Author: Jefe

On rhyme and meter

and whether or not I have any.

Writing has taken up a place in my chest again lately, like the warmth spreading inside  you get from drinking whiskey.  It’s been a while, I gotta tell ya.  I have new heroes like Mike, and I’ve gotten in touch with an old hero, Larry.   I’ve been scribbling in my moleskine like mad, and I had a lot of fun with the following, even if it isn’t very good.  It’s raw, but bear with me while I give you a poem.

“I suppose I should worry…”

I suppose I should worry about becoming a barfly,

Sitting on stools, alone,

Drinking with fools, with stone

  hearted men, and girls, not

  ladies in tight things

      tied with strings, 

teasing and drinking while I just sit and watch.

  While the predators hunt

  wolves in a pack of just one,

  hoping to add another notch

  and be done,

  to the headboard,

  the nightstand,

  to any eternal measuring stick that isn’t my hand.

 

I suppose I should worry about going

blind. 

Making Love to myself, alone 

in the dark, in this “home”

  to a cold electric glow

  or an oily slick page

    at my age

I should find someone, spend meaningful time.

  Everyone else pairs off

  and touches and feels

  and they don’t seem to mind 

  that they’re real.

  and emotion,

  not aesthetic

  should rule a life that’s not quite so

pathetic.

I suppose I should worry that I only feel numb

  that sometimes, inside me

  I only want not to hurt anymore

  that I sometimes only want to be looked at and not talked to.

I should worry that I’ve become a great actor,

a reactionary thespian,

going through the motions

     and emotions

that I’m supposed to be having.

That I fall somewhere

close to “an artist”,

“a person”,

something “real”, like a great big yellow plastic poser fuckin’ lawn dart flung by somebody else.

and that I don’t know what I’m waiting for, what’s real, or who the hell I am.

I suppose I should worry that I gave up that nice little rhyme and meter thing that I had going for a while back there.

But that’s just somebody else’s trick, not my smoke and mirrors.

I don’t need to believe in magic, or romance,

or anybody else’s fuckin’ bullshit big ideas or spiritual enlightenment or corproate sponsored nuclear family.  They can glow in the dark like a fuckin’ suburban Chernobyl for all I give a shit.

I “suppose” that if I want to be an Uber-dork introvert and a drunk and scribble in my little black pocket notebook while drinking whiskey instead of publishing my novel or changing someone’s mind, that if I only care to worry if the chicks all around me in this smoke filled den of liqour and sex think I’m cool looking instead of whether or not they can fuckin’ spell much less carry on a conversation or be my muse, then that’s my fuckin’ business, isn’t it? 

And if I want to worry about whether or not the cases upon cases of skin mags and painted faces in the boxes in my closet are properly stored and aplhabatized according to porn-star-slut-of-the-moment, or fetish kink, or the stickiness of the pages because I just couldn’t hold my wad long enough to reach for the kleenex box and it didn’t really matter ’cause it was empty, again, then “I suppose”  my only real “worry” should be why didn’t I buy enough kleenex.

And “I suppose” that if I want to live for only the small, the visceral, the single moments of solitary pleasure in a world of pain, if all I want is to numb myself with liqour and new clothes, orgasms and new tattoos, if I want to abandon the endeavor for the emotionless love of a bad little girl with pixie chopped hair, starring at me through a haze of her own cigarette smoke with a look in her eyes like she can’t decide whether or not she wants to fuck my brains out or stab me with the knife in her boot for staring at her TITS, THEN JUST THAT LOOK OUGHT TO BE ENOUGH FOR ME? RIGHT!?!?

Right?

PLEASE?

No?

Then I suppose

    I should worry.

On Utter, Cataclysmic Change

or,

There are lots of good reasons to shave your head.

So, Fearless Reader, glad to see you again. How’s Granmdma? Just Kidding. I know for a fact now that someone other than my mother is reading this thing. That is because you, Fearless Reader, have at last begun to respond to my rantings, have at last become concerned about the little slice of my thought process that you can get a hold in these words. For all I know, you have been there, collectively, all along. I am grateful for your existence, Fearless Reader, and after my previous post, grateful for the portion of you that expressed your concern for my well-being.

