  they kissed a second time

they sat back

Black coffee and kisses Cant think of a better way to start my morning

Me neither.

the cup she filled for himwashed for him was his favourite of her coffee cups it was decorated with a replica of a Joan Miro canvas

              he preferred the Miro to the various Van Goghs she had  it spoke to him

it was very much like his daughter her gentle thoughtful generous nature which she readily extended to him

Thank you for serving me Miros cup

she blinked and smiled

                         it seemed he surprised her that he noticed every time

You’re welcome, Dadu. she loved teasing him with her new moniker she had addressed a letter and either in her haste or distracted by the girls she wrote Dadu rather than Dad and seeing her error she sent it anyway

You certainly are observant, have an eye for detail.

Actually love thats rather an eye for beauty An how graced I am this morning to be able to have coffee with my beautiful daughter

Awshucks, golly geewhiz. Am I blushing? she laughed deeply

MyGawd he thought Ill never get enough of her laugh  he laughed with her

1737,  Sunday,  8  3. 20

1204,  Reggae Friday,  4  9. 20

when he could finally lift his eyes off her beautiful face

                                                          her triumphant smile had slipped her colour draining and grey

over the top of her head he looked into her backyard her roses her wisteria breaking into bloom and fragrance her grapevines flourishing

                        anhe witnessed an abrupt winda sigh shake the plants  anfrom a dandelion a whitetopped woven seed shook free anrose into the air rose into the sky  climbing

he climbed on top of it

he wanted to be high

                       to look down on the world that was suddenly  empty    her lifeforce escaped 

                                                                                                           anhe rose high into the blue sky an found that he wasnt looking down into the neighbourhood where she died

                                                                                                he floated over the green pond that was a block over from the quadruplex they lived in in Minnesota when she was a little girl

                                                                                                         where he defied the posted sign No Swimming anhad her hold onto his trapeze as he breaststroked anchased dragonflies an tadpoles an the occasional big fish that rose near its center far from where people couldnt possibly cast

                                                                                            anhe saw her with a crooked stick in her hand he snapped off a fallen limb an tied a string to an fixed a hook on an baited with a split earthworm they dug up an watched as she cried proudly Daddy! I caught fish! anhe freed the small perch or bluegill an had her hold it an tell it Go get your bigger brother or sister to come for me to catch . . anhe made her kiss it goodbye which she did because he told her They were so kind to play with you, don’t you think they deserve a kiss goodbye? You might not ever see them again. They may swim down down down past the Frog Prince’s castle who on occasion has come to our front door to pursue you to the hole in the bottom of the pond that connects to a winding tunnel that lets them swim free to the other ponds and lakes around us.

up up up down down down  deep inside himself he sought comfort with memories

his baby girl had just died

1439,  Sunday,  23  2. 20

1449,  Thursday,  3  9. 20

she left with more than she could possibly carry comfortably
                                                                but he knew she could withstand discomfort
she withstood pain that sheas he aligned with discomfort Discomfort, Dadu, nothing more. it poignantly reminded them they were alive

One has to choose to suffer, don’t you think? Why would I do that?
                                                                       he nodded preachin to the choir

yet she would patiently suffer the ignorance of others if she believed she could enlighten themmake a difference

anhed have to admit his surprise how often she succeeded

she was a velvet glove 

he was brass knuckles

Girl ya got the patience of a saint

it was upon that gracious extraordinary patience she fell when she enlisted him and her husband and her sister to caretake her through the end of her life
                                          through the excruciating drip drip dripthe loss of her voice loss of her motor skills the drip drip dripdecline that accompanies dying slowly that ALS devised

her death certificate alluded to her ALS as the cause of death
                                                                 but they her caretakers knew she triumphed and lorded over her illness

her huge smile at her death confirmed it

0805,  Day-between-Two-Ts,  4  3. 20

1356,  Thursday,  3  9. 20

Doors  Crawling King Snake  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5cwmZxW0Jc

https://www.msnbc.com/the-reidout/watch/joy-trump-runs-on-law-and-order-but-he-breaks-the-law-because-he-does-not-care-for-it-91104325544 

                               when a cunt is a cunt is a cunt

tell him I said so

                   Id love to meet his fat ass on a common street alone

1751,  Thursday,  3  9. 20

he stepped in front of a buddy heading into the tavern from out of the alley

                                                                               Man yamight wanna not go in just yet  mebbe give it tenfifteen go around to the front look in through the window see ifa cat in a plaid shirts still sittin at the bar Youll wanna wait him out

Hes cryin in everybodys soup

Nobodys gettin a pass

The manll stalk ya

Hes buyin drinks

Ya drink

Yer doomed

Youll wanna shoot yerself

Whassup with him?

