On Wishing You Hadn't Made the Same Mistake Again

Mary and Jacob were enjoying a nice day on the lake when suddenly . . .

Booze

Booze
is good for
lots of things.

Winter Poem; or Winter is a Disgusting Waste of Time (Reprint, with Revisions)

Snow is a cockamamy
excuse for people to be happy and festive
during the most depressing time of the goddamn year.

Snow causes pathetic people to say, "Look,
it's snowing. Boy that's pretty." or "Look,
we're gonna have a white christmas." or "Look,
I can piss my own name into that pristine whiteness."
or "Look at how I can write about the snow on my goddamn blog."

Snow is nature's way of taking your eye off the ball
you stupid moronic humans.
Don't you see? Winter
is depressing and stupid,
a lot like you.

Take it from me:
Winter is only good for holing up around a fire
and getting piss-drunk and reflecting on how
you've wasted another year holding off death.

Bill, Tapeworm to the Stars

Hey there. I'm Bill, and I'm a tapeworm. That's right, I said a tapeworm. A lot of people are afraid of tapeworms, but there's really nothing to fear. I'm just like you. I want a warm place to live, and I want something to eat every now and then. And, well, I also want to live the celebrity lifestyle. "Fifteen minutes of fame?" you might ask, and I will answer with a resounding, "No." I want a lifetime of fame. That's why I've set out on a mission to invade the intestines of stars from around the globe. My good friend, Hilton Hightower, has allowed me to post my adventures here. Thanks to him. He's been either too lazy lately to post his terrible art and poetry, so I thought I could breathe some life back into this this pile of dump.

So, here goes the inaugural post of my adventures. I titled my post "Bill, Tapeworm to the Stars." If you can think of something better, leave me a comment. I'm open to new ideas.

First things first, you may wonder how a tapeworm makes a living. Well, it's not that hard. I'm a parasite, so as long as I have a host, I have a nice place to call home, and if I've chosen wisely I have a nice selection of food to eat. Sometimes I make the mistake of choosing to live somewhere like Nicole Richie's guts. I'll admit, that was dumb. She doesn't eat much more than a grape every now and again. Maybe a jolly rancher or a candy necklace. I'll tell you I was drunk quite a lot, but that can get old when you're tired of the club scene.

Tapeworms all over the world make a living. But I am wealthy. How did I get so wealthy? Well, being a celebrity tapeworm has a dark side. I am a celebrity snitch. A lot of times when TMZ or other celebrity news outlets mention an anonymous source, it's me. You wouldn't believe the types of things I find out living in someone's poopy chute. You may think the news at TMZ is shitty. There's a reason for that! It's, most of it, coming from a tapeworm.

Now, I first got my start in celebrity parasiting with a dear old friend of mine Anthony Bourdain. Oh gosh, it must have been the late 90s or the early 2000s. I was just a little tapeworm larva in some not-so-high quality steak tartare at a neighborhood restaurant in Bern, Switzerland. Then Tony came along. Before I knew it I was growing nice and strong in his gut, sampling some of the finest (and occasionally most bizarre) foods around the world. It was a real treat, being buds with Tony, but the time came that I saw an opportunity to move up the celebrity ladder, and I took it.

More on that later. Thanks for reading.

Potty Humor

On Robert Frost's House Being Vandalized

It's about
damn time.

Terrible Explosion

There was
a terrible explosion
this weekend
in my
pants.

It smelled like
week-old
fried chicken
and eggs
and came
imbued with a
certain darkness.

Chapter 2

"You got the brains of a fucking sweat sock I swear," she said. Helen Handfuls was a mean-spirited lady. Helen wasn't a pretty woman, but she wasn't ugly either. She was about equal parts hobo lady and Cindy Crawford, and she had a smile that looked like Brad Pitt's that she rarely used except to invite salespeople or Jehovah's Witnesses into the house. She had big hands for a woman, too. Man hands, and they made hard fists. Just ask Harry. If anyone could run Harry down it was his wife Helen. She was strong-willed and intolerable to most people including her loved ones, but for some reason that I will reveal later in the story, Harry put up with it.

"You been drinking again," she said, "and by the looks of your hands fightin' too. What the hell's wrong with you, huh?"

Harry sat down on the couch. It was an old couch and had lots of stains on it, like from popcorn