However, I am not out on the ledge just yet.

I am thankful that when I write about being down, that you respond with kind words and late night phone calls. I know that you, too, have similar periods of down time and that it is good to share these in real world kinds of ways. I rejoice that this particular chunk of digital information in a vast and mighty river of ones and zeroes has helped you and I form a bond that goes beyond glowing screens and clicking keyboards. I like it that you check up on me, and I hope you know I do the same to you. For, while you are my Fearless Reader, rest assured that I, too, am yours.

I do however, owe you an apology. I have been negleting you in many ways. First, I have given you little oppurtunity to exist as my Fearless Reader, for I write little these days. Second, I have let the personal bond we created together stand in the way of the creative bond we have have as writers and readers of each others musings. You want to know who I don’t read anymore? This guy. I think it’s because he lives in my house. I don’t need his blog to keep tabs on him. Many of you are in similar situations with me. We talk on the phone, we instant message each other, we get together on weekends. We’ve grown our personal connection, but lost our bond as Fearless Readers, as lovers of each others words and ideas. I see, more and more clearly, that the writer must strive for greater personal drama within the Blogosphere to gain attention from you, oh Fearless Reader, and you must do so for me as well. If I don’t write about how a girl crushed my heart a long time ago, or that I shaved off all my hair, you will run from my words to other more sensational bits of information. Thus, I make you this promise, From this post forth, Fearless Reader, Cloudwrangler will hold you riveted with the passion of a hundred Cassanova’s, The action of a thousand Jerry Bruckheimer fims, the sheer literary heat of a million Suns, This I VOW!!!!!

OR, I’ll just bitch about my job. Thanks for reading!

On adject heartbreak

or,

Hallelujah can be a killer.

I’m at work, and I’m supposed to be finishing paperwork and numbers and lots of infintesimal bullshit that, in only a few days, will never ever matter, ever again. My media player was randomly selecting songs I’ve uploaded or downloaded or jacked in or whatever the fuck, and it came across Jeff Buckley doing Leonard.

And It breaks my heart.

For me, this song is all about loss. It’s about love, and it is, foremost and above all, about women. It’s a killer.

I fully realize that I might be getting the song wrong, the same way Dan was getting the Three Dog Night song wrong when he worried that “Eli’s coming, hide your heart girl” was a portent of a certain darkness, of something bad, and not just the approach of a disgusting womanizer.

This one is about all women, and one woman. It focuses all the women you’ve ever loved and lost, ever loved and pushed away, ever screwed over in your life. It focuses all those women through that one. The eye of your emotional needle. The one big screw up in your life. The one that got away, in my case.

Love is not a victory march.

All I’ve ever learned from love was how to shoot somebody who outdrew ya.

Lately, I feel broken, lonely, and unloved. Not by my friends and family, their support never wavers. But by the one that got away.

My best friend is closer to her than I am right now.

She called me at 3:04 am recently.

It’s raining in torrents here, and leaking through the roof. I want the rain to wash away certain things in equal torrents, because I know there are good things in my life. There are good women. I can think of one in particular, I’ve been thinking a lot about her recently, to be honest. I just don’t know how to wash away the one I was worshiping and get on with other adorations.

Maybe I just take this way to seriously, but I doubt it.

Van Helsing

Starring Hugh Jackman, Kate Beckinsale, and…..awww who cares, It’s Kate Beckinsale fer cryin’ out loud!

Good Lord, it has been a long time since I wrote a movie review. What a slacker I have been. Thankfully, my favorite season has arrived, SUMMER MOVIE TIME! Yes indeed, chicks and explosions are here again, and I just love it.

Too bad this year’s first big summer movie is such a turd. Van Helsing is a completely uninspired hunk of bat dung. Yikes. Mr. Stoker is likely spinning in his grave at what these people have done to his characters, as are Lon Cheney and friends. The concept of a great vampire hunter taking on Dracula, ok, fine. The idea that he has a hot gypsy princess babe to help him out/make out with him, ok, fine. That fact that he has a priest sidekick who seems to have invented the machinegun about 150 years early, well, that’s pushing it.

