SONG OF THE DAY: Is It My Body

I still listen to Alice Cooper, though to be honest, it's the Alice Cooper Band. The real decline in Alice Cooper music happened when it became just the guy Alice Cooper as opposed to the Alice Cooper Band. I bet the guy Alice Cooper is a flat earther or Covid hoaxer or some crazy shit, so I'm not gonna look it up. Nobody comment either. Ever again. Nobody ever comment on anything online ever again, for all our sake.

3V3N TH3 M0ST B4S1C F0LKS...

even the most basic folks 
got artistic gibberish 
inside them; it gets stifled 

SONG OF THE DAY: Breaking Up Somebody's Home

Another anthem to poor choices, which sometimes are our only choices. We all must play the cards dealt to us, even if we know we're doomed. One can't fold when they were born already all-in. (Also, let this be yet another example of how Hi Records from back in the day did not fuck around.)

WH3N3V3R 1'M S1TT1NG 0N...

whenever I'm sitting on 
back porch, it's in purple light; 
chop and screw environments 

SONG OF THE DAY: I Like It (Soul Synopsis Mix)

Black Friday is a cruel joke when you're flat broke. Y'all can extend the once in a lifetime deals all you want, this man living this lifetime is irrelevant to your messaging. It'd be nice if I could block it or cut y'all off, but I can't, because our system is one of incessant messaging causing neurological damage which makes one consume an identity of self. Well fuck y'all. I'm putting on some chill music and going the fuck outside.

C3LLVL4R M3M0R13S 0F...

cellular memories of 
self-medication to aid 
fade into oblivion 

S4D H0W TH3Y T1LL3D 1 N33D T0...

 

sad how they tilled "I need to 
be more productive" thinking 
into the back of my brain 

SONG OF THE DAY: Listen To My Song

Darondo makes me want to fuck. Not creepy power fucking or weird collecting Pokemons fucking but good ol' greasy fucking in purple lights, everybody involved being all about it, no hidden agendas or hang-ups, everything out. It's a fucked up world right now, although maybe it's always been this fucked up, here or there, and it's all relative. Either way, there's enough art to make us feel like shit, to make us feel hopeless, to make us feel inspired to aspire to motivationally inspirate. Good ol' fucking art gets left out the conversation, which is unfortunate, because damn if we don't all need some serotonin still. And if you're out there not getting that serotonin release, stuck in a situation where it doesn't happen, or you accidentally ended up in a routine where the other side of the bed realized they don't like your type no more, recognize it's a big ol' world out here. Somebody wants to fuck you, in a most wonderful way.

C0NT1NV0VSLY P3RPL3X3D...

 

continuously perplexed 
by how we stacked all these bricks 
into boxes we don't like 

SONG OF THE DAY: Loc'in On The Shaw

Tone Loc's tape gets overlooked a lot because he's seen as a one hit wonder by our fickle ass culture, even though he was still making music, voicing cartoon dogs, and getting into shootouts with the Boo-Yaa Tribe years later. Before The Dust Brothers got famous helping hone that wild ass Paul's Boutique sound for the Beastie Boys, they worked on Tone Loc's first album, which means there's all these amazing but forgotten beats. "Loc'in On The Shaw" is exactly that too, one of those "let's ride forever" beats that a person can freestyle to for at least 7000 miles before getting tired. I once woke up in Charlottesville, Virginia, and my alarm clock ipod randomly played this to wake me up, so I called in sick, and took a leisurely drive west, ending up in Montevideo, Uruguay, thirty-seven years later, having lived three lives along the way, in eastern Kentucky, the borderlands near McAllen, Texas, and finally in Montevideo, walking to see matches played at Estadio Cenentario when possible, sight of the first World Cup, spray painting haiku on alley walls in my horrible mangled Spanglish. Finally, I had to work on Monday, so I drove back home, playing the beat almost the entire way back as well, but deciding when near Texas to play DJ Screw's Syrup & Soda mixtape instead. When I got to Virginia though, I was worried my racist ancestors would be mad, so I put on some Willie Nelson for the last stretch. All of that happened in 2018, which shows you the timelessness of these beats lost on a Tone Loc album nobody will listen to because they think all he did was "Wild Thing".

FR33D0M'S JVST 4N0TH3R W0RD...