Hes upset

Whas upsettin him?

Letters  Letters he wrote home

Letters home?

Yah His maw died  She had kept all his letter since he moved out of his parents house Forty years of letters see

Forty years. There couldn’t have been ma . . 

. . Many Cat told me he wrote fourfive letters a week home and to other family  Imagine

Forty years?

Yah  He was in there scribblin a letter at the bar when I sat down beside him I asked Whoya writin man

Cat was writin his nephewya ever written your nephew

Nah. I don’t write a soul.

See  Hes in there writin and drinkin whisky an beer Bought me three rounds 

He bought your time.

He did  he nodded

they flinched as a couple of toms tossed some garbage pails getting at each other had to be some punany around or maybe territory

Fuckin cats.

              So what's with this cat, his dead maw?

She kept his letters His old man burned em

They were her letters, not his.

Yah I thought too Turns out his old man couldnt read his handwriting so his old lady read him the letters his son wrote him

He ditched hers and his see

Forty years?

Forty years Anhe said the letters were usually tenfifteen pagesfront an back

Fuck, man, cat had a lot to say.

Yah

      He said he could rationalize why his old man did itthough he thought he might have offered them to him before he burned em

I could see that.

Yah Me too

              Then he said it reminded him of his first girlfriend all the letterslove letters he wrote her When they split her new boyfriend was jealous of em wanted her to toss em

She resisted

One day the boyfriend went into her place when she was out took em all anburned them in the yard with some goofy carnival toys hed also won for her that she picked out

He burned up their memories

What a prick.

Yah Not gonna be a long relationship

She called him antold him all his letters were burned up

He asked why she didnt just give them back if he was threatening em Imagine how fuckin insecure  Threatened by old love letters  Written before he was ever around see

Jesus. So these guys burned up . . his memories.

Pretty fuckin cruel

                    But thats wha we excel athuh

Yeah. Wanna have at drink at Johnny’s up the streetI’ll buy ya onekeep your streak alive anless costly to your psyche

Me anmy psyche thank you  Yah

0850,  Thursday,  3  9. 20

Joe Cocker  The Letter  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlX5IWwizGg

the CDC wants states to prepare to distribute a nonexistent vaccine November 1  that will be nonexistent until likely mid-2021 end-2021

                      https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/02/cdc-states-vaccine-distribution-407783?nname=politico-nightly-coronavirus-special-edition&nid=00000170-c000-da87-af78-e185fa700000&nrid=00000167-851a-d01a-a567-d79e0c9d0000&nlid=2670445

a politicised vaccine to yank the presidents ass out of a sling which Americans are suffering because he was inept
is horseshit

remember the game Mother May I?

                                      this game is called Cunt, I Aint. 

1553,  Thursday,  3  9. 20

Frank Zappa  I’m the Slime  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiCQcEW98OY

when things were called to an end

                                    he realised  when she was 20 half her life was over

not that anyone could possibly have known


although she insisted she was going to die young

anwhenever she related that she incensed him

                                                 they were the only times he found himself angry with her

as a matter of fact she said emphatically she knew it would be true   

                                                                        she was certain as he was when he said he knew hed live into his 90s  perhaps beyond

his advanced age would be a matter of his bad habit of noticing everything  and because everything did not reveal herself at once he had to be patient

                                        everything would unfurled unraveled  like a good stripper

anhis rope had to be long enough to allow him to rappel to the depths he intended to venture

she said he was a chronicler

a listener  lister

a namer

a charlatan of preposterous fantasy and reality

2147, Day-between-Two-Ts,  4  3. 20

1600,  Day-between-Two-Ts,  2  9. 20

Simply Red  Holding Back the Years  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yG07WSu7Q9w

$186K -- killed

radiologist not infectious disease expert not public health expert Scott Atlas insists on the advent of herd immunity

https://news.yahoo.com/trump-appears-surrender-coronavirus-spread-044630166.html 

                                                                                             AwrightOkay lets begin Atlass herd immunity at the very top lets infect Atlas every senior White House official the president vice-president chief of staff cabinet members every administrative White House support staff with coronavirus

give em 14 days

then letem talk to the American people

no skin in the game

                     shut your fuckin mouth

0008,  Thursday,  3  9. 20

ELP  Welcome Back my Friends  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VsifANR96s

the paperbacks were exactly the same size

one was published by Warner Books a Time-Warner Company The Mysterious Press James Ellroys The Black Dahlia 325 pages

the other A Plume Book published by the Penguin Group Toni Morrisons Paradise 318 pages

seems they were printed to a standard applied to the paperback industry

their content was similar

while one was common

                          the other poetic elegant  elegiac

they were equally brutal

they reminded him that no matter how you dressed a whore she was still a whore

if there was the hole in his logic it was simple

hed never meet a whore

not a street corner hooker 

not in an alleyway or in a backseat

                                     Suck your cock for five dollars, mister.