And then Dracula is a fruit.

Seriously, I have no problems with the gay community, I have many gay friends. This is Dracula, though, have some fuckin’ balls man. Dracula cries in this flick. There’s no Crying in bloodsucking eternities of darkness. he has a frilly little ponytail and is about as androgynous as Prince. I expected him to break into a dance number a couple of times, it was like watching the Halloween Edition of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Carson as Dracula telling Hugh Jackman he needed to shave, and then Jackman beating him senseless. Now, I would have enjoyed that moment……

Regardless, Kate Beckinsale is worth the price of a matinee. We’ll give this one 2 monsters out of 5, kids.

On How I Drank a Six-Foot Scotsman Under the Table

or,

Family is where you find it.

I have at last gotten the chance to reflect on my recent trip to England. Kevin and I went for Mark’s wedding last week, and I can’t remember the last time I had such a good time. I’ve been writing a lot about love, most of it only for me, all of it inspiried by Mark and Janet’s wedding. It was a really beautiful affair, and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. You want to hear the whole story, you say? Well, let’s just say it involved air travel, tiny cars, tuxedos, great food, great beer, soccer, ruins, rain, the tiniest hotel room in the world, the most comfortable country house in all of England, new friends, and adorable two year old named Charlotte, a bald englishman named Colin, a beautifully shy young woman from Leeds, a charasmatic Scottish music fan, Australians, Texans, Spaniards who weren’t really Spaniards, Spanish women who really were Spanish, Big Ben, T.S. Elliot and Geoffrey Chaucer, the Queen, a graceful young Indian woman who has never eaten meat, her sexy little MG convertable, more great beer, my favorite T-shirt, Jack Daniels and of course………..Murder!

Except, not really the Queen.

more to come………….

On NOT dying in a fiery hunk of twisted metal hurtling into the sea

or,

Jefe’s only real phobia.

Anyone who has known me for a very long period of time (by this I mean more than an hour or so) knows that I fancy myself a born story teller. I am never happier than when I have an audience to listen to me run my frickin’ mouth. My stories are long, usually prefaced with bits of other stories, but entertaining and well-structured. They also tend to repeat themselves, so if you’ve known me for a very, very long time (more than a couple of weeks) then you have heard some of my stories more than once. Or twice.

This is one of those stories. I am afraid to fly. Terrified of it, really. I get white knuckeld on take-offs and landings. My mind races on airplanes with horrible scenarios of fiery explosions or terrorist atttacks. One of my few recurring nightmares is of being on a crashing plane, standing in the aisle with the cockpit door open, watching the ground rush up at me. The mid-air collision scene in Fight Club nearly gives me panic attacks. Typically, to endure air travel of any length at all, I need to get drunk. As a child, I delighted in the excitement of a trip to Houston to visit my two best friends, or a flight to Colorado to see my Grandparents. I insisted on the window seat, and was glued to it the way some children get glued to television. I watched the tiny trucks roll down the pencil-line highways, I marveled at the chaotic asymmetry of farms lands and grasslands, I lived and died with the rush of acceleration on take-off.

Ah, to be a kid again. What an idiot I was.

Because, see, here’s the thing. They tell you that flying is safer than driving. This idea that airtravel is safer than cars is based on many different things, including the exhaustive safety precautions taken by airlines, strict regulations mandated by the government, even the complete lack of drunk drivers in the air (we hope). For that matter, everyone driving around upstairs has loads of practice and is really good at it. Airline pilots don’t cut each other off in traffic, try to put on make-up in the rearview, forget to put oil in their cars, steal your parking space, or get road rage.

See, but my thing is they also have NO ROOM FOR ERROR! There are no fender bender’s at 37,000 feet going 700 miles an hour. You don’t have airline ‘accidents’. Up there, you make one little mistake, or have one tiny mechanical failure, and EVERYBODY DIES. If you’re lucky, they scoop up your ashes with a spoon.

I just got to England for Mark and Janet’s wedding, and I couldn’t be happier to be here. We really love that guy, and his lady is amazing, and I am really happy for them.

I’m also very glad to be on the ground in one piece.