 

"freedom's just another word 
for nothing left to lose" tat 
across my pineal gland 

SONG OF THE DAY: Angel From Montgomery

I ain’t much on Sturgill Simpson, on the surface because his music felt like that forced “I’m different than regular country music” style anti-country music. “Even a black sheep is still a sheep” is a saying that has stuck with me about being too reactionary forces you to be attached to that which you’re reacting to. But beyond the surface level, he wears a cop mustache, which I never trust, even ironically, but especially in his case because his dad was actually a narcotics officer in the mountains of eastern Kentucky. You should not ironically be looking like a cop when your dad was an actual cop, and one of the most dishonest and deceitful sort. But Sturgill Simpson does, and I’m supposed to trust that. What my father taught me might’ve been discombobulated, chaotic, and filtered through the haze of drugs and alcohol, but one thing I remember clearly is DON’T TRUST COPS, OR PEOPLE WHO TRUST COPS.

I say all this because they had some sort of bullshit country music awards show a few weeks back, and some people had retweeted a Sturgill Simpson opinion about how disappointed he was at the fake ass country music awards show, they didn’t take a minute to mention the deaths of John Prine and Jerry Jeff Walker. Of course he positioned it in that cooler than thou light, that he only watched for a few minutes to see if they did it, not like he watched the whole fake ass thing. Of course he watched the whole thing though. But it’s also not like the fake country music industry gave a lot of love to guys like Prine, Hubbard, and Walker while they were alive, to be honest. Why would you expect different in death? Country music has always been fake as fuck, but since the ‘90s, after the rise of Garth Brooks in Nashville, it’s turned into even more of a mechanistic churning out of neurological trickery that sounds like music, behaves like music, so it must be music, when in actuality it’s just Wal-Mart muzak meant to market the American Empire. And it’s worked. The majority of people who consider themselves "country” are more likely to identify with sitting in a Wal-Mart parking lot than sitting by a creek, and they consider that to be what country means, especially when the Lowes is right there too. Wal-Mart/Lowes combination strip mall developments are a thousand times more country than a tobacco field in 2020 – ain’t no recount on that vote, because that’s how the majority feels.

So Sturgill Simpson taking his social media soapbox stance against the ever-present hypocrisy of country music industry just made me think, “lol, of course Sturgill Simpson did that.” His whole angle is positioning himself as a manufactured black sheep in opposition to the regular sheep. And he’d be played heavily at hipster breakfast restaurants in gentrifying spaces right now, if it wasn’t for the pandemic.

Anyways, John Prine died from complications related to Covid, which of course all those Wal-Mart parking lot country folk don’t think is real. All the sheep think they’re black sheep, overthrowing the wolves, but it’s just a bunch of fucking sheep, rambling around in various strip mall parking lots, lost in the buzz of late capitalist empire.

4LL TH3S3 N0 TR3SP4SS1NG S1GNS...

all these no trespassing signs 
have little authority 
with nobody else around 

SONG OF THE DAY: Colors

Stayed up too late the other night watching Boyz In Tha Hood again. My kid came down for a late night snack, and starting interrupting and asking questions, right when Tre and Ricky were in the alley and Ricky got shot. My kid’s like, “You look like you’re about to cry?” I was like, “Damn, Ricky just got shot.” I told her the basic layout of Tre, Ricky, and Doughboy, then she goes back into the kitchen. As she comes back out, they’re putting Ricky in the Impala to take home, and my kid goes, “Is that Bread?” I’m like what? She goes, “Bread? Dough? Whatever it was?” And then we talked about the plastic on the furniture at Ricky and Doughboy’s house for a few minutes before she got bored with my existence, like any tween would with their dad watching some old ass movie, and left again.

TH3 HVM4N BR41N K33PS TH1NK1NG...

the human brain keeps thinking 
it has to do something, it 
has to get somewhere - fools task 

TH3 P0W3R 0F L0VNG3 D03SN'T...

the power of lounge doesn't 
look like much, because it's not; 
somehow, that's hard to maintain 

CVLT1V4T1NG MY 1NN3R...

cultivating my inner 
weed mentality - fuck it, 
I'm gonna grow wherever 

SONG OF THE DAY: Mosquito Loco

Fuck it, no write up with this one. Just the most annoying beautiful cumbia song that was ever made (as far as I know). If you have MAGA neighbors, TURN IT UP LOUD AS FUCK, and shoot your guns into the ceiling. Or at least have a barrel fire. I've been in this new home of mine for almost three months, and still ain't got no burn barrel. Neighbors down below me by the river are burning trash, detritus, and scrap limbs every Friday night. Got the sky filled with trash fog now. And me up here, looking simple, ain't even got a burn barrel. Damn. Played myself again.

TH3 SVNS3T 4ND SVNR1S3 L00K...

