Relief in action

Thinking I must sweep away
of the shards of glass
strewn about my skull’s
floor; enough broken things
already.

Thinking I must turn
the dust in my heart into
sand castles before the sun.

Thinking I must go
beyond the dullness that
grips a man when the lights
have gone astray in the
shadows of day to day
existing.

Thinking I am not lost
at all. Everything is there
has been there whenever
I wanted it, even I, and the
fault of sorrow lies with the fool
who loves to kiss the decrepit
lips of his own corny self
importance.

Thinking I only have
to will this like putting on a pair
of running shoes; there’s no
argument, there is no thought on
the matter, just these shoes
that will go on the feet and let one
walk, or run, among the jagged surface.

Thinking I have only
to look passed too much thought
so that instead of tripping and falling over
I can laugh at the cracks of the world.

Ezra Pound sniffs my underwear

Ezra Pound

selected poems of

i bought it used

at the advice of countless

poets and writers

(see how astute i am)

i only understand 5%

of that book

for now

and despite his high jinks

i can see some good

nutrition there

the profile of the

author-poet is

on the book’s cover

i went to the bathroom

i don’t remember if

to excrete or to shower and

my dirty underwear was

strewn on the bathroom

floor

and Pound’s book was

right side up

with the profile up against

my undies

well

it looked as if mr. Pound was

sniffing my unmentionables

i gasped

hooollllee!..

no Ezra

no!

copyright 2004, by Arturo royal

one about Kurt Cobain

Kurt,

well, you blew your

brains out.

that wasn’t so bad, many

do.

too much dope, or maybe

too much

life for one so

naive & young.

when they found you

you were nothing like in

the those magazine pictures.

instead

you were all bloated and

minus a face -a

ridiculous sight if you ask me.

but don’t ask me anyhow.

when you died,

i’m sorry to say, it didn’t matter

too much

to me.

just like when Johnny Lennon

got shot in N.Y. city back in ’80

-but, as they say, that’s another story.

better men than you

-and me-

die every day. never given

the chances we get,

the chance to just be, or

to bring something better into

this world;

a thought?

an opus?

a new meaning to things?

maybe they bring better things for

themselves, maybe for us as

well, but

one never finds out.

they’re plucked away too soon, too

damn fast, for anyone to notice.

while the rest of us piss away our lives,

our chance,

in petty complaints, with full belies

and skulls full of shit.

besides, Kurt, your

stuff

wasn’t that good anyway.

copyright 2005, by Arturo Royal

Cheap entertainment at Jimmy’s

There wasn’t anything else to do. I laid on my army cot of a bed and let my mind form strange images from the water spots on the ceiling paint. Might as well go visit Jimmy. I told mom I was going to visit Jimmy, to not wait for me for supper or anything.

Jimmy’s house was six to seven long blocks away. I felt lazy to walk them, but I did anyhow.

His house was located behind another one. Jimmy’s was a two bedroom job that was having trouble holding up. Jimmy McInnis lived there with his two brothers, Abe, the oldest, Killroy, the youngest, and his lesbian mom, Nancy.

I knocked on the door. Jimmy answered.

‘Hey, ’sup,’ he said.

‘’Sup,’ I said.

I walked in. The place stank of cigarette smoke and baloney. Nancy was a heavy smoker. Jimmy had probably just eaten lunch. Baloney sandwiches was all those guys ate. That was all there was in their fridge: baloney, white bread, and ice cubes in the freezer. He was the poorest white man I had ever met. Even poorer than me; and I was as poor as Mexican in Mexico. His lack of a phone won him the contest.

‘Wah’cha up to dude.’

‘Oh, same shit, different day, you know...,’ I said.

Jimmy was all grins. All the time. Hardly ever a frown on the mug. He was a white trash pretty-boy. All the girls in high school raved about him. He fucked a good percentage of them too. I was both happy for him and envious of his luck. He knew it and none of it mattered much to him one way or the other.

There was a small, brand-new surfboard on the stinky carpet of his bedroom floor. Jimmy was waxing it up. He loved the beach; surfing; he was ok at it. We both lived near the beach; about ten blocks away. I plopped myself on his concave bed. There was a faint odor of piss and dried spooge (dick juice) on the mattress. The blankets(?) looked & smelled like they hadn’t seen the likes of water for a year.

‘What’s with the new board?’ I asked.

He kept waxing the thing and answered without looking at me, ‘I snaked it from some white trash, rich piece of shit in Coronado beach yesterday....’

Talk pauses. I look around habitually, thinking of nothing.

‘...Yeah, man, the fucker just walks away to meet with his fucking chick at the shore, leaving this puppy standing in the sand, like he was in one of those stupid ass sixty’s movie, ha ha ha...’

‘Oh yeah? Hey, but aren’t you a white trash man yourself?’

‘Aw fuck no man! Well, yeah I’m white trash but not as white as that dude.’

‘How you figure that?’

‘Well... I hang out with you beaners!’

‘Interesting point.’

‘Yeah....’

‘So you just took the thing, just like that. Nobody saw.’

‘Naw, those rich fuckers live in la la land, they don’t think shit happens to them, ever.’

‘Huh.’

‘Yeah, I just grabbed it like I owned it, put it on my ten-speed, and rolled on home. I’m gonna test it out tomorrow, not much of a swell right now they say. Tomorrow we should get some good six-footers.’

He reached over and put a tape in his old tape player. The music came out with lots of static, and muffled.

‘This is the new PURPLE ASS HAIRS album... shit rocks, dude!’

‘Oh yeah, TRIPLE NIPPLES, I’ve heard about it.’

The music went on for a while. Jimmy kept going on the surfboard.

‘Hey man, you got anything to drink around here? And I don’t mean water.’

‘Well, there’s some beer Killroy got from a party.’

Killroy, at sixteen, could drink any veteran drunk under the table. Nancy would hassle him about drinking in the house, but not outside. Killroy was seldom home.

‘Oh, wait....’ Jimmy went to the kitchen and came back with a fifth of extra dry gin.