cocksucking was foreplay 

                            it wasnt the game

would he have to pay more to have her put her finger up his ass while she sucked his cock

did ya tip

he hadnt ever paid for sex

he could masturbate

queer that the paperbacks were the same at first blush

but spreading their pages

                            like whoreshe assumed

                                                      they were different

2131,  Twosday,  3  3. 20

1508,  Day-between-Two-Ts,  2  9. 20

“The more authentic you are, the more authentic you can be with others. It has to come from an intention not to manipulate.”

               photographer Lynn Johnson 

he found her quote in an article called The Power of Voice in National Geographic its editors note explained that photography is not unlike meditation the intimacy captured can come only from a relationship ground in trust

he yearned for authenticity 

                              either one has it or they dont

Boy, if you ain’t the real McCoy.

                                  Mr Clarke said

Mr Clarke confused him the only McCoy he knew was The Real McCoys on television he didnt follow Mr Clarkes meaning what was there about him that reminded Mr Clarke of the television program he wasnt a hickhe didnt call California Californy

he smiled at Mr Clarke

                        Thank you sir thank you very much

No. Mr Clarke took a knee before him he was sixfooteight on his knee he was still taller than him No, Joe, thank you. You’re quite a boy.

Mr Clarke was to undergo a surgery

Mrs Clarke was quite agitated one would have to be blind to miss how the talk worked in her face that she was holding back her tears bright blue eyes made brighter by the sheen of uncried tears cornflower blue eyes girlish eyes

Mr Clarke would chuck her under the chin and call her his little girl

Joe asked her what he could do to helphe wanted badly to help

Mrs Clarke knew Joes dad knew that he was always clamouring through the neighbourhood trying to encourage people to donate blood he was a donor

Joe, if your father would, he could donate blood in Mr. Clarke’s name. The doctor said Mr. Clarke will need a lot of blood. she caught her tears againstymied them  but he saw

That would help a lot, Joe.

at dinner that evening conversation circling the kitchen table what everyones day was like he mentioned Mr Clarkes coming surgery and what Mrs Clarke had asked . . An I want to donate too Dad.

Son, I don’t know if the hospital will allow you to donate, you might be too young.

Somethings wrong with my blood

No. There’s nothing wrong with your blood. There’s professional ethics, and because you’re nine you may not understand what it is you’re doing.

Im donating blood for a very good friend who needs it An your my father an youll tell them to draw my blood because it is okay with you Youll make them listen an youll make them take my blood

                                                                                Dammit

his brothers and sisters went bugeyed because he swore

It may be out of my hands, son.

I wont accept that Dad I want to give my blood to Mr Clarke an I can if you say it is okay with you 

You donate I should be able to donate

he was an adamant little cuss

he and his father donated at the hospital 

they also reached out to the neighbourhood

                                              Joe knew damn well that because he donated he could leverage shame others to donate 

they did

         fiftyfour units were available to Mr Clarke for his surgery

1127,  Thursday,  5  3. 20

1237,  Day-between-Two-Ts,  2  9. 20

Harry Belafonte  John Henry Song  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydTRk1l0ZqI

Death – if one is dying fortunately (186,000 have died in America and the majority have died alone robbed of comfort robbed of the care and the embrace of their loved ones robbed of saying one last time I love you when it will have to suffice for the thousands more they thought they were going to be able to share Trillions of unsaid unheard I love yous vanquished negated) – Death creates captive audiences

driving to his daughters home in Southern California windows down blue air whipping through the car his hair no radio nothing to balk or interrupt his thoughts he sang repeatedly over and over I’m working my way back to you, babe  the Four Seasons over and over  he might have sang for two hours tears streaming out of his eyes

                                                                                                     and as he sang

it occurred to him that she might be thinking along the same lines except she was working her way out of a horrible debilitating illness  working her way to a new existence that she knew existed 

what was binding herkeeping her from her new life was her failing bodyher failing mortality

she wrote him that she was becoming very anxious

she wrote she was upset that she was leaving him her sister her husband and two children

                                                                                                 but her time here was at an end she had done what she was meant to do

he did not doubt her earnest her intelligence

                                                she had been one of the wisest most caring people he had ever known

he took no credit

she took after her mother

he was grateful his wife was dead

he was sure their daughters death would have killed her

1514,  Saturday,  22  2. 20

1937,  Twosday,  1  9. 20

Four Seasons  Working my Way Back to You  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj0BnpvM5cQ

George Michael  I’m Never Gonna Dance Again  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7x9UUMmuTw