A Bowl of Soup

I'm sick, and I want a bowl of soup.

I went to emptystomachache, because I'm sick

Six AM no sleep cycle, wake, sick

Now I want soup.

Don't want to buy can

Don't want to buy can

can't can cook

sick

tired

sick

Why is there no soup

in the morning

in this place

in this town.

Food is not meant

for time

food is not meant

meals are not meant

all social

dictate

all breakfast=egg

all red mary=brunch

all soup=lunch

is opiate

which satiates

the cold, burn

gravel throat, dress rattle

better than

anything

condoned by the state

but it is a working

day today

and it would be greater

and it would be better

and I'll thank myself later

if now I had some soup.

If you've ever felt that you're not enough of an asshole:

Treat yourself to the master's thoughts on "Brand New Day."

Free Shit

Free Shit for the taking at 23rd and Q.

I will thank you to leave the busted bookshelf with the actual "Free Shit" sign to me.

You owe me nothing of course; but I would consider you to be an ungrateful person.

I Thought There Was A Virtue In Always Being Cold.

Fueurbach and I were having one of our patented overgrown boy adventures tonight, and I noticed that our normal personality roles were reversed. Our conversations normally go something like this.

Dan: Everyone's an idiot, isn't it funny?

Me: Everyone's an idiot, aren't you ashamed to be human?

We hit up all three bars in eternally-on-the-verge-of-doom Ashland Nebraska. A horrid band played horrid public-domain classic rock horridly, the guitar player covered himself in blinking lights and wore leopard-skin tight pants. A biker woman with a tragically stunted sense of self-worth flashed her breasts and grinded herself against another woman for the amusement of the locals.

If this was the me of no more than one week ago, I would be writing two thousand words excoriating this guitar player's Clear-Channel idea of rock-and-roll zaniness and offering him up as proof that everyone in Ashland, Nebraska is a worthless fucking moron.

Dan was in precisely this frame of mind. I could see that the locals were sensing our contempt and that my boy would get us into some sort of altercation with some man or group of men who have actually been in a physical fight in their adult lifetimes.

Oh but he softened with every random "how's it going" we got from every random person, and once we took over the jukebox at the place we were at for last call there was the sixteen-yr-old boy that everyone who knows the man loves, and after our perhaps ill-advised drive home he was genuinely happy.

My friend was happy.


He wondered aloud why I wasn't being my usual bitter self at the first bar. I recognized the silliness and stupidity of it all as much as I ever have, but, no, no I couldn't. I won't condemn. I can't. Not anymore, not again.

I still think, in fact know, that most people are idiots, but I also see how all of them love their friends and families, and how they feel joy and rage and boredom and grief and despair.

And I've been a brat. A 26-year-old brat.

Sheridan County, sorry about, you know, everything.

The spite was physically killing me, I could feel it. And than I was lying in bed between waking and sleeping at two A.M last Wednesday, and it occurred to me that my; if I do say so, my gift, my gift for seeing what's wrong for people isn't predicated on my scorn towards them. I don't need to hate these people to perceive and record what's wrong with them. With us, what's wrong with us.

This is my species, we are in this together. Every despairing member of a conquered race, every person in jail for a crime they didn't do or a crime that shouldn't be a crime, every single mother ignored by the world and trying to feed her kids through some manner of filthy, dehumanizing work. It's not the man doing that to them, it's not them doing that to them. It is us doing that to us. It is me doing that to us.

"I love everybody" so said Becky on some warm day last May, and she must have been joking, clearly she was still a girl. Very smart and charming, but clearly still a girl.

Love, after all, is nothing but naivety. The realization of this is what makes me smart, it's what makes me not a hippy, what allows me to lounge and rail against the man and the squares without being a hippy. It is only my choice of punching bag that makes me a liberal, but no worries, I certainly wouldn't be so ridiculous as to believe in something, and certainly not so naive as to actually love something. No worries, deep down I am just another funky white nihilist with a blog, a child of the modern age, not the slightest threat to the electro-fuck-you-order.

I treated her like a girl when I was first attracted to her a got the rejection I deserved.

And so it goes, she clearly doesn't she anyway, love is naivety.

Bullshit.

This woman sees. If you have ever been in the same room as Rebbecca Ankenbrand she knows you perfectly well, she knows everything wrong with you and she loves you.

She said I had goodness in me and I thought she was being kind; but no, she never lies, never humors, she is only being brutally honest most especially when she is kind. My sister, my muse, my liberator, thank God for you.

And I realize that my inner goodness does not exist for the purpose of fellating myself. It is there to serve you, and I am at your service.

I can hardly breathe from the anticipation of seeing the sun.