‘Here man. I forgot one of my mom’s friends left this shit.’

Jimmy always called Nancy’s lovers her ‘friends’. He didn’t think I knew his mom was a dyke. He was ashamed of it. I thought he was a weird guy. I took the bottle and took a nice, easy hit. It was good stuff. I took three more consecutive hits. Everything was better now. Jimmy kept waxing that damn surfboard.

‘Hey man, you wanna go with me to the beach tomorrow?’

‘Nah, I hate the fucking place...’

‘Aw, there’ll be some pussy out there!’

‘Yeah, but I still don’t want to go to that fucking place, too much crowd for me. Other than pussy, you understand.’

‘Yeah.’

He said, ‘hey man, you wanna see something?’

‘Yeah,’ and I took another hit.

He went over to the bathroom and came back a few seconds later. Jimmy had what looked like spandex shorts on his hands, and they were. They were black with pink seams. He turned the things inside out and

showed me the crotch area of the shorts. There was a spot of crusty whitish-yellowish stuff in that area.

‘What the hell is that?’ I asked.

‘This is Corina’s spandex shorts. Abe was wearing them last night. They weren’t washed. This is Corina’s pussy juice, and Abe was wearing them like that, ugh!’ Jimmy wrinkled his nose and curled his upper lip.

I leaned over to get a closer look. Dried vaginal effluvia alright.

‘Did he know they belonged to Corina?’

‘Yeah. I think he likes wearin’ that shit because he can’t get any pussy himself, so he tries to get some kind of kick out of wearin’ those things with the pussy stuff in ’em.’

‘Makes sense. I mean all of it.’

‘Yeah.’

Abe was a nerdy type of guy. He was into all those ‘game clubs’ in high school. Needless to say, no vagina for Abe throughout high school. Corina, wasn’t too bad looking for a lady in her late thirties. I can see why Abe might have fantasies about his mom’s lover. Yeah, it all made perfect sense.

Abe was Jimmy’s mirror image: jimmy was short, Abe was tall, Jimmy was into sports and was muscular, Abe couldn’t care less about exercising and was a weakling, etc.. He could’ve been some kind of school-boy smart guy; he read a lot. But his grades were shit. Most of us subnormals had the same GPA.

Nancy & Corina had met at work; a town dive-bar a few blocks away from Jimmy’s place (That was my guess anyway). I didn’t mind that too much because sometimes for kicks, me, Jimmy and a couple of other kids would go there when we ditched class, and if the owner -BULL- wasn’t there, we’d get to drink under age and for free.

Jimmy threw the shorts back where he’d found them and went back to his surfboard. I passed the bottle to him without saying a word. He grabbed it and hit it pretty damn good. He grimaced and belched, the way boys do when they’re trying to be men. I took the bottle back and did the same thing. The board was getting it’s wax massage again. About a half hour passed. The music was coming out loud and good, or good and loud. Drinking made it sound better than it was.

‘Hey, you wanna see something?’

‘Yeah.’

He went over to his closet. There was a lot of clothes in there, mostly dirty, of course, and yanked out a pair of brown pants.

‘These are Moe’s,’ he said, and grabbed the waistline of the pants, showing me that there was a used pair of underwear inside them, as if someone -Moe, in this case- had been in a hurry to take their clothes off to go shower or switch clothes or something, and leaving the underwear inside the pants. The belt was still on even. The underwear were white

briefs, and there was a spot of excrement a doorknob’s worth in diameter and a quarter of an inch thick. My stomach almost returned the gin back to the sender.

‘Oh godammit! Doesn’t Moe know how to wipe his ass, Jesus Christ!’

‘Few! he he he, yeah man, I saw this as I was looking for a shirt to wear today, my hand missed that shit by an inch! Moe’s staying over for a few weeks. He had a fight with his mom and she kicked him out of her house, so he’s looking for a place to rent. My mom said it would be alright for a month or so, until he finds a spot.’

‘Oh.’

He put the shitty pants & undies away and went back to the pilfered surfboard, and I went back to the parched gin. Moe was another one of the guys I knew from school. He was a black guy with a Puerto Rican mix and as right as anyone of us.

‘Hey Arturo...’

‘Yeah.’

‘...Remember little Johnny Gutierrez?’

‘Yeah, the little Mexican homie with the long hair. I haven’t seen him in a long time, since even before graduation... about a year? maybe? What’s up with him?’

‘He got shot, dude. Little Johnny and cross-eyed Mike were going home from a party. They were shit-faced and thought of making it home faster by cutting through someone’s yard; it was a house close to their street. So they go over the wooden back fence and begin making it through the backyard toward the front when they see some nigger jump out of the side window of the house. The nigger sees cross-eyed Mike and little Johnny, and jets it over the wood fence that’s right across that part of the house. He don’t seem right to them. All of a sudden this white dude is parking his car in the house’s driveway and jumps the fuck out of the car, he don’t seem to have seen the nigger, just Mike and Johnny, and says, “hey! what the fuck are you mother fuckers doing!” Meanwhile, little Johnny and cross-eyed Mike see that another nigger is still in the house and tell the white dude this; they’re pretty sure the white guy’s the guy who lives in that house. Then the nigger that was in the house gets out the front door, the white dude is gonna confront him but sees the heat in the nigger’s hand, so he backs off because he don’t wanna get shot, seems he’s gonna let the nigger go when little Johnny -too fucking drunk to know better- goes after the nigger.

Cross-eyed Mike just stands there, frozen, the white dude too, little Johnny yells something at the nigger, the nigger turns to little Johnny and very fucking calmly lets three fucking bullets go at little Johnny’s torso, then the fucking nigger turns slowly around -as if the other two weren’t even there- and just walks the fuck away. Little Johnny didn’t go down though.

The white guy runs over to little Johnny and asks if he’s alright, tells them he’s going to get the cops and an ambulance. Cross-eyed Mike goes over to little Johnny and tries to sit him down. They’re both still drunker’n shit but try to keep it together...’

