caveat emptor

The Rime of the Ancient Hobo

This my streets

A corner of two

Where one goes thap way

And one go anothle

And here I rules

Hobo Gob of the Streeps

And I will tape no shit from no one

On my cornle of the world!

You can put neckle in my tin cut

I'm even tape penny too

Cauz all the money mime

Ant I will bring it too me

An if you doesn't gib me nicklin,

I will murdle you whem you leest perspect it

I will creap up behine you

And punk you rife in the the potatoh!

I wil thunk you in you dingle punkin,

somofabish!

I kik you rife in the turtlez

And mape you screen!

Cauz I am Gob of all Gorrilahz!

Cole at night the win blows

Wrap all up in myselfs

Breen the outsides into safe

And close my eyes over my hole body

To sleep insight my own head

Where nobody sing but me

My song of yeserday gone

Tomorroe never show

Here insign my head

Wif the goasts

An a swallow of hot life

On my breaf

Fin.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

What to Write

When I cannot think of what to write I write poetry. My thoughts tumble in front of my mental stare like socks and shirts in a clothes dryer, and I pluck one from midair and place it on the page. Then another and another and another, until something I call "poetry" takes shape. When I feel as though I've put enough into it, I stop and read it. I always expect it to tell me something about what I'm thinking, about who I am. No. It's just words on a page, like someone with nothing to say took the time to write it down. When I come back to it later, stumble upon it while looking for something else, I always wonder, "What was I thinking?" In that sense, I guess the poems capture something of the moment.

I've always envied, speaking of ghosts, the ability they have to pass through doors. I'm not sure why, really. I suppose the only reasons to have such a talent would be to sneak around, to surprise people and such. "It's not really a talent," the ghost says. "It's just the way it is. I haven't the substance to open the door so I must pass through it to enter the room." I guess that makes sense, but I still think it would be cool to be able to do it. "The secret to passing through doors," my grandfather tells me, "is simple. You just open them first."

If you ever have writer's block here's what you do: Close your eyes. Now think to yourself, "I wonder who's looking at me while I'm sitting here with my eyes closed. I wonder if someone might be stealing my computer from in front of me. I bet they think I'm praying." Now open your eyes and notice that nothing has changed. No one even noticed that your eyes were closed. Now write something. Amen.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Kinds of Happy

Opening shot is a girl riding a bicycle on an idyllic country road, a farmhouse passing by in the background. She's smiling, standing slightly in the pedals as she rides. She's probably thirteen, wearing a school uniform. "This is a Song" by The Magic Numbers plays over the scene. The girl looks happy, the kind of happy that you're tempted at first to think of as foolish and naive until it makes you ashamed of your own cynicism and you begin to suspect that she knows something you don't, some secret of true happiness that you missed in your upbringing. She looks innocent.

He is overwhelmed with the dread that the movie is going to ruin this girl somehow. Irrational tears well up in his eyes and he has to leave. He doesn't even say anything to his friends. He just winces back tears and stumbles over feet and purses out to the aisle and he walks out.

In his car he wonders what came over him. He has driven past the edge of town and is speeding down a country road he's never been on before. There's something lacking about it, something less than idyllic. Up ahead he sees a billboard for cigarettes. He fumbles with the radio stations, but no one is playing The Magic Numbers, of course. She was just some actress. She wasn't real.

And this is a song

And these are the words

I don't wanna hear it, don't wanna hear it

I don't wanna hear it, don't wanna hear it

Opening shot is a boy speeding a car down a scrubby country road, a billboard passing by in the background. His eyes look like he's been crying, but he's smiling now. He's probably nineteen. "In Between Days" by The Cure plays over the scene. He looks happy, the kind of happy you recognize.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Dumb. Randumb.

I've become convinced, just now, that my opinions really aren't opinions. I am, as it turns out, the ONE person in the universe whose tastes are, in fact, verifiably correct and objective. The rest of you have subjective opinions, but I enjoy and prefer the right things. It's a good feeling, to be so right.

Gmail is foggy today. It must be foggy outside. Let me check. Yep. Thanks again, Gmail.

Before there was blogging there was just writing. Remember? Poems that no one ever read and funny little stories that lost steam before they came to any satisfying conclusion. Sometimes song lyrics and sometimes philosophical positions. Writing for no one, lost as soon as it hits the page. Just thinking and inking, kenning and penning, plotting and jotting, dreaming and streaming, knowing and flowing, noodling and doodling, crafting and drafting, and also not worrying about rhyming. Or timing. Or hosting or posting. No hits or twits or stats or chats. Remember? I remember.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Made in the Shade (Orig. From 05/06)

(Repost today. Busy. Sorry.)