Kittens: By Christiana Paxton, age 7

The winter wind howls
and the sun sets
That's a good girl
don't be upset
Daddy's gonna come home
on a brand new jet
Daddy's gonna come home
on a brand new jet
Daddy's gonna come home on a brand new jet
and he loves his girl so

But don't you be foul
and don't make a mess
Don't be a bad girl
don't be a distress
or God is gonna come
he's gonna bury your home
or God is gonna come
he's gonna bury your home
or God is gonna come
he's gonna bury your home
and you'll be all alone

Alone with broken toys
and alone with skinned knees
alone till bad dreams
will be your only dreams
alone in the snow
and alone in the dark
alone with the snakes
and the dogs that bark
alone in the world
when the angels cry hark

And kittens get to run
but the dogs stay home
and kittens get to run
but the dogs stay home
and kittens get to run
but the dogs stay home
and we'll all be broken bones

Homage to Bertha

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Debbie

Just did a life sentence (25 years, practically speaking) for killing a cop.

Is still a working and very active prostitute at 51.

Seems to be the de-facto pimp of her particular ring

For a small fee, will pleasure other 50-year-old women for the sake of a "rich" 50-year-old man.

Writes poetry, very much in the classical tradition with basic schemes of rhyme and meter. Her lines on how Timothy Mc'Veigh deserved the death penalty, because he murdered children, and children come from God; words can't describe. I went home and immediately burned my copy of the Aeneid. Everything that came before Wild Thang is nothing but diarehetic shit with a few flakes of children's glitter mixed in.

Knows eight languages. To be more precise, she knows a phrase or two from the various underclasses housed in the Nebraska State Pen, and there is intense debate over whether or not the differences between Pine Ridge Lakota and Rosebud Lakota constitute different languages or mere dialects. But I shall not dispute her claim, there isn't any more B.S. in it than when I bust out "Joi De Vive" as if it's part of my normal vocabulary.

Despite her inability to distinguish an English major from an English professor, Debbie seemed to realize that I am the Pope of the ghetto/university matrix; the only legitimate means of communication between the two worlds. "Street knowledge" is nothing but a well-developed theory of mind. If you had a five-minute glimpse of Debbie's powers of perception, you would be just as certain as I am about her perfectly admirable intelligence.

To love a city is to love her streets. If you don't love Debbie than you don't love Lincoln.

It's perfectly alright if you don't love Lincoln, but if I ever here you saying an ill word towards Debby it's the rope and the ball-gag and the back of my van for you.

This Dog

Followed me around while I was walking to the store for detergent and toothpaste. He looked like some sort of Pit Bull/Lab mix, thin but not unhealthy, bathed and collared, clearly somebody's.

He followed me from 26th and Vine and I yelled at him to go away. Two blocks later I nearly tripped over him and I yelled at him to go home again. A block later he was still behind me. I turned to him "where are you going boy" in a sing-song voice, and gave him a pat on the head. He jumped on his hind legs and did a little happy dog dance.

I led him back the way we had come until we reached a house where he lingered to smell the grass. I figured that this was either his house or the one next to it so I turned back around to go to the grocery store. When I reached 26th and Y to find him still behind me. He followed me into the parking lot of alps where he stopped to lick something off of the concrete while I walked inside.

When I came out I walked around the back to try to lose him, only to see him running towards me from 26th and Orchard. I quickly turned around and ran back to the front parking lot of Alps, and there he was running towards me on Y.

Ultimately, I had to jaywalk accross 27th to lose him. I tell myself that I did the right thing, but I can't help but think that this was the one. They never do show up when you expect them.

A. Bird/Wilco notes.

Andrew Bird does the same thing in every song, stark string notes and ethereal lyrics building to a peak. But it always works, and that Janis Horn he puts in the middle of the stage is just fucking cool.

Jeff Tweedy kept mocking our Midwestern reserve. "If you wanna sit down and take it all in that's cool. If you wanna get up and shake your ass that's alright too. Lean toward the latter." The thing is, Jeff, that nuanced psychedelic country-rock really isn't ass-shaking music. You write the songs, you want people to shake their asses, change your style.

People were still looking for their seats in the balcony section long after Bird was done and Wilco were playing their second song, which just happened to be "I am Trying to Break Your Heart." Some kids sitting in the row ahead of me were apparently squaters in seats meant for will-call orders. It nearly came to blows when the people who bought the seats showed up. (During Trying to Break...) Married couple, three or four years older than me. The man was whooping and singing along to every word. It was annoying at first but I came to realize that he was simply a better fan than me and loved the deeper album cuts.

Oddly enough, they left after the first encore, though this was clearly a fake encore. Wilco always close with "Outa Mind Outa Sight" Anyone who has been to or seen a show before knows this. Odd that they would know the most obscure songs on "Sky Blue Sky" and not know this.

The band was wonderful, of course, noise and pain and sorrow and mercury.

There Can be Only One.