‘How the fuck do you know all this?’

‘Cross-eyed Mike told me a week ago.’

‘Jesus.’ I took another hit of gin.

‘Yeah. So anyway, cross-eyed Mike tells me that he sits little Johnny down on the side steps of the white dude’s house. You can’t even tell little Johnny’s been shot; there’s no blood you can see anywhere, only holes in his grey sweatshirt. Little Johnny’s face is all grey & shit, just like his sweatshirt, and sweaty, his pupils are dilated as fuck, he’s shivering all over, I mean he’s dying. At first, he jokes a bit with cross-eyed Mike -like nothing’s happened, he’s still drunk, but then, I guess, it finally hits little Johnny that he’s gonna croak. Little Johnny looks cross-eyed Mike (this whole shit is what cross-eyed mike told me, so...) in the eye (he he he, sorry) and say’s the last words he ever spoke, he says, ‘hey man... I can feel my life leaving me....’ Then the ambulance gets there, puts little Johnny in a stretcher, little Johnny barely makes it on the thing when he slips into a fucking comma and dies an hour after he gets to the goddamn hospital.’

‘That’s pretty goddamn dramatic. Jesus, poor little Johnny... can I have a beer? this gin is pretty much done.’

‘Oh, yeah.’

Jimmy goes to the fridge and gets me the beer. There’s no more to do with the surfboard, its finished. Jimmy goes and gets himself a beer too, comes back to his room, sits on a greasy chair in a corner by the closet.

We don’t say much. I was getting a bit bored (haha). It was better with the booze in me though, I won’t complain much. No, actually that’s not quite correct: I was thinking I was going to get bored just sitting there. Jimmy was staring at the floor, listening to the ruckus that was being spat out of the beat-up tape player, chugging at his beer, quiet, quiet. I had the sudden urge to pick up the empty gin bottle and send it hurtling through Jimmy’s bedroom window, but it wasn’t out of any kind of anger or aggression or even malice I simply wanted to see the after effects of such a contingency: what shapes the broken glass would take, where would the glass fall -the inside to outside ratio, where would the bottle fall, would it break, would any remaining liquid fall onto the carpet, what would Jimmy do, would he kick me out, would we get in a fight, etc.. A simple experiment in arithmetic. Though Jimmy’s face would’ve made a better target, and a much more anomalous, if fascinating, equation. Don’t worry though, I wasn’t -or aren’t- that numb. I think I just wanted to have some pussy or something... who knows what the hell I wanted. To hell with it; I

let those thoughts drift away into the depths of my alcoholic bliss. Best way to get rid of pesky cerebral meanderings.

We heard the voice of Nancy coming into the house. She wasn’t alone. Corina was with her. They didn’t sound too happy. An obvious lover’s quarrel. I looked at Jimmy’s face. He was still staring at the floor; or pretending he was staring at the floor. I wondered how the hell he was going to get out of this one; meaning: how was he going to explain away this lesbian cat fight. There was a lot we didn’t hear in the beginning, I’ll admit, and a great deal of what we did hear was a lot of innuendo, or could be misconstrued any-which-away. But as the battle went on I pricked up my ears.

Nancy: ‘YOU FUCKING SLUT! YOU FUCKED HER DIDN’CHA! I LOVED YOU, I LOVED THE SHIT OUT OF YOU AND FED YOU AND GAVE YOU EVERYTHING YOU WANTED, AND MY HEART, MY WHOLE HEART, YOU FUCKING BITCH!!!’

Corina: ‘NO, NO, I DIDN’T! YOU’RE SO FUCKING JEALOUS. YOU’RE EVEN JEALOUS OF MEN, YOU KNOW I’D NEVER FUCK A MAN! YOU’RE JUST A FUCKING CONTROLL FREAK, EVERYTHING HAS TO BE DONE YOUR WAY. I CAN’T EVEN TALK TO MY FRIENDS ANYMORE BECAUSE OF YOU, I HATE YOU...’

And so on and so forth.

We never saw them, only heard them through Jimmy’s bedroom door, which was a bit ajar.

Finally I felt much better. I drained the last of my beer and threw the can in the miniature trashcan beside Jimmy’s bed, where I was sitting. I looked up at Jimmy and he looked up at me, he was smiling with that famous smile, but nervously. He drained his beer. He belched, I belched.

‘Damn, they act like they were in love or something, he he.’ He was worriedly insinuating that there was nothing to it -I probably heard wrong, and so forth.

‘Hey Jimmy, I’m getting hungry man, lets get some fries at the taco shop, those beaners make some kick-ass carne asada fries.’

‘Hey man, but aren’t you a beaner yourself?...’

‘Now listen, Jimmy, don’t gimmie any shit....’

He searches through his pockets.

‘He he, oh hey, look, I got two bucks, how much you got?’

‘Uh, about three seventy seven...’

‘That’ll do it. I’ll put my flip-flops on.’

He got his flip-flops on.

‘Lets go.’

we went.

By that time Nancy & Corina were in their bedroom, still fighting. They never saw us leaving, they never even knew we were there.

Among other things, Jimmy was also a notorious farter. He always got the really loud ones. He won the contest on that one too. As we headed down towards the taco shop, which was two blocks away and inside the local strip mall, we passed a liquor store. Right outside it there was on old black wino sitting by a trashcan, smoking a cigarette. Jimmy lets out a nice one by the wino’s face and the wino says,

‘hey boy, you shit your pants or what!’

I laughed and told the wino that I thought Jimmy did poo his pants. The wino in turn laughed himself silly.

