long cold nights under the influence of Ray-guns.....Ronnie Ray-guns that is. Some of you might remember him; the actor-turned president-turned name sake of an airport. I remember the cold nights in Chicago. I remember the long hours hunting shop lifters for K-Mart.
Can we all remember the sudden tidal wave of the homeless? Ray-Guns freed them from the nut houses and they gravitated to the streets. Some circles still praise him for this. Some circles criticize him for under funding social services to pay for his ray-guns.
My step-son wrote the bastard a letter after he got shot. Some circles express horror when Hinckley acquires a weekend pass to visit his parents. It got so cold in Chicago one night the battery in my Plymouth Duster froze. Some circles won't believe that, circles who never venture out of Southern California, the spiritual homeland of ray-guns.
I spent one of those frigid Chicago nights sleeping in my car after an argument with my wife. None of us grasped the intractability of the homelessness problem that emerged during the age of Ray-guns. Some circles shudder with orgasmic nostalgia at the very mention of his name.
Can we all remember the contras? I remember reading Ernesto Cardenal in a tiny but toasty suburban library. I wonder how many in that small oasis, other than myself, knew that he played a major role with the Sandinistas. Some circles still claim Ollie North as a hero second only to Ray- Guns himself.
I remember the preacher I caught stealing at K-Mart. I remember the wind howled that night and flurries stung the face. Some circles find solace and answers in the Bible. Some circles can't wait to consult with Ray-guns in the great beyond.
I remember closing the Cardenal and walking into the iced over parking lot. Some circles react to this story by praying I fell and broke something that bitter cold and unholy night.
open skies and sacred dope....We get the hell out of town. We take our mongrel lap-dog with you. We take that new digital camera and those battered Wal-Mart walking shoes. We get into the open country where the winds blow free.
What we discover are the crumbling pavement and rusting, teetering bridges. What we discover are pastures chewed to death by atv's and washed away by over grazing. What we encounter are invasive species that choke out all native life and swarms of dope fiends that invade every forsaken farmhouse. What we fail to discover are peace and insight and community under the sacred skies of the pioneers.
What we fail to uncover the one thing we set out to find; the ashes of heirloom spirituality.
wild Palestinian bucks.....Wild rice simmers in the pot while our economic experts evaluate GDP and guesstimate inflation and pull down big (to us, but measly to Ted Turner) bucks.
When the rice gets done I toss in a couple cans of oysters while our military experts devise new tactics and publish revised casualty reports and pull down big (to us, but puny to any self-made king) bucks.
After we finish eating, we wash the dishes and I feed the dogs and we sit down in front of our worn out SANYO to await tomorrow's grueling hours of small (to us but huge to any unemployed Palestinian) bucks.
pale spiritual.....Someday, when I'm ready for it, somebody will tap me on the shoulder as I get out of my car to shop for a printer. She'll say "pardon me; take this manuscript to your leaders. With these insights they can save your world." I'll think, "What a beautiful, ethereal, spiritual, extra-terrestrial Halle Berry!" I'll ogle the body under her pale green diaphanous gown as I take the papers from her hand and jam them into my sweaty back pocket.
Later that day, I'll jam her vital message under a pile of my own useless scribbling. I won't bury her communication because I'm a bad person. I won't conceal it because I'm a weak person. I'll do it because I no longer believe we know how to make contact with our leaders.
rosy fraud.....Lemon grove people, I call them. People of the sunny disposition. People of the rosy outlook. People born to own and reside in a wonderful sun dappled lemon grove on a picturesque coast line that's never felt the impact of a bomb or fretted over the steep decline in union membership.
I can't recall ever feeling rosy. I don't know how to breathe without my sense of gloom. I know, without a doubt, I wasn't born to live in a lemon grove. I was born to own and live in this tumble-down shack that's buffeted by constant prairie winds.
When I try to grow roses around my shack, they shrivel and die. I can imagine what would happen with lemon trees.
When I look at pictures of a pretty coast line, I see nothing but a wicked fairy tale filmed by Goldman-Sachs operatives for the purpose of defrauding my cosmic bumptiousness.
Ex-firefighter, ex-beat cop, ex-dirt farmer/cowhand/bouncer and current garden center flunky; Frank Sloan lives and writes in a small shack near the heart of the American empire.