 

the sunset and sunrise look 
similar, just coming from 
two different perspectives 

SONG OF THE DAY: Samuri Da Yan Matan

Walking the narrow road of “holding my shit together” in a society that seems hell bent on squeezing as much literal blood from folks stoned by hopelessness. I’ve wrestled with guilt lately for having brung children into this world, who will have to survive it after I’m gone. Haha, what a swerve – previous generations looked forward to playing with their grandchildren, and I’m sitting here feeling guilty I gave life to my children. I mean, I know it’s all perspective, and maybe all those times I stood in front of people babbling about how we don’t actually get to an end, there’s no wall that says “It’s over” for humanity, but that stubborn and persistent souls keep pushing forward. I guess I don’t feel that stubborn, or persistent right now, which also is probably normal, because we’ve been living in this fucked up purgatory, hiding from potential illness, as well as medical debt in America, and I still ain’t dug out from the debt that came about years ago.
That’s what’s so depressing about life in America now – it’s a burden to be alive. Most of us are losing money every day we remain alive, with no hope of that figure ever changing, so no wonder suicides are rising and people feel guilty for procreating. I just want to sink into a cocoon for three months, be left the fuck alone, zero expectations from anybody, and come back out with the redbuds, and see how shit feels at that point. But I can’t, because in America any day you don’t at least tread water to where it’s risen, you get flooded a little bit more. I can’t wait for this country to dissolve from what it is now. It’s going to be a great relief to a lot of people, even though it feels scary since it’s all we’ve ever known. But this shit ain’t working no more.

TH3 L3SS0NS 0F GR4FF1T1...

the lessons of graffiti - 
yesterdays get covered up, 
but also builds foundation 

SONG OF THE DAY: Why Do Everything Happen To Me

The guy that puts out the vegetables at the Food Lion in Scottsville is never wearing a mask over his mouth and nose, just sort of dangling, strapped to his chin, usually with a shit-eating grin on his face. I’m not the type to snitch to a manager, and the manager there has that redneck hip hop dude from 1991 who got a woman pregnant and is gonna do right by her the rest of his life look anyways, so he probably wouldn’t even care the guy wasn’t wearing his mask, and would just do that, “Look man, people complained. You just gotta be cool about it.” And fuckface would still be wearing his mask as a chin strap a week later.
The weird thing about our culture – if you can call it that – is how proudly stupid people have become. Even smart people. Shit everybody. If our culture is anything it’s one of self-importance, where we think we have to share our goddamn idiot thoughts on every single subject on social media. And then trending topics force us to give opinions about shit we didn’t even think about or care about otherwise. And it all gets to feel so stupid and overwhelming that when I’m trying to get through the stupid fucking Food Lion during a pandemic with rising numbers, and just grab the things I need, and I see the idiot pear-shaped redneck produce man standing there looking like a goddamn cartoon warning against electrocuting yourself from 1949, setting bags of onions out, I just wanna stomp him and the whole world into pulp. But I can’t, and don’t. I just buy my useless shit and go home, like everybody else, until the credit behind my name runs out, and I’m sleeping in the cold earth again.

TH0S3 WH0 P4SS10N4T3LY GR1P...

those who passionately grip 
at the past get trapped thinking 
tomorrow won't have sunshine 

SONG OF THE DAY: I Wanna Be Where You Are (Underboss Remix)