We got to the taco shop. We ordered a plate of carne asada french-fries. Jimmy asked for catsup; catsup on c.a. french-fries was beyond me, I just made sure the stuff was on his side of the plate. I ordered a diet cola, I needed the caffeine.

copyright 2005, by Arturo Royal

another one about just some ol day

the bathroom was pretty

cold

but it did let the shit

flow easier,

and as those wonderful

turds came out of my ass

-for some insane reason-

i thought of my mother.

she would never

know how good it

feels to take a good dump,

to get up in the morning

or cut her toenails

to think of a melody

or scratch her head

to bump in to a total stranger.

she would never know

anything at all.

she passed away a few years

ago.

so, i finished,

wiped,

flushed the toilet,

and went for a smoke.

it wasn’t too bad of

a day.

even the sun decided

it would be alright to shine

something fierce,

clouds & the cold be damned.

i decided to enjoy it.

nothing else i could

do about it.

and that was ok;

mostly i’m bitching

about things:

bad health

the price of avocados

the price of eggs

(-both in cali)

the government

(-everywhere)

some asshole who almost ran

me over as i was jogging

war

peace

murderers

awful tv programming

the weather

people who claim to be

your friends

and on and on.

but i’m a fool anyway.

i’ve been fooled into thinking

i’m some kind of man,

an human being,

a name & number,

living in some world or other,

in something called civilization,

and that i have something

called a mind, and that i

should use it to better

myself

-or at least use it somehow,

and that

certain things are bad

and others a bit better -though

you must pay for those,

and the rest of

that hokum pinned on us

the minute we’re

born...

well,

forget it,

i’m bitching again.

i think i’ll let the last of this

fucking sun bathe me in it’s

cozy gold.

not bad at all.

sometimes i envy my mother:

even though she’ll never

know certain things ever again

she won’t lose too much

sleep over them either.

she’s much wiser now.

the dead know the ultimate truth.

those bastards!

and just not existing isn’t too bad

a thought to me.

hell, the way most

of our lives are spent we might as

well not exist at all.

this day will be left to be whatever

it will. neither push nor pull, nor

any equilibrium; the TAO be damned

to hell.

life and death,

the state of the world,

the meaning of me,

will only amount to in importance

on how

quickly i can fall asleep tonight.

ok,

its dusk.

i’m going inside my house.

its my turn to cook dinner.

i’m making

mexican red, fried rice topped

with fried eggs,

over easy.

copyright 2005, by Arturo Royal

death

i’m afraid of death,

i’m terrified of it.

i can see myself dead: somewhere

where the water goes up to

your knees and leaches & lichens

do a jig with a jug band,

under a traitorous green moon,

while my body undulates

in the muddy water,

as if doing it’s own danse macabre.

and i’m bloated

and i’m purple and grey

and nothing to sing about.

or

i see some son of a bitch with

spirals for eyes,

a 44 on his hand

pointed at my whatever, pulling

the trigger and cutting out

the marionette strings off me.

or

i’m in a plane and the damn

bucket of bolts goes

in to cash it’s chips

along with everyone in it’s

belly.

or

i’m riding a bike...

jogging...

lifting the steel for the muscle...

lifting more than i can chew...

and the main brain vein gets down right

arrogant and decides its time

for it to fill my skull

with blood:

regular

or unleaded -pop!

or

i’m somewhere in the twilight

of life. in an old fart’s home, maybe

even living alone, i could be destitute,

doesn’t matter, the point is i’m old.

maybe i have cancer

maybe i have a heart attack

maybe the heart doesn’t attack but just

plain gives up.

and ‘here lies yours truly,’ says the epitaph

on my damn tombstone.

and that’s that, i’ve sold the farm,

kicked the bucket, gone south, went limp,

pushed the daisies, crossed the

bar, curtains, and kaput.

or

i could simply fall, bump

my head, and lights out, for good.

show

me a man, or a woman for that matter,

who truly isn’t afraid of death and i’ll

show you death itself!

in

any case, the worst is

that any of it can happen, that

death will happen, to all,

no escape... no, the worst of it

is that we all have to face it ultimately,

inevitably, unavoidably, inescapably,

undeniably, incontrovertibly alone

alone

alone

alone

alone

alone....

copyright 2005, by Arturo Royal

A story

Alright, so its another day. I’m lying on the bed, on my side, I mean on both my side of the bed and on my body’s side... okay, make it my left. Just got out of one of those crazy ass dreams where nothing makes sense and at the same time it does. My mouth opens wide and I let out a nice big yawn... aaaaahhhhh! -like that. Damn! my breath stinks like a skunk’s bunghole. I wipe the eye-buggers, and what’s left of those mad dreams, out of my eyes.

Now I’m set to get up. I do, and my whole body feels like lead, I really prefer to stay under the cozy blankets all day long. But some dumb, ancient son of a bitch made this rule about everyone having to get out of bed every damn morning to do SOMETHING... but what for? What’s the big deal with doing doing doing? It doesn’t make much sense to me. To keep the master-slave machine going, is my best guess. Just imagine how all those wars, murders, rapes, thefts and the rest of the indignities of the world would be greatly reduced if all would just stay the hell in bed most of the day -if not all of it. And if stock markets crash and factories and power plants close down and government offices shut-up, would that really be such a bad thing? With all the greed, pollution and bad country management going around? Who knows, I think so, but who knows. Alas, I get out of bed and do things anyway.

The sun was blasting in through the window by my side of the bed. It was already half past twelve pm. I go over to the window and look out at my neighborhood street. Everyone’s at work, so I don’t see anybody except for the occasional car passing through, and hear the noises of the nearby, major busy intersection. ‘Well, now what...’ I say out loud finally. Then its to the get a cup of coffee my wife leaves for me when she goes to work at nine in the am. I get the cup and sit down on my wife’s e-z chair and try to get it through my head that I’m going to have to do something productive today, preferably writing. You see, I’ve been fooled into the whole program, just like everybody else, only difference is that I just might do a bit more bitching than most, and that’s because, one, I had no choice in being born into our way of life (I know I know! no one else had either), two, because after thirty three years in this world I still don’t get why things are the way they are, three, I don’t like the way things are, four, the only way to get out of it all is to murder oneself, five, I’m too chicken-shit to do anything that grave (ha!), six, that puts me right back to point number one, and that pisses me off... alright, never mind.