Shadows stretch and lengthen across the yards and parking lots around town as evening sets in. This triggers some part of me to come alive. I have this theory that I'm 1/64th vampire or something. I love the night. (Plus garlic makes my breath foul. Coincidence? I don't think so.) I love the shadows. What is the night, after all, but the queen of all shadows. At night we stand where the shadow of the Earth begins. From there it casts out across the vastness of space. Shadows never end, as long as there is the potential for light.

When you tell people you love the night, many of them get the wrong impression. I am not, for example, a party boy. I don't say, "Woo." I don't frequent the places circled as "Hot Spots" on Mapsco books of the Girls Gone Wild production team. I've never walked into a flashing, thumping dance club, and I never will. I am also not a Goth person. I wear jeans or shorts and flip flops or sandals and T-shirts or those Latin wedding shirts or camp shirts. I do not wear long black trench coats in the middle of the summer. I do not wear eye makeup. I do not sign my name "Sköt Wight." If I am, in fact, 1/64th vampire, I'm the white sheep of the family. My love for the shadows is milder and more organic.

I like the cool and quiet of the night. I love the lack of ambition. No one expects anything from you at night. Few people are trying to accomplish anything more ambitious than nookie. The night, as long as you can stay awake, is free time. I love this freedom, this easiness.

Some of you wear yellow and orange and white and you're sunny beach people. Some of you love a clear warm or hot day. Some of you love summer afternoons. That's good. The world needs people like you. The greeting card industry REALLY needs you. We all need you. And we love you. You're great. You really are.

We do, however, breathe a sigh of relief when you finally go to bed (at 8:30) and we can relax.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

The One About Hypnosis

When I count to three and snap my fingers you will open your eyes and you won't remember any of this. One. Two. Three. [SNAP]

I don't believe in hypnosis. I don't. It's no big deal, though. You could fill stacks of books with lists of what I don't believe in. Somewhere in those stacks of books would be a line that said, "Hypnosis." I should confess that I know nothing about hypnosis. It just falls into a category of things I find ridiculous. If you do believe in hypnosis that's okay. I would never say that your belief in hypnosis causes me to assume certain things about you. That would be a rude and unnecessary thing to say, and I like you, so I would never say that. Instead I would just nod and smile and say, "Really? Well, who knows? Anything's possible. I'm certainly no expert." And I'm not.

They say you can plant a trigger word into someone's subconscious that, when uttered later, will cause them to act on some hypnotic suggestion you made during hypnotherapy. That's just crazy.

Chrysanthemum.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Trolling Myself

Today my spirit is a tiny little troll with bare feet and big ears and unkept hair and slightly green skin. He's sitting in his dim, muddy little underground den because it's raining outside (metaphorically) and he's not at all happy about it. He doesn't like the accursed rain and he doesn't like this time of year and he doesn't like the mud between his toes. Today my spirit is a discontented and grouchy little troll and nothing you do will make him stop pouting. You might think that you can pick him up and tickle him on the stomach and say, "Cheer up little guy!" but it will not work. He will slap away your tickling hand or possibly, if you try again, bite you on the fingertip. He's not interested in cheering up and he's not interested in your desire for him to be a happy and cute little troll. Just leave him alone down here in the muddy mess where he belongs and go away.

But come back tomorrow.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Animal Justice on the City Streets

If experience has taught us anything it has taught is that the flapping motion of birds is more interesting and dramatic when they're alighting than it is when they're soaring. If you can catch the end of the approach in slow motion, or even just the shadow of it, and overlay it with exaggerated sounds of wings beating the air, you have yourself a very effective few seconds of footage that can add texture to many a movie or cop show.

If I made a gritty cop show about attractive detectives in New York who are very serious about justice and possibly attracted to one another, I'd intersperse inexplicable wildlife all throughout the show. The characters and extras would act as though the presence of this wildlife were perfectly normal and to be expected in New York. While Detectives Mulroney and Spitzer interview a Korean shopkeeper a Grizzly slowly saunters across the road behind them, a salmon still twitching in its mouth. Even surreal animal shots would abound. Giraffes would leap from rooftop to rooftop. Whales would drift by slowly in the sky. Cars would pass with chimps behind the wheel.

