9 to 5

First, it was Dolly. Then right after, Tim. Both of which happened not long after we lost Ozzy.   And the absence of his beautiful darkness still lingers loud—it would be great if all the cultural icons could maybe take a break from crumbling away. But I guess that’s just not the way of the world. Sometimes, bad things come at you fast. Crashing over your head. Stabbing at your heart. Tearing at your gut. An unstoppable “9 to 5” tsunami of brutal “what the fuck was that?” Every goodbye is a reminder; every funeral is a souvenir of that terrible secret they never tell when you’re growing up—there is fuck all you can actually do to stop any of it. Because every thing, and every one, …

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The City

I can still remember when The City was new. Everything sparkled clean back then—even me. Because I was stubbornly trying to make healthier choices in those days for the sake of a surrogate family to which I was never actually entitled. But I still tried to hold on to them all the same. There was a certain magic attached to all the strange street signs. The green ones hanging higher than I ever was. Fresh adventures sparked with every GPS guided misturn. Enticing surprises lurked around every quirky neighborhood’s twisted corner. You just had to be brave enough to actually make that fucking turn. Everything now is just stagnant; everything now just smells like decay. You can literally smell the city dying. When the wind off …

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Capital City Bender Blues

Hot concrete alleyways. The reek of stale piss. Potholes and pitfalls. Destruction buffered by neon orange barrels. Barricades blinking caution. Fresh spilled asphalt and naked construction ringing named neighborhoods once historic in nature. The ones now desperately trying to make all the old things back new again. The Capital City.   Its face familiar to me since those early summertime drives. But strangely foreign to me now that I’ve seen it through the bendered lens of an empty bottle’s bottom.  Strange vibrations tangle unsteady feet. Green glass lies echo everywhere. Ugly graffiti, sprayed with the rattle can of memory, howls. Because no matter how many times it gets power-washed under high-proof pours, traces still linger undefined.  Another sleepless night. A fresh spring giving birth to more stillborn …

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Day Drinking

I adore the anonymity of a dark bar.   There is significant comfort found in their high-proof nonconformity. No emotional quarter is asked. And none is given—leave that fucking baggage at the door, friend. Because if the place is sufficiently dive enough, conversation rarely extends beyond monosyllabic sentences grunted across the bar.  Nobody talks. Or fucks with you. Unless you’re being an obnoxious drunk. That’ll get you thrown out. Or your ass kicked. There’s just no tolerance for that kind of amateur shit. At least not at three o’clock on another under-employed Friday afternoon. No one cares if you are stumbling in to join the other professional flies on maybe the worst day of your life. They frankly don’t give a shit about you. Even better, you …

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You Call This a Storm?

I didn’t think about the kids. I ordered another round instead.  Because that’s just what dirtbag, tin kicking 🦊s do on a random 517 Tuesday. On an angry night. When the storms blow in hard from the Great Plains. Gathering their strength out over the expanse of the big lake. Building destructive momentum. And painting the pallets of handheld radars with angry colours. The stuttering bite of backlit lightning silhouetted the curved outline of barely tolerated Eurotrash when her engines finally spooled up. Tolerated because at least it wasn’t a shitty downsized 757. That clunky beaked tin monster that’s a fucking chore to feed. Because its loose load bellies are a claustrophobic nightmare of knee punishing Boeing bullshit. The unremarkable Airbus generally fills the scheduling gaps …

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The New Old Town

It was a February tease of a premature Michigan spring. A dishonest one. Because like most things here in the land of misunderstood Mittened madness, it wasn’t really real anyway. Just another Clinton County night spent pretending to be human. But at least it was a night warm enough to finally melt away all the fucking snow. Erasing all the ice clinging stubbornly to this 517 speed dialed insanity. And teasing a springed hope from all the inconvenient mud. But somehow, things inside remained rigidly frozen. And that left me aching for a different kind of thaw. Instead, I was rewarded with only an unseasonably foggy West Clark Road. The one lined with all the damn deer. Those tragic creatures cursed with a stubborn stupidity compelling …

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Bottom Shelf

She said that this city is killing me. And, she is probably right. I feel the bite of that malignancy every fucking time the boulevard coughs and sputters. Or when I have to pivot myself to the floor to dodge the popping clack of turf wars erupting outside the second story of my window. I never wanted to fucking be in Michigan— shamrocked things were always much more my style. Because I was born with an insatiable hunger for something green. And the broken browns of dead Midwestern corn are at best a cruel joke. But here I am.  Suffering through the suffocation of another Ingham County overnight. Just rotting away in the inconsistent squeeze of a misunderstood Mitten’s grip. And expiring slow in the farcical …

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Ramp Rats

Gold and orange autumn canopies arched over broken Michigan asphalt. Reflective ocular cautions of migratory deer lined the road curving out past the grip of those unhealthy Clinton County mirages. Glaring glances peeked accusingly from the fields of brown corn recently broken in the harvest. And they constantly threatened unexpected collisions during the entirety of that wandering Tuesday night Airport Drive. It made me want to collapse into the want of someone. But that was just another 517 impossibility. And my heart fucking knew it. So I could only keep driving.  Pushing myself down past the awkward highway interchanges. And up around the curves where the numbered signs stop making sense. Because I was always taught that 69 should mean north and south. Not east and …

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517 Skeletons

Somewhere amongst the curled pages of a yellowing manuscript lies my truth; somewhere beneath broken Michigan heartbeats hides my story. And in the space between the division of those divorcing concerns, somehow I survive. But, barely. My mornings are partnered with throbbing afternoon hangovers; my nights are too often invested chasing after ghosts. Lingering translucent amongst the memories in all those windows; reflecting on shadows cast across Old Town alleyways. Straining to hear the echo of old laughter before the tin monsters steal the last of my hearing for keeps. Because I can’t fucking remember the last joke she said to me. Robbed of my favorite little hill by the blight of renewed expansions, I seek another sanctuary amongst strange geography. Slinking haphazardly across inconsistently patched …

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Crossroads

It isn’t often that life affords you the opportunity to stand at a literal crossroads. But there I was. A high-viz collar turned up against the darkness of Turner at my back. East Cesar E. Chavez stretching out beside me. Facing the curves of the planked river trail. The one skirting the spot where the fish are supposedly laddered around.   The song of water dancing over the dam filled the symphony of another Old Town night. And for once, I wanted to be safe in the sound of something. Because everything else has proven itself a whole lot of nothing. And the claustrophobic silence of that vacuum left a nervous fox drinking fidgeting. To the west, orange barrels lined the bridge. Their rigidly spaced regularity paced …

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