I pick up whatever book I happen to be reading at the time and try and get something out of it, either for my soul or to better my writing, whatever. Then I try the boob tube -the TV, not the TITTY tube. But then

I go back to the book. Books are better, unless there’s a good animal show, or a science show, or some good history on the Nazis, or something on U.F.O.’s, or the paranormal in general, on the TV. For the rest of it, well that’s where the book, or books, come in; can’t handle TV dramas or comedies or anything of the sort, that’s just plain bad writing, the worst hacked-up shit this side of formula-pulp-writing hell (yeah, I complain quite a bit, I’ve come to accept myself this way). And I should know about bad writing, I write badly as well. But, for me, writing is like life: one must go on doing it... even if it means doing it wrongly... eh? So let the TV guys have it, and let me have it as well, its up to people if they want to look at our work or not: one can always turn off the TV or close a book, yes?

Well, that’s alright. I still do like this though; waking up and being able to waste a nice day to itself. Let it roll as it likes, I just sit here and watch it do its thing. I mean how lucky can a man get, this insane and glorious leisure, a tiny pause in the madness of life, some moments to do as I please. No, its not all hell, all in all. There ARE small chunks of heaven on earth (probably another reason I haven’t offed myself as of yet). We can all find them. The only thing is though, one has to look through tons of shit to find them, really dig in, most get discouraged when they haven’t even begun to dig in enough. And one has to find their own way of heaven, its different for each, but worse is to mistake the shit for the heaven itself! e.g. Hallmark Greeting Cards are chockfull of this type perfumed shit. BEWARE!

Where was I...
So, I get to thinking, maybe I should write that dissertation on ‘The Human Condition’, but, oh, hell, that’s been done already. Then I think I should write that story about a guy who turns into a giant lizard and doesn’t know what to do about it and has tragic but funny misadventures... oh, but didn’t Kafka already write The Metamorphosis?... Yeah, he did. Right. Then I finally decide I’m going to write a story about writing a story... but lo! that has been done to death too.

There’s no more coffee in my mug. I get up to get some more. There’s a half a cup in the coffee pot, I pour that into the mug, put the mug in the nuker for about forty seconds, done. I still feel a bit sleepy, groggy. The coffee seems to be doing the trick though, slowly. Just need to get a little extra kick. I look at the new clock -my wife and my mother-in-law bought a few weeks ago (a nice looking, round, white face thing with a blue outline and Hindu-Arabic numerals)- and it says one fifteen in the pm. Damn, getting a little late.

I sit back on the e-z chair. I look out the big living room window, which faces west, and there they are, the lesbians, right on schedule. They’re not really lesbians, well hell, not that I know their story. Its just a humorous private joke of mine. They look like regular yuppie lady’s (shit

I always say lady’s when referring to women MY age, really. I forget that I’m not seventeen anymore, but these broads still look older to me, and they could very well be younger than I! Maybe I should call them girls or chicks or something, just women perhaps, who knows... very strange, this age thing) out for a ‘power walk’ or whatever’s the exercise trend these days. One of them is brunette and maybe of Asian decent, the other is blond and obviously Caucasian, both fairly thin, nothing to hoo-hah about though, sincerely. The lesbian thing just came about when I first saw them walk by the house, just a few days after my wife and I first moved into this joint. It was a day just like this, I was high on caffeine, they passed by and I yelled out ‘hey lesbians!’ and that’s it. I do silly, stupid things like that when I’m drinking good coffee and am by myself, but its always harmless. I’m easily amused. They never hear me, the window is always closed. Sometimes I don’t say anything to them at all, I might think it, or not bother with it at all. They pass by between one and one thirty, everyday; talking, laughing, chitchatting, farting, they have their fun, I have mine, that’s all.
There’s the sneaky suspicion I won’t do any writing today. Nothing’s coming out. Oh well. I go back to the book. The book goes right back down where it was, on the coffee table, it simply isn’t working now.

Ah, cigarette, haven’t had my morning... okay... EARLY cigarette. I go outside to my patio and do just that. A neighbor’s cat, Bisco, comes around for his kitty vittles. He’s a oddly colored cat: black striped tale, white fur, black tipped ears, baby-blue eyes -crossed; its why we called him Bisco; it means cross-eyed in Spanish, we christened him that when we met him. My wife and I had bought some good kitty vittles for another neighbor’s cat -Sweetpea- that used to come around the apartment we lived at before moving to this place. We were very sorry and sad to leave her back there. To our joy, this little bastard started coming around this new place, so we gave him the leftover kitty-vittles -cats really dig that stuff.

At first I thought it was an alley cat, but soon found out, through my mother-in-law talking to the owner-neighbor, that the cat was properly owned, by herself, I mean the neighbor. So we adopted the cat, sort of. We keep buying the k.v. for it and of course he keeps coming around, though we have the feeling Bisco just likes to hang out with us. Sometimes he irritates me though, he has the habit of clinging to the netting of the screen door with his tiny talons -when begging for his food, ripping it to hell, but I spray his ass with a spray water bottle, right on the kisser, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, never hurts him. Regardless, I still like having him around. These little guys have more life and magic in them than most of the human population on planet Earth. I feed the cat, it’s happy, I’m happy, we’re both content with the arrangement. I finish my cigarette then go back inside.

I drink some more of the brew... ahh, feels good. No more looking at the book, no more watching the sucker box (TV), no more whining. Just sit and stare out into space and hope everything in my insignificant little life lasts just a few more breaths, a few more moments with my wonderful wife and my daughter, just a few more bits of the magic and madness of this wild joy-ride... life LIFE! let it all happen............. whatever may come.

Got it!..

This then is a story of nothing in particular, or rather, a particular something, for if science is correct in stating that ALL OF US are made out of the same basic particles (‘stuff’) which are spread throughout the cosmos, then this is a story of -with the utmost sense of humility- the universe observing itself... the mind of God?...

