Spending time with my dear mates from QLD.
Won’t be here much for the next week or so.
Look for a surprise post over the next week.
I’m thinking Youtube.
Stay tuned.
Here’s a video of one of Mark’s favorite river gekkos . . .

~m

the echoes of goodbye,
cross a yawning chasm of fog and thought
find me sitting in this Darkroom,
the pictures of my life, languid and swirling above me

familiar fingers of blacklight penetrate me,
violating my inner walls of thought,
a fortress once impervious yet fragile, yes, once like me

galaxies of sotto voce secrets, skeletons in my locked closet
seem to drip like candle wax from the hanging pictures
the memories of my sweet by and by
they were prints I lost so damn long ago
souvenirs, as lost as I

this Darkroom embraces its secrets,
never letting go of the subtleties of the ‘why’
some things just simply refuse to let go of me
like the distant echoes of goodbye . . .

~m

*repost of a  dark angel

As uncomfortable as this picture makes me feel
THIS makes me feel even more uncomfortable.
And it gets more uncomfortable as the days grow long reading about people
that think they deserve equality and justice.
Will we ever wake up and smell the coffee?
When will we finally call a spade a spade?
From the leviathan Gulf oil spill and Mexican border breaches to the ever-simmering clusterfuck in the Middle East,
I feel doomed somedays, for so many reasons.
Just like today.
Maybe we just haven’t found the answers . . .
Yet.
Got testicles?

~m

***I changed the post picture for the mental stability of my wife

Yeah,
Me,
Michael,
total comment & blog slacker.
I admit it and hang my head in total blogosphere shame.
The past few months have been a bit difficult and have not
allowed for me to visit and comment as I usually do (or try to)
I have answered almost every comment on this blog from the past few months, I think.
If I missed one, please kick me in the ass.
I need it.
And deservedly so.
Just trying to make things right here at S&M tonight . . .
Back to my blogging cave . . .
{insert maniacal laughter .wav file here}
If I haven’t been by your blog lately, watch out.
I will be soon . . .

M

This post is somewhat repulsive.
Just my own silly little observation…

I do believe I’ve found a job that I would never want, even if it paid some incredible cash, I still couldn’t do it.
I could never be a tattoo artist.
It’s a short story but it starts with a large woman that I saw standing in line at the Coldstone Ice Cream place one hot summer afternoon.
Judging from the shaking of the ground beneath her feet I’d say she tipped the scales at 300 or so.
This was one big, hunk of a woman.
To get by her on a sidewalk would probably require a city variance of some sort.
I’m rambling.
Sorry.
She was wearing a teeny-tiny pink shirt that showed off her impressive midriff.
Her t-shirt said “You can’t touch this.”
I’m thinking, ‘why would I want to?’
The overall effect was—how shall I say it, globe-like?
Ohhbese? (bigger than obese)
Palatial?
I was unfortunately behind her which is where the thought of never being a tattoo artist came to mind.
I could see the small of her back (a contradiction if ever there was one)
and the unsightly crack of her heiny, a good 2” worth.
Plumbers crack on a woman.
Nice.
Real nice.
Rising up out of the murky depths of her posterior was a tattoo of some kind.
I didn’t want to stare for fear of going stark raving mad so I never found out just what it was.
I have a few ideas as to what it could have been but I really don’t want to go there.
She ordered a mountainous vat of 5 or so flavors mixed together with Butterfinger’s and M & M’s and Jimmies and God knows what else; a reasonable caloric addition to her vast temple of flesh.
Maybe they need to implement some type of weight scale in front of the Coldstone register and if you
happen to “pin the needle” you can only have fat-free yogurt in a kid’s cup.
Hey, life’s a bitch sometimes.
I guess I came away from the experience #1) wondering why some people dress the way they do and
#2) wondering who the lucky son of a bitch was that had to spend 4 hours looking at this woman’s vast backside.
I bet his story is really something to chew on.

~m

I have a dark side.
I know it, my family knows it, my cats know it, my funeral director knows it.
Years ago I played a club located in the middle of a major hotel.
One weekend there was a mortuary fair, if you will.
All things death related.
There were many items that piqued my interest: wound filler, blood tubes, various (uncomfortable looking) clamps,
goggles (obviously), hypo trocars, powder blowers, toe tags and my personal favorite . . .  viscera bags.
Jesus Krispies, the language of death is amazing.
Depressing, yes.
Amazing?
Even more so.
I dug this stuff up for any funeral director that may happen to pay my blog a visit.
This is 10 shades of whack, IMHO.
Want a sterling silver trocar pendant?
Your quest has ended. Click here .
Being a cigar smoker, I am all about the ashes.
Find me a nice cat shaped urn and I’ll be happy.
Forever.

~m

In the beginning,
[find]
the path of least resistance
[because]
God can forget too . . .

4~p

It’s like watching the slow and dying embers in the
backyard firepit on a sultry summer’s night.
In some ways I understand it, some I don’t.
Maybe it’s meant to be that way.
It’s hard enough to watch someone you love die but it’s the
‘dying marathon’ of Alzheimer’s that really hurts inside.
I had a deeply emotional visit with my father this past Sunday.
I felt this impending sense of detachment from him that I’ve never seen or felt before.
My sister says it’s that way with most patients in the final stretch of the endgame.
I am trying to make myself understand that.
Not doing too well with it either.
The past 5 years have been a sad and long goodbye and although I’ve said it before,
I want to believe in my heart that he is ready.
My father did not cry yesterday which had me scratching my freshly shaved noggin.
It was almost as if he was trying to be strong just for me,
but maybe I’ll never know.
I sat and held his thin and badly shaking hands and really looked at him,
into my father‘s eyes.
My heart was instantly shattered as a lifetime of tender and lost moments came crashing into my mind.
I want many things for my father and not one of them was in this room that has held him prisoner for the past 5+ years.
I want him to walk and feel the rays of the sun on his face again,
love and be loved in return, find the missing piece of the puzzle he’s been searching for since he got sick.
Find my mother.
I want him to find enough strength to finally fade away and find his corner of the sky,
his cerulean peace.
It’s time for my beautiful father to go home.
Because of all the places I roam, I miss having him there the most . . .

Reading ‘Carver‘ right now.
Please READ THIS.
You will spend 20 minutes of your life and thank me.
This is one of Carver’s most amazing short stories.
Please take the time and read it.
The man was amazing.
Simply amazing . . .

He stares blindly out the window of another night
down on Bleeker Street, where nothing seem to change except a world gone mad.
He exists.
I exist.
I go to him, touch his shoulder feeling the quivering bone underneath my hand
but he doesn’t move, nobody is home it seems.
As I bend to kiss his forehead,
I think back to my childhood remembering the smell of him;
a rich elixir of leather, spice and a fatherly scent I could never quite put my finger on.
It was a smell of  total comfort and one of extreme familiarity.
His scent is different tonight; he smells clinical, preserved and abandoned.
He smells like a familiar stranger, an ancient decade of melancholy memories,
echoes of voices lost in an obsidian mist . . .

I sit there with him as we both blindly stare out the window, watching a world gone by
and we sigh,
we cry,
we say goodbye to the too many words left unspoken,
the things we once took for granted,
and the once welcome spaces where we no longer belong.
I take his frail and shaking hand and wonder (as I have thousands of times before)
how many more nights will he sit here all alone and stare?
And simply exist.
There is little left to say but with my father, somehow that’s okay.
Somehow, I know he understands.
He has taught me well.
He was never big on words anyway.
It will be very hard to forget the nights down on Bleeker Street and even harder to forget
the little man just sitting staring out the window . . .