People would talk about it. "WTF is the deal with the animals? #NYJUSTICE." The network and the show would ignore all questions, refuse to comment.

There's drama in the takeoff of a bird as well. The right John Mayer music can accentuate this drama nicely. Blur the exposure and filter out bright colors. Why is life so sad? Why is justice so hard to find in the mean city? Why is romance so tragic? Acoustic guitar is especially effective.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

The Feeling of Shapes the Spheres Never Dreamt

Where do the souls go

I wonder to myself

And to her

Maybe there are no souls

She says to me

Where do they come from

I wonder to us

Maybe nowhere

She answers me

And I wonder where she came from

This soul that is her

And I wonder where I will go

This soul that is me

And no answer comes

Because she has gone

And I wonder where

She goes

When she goes

The ancients, we have be told by the recents, believed you could know a lot about a person by feeling the bumps on the head or by tracing the lines of the hand or by studying their eyes. I have seen and touched her in as many ways as I can imagine and so many things are a mystery to me. I could, I feel certain, create a perfect sculpture of her. Still, it would not be her. Not even close. What is missing? Everything that I cannot see or feel.

When

After the end

We share what some consider

A more perfect communion

Among the spheres of the cosmos

I will miss

The curve of the small your back

And that place at the top of your thigh

And so many places and shapes

That the spheres never dreamt

---

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Having Now Learned the Secrets

The Pythagoreans had a lot of crazy ideas. They weren't allowed, for example, to touch beans. I think they were hitting the hypotenuse a little too much, if you catch my drift.

Science has proven that there is no structure stronger nor more stable than the Jell-O mold. They have proven this with various math symbols on old-school chalk boards, the kind with dust and black erasers and frangible chalk sticks that cannot survive for more than a couple of minutes. Most classrooms today have dry-erase boards instead of old-school chalk boards. Most of these classrooms don't prove anything very interesting. The most modern of modern classrooms have robots that demonstrate ideas through expressive dance so you don't have to write things down any more. "How does the Pythagorean theorem make you feel, Jimmy?"

"Well, I guess..."

"No, no, no. Don't tell us. Show us! Dance, Jimmy! Dance!"

Jimmy dances a square dance.

The cosmos, according to Pythagoras, is filled with vacuous bubbles. These came, of course, from the inhaling of the void by the previously perfect apeiron. Jimmy dances and dances and dances from vacuous bubble to vacuous bubble, robots swirling around him all the while. Today we know better than Pythagoras. We have learned the secret of the Jell-O mold.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Changes Are Afoot, Sports Fans

I've decided to switch the format of the blog (again). For a few months now, the blog has been all about sports and teams who play sports and long arguments among the fans of various sports clubs over who would win sporting contests of various sorts. As much fun as the lively debates have been over the games, matches, tournaments and such, I find myself growing tired of the topic of sport. I know, I know. Most of you probably assumed that sport is the only thing in which I have any interest whatsoever. Though it's perfectly understandable that you might have reached this conclusion, given the rabid sports mania that has typified this blog for the past few months, the fact is that I have many interests that have nothing whatsoever to do with athletic competition. I also enjoy strange, absurd little stories, poetry and pointless banter. It's true.

So, I'm changing the blog to more of a rambling, pointless site for posting strange little stories, poems, jokes and such. I know this might disappoint the millions who come here primarily to debate matters of sport, but my decision is final. Perhaps there are other sites out there on the Internet where one can find lively debate about sports. I've never heard of another, but the Internet is a big network. I suggest using Google to search for an alternate venue. Just type your search term into the text box and click the button labeled "Google Search." Good luck.

For those of you who care to stick around, I'll be posting something entirely unrelated to sports every single weekday from now until forever. I hope you find a way to enjoy it.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

18 x 2 = Us

Today our marriage is 18 years old. Remember when our marriage was just a baby and it used to keep us up all night? Now it's all grown up. Our marriage could vote or join the military. I have to say, I'm proud of our marriage. A lot of other people's marriages are awful and belligerent and unbearable by the time they reach this age. Our marriage has matured into quite a well-adjusted and happy adult marriage. I credit you for that, mostly.