NO END

copyright 2005, by Arturo Royal

‘bisco’ the cat

bisco the cat comes over to

my house every so often, for food.

i buy the good

stuff, he

don’t want no dried

up shit, he

wants the moist vittles

i get at the super-super market.

and the cat’s cross eyed,

but it don’t bother him too

much

none.

and aside from

lounging, playing, and

sleeping around he don’t

do much

none.

when he comes over

he likes to bust up my screen

patio door -i have

a screened-in patio. his way of

saying breakfast!

lunch!

dinner!

or, 3am snackies! right in the

middle of my cigarette.

he might just want

to play; something i forget

how to do.

he gets his

claws all up on the screen

and

tears at the thing.

so i get a water bottle

with the

spray-gun head and

let it

hiss at him to get him

off of that thing,

and ba-bing,

he’s down, and

he’ll do it again too, but

don’t worry, i don’t hurt

him

none.

i give him his kitty vittles anyhow.

Buddhist’s consider it the gravest

of offenses to harm one’s

teacher.

copyright 2005, by Arturo Royal

Don’t make it easy for them

You should never leave your

shoes outside.

The waterbugs will get in them

and that won’t be too nice

a thing.

You know

what I mean; those big, black, ugly things

that look like burnt almonds

and run around in the shadows.

Imagine that; you

step into your shoes in the fresh

morning

and something

tickles

your toes...

ahhhg! a waterbug!

Well, actually they’re roaches, but

some

like to call them waterbugs, it sounds

nicer, cleaner, neater, hygienic, but

lets be real, they’re roaches

that eat shit, and if they

get

on you you’ll be full of shit

too.

So don’t let those water... I mean

roaches into your shoes.

Keep those shoes indoors.

Sure, they’re able to get indoors

too,

but

at least they’ll have a tough time

at it.

copyright 2005, by Arturo Royal

flightless birds

i put the outfit on

and went out for my daily jog.

the sidewalk moved

underneath my feet.

something was rolling on it

and toward me.

i quickly began to lie to myself.

i told myself it looked like

the tree next to the thing

had just lost a fruit or seed or

something.

but my case fell apart when

sectioned bird limbs and feathers

gave up the truth of the gore.

a dead bird.

and what i first saw was the

thing’s decapitated head. it’s beak

opened as if in the act of cracking

a two bit joke, and, of course, it wasn’t

funny at all.

the bird was black with specks

of white, probably a pica pica; the

species.

these birds seem to be all around this

city of the sacrament.

jesus christ! i thought, this is not my

time to

be jogging.

so i did the ol 180 and slouched it

back to the castle.

walked through the door,

put the window blinds to the dark

position,

and waited for the end of the world.

it didn’t happen, so i went to the bedroom,

passing through clownish shadows

who were doing an evil mambo.

with no other choice in the matter

i threw my back against the

eastern king, faced the ceiling, and

wondered how many stars i could fit in

a used spaghetti jar.

copyright 2004, by Arturo Royal

here’s a poem

well, here will be a poem;

help me write it.

ok, lets begin.

there, that was a start, i

gave you a head’s start,

now you.

scared huh?

well, that’s alright, i’m scared too -but

only this time in the particular.

what are you doing? i mean,

are you thinking about something

to write?

to do?

just thinking?

don’t worry so much.

I won’t judge you...

too much! -just kidding.

don’t have it huh?

well, what did you see today?

did you see any birds hanging

around? were they

pretty or ugly?

too corny, i know.

ok, never mind that.

i’m trying to help you out.

you can write anything, everything

fits.

how about: did someone piss you off?

yeah, me too.

do you love anybody perhaps?

yeah, me too.

where are you today?

tell me all about it.

who are you

today?

that’s a tough one.

i don’t think anybody can say

anything about that for sure,

any day.

are you happy being you?

that’s a tough one too.

i don’t think anybody can say

anything about that for sure,

either way.

how about gods. do you have any gods?

a god?

one god?

i don’t much like them anyhow.

you do, huh?

well, either way, that’s alright.

hey, this is coming along

pretty good.

look, we’re almost done.

do you ever think about dying?

alright, i agree, death is a bit

corny too, never mind

-you know, its funny, nobody ever

writes about births.

you’re bored? yeah, me too.

check this: lets leave this for now,

the best poetry won’t be on paper anyway,

its best found in that conundrum:

life.

copyright 2005, by Arturo Royal

sports bar & dead end

god o mighty! i thought, i got to get out of here, i’m trapped, i got to make it, somewhere, into something. hell, where? i knew everything (careers, causes, starting a family, etc.) would be a dead end anyhow; eventual death. nothing i would do, and nothing else for that matter, would ever really make the world a better place for me, or anyone else; so-called progress was a sham, in the end all it did was speed up our polluting... everything, and all the knowledge and intelligence in the world never stopped the bombs from being dropped on the ‘evil people’ on the other side of the fence. in two hundred thousand years homo sapiens hadn’t budged. it seemed this was just part of the evolutionary direction of our species. just like this place, this goddamned, dead end bar, our whole existence was one big fucking, stinking, dingy, dead end bar. could be a naive view of things but nobody had successfully convinced me of any other postulation. so what the fuck.

anyway, there i was, the bouncer in that joint, paid under the table, and having some kind of existential panic attack. so ok, i’m the bouncer, guard, but come to think of it, who was i supposed to be protecting, and from whom? everyone there were like maddened lab rats: all grey, trapped, ugly and hardly alive, and hardly worth letting live, but, goddamn it, i was in there too. fuck it. i decided to go get a drink, got it, and went back to the my stool; in the darkest corner of the place. the owner had put me there so i could see, and not be seen by, the ones who needed their asses thrown out. but one of these illustrious ones saw me there minding my own and, i guess, he decided to make small talk. aw shit, i thought. he was well dressed, stinking of cologne, groomed & all, and very very femmy -a fag. i was in no mood. for anybody. & i’m no fag. aw shit, i though. the bastard came right up to me.

‘you know...,’ he said.

‘yeah?’ i said.

‘nothing is real.’