Yesterday, left work early to go walk through the yard and scribble my dumb shit into the industrial æther, performing such hits as "November in Railroad Earth", "Southern Inshallah", and "Nature Boy Whooo". After that, as the sun set, meandered in the direction of the new moon's silver sliver through the cybertron power lines carrying buzz over the Blue Ridge, and went to the nearly abandoned mall in Staunton, presumably to scope out old magazines at the junk book store that has overtaken the former J.C. Penney end, spreading into the concourse even. But they'd gotten rid of all the magazines, except for piles of National Geographics. I looked through the survivalism and art and photography sections, and almost bought a classic on ninja invisibility by Dr. Haha Lung, but chose not to, even though my girlfriend had store credit I could use. Is it true ninja invisibility to purchase a book on store credit in a dying American mall? I actually walked through, trying to find a bathroom. There was the inner side of the military surplus store, looking like it had cool shit inside but also that I might have to fight somebody for even considering to wear a mask. Not much else left in this mall other than a Jesus thrift store, cell phone shop, and the saddest Bath and Body Works I think I ever saw, like still hanging on but running with decor from four seasons ago maybe. My youngest loves that store so I've been in them way more than I care to admit, but fuck man, this one was doomed, beyond life support, just waiting for somebody to add the right function column to a spreadsheet in some far off building and go, "Wait! Why the fuck do we still have a store in Staunton?" and then it'll be gone too.
Nowhere to go, nothing to be, so I meandered my way back on 11, then 250, in the early evening winter night time, taking pictures of dying strip mall stores with bright lights but dead dreams. Stopped at the Sheetz, where of course covid doesn't exist for these rednecks, who aren't even rednecks anymore but some weird suburban wannabe hybrid that was steeped more deeply in the internet than back roads, and when their drunk uncle took them to the river to sit there and drink and get high, they must've been looking at social media more than the river, because these folks ain't rednecks, or country. But they also don't wear masks, and walk around like too many roosters in a chicken pen, so I wanna slit their throats, because that's how I was raised when there's too many useless fucking roosters strutting around the chicken pen, making things hard for everybody else.
Sadly, I'm probably wrong, and that is "country" in what this country is now - all of us penned up in our chicken runs, too many goddamned self-important roosters flapping around, making noise all the fucking time but got no real fight to them, and would die in the wild with the quickness. Me too. There's a dude living down below me by the river, and I walk past him and we go "hey!" at each other, but two or three nights down there in the cold November Blue Ridge foothills nights would destroy me. I'm too weak for this shit, to be dealing with all these dumbass roosters and dying malls and machetes that aren't sharp enough to cut through bone and winter in America.
Strangely, the military surplus store had lockers for rent on the concourse, with proceeds going to the Dolly Parton Literary Fund. It seemed interesting the store that appeared to believe antifa was a George Soros-funded militia, also supported Dolly Parton charities, but I have to remember not every living person gets feed the same digital stream of memes I do. They may not realize Dolly is a lesbian at heart, and rides rainbow candy-painted Harley Davidsons over the new moon every month. But also, who is going to use a locker at the mall? Only thing I could think of was nearly homeless people, who are likely not far from that mall, by the looks of things. I also tried to find a bathroom, which was at the far desolate end, by the movie theater I couldn't tell if it was actually operational or not, but also some claw machines, all by themselves. The bathrooms were blocked off with warning tape, and had OUT OF ORDER written on them. I started to walk away but a black dude popped out of some lavender bakery place and was like, "Oh you can use it, man. I was just trying to clean it up. It was fucked up in there." "Alright. I'll try not to mess it up," I answered. "Oh, you ain't got to worry 'bout it; you're good."
The floor was still wet, and my boots left black marks on the floor, and I felt horrible about it. He popped out as I was walking off and said, "Take it easy!" and I said thanks and also took it easy as best I could.
The whole thing was sad, because we're all out here still trying to feel good, still trying to survive, and I'm not sure where all the people who can afford things are. Downtown Staunton has become more gentrified, housing prices going up, pushing people into the suburban areas, which are spiraling downward, like that mall. Some lady was sitting at the desk and said over the PA that the mall was closing at six and to wrap up your shopping. I thought the book store was open til 8, but I also didn't want to find out if they were going to kick me out or not, because it gave me an excuse not to disappear like Dr. Haha Lung. So I did.
Also, I did not break up my conversation with the dude who cleaned the bathroom into multiple paragraphs, because it was all one conversation, and just like with malls, and American flags, and "country" people at the Sheetz, that 1950s shit doesn't apply anymore. Sorry, that's just how shit is.

N4T1V3 S0N 0F RVR4L S0VTH...

native son of rural south, 
but with futuristic hopes 
unfound in history books 

3X1ST3NT14L QV3ST10NS R1S3...

existential questions rise 
while realizing how mortal 
I am as winter sets in 

SONG OF THE DAY: Open the Door (Alternate Take)

Otis Redding is one of my all-time favorites. His voice has just never been matched. I'm about to light a few sticks of incense, draw a hot bath, plug in all 39 strands of purple and pink holiday lights, and vibe the fuck out.

SC4TT3R MY 4SH3S 4R0VND...

 

scatter my ashes around 
the sixty-ninth mile marker, 
between Bremo and Scottsville 

DR34M1NG 4B0VT H4V1NG SH1T...

dreaming about having shit, 
but knowing I won’t get it - 
politics of being trash 

SONG OF THE DAY: Old Firms

video 

There is no international break in the realms of the unreal.

D0M3ST1C4T3D G4M3C0CK...

 

domesticated gamecock 
of a human being, trapped 
inside fences I don’t see 

SONG OF THE DAY: Tre World Freestyle

video 

Hadn't even been six months since George Floyd got murdered by police in Minnesota. What the fuck? RIP Big Floyd.