Susan, I love you better than I did before. I understand you and I know you and I like you. You keep getting more beautiful and more interesting and more fun the longer we stay together. If things keep improving at this rate, we'll achieve enlightenment and disappear in a sighing vapor of ecstasy before the grandchildren start arriving. Maybe we should pull it back a notch, hang around for a few more decades. Nirvana will just have to wait a little longer for us to show up and explain to everyone how it's done.

Hello, Susan.

Tea Sippers and Paint

"What's your favorite style of painting?" he asked, sipping his tea. (NOTE for new readers: Here at Caveat Emptor, "sipping tea" is a sure sign that a character is an arrogant asshole. Why? I don't know. I actually like tea. In my writing, however, tea sipping is almost universally a sign of asshatery.)

"Finger," I replied, chugging my Red Bull and then belching loudly. (NOTE: I don't actually drink Red Bull. I also do not belch often. It's been know to happen, but it's not like a signature thing of mine or anything.)

Have you ever tried to juggle paint? Not in tubes or cans or anything, just big splashes of paint? It isn't easy, let me tell you. Nevertheless, someone has to juggle the paint. We cannot leave the paint unjuggled.

How will we abide the tea sippers of the world? We will dance our feelings. We will journal our fears. We will open up and let our emotions juggle. We are the dried leaves of humanity, crushed and brewed for the enjoyment of the gods, steeped in doom, damned to be sipped forever.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Reflections on Water

I love the way the rain turns the parking lots and sidewalks and roads into poor mirrors, especially when it's still darkling outside in early morning because of the switch to Nightdark Saving Time. All the lights are reflected badly, ghost lights underground. They follow us around in the underworld, mocking our fuss of activity, our busy living. It's only an illusion, of course, a distraction for the mind desperate to think something, anything. The rain collects in all the lowest places, running always down and down and down, manifesting the underworld for all to see. Water is the window to the ghost world below. This is why we cry for the dead.

The weather factors heavily in my writing at times. It's one of my most reliable muses. The weather, after all, is always there. By the time a man is old, the weather is his best friend. An old man can sit for hours and commune with the weather, talk about the weather with other old men. It's one of the few things they have in common. "I remember the snow of '83." I remember it too. I loved that snow. I wonder where it is today?

Meanwhile the snow of '83 is crawling down the pavement outside, looking for the lowest spot, having found its way back to earth once again in the endless cycle of water. It's right outside the door, wondering what ever happened to you.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Dumbing the Depths

She asked me if Rock and Roll is poetry. In my opinion, this question betrays a misunderstanding of poetry. The answer, of course, is that good poetry is an instance of life captured perfectly, expressed without distortion, so that reading is experiencing in some sense. Rock and Roll, on the other hand, is an experience you have in life. It's a feeling you feel all over. So Rock and Roll, when it happens, is life. And poetry, when it happens, is life. Does it follow, therefore, that Rock and Roll is poetry? Not necessarily, though some poetry might be Rock and Roll.

This is, of course, only one way to think about such things.

The wolves who live in the clouds are howling this morning. Can you hear them? They are howling for the lost moon. They do not realize that the moon is not lost, you just can't see it when you're in the clouds. Such is their lot in life, a tragic whim of a twisted imagination. They run and pant and howl forever, forlorn in the grey mist. Silly wolves.

Oh, wait. I just thought of another idea about that whole poetry/Rock and Roll thing. A lot of Rock and Roll rhymes. That's kinda like poetry too, you know?

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Angry Fronts and Indifferent Raptors

Thunderstorms. Most of the week. Air is angry by the time it gets to Texas. Too many Great Plains and deserts and mountains to cross on the way. It comes in furious across Oklahoma and Colorado and New Mexico and rages against us, as though we are to blame for every other state. It's okay. We can take it. We're not afraid of a few thunderstorms, a little lightning, a little rain. Tornados come and go, like tourists except less destructive. Still, here we are. Thunderstorms all week this week. I don't mind.

I wonder how you can tell if hawks like you. I'm fascinated with them for some reason. I love to see them perched here and there along the highway on the way to work. In a tree. Atop a street light. On the rail of an overpass. I'd like to come to some sort of agreement with the hawks, for them to acknowledge that I'm a friend. To me there is something much nobler about a hawk as compared with a turkey buzzard. Maybe that's not fair. Maybe it's just another case of unjust favoring of the beautiful in the world. Nevertheless, I get no thrill from the circling patterns of turkey buzzards, from their hunkering posture as they slump along the sides of the road over some dead armadillo or cat. When a hawk dives or lifts off, however, I feel as though I'm seeing a sort of majesty. I want them to call me Hawk Friend, to cry it out in that piercing shriek whenever I drive by. I don't know, though. Something tells me they're not even aware that we exist.

The clouds roil grey, angry threats overhead. Who can blame them? The Great Plains can do that to you after a while.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

The One About Choice

It's fear, I suppose. It comes, perhaps, from missed opportunities in life, or from that angry, hurt feeling of being left out. So, we develop this fear, this drastic over-estimating of opportunity costs. Everything becomes inferior to everything else, so that we cannot engage with anything for fear of missing something. For want of everything we settle for nothing. Have you known this feeling, this fear?

Embrace, I suggest, the something in front of you. Everything else is still there. We are free, people, free. Don't let your very freedom trap you, paralyze you, imprison you. Embrace the something at hand. Never let go of anything to grasp something else. Love the also and not the instead.

When I close my eyes I float in endless nothing. I am the center of everything that isn't. I let myself forget, just a little, floating there. All alone, I could forget altogether. But I don't. I open my eyes.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Juggling Delton

Juggling

Noun

1. The act of using some number of hands to continuously toss and catch a greater number of things.
2. Sometime life is like juggling too many things. Do you ever feel this way? Delton does in the story below.

There was no wind at all, perfect stillness, and that would have been okay had the early evening been just a few degrees cooler. As it was, Delton could feel small beads of sweat running from his hair down the back of his neck and into his shirt as he sat, trying to relax his jangled nerves, on the front porch of the small cabin. His breathing was a bit labored as it drew, almost whistling, between his slightly parted lips. He gripped his legs tightly just above his shaking knees to still the trembling of his hands. Staring out over the tops of the trees into the darkening blue of the eastern horizon, he thought it might be nice to just sit here forever, to forget about everything and sit here forever. But he couldn't. Jacob was waiting for him back at the camp and he still had to bury the bodies in the cabin and clean up the place.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

P. S. - I actually have nothing to say in this postscript, but the background image works better if the post is a little taller. So, I'm adding this postscript for height. Thanks for reading it.

P. P. S. - Just for good measure. Thanks again for stopping by.

It's all accidental and random. Like math.

If I could make just one person in the world smile - just one and no more - it would be all of you. If two, then everyone else also. That would be enough for me, just the two of you. I'd feel fulfilled.

I see these "The North Face" jackets everywhere. They all have the brand name stamped in a normal place, on the left side of the chest, and also in a strange place, on the back of the right shoulder. You cannot convince me, however you try, that the one on the back didn't start out as an accident.

"Oops! We stamped all of these on the back, boss."

"What?"

"Yeah, they got stamped on the back instead of the front."

"Damn! How many?"

"Six thousand."

"Damn!"

"What should we do?"

"Stamp them on the front too and ship them. Maybe no one will notice."

This is where stuff like this comes from, people. It's all accidental and random. Like math.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.

Wisdom at the Door

Wisdom is standing in the doorway of a donut shop on a busy urban street. She is wondering how to merge into the rush and crush of pedestrians on the sidewalk without being clumsy and awkward. Wisdom is wearing a navy business suit with a cream-colored, long-sleeved blouse and black kitten heels. This morning she had stood in her closet for almost an hour trying to match her fuzzy notion of what other women in this city wear with the sparse selections hanging in front of her. After forty-five minutes, she had burst into tears for just a moment. Then, feeling foolish, she had grabbed the suit, blouse, heels and some Nude hose and dressed herself with mustered determination. Now, standing in this doorway, her resolve has all been blown away and she finds herself wondering what business she has in this bustling city with all these beautiful people. Some part of her refuses, tempting though it is, to surrender and just go back inside the shop and eat donuts all day. Wisdom loves donuts, as you may have heard, but she's trying to be more healthy and eat salads and dress like other women dress in this city, with its terrifyingly busy sidewalks and its matching shoes and purses. Wisdom only has the one purse, and it's brown. The wind gusts and blows her hair into her face just as she starts to take a step out into the rush, and she steps back and brushes the hair back, blushing angrily at the tears forming in the corners of her eyes. She hunkers back as a small Korean woman bursts out of the shop and, without even slowing down, disappears without a ripple into the river of people. The bell on the door jangles as Wisdom pushes it closed and strains to see the brave, little black-haired woman in the crowd, but she is gone.

Hello, friends. How are you today?

Later. Love.