‘oh yeah?’ i said and punched him in the nose, ‘is that real?’

‘oh, oh, oh, oh...’ he cupped his hands up against his bloody nose & ran out of the joint.

jenny, one of the whores (waitresses), saw the whole fiasco from behind the bar as she was washing the mugs, wine glasses, and other assorted drinking vessels, her eyes throwing little daggers at me. aw shit, i thought. she slammed a used beer mug on the counter, tiny bubbles rose in to the air from it as it hit the wet counter top, the mug was still foamy and wet from the washing. she wobbled her ass to the bar owner’s (pete’s) office; behind the kitchen. i never liked that jenny anyhow. she never liked

me either. crude oil & sewage water. sexual tension? who knows. who cares. i didn’t.

anyway, i got up to see what the hell jenny was going to do, though i knew exactly what she was up to -the little snitch. she knew damn well pete didn’t like the bouncers getting into fist fights, especially inside the bar. even when we fought out in the street, on neutral territory, he foamed at the mouth. he was one of those keep the peace at all costs types; kind of smart, really, when in the booze business. before i made it half way, belinda got in my way. she was carrying a tray with some drinks, serving this & that, when she stopped me to ask what was all that about. she had not only seen what had transpired between the creep/weirdo/fag and myself, but had also seen that something about me wasn’t all that kosher; ‘she felt it,’ she said. i guess i must’ve had a grim look on my mug (hahaha) when i went to get myself a drink; she was doubling as the bartender that night.

‘i don’t know, but i can’t talk now,’ i told her.

she just kept pushing the damn issue, pushing, pushing: are you alright? can i help or something? listen, let me buy you another drink, ok? -get what i’m saying? the nosy hussy. i just wanted her to get the hell out of my way. not much of a request, if you want to know the truth.

‘GODAMN YOU! LEAVE ME ALONE! DON’T YOU KNOW WHEN TO SHUT UP! I TOLD YOU I DON’T WANT TO-TALK-RIGHT-NOW!’

she was so startled one of the drinks fell off her tray, smashing to bits on the red carpet. her record now spoiled; this was the second dropped drink in eight years. she would have to erase it from her little, pathetic plaque in pete’s office. jesus christ, eight years in that joint; the broad was worse off than i was.

a tear drop rolled down her right wrinkly cheek, to her fuzzy chin, & followed the fallen cocktail, her glance chased them all down. she didn’t say a word. her face flushed a beautiful pink with eyes cast downward. real classy girl -age thirty seven. i didn’t bother with it and kept going toward pete’s office, and that bitch. a couple of fellows hissed and hooed at me as i was walking by. one or two fine, let it go, four or seven... i had to turn around.

‘ANY OF YOU SONS A BITCHES WANT TO START ANY SHIT WITH ME? COME ON, I AIN’T GOING ANYWARE, COME RIGHT UP, I’VE GOT PLENTY FOR ANY OF YOU!’ nothing, silence, ‘ALRIGHT, THEN SHUT THE FUCK U...’

‘PETER!’ i heard the bitch yell behind me. she told me that pete (yeah, we had the same name) wanted to see me in his office a.s.a.p.. aw shit, i thought.

this would’ve been a good time to kill that spiteful, little runt, but i’m not a man given to senseless violence. as i passed her, jenny was tapping

the bar counter -the side right before the kitchen entryway which lead to pete’s office- with her elongated, uncouthly painted finger nails. those things, they looked like they could rip the guts out of you, if she so desired. at twenty two, and handsome, she could pretty much do anything, if she so desired, and she did! she had a great start in life, she worked at GRENDEL’S SPORTS BAR & GRILL. she began working there at seventeen; under age in cali. i don’t know how she did it, but i don’t think she sucked pete’s dick or anything. real classy bitch. anyway, she wasn’t going to use any kind of nails on me -figuratively speaking or otherwise. she knew, without me ever showing that night’s temperament before, that i could be capable of anything: i’d slap it out of her, or i might kill her, or i might fuck her, or i might tell her a bed time story. who knows. who cares. i didn’t.

so i passed her by, not a word. she had a soft sneer and her mouth shut. i got to pete’s office, came in. pete was sitting in his midget desk, as always, in this tiny little closet of an office. but pete was a small, older guy anyhow. as i said, we had the same name but different last names. sanchez for me and palacios for him, if you want to know. i don’t know if it was the name thing or because he liked me like a son -i was the youngest bouncer in the joint- or what, but he didn’t yell at me nearly as much as the other brutes.

he told me jenny had told him what had happened, everything, and wanted my version of it. he looked kind of funny with his torso sticking out from that little desk of his like that. sort of reminded me of a jack in the box, his legs were completely invisible. i told him that jenny hadn’t left anything out, the whole thing was true. since i hadn’t shown this type of behavior before, he asked if i was feeling alright, if i was disgruntled for some reason, if he could do anything. actually, i had gotten into a couple of fist fights outside the bar a while back, but he knew i was ruthlessly provoked, self defense and all that. no, no, i told him, i just wasn’t feeling too good.

‘ok,’ he said, ‘still, i told you before, peter, no fucking fights, at the very least avoid them as much as possible. the goal for you is to gently escort them outta here, ok? i don’t want those goddamn pigs, the cops, around here making trouble. i do run a very legitimate business, but you know as well as i that sometimes we do get the bad element in here, selling dope or whatever, and if these two would meet i, we, would be in the shit house. get it?

‘yes, pete.’

‘alright, kid, now get your ass out of here for the night. take it off, come back on your next shift. take a break, ok?’

‘alright, pete.’

pete crumpled a piece of paper on his desk and threw it in a waste basket on the right side of it -his right. o shit, he said, and, as if forgetting

that there was something important written on it, without getting up, he swiveled & slid in his chair toward the basket to retrieve the crumpled thing. he couldn’t reach, he couldn’t reach, he stuck his right leg out the side of the desk to -i guess- pull himself. lazy bastard, i thought. i was about to go over to the goddamn basket myself and hand him his fucking crumpled paper when i got a look at his leg. the thing that stuck out of pete’s desk -pete the tough guy, the guy who yelled at men three, four, five times bigger than he was, without flinching at a possible fistfight with them, pete the ruthless business man/bar owner- was covered in silky, black nylons, with it’s foot inside a 6”, black stiletto heal, he had even shaved his damn leg. he noticed that i noticed. his eyes wide open, with a bit of tears forming, saying something i couldn’t understand. the leg retracted like a switchblade. i turned around and went for the door.

‘alright, pete, thanks for the night off, man. i’ll see ya next saturday, huh?’

i shut the door behind me.

passing through the kitchen, i saw a woman’s ass -not bad- in red shorts and legs ending in white high heels, bent over, getting something or other from the bottom of the pantry. i slowed my pace. she got up and turned around. ugh... it was fucking jenny. i couldn’t see what she was wearing that night. too dark in the bar area. the kitchen was well lit. she saw the look on my face. i kept walking.

‘i wouldn’t fuck you if you were the last guy in the world,’ she murmured.

‘‘...last man on earth,’ you mean. that would be the proper terminology for your particular colloquialism,’ i corrected her.

‘what?’

‘forget it.’

belinda was talking with some of the regulars: old wrinkly dudes from the farthest reaches of boon dock hell, dead eyed truck drivers, washed up, wet backed mexicans, hustlers, thieves, dope dealers, who the hell knows what; though they might as well have been lawyers, doctors, history professors, authors, bank owners, scientists -just fucking human trash. some of these bastards would try & talk to me once in a while as i sat in my stool, and tell me about the ‘game,’ sports, which i hate, or about their wives leaving them, or about the economy, whatever, and i would look at them with the most attentive eyes then silently fart, or pretend the music was too loud -‘we’ll talk later’-, something, anything to try & get them the hell away from me. what, did i look like a shrink? what the hell do people think? who do they think they are? i have my own shit to worry about, it must’ve been the liquor, or, well, i do have sort of a stupid, friendly face, so i guess people immediately assume that when i listen, or pretend i listen, to them we’re going be pals or something. fools. anyhow, i passed them by. belinda looked at me as if to say something, or expecting me to.

the regulars kept looking at their drinks, not a sound. i didn’t say shit. as far as i was concerned i gave her ample warning to stay away. i got out of GRENDEL’S just in time; the karaoke was about to start, and the first guy to get up and sing was always this bald, 50something year old gent who was fond of singing ‘you’re sixteen, you’re beautiful, and you’re mine.’

it was 11in the pm, the trolley would stop at 12:30. plenty of time. the station was only four blocks away. i went to get on the damn thing & head for home. the streets were damp, the air cold, i had forgotten my jacket at the bar but i was sure as shit not going back there to get it. fucking november. why is it always november? its always in all those songs, story titles, poems & shit. december isn’t all that great either, more suicides then than any other month -the xmas thing, i guess, so what’s the deal with this november? hell, every single month of the years is as bad as the next as long as we’re there to notice it.

bohhhng! bohhhhng! bohhhng! went the trolley’s horn, the trolley stopped, i got in, two buck ticket in hand. i was the only one in the whole damn cart. it was colder in there than it was outside! i kept rubbing my hands between my thighs to keep them from getting all blue & purple. i also rubbed my arms & legs. i could see my breath forming simulated cigarette smoke as it bellowed from my snout -mouth. you couldn’t smoke inside, so i pretended i was smoking a nice expensive cig in there, not the generic usual brand i had to buy with the crappy money i made at GRENDEL’S. it entertained me, made the trolley move a little faster; i’m kind of a simple person, if you want to know the truth. chacatah chacatah chacatah, went the trolley wheels, deeper into the night. cold, colder than the eyes of the dead, and everything was a blur; i was looking out the window and the little train was going an easy seventy five.

my stop came up & i got off. my apartment was a good fourteen blocks away, and no more buses. shit! i would have to walk all the damn way in the 42degree night, in levi’s and a blue t-shirt, sneakers. every step got colder & colder. well, i thought, if i die of exposure here it won’t be too bad, i’ll simply fall asleep, never to wake up and see the horrible sight of life. but i didn’t fall asleep. i kept walking. all the way home. through the cold, through the suspect cars of late night, through the drunken silhouettes of the lost, through music only the poor can make so real by suffering, through things yet unknown to those who belong to the light. well, hell, i was feeling sorry for myself and got a little dramatic.

the apartment was open and i wondered if joe was home; my roommate. he liked to leave the damn doors unlocked when he got home. he said he liked to do this because ‘if anyone would come in i’d like to see them try & steal something so i can laugh my ass off when they notice all we have is books, a crappy t.v., second hand clothes, and four dishes! hahaha!’ but i didn’t like it. even if i didn’t have shit, i just don’t like strange motherfuckers inside my abode, near me. oh they can steal my

shit, i don’t care, as long as i’m not there when they do it; sleeping, showering, or shitting, or something. as soon as i got in i could hear his stupid ass snoring away in the next room.

‘hey joe!’ i yelled.

‘wharrrg?..’

‘turn on your side or something, man, you’re snoring again. i’m gonna want some sleep tonight!’

‘yeah, yeah... fuck...’

i took off my shoes, the rest, and got in to my sleeping shorts, my favorites. they had a big hole in the crotch, and, since i didn’t wear underwear underneath them, my balls hung nice & loose out of that big ass hole. ahhhh! i plopped myself on to the floor, under my blankets. blankets... now there’s something the human race can be proud of, blankets; the greatest invention of all time, yeah....

it was getting warmer & warmer under there. it got ruined by my cutting of the fart. aw shit, i thought, and pulled the blanket part near my ass off to let the smell out. i put it back. my eyes had little weights on them. i needed lots of sleep, lots & lots of sleep. yeah, sleep... now there’s something in the madness of our existence that finally makes sense, if you want to know the truth.

copyright 2004, by Arturo Royal