H4RD N0T T0 F0LL0W P4THS L41D...

hard not to follow paths laid 
out for you; not as many 
cloverleafs as one would hope 

SONG OF THE DAY: Signoya

video 

The river is high from all the rain, which I like because it means that all the spots where people sit there drinking a quarter or pint or whatever, and bottles got left in the brush, it all gets washed loose and down the river. Then it recedes, and bottles which got moved about end up in the muck down below where I live, and I find them while tromping along the road. It takes a lot of patience to write poems on old river bottles, because you can't rush the finding of bottles. Nature has to do their part in the creative process. If I started forcing it, or getting bottles in a different way, I'd be turning creative process into manufacturing, and then I'd lose heart for it, because creation is a heart thing but manufacturing is a brain thing. Fuck my brain, in my opinion.

ST1LL M4K1NG P1LGR1M4G3S...

still making pilgrimages 
to American mosques of 
industrial fallacy 

SONG OF THE DAY: Cheeba Cheeba

 

video 

Randomly decided to look up famous graffiti artist Stay High 149, and turns out he was born in Southside Virginia, down in Emporia, before moving to the New York City at age 6 in the mid-1950s, and ending up in the Bronx around ‘66. Apparently he never knew his dad, but early on in graffiti’s late ‘60s/early ‘70s days, Stay High 149 became well-known, turning a haloed stickman figure from a popular TV show into a smoking character that was thrown up with his every time he did it, stylizing it in a way not everybody did at the time. By the time hip hop and graffiti was blowing up towards the mid-70s, Stay High 149 was a legend. He apparently had a job as a messenger downtown, so rode the train all day long, saw other tags, so started carrying markers with him and tagging all over. He got featured in a New York magazine article in 1973, including a picture, and the cops busted him afterwards once they knew what he looked like. He switched to other tags after that, then he sort of disappeared, still tagging but also battling drug problems, while raising and supporting a family. (He apparently tagged the stairwells of the World Trade Center extensively, because that’s where his job was based, before he lost it due to drug issues.) Around 2000, as internet culture and information sharing was developing, he ran into another graffiti writer, and found out his name still carried legend. He resurfaced, getting mobbed at a couple art shows he showed up to at the time, and got back into graffiti for a while. Norman Mailer’s “Faith of Graffiti” long essay had been released as a book with photographs of prominent graffiti back in ’74, and featured Stay High 149. It got reissued in 2009, and had a picture of a Stay High 149 tag on the cover of it. At the same time, the actual Stay High 149 could be found haggling prices for graffiti canvases on the streets of NYC. Once again, the archivist from within the system of respectability and authority got more wealth out of the deal than the originator and source of the material. Stay High 149 died in 2012, from liver disease, after a life spent battling those addiction demons. He’s got a government name that his obituaries go by, but his real name is Stay High 149, and to think otherwise is fucking stupid and disrespectful to how he lived his life.
Emporia used to have both an east-west and north-south train line, but the east-west has been shut down, like a lot of shit in Southside Virginia. Folks try to gentrify them into rails to trails, but weekend bikers will never bring the economy that actual functioning textile mills and factories gave folks. It’s a dead end town for the most part now if you don’t already have wealth to live off of. The north-south line still runs, operated by CSX, and the Amtrak still comes through, carrying folks up north to better opportunities or family or an escape to this day. There’s no yard there, so probably not any old freights sitting around, but I wanna go down there and tag up some Stay High 149s, as homage to an illegitimate arts legend, and where he was born, because ain’t nobody there gonna bother trying to remember shit like that.

C4RV1NG P03TRY 1NT0...

 carving poetry into 
rock faces where I live now - 
cold mountain meditations 

SONG OF THE DAY: Pass

The malls are all nearly empty now; they sold off the last headless department store mannequins a couple months back, 90% off the overpriced starting point. The only thing left now are a used book store where the old dude sells junk he gets in bulk for free from estate dump-offs, and the military surplus store, where you could get a nice knife but they're gonna look at you funny if you're wearing a mask of anything other than a beard and naive belief in freedom as a god. A couple stores can now afford rent where they used to be kiosks, and you always hope it turns into a giant international flea market, pull the unpainted food trucks up to the big double doors of the long gone tire center on whatever all purpose capitalist destination from three decades ago could give you tires along with your home goods, let the wretched of the earth, who have come here always but hidden in the corners of this country, finding shelter in the gaps between margins, let them thrive in this place. But it won't happen. The value of the land's potential is always more than what poor people can actually do with it. These old buildings will hang on, out of kindness to the small business owners who are respectably white, but eventually be bulldozed and hauled away, and replaced by a new investment opportunity, unfaded by time, bright and shiny and made of the newest plastics, which decay even more slowly than the ones from before, although it all ends up in the same pile eventually, far beyond the horizons we pay attention to. Those are the hills you see, cutting a skyline in the twilight of America, piles of rubble of dead dreams, with a thin layer of soil and grass sown over top, sprayed with pesticides to keep any dandelions or four-leaf clovers from blooming, and fucking up the eternal sameness.

SVP3RL4T1V3 3X1ST3NC3...

 

superlative existence 
is a liberal pipe dream; 
keep it simple, and stupid 

TH3 M3D1C1N3 0VR R4GG3D...

the medicine our ragged 
asses needs has always been 
all around us, in the wild 

SONG OF THE DAY: Jo Lean (Slurred & Blurred)

Jo Lean video 

SHOUT OUT TO DJ BRILLIANT, SLURRING IT AND BLURRING IT. He told me he'd never really listened to this song before he fucked with it, slowing it down and chopping it up. True artists understand the essence of the material they're working with, even without analysis. Without thinking. Shit just comes to you, naturally, like McDonalds bags full of fries to a pack of crows.

1NT3RN4L F3RM3NT4T10N...

 

internal fermentation 
of heart-first philosophy 
counters fast food disinfo 

SONG OF THE DAY: Robots Taking Them Jobs Away

VIDEO 

There's a Greater Appalachian Beer Tree down below where I live now, by the river, fruiting beer cans on branches in autumn. Contrary to popular belief, these trees are not native to the American continent. They originally came from the Scottish Highlands & Ireland, but they were used by the colonial elite, planted extensively just outside the walls of their English gardens in the "new" world, to block the view of the indigenous and enslaved. The trees down where I live are wild ones, mostly found in rural places now, but an organic “micro” beer tree is often used decoratively in gentrifying neighborhoods. It's derived from the same species. 

I took some pictures of the beer can fruit earlier, and then walked along the half-paved, half-gravel road by the river. While I was down there, someone in a gator across the river, up on the ridge, backed off and buzzed away. I kept walking, and dug out a brown stubby quart bottle at one spot, shaking the river and mud out of it, then setting it upright on the side of the road to see and grab on my way back. I'd already contemplated paint markering haiku on it with a dirtgod moniker and trying to trade it to anybody local for some other form of art.

Me and the dog kept walking, to the gravel, found both an abandoned outbuilding to a factory as well as an abandoned house, both maybe worth exploring but hard to gauge the neighboring people at this point. There's a weird mix of locals who probably have been families here for generations, and new school people, more affluent, who bought the nicer houses. A definite class divide, and I'm probably seen as the outsider, rightfully so because I ain't ever lived here before. Actually one of those fellow outsiders, who I knew from years ago and my ex-wife's women friends and their hippie workingman husbands/boyfriends, he stopped and talked for a few minutes. I know from talking to the landscaper guy that used to cut grass here, that those people are liked, so far as they're paying customers for local services. I don't know if the locally disenfranchised, or those who can't calm their wildness are all that accepted by the affluent buy-ins.

We finally turned back around, and as we got to the end of the gravel part I heard a mechanical buzzing coming towards us. A dude on a zero-turn mower turned the curve, saw us walking, waved, and turned back around. Me and the dog kept walking. Two ragged sedans roared through - you could hear them half a mile away, since nobody really drives this route, so the dog and I stepped aside. Both did drag racing takeoffs as best as possible in their dilapidated shit where the gravel turned to straight stretch asphalt. The smell of six cylinders pushed beyond ability burning fuel floated in the air. It was nice; I recognize that smell. I was born under one of those wild beer trees, and I've been working all my life at chopping it down, or at least trimming it back to where it's not in the way of everything.

The brown quart bottle was gone when we got back to that spot; I'd left it in a very specific lay of the land to not lose track of. I could see water dribbles beside where that spot was on the asphalt, and more up and down the road - the path of the zero turn mower. I was kinda like "what the fuck?" about the bottle being gone, but also who knows what that guy thought. It felt weird somebody across the ridge backed off, and then not long after some mower riding dude rode far enough to scope out where I was, but not to come talk. I guess he did wave though.

I was watching everywhere to try and figure out where the mower came from, looking back across the river to see if somebody was up on the ridge again, like a horror movie. Trump just got beat in the election. Those class divides between the affluent progressive whites who can buy shit out in the country, and the poor whites who don't really have shit, is gonna get more plucked now. But nobody was over there.

As I got back to where houses were, the folks across the street had a burn barrel going. I say "street" but it's really a road, and they live down in the bottom by the river just below the bridge that got built after the previous one and hydroelectric dam got washed out by a hurricane flood in '69. They're always buzzing around on four-wheelers there too. But I've been wanting a burn barrel, and hadn't gotten one, so I was admiring their compound from afar. One old trailer, with a blue light bulb on the porch, and a newer, but still old, doublewide closer to the end of the driveway, plus a couple outbuildings and a pop-up camper, popped up. The burn barrel had chairs and a pop-up tent covering over there too - definitely built for steady lounge. I saw a lady, maybe a teenager, maybe not, sitting at the burn barrel fire, all of this a good eighth mile away. I also saw the zero turn mower parked there. So that's who took the bottle back.

I watched, hoping somebody would look my way, so I could throw out a friendly wave. I don't know those folks and they don't know me, and judging by how embedded the trailers are in that compound, they've been here for a while. Way longer than me, two months into a thirty year mortgage I'll never live to see the end of. Nobody looked, and it was too far away for us to be like, "HOW Y'ALL DOING?" anyways. He missed his opportunity on the mower, but like my dog sniffing other piss smells, he was just seeing who I was most likely. I get it. I ain't from here. I mean, ultimately, in the great American context, neither is he, but I'm less from here, in this specific location, than he is. And the land might have thousands of years of history, people tend not to remember shit past their grandmother.

I can find another bottle next time. There ain't no shortage of litter in places like this, both in terms of empty alcohol containers and human lives that got left behind. It might seem weird to some that this dude took the one bottle I set up, while leaving behind all the rest of the litter along the road. But I get that thinking that ain't nobody fucking with my trash world except for me. I come from that, and still possess it. I think anybody who drank from the fruit of those beer trees knows that outlook. I should've known better than to leave that beautiful river trash bottle sitting there on the side of the road upright like that. Might not too many people go past that spot, but I'd be most everybody that does go through there knows what to look out for.

B4TT3R3D C0NT41N3R 0F 4...

 

battered container of a 
body blemished by mistakes, 
gives patina of wisdom 

SONG OF THE DAY: Pirate

 
VIDEO 

Trying to stream things is such a chaotic mess now. Music or shows just disappear, or move to some new thing you’re supposed to be like, “oh okay, let’s throw another $12 over here after throwing all these $5, $10, whatever the fucks everywhere else.” Fuck that, I’m going back to pirating shit, burning it to DVD, and then when the internet is shut down because too many people are coordinating where they’ll be to flip over police Humvees together, when I get home after a long weekend of rioting, and put my tear gassed track suit in the wash, I know I can still enjoy Iron Chef, by just slipping a media disc into the machine.

P3RF3CT10N 41N'T P0SS1BL3...

 perfection ain't possible 
when trapped in this human form; 
too much worshipping of self 

SONG OF THE DAY: Soub Hanak

 
VIDEO 

Intentions are important. One of the worst things about this human age where we have been trained to believe we’re machines with mechanistic schedules, where we have to be productive, and achieve goals all the time that are laid out like a project manager’s flowchart, is that we go through the physical motions in a lot of parts of our life. I mean, I’m writing this while going through the physical motion of being "at work”, while at home, which means that productivity has crept into the space I’m supposed to be free from that shit. Going through the motions, of appearing to be doing something while our heart (or mind) is not emotionally into it, at all. And in fact, I’d say a lot of our current politics has began to mimic this entirely, where we’re now in a pro wrestling-esque political age, with all these grifters who play characters that start to reap benefits, so they then remain that character, even if it’s not how their mind actually feels. But they do it so long and so hard, that the angle they’re selling becomes what they believe. They start to become victim to their own con, and become that shit. And to be honest, there’s a lot of capitalist-based self-help people who will instruct you as to exactly that – the one path to economic success is to believe those things without listening to your heart at all, and forgetting the humanity of others or the beauty of the natural world, and only “work” towards those “goals”.

Intentions though, are giving voice to our heart, before our body goes through deliberate physical motions. Speaking what our heart (mind) actually believes, so that the body knows in advance, “This is why we are about to do this thing.” It’s important, because I know I feel much better about what I’m doing if I do it purposefully, instead of getting to the end and being like, “What happened?”

Of course, there’s a lot of unexpected and unexplained that still happens – both positive and negative. There’s always little signs of whether you’re on a good or bad path with that too, which a lot of folks ignore, call superstition or silly, but I live by that shit. Even today, saw a big bright beautiful quartz rock sticking out a fallen tree’s roots/dirt clump while tromping through the woods with the dog. That was a great sign on the day; I knew I was doing good. But I also went into the woods with the intention of not thinking about civilized dramas, and just taking the dog out there to sniff around, and be outside, and see what happens. The dog’s gotta shit, and they can’t do it in the house.

The full moon was last weekend, so the new moon’s not too far away. They use the sighting of the new moon as marker to switch months in the Islamic calendar. I like that, and to be honest, my heart prefers that to Gregorian calendar. My brain has been taught otherwise, in a deep cultural way, so as my heart and brain battle for what my mind does, there’s not a lot of give on the Gregorian calendar. But I practice observing the Islamic calendar, because it makes way more sense to me, innately. The new moon is also, traditionally, considered a time to sow your intentions. It’s also, quite literally the time farmers planted, because according to those unknown vagaries people lived by before the scientific age claimed dominion over the Earth, it was better to do so. So I’m gonna try to get some new moon intentions together, maybe start trying to have my months (according to those new moon delineations) have a little more of my heart speaking some plans into existence, at least some hopes, before my body starts going through the routine motions that occupy most of an average month. I’d like my body to be giving me more happiness, and not just fucking around wasting my life going through motions that I could give half a fuck about.

G3TT1NG L0ST 1N TH3 F00TPR1NTS...

 getting lost in the footprints 
I wish was just left behind, 
but online is forever 

SONG OF THE DAY: レッドブルとグミ

 

VIDEO 

Nothing is really any different today than it was yesterday. Next Wednesday won’t be all that different from last Wednesday either. There are always subtle changes happening, but these human mind made catastrophic dramas are never what we make them out to be. Ever since dualistic theology overtook our ways, we fall into these “good vs. evil” traps, and forget the spectrum of spirits that exist between and beyond the binaries. If you’re really feeling bad though, I suggest burning some shit. I like to call it “archiving in ash”. It can be helpful, on both a personal and political level.

N0 M4TT3R WH3R3 1 G0 1N...

 no matter where I go in 
late American empire, 
I leave digital footprints 

SONG OF THE DAY: Legs

VIDEO LINK

I have found my best stress response is to walk, preferably where there’s not a lot of human activity but with the detritus of civilization still around. Railroad tracks obviously are great for this, but so are back roads through dying towns. It’d be great to be walking ten miles a day, without all the time constraints of a job, and just scribbling the weird shit that comes into my mind on trains or notecards or tiny doll-sized dollar store composition books. Ideally, I’d even just be walking twenty miles a day, but not counting the miles either, just knowing I walked enough that it was probably that amount, composing scraps of poems in my mind, like a late American Taneda Santoka, or even a new school Vachal Lindsay. I mean, obviously I’d just be Raven Mack, not anybody else, and the fact I think I’d be a reflection of some earlier entity is probably why I’ll still honor my responsibilities of employment and financial obligation, and not walk off after the horizon. But that’s the ideal life. My legs would grow as big as ox, and I’d stick and poke tattoo my favorite poems on them, or maybe just freestyle poems onto my legs in those moments where I felt most attuned to the universal magnetics, slowly stick and poking the words into order. Yeah, that’s the dream right there.

DR34MS 0F DR1V1NG 4FT3R TH3...

 dreams of driving after the 
horizon five or six days 
straight, and not coming right back 

SONG OF THE DAY: Mi Vida Loca (Slowed-n-Dro'd)

I have decided I’m against time. It only fucks up my days, months, years, and it’d be better to stop paying such close attention to it. Unfortunately, most of the mechanisms of being an allegedly productive member of society revolve around punctuality, or at least being close to on time. “Time is money” is some shit tattooed into our subconscious. Fuck it though. I’m going for a walk – a long walk of a half a million miles, for about twenty minutes or so. Everything from now on is “twenty minutes or so”. When will I be there? Twenty minutes or so. How long ‘til dinner? Twenty minutes or so. When will you retire? Twenty minutes or so. How long will this existential nightmare continue? Twenty minutes or so. See? It’s not so bad.

N0T S0 MVCH W0RK1NG CL4SS 4S...

 not so much working class as 
I'm hating work it doesn't 
do shit to help my damn life class 

R00F3RS 4R3 N0T SKY W4LK3RS...

 roofers are not sky walkers; 
preachers are not prophets; and 
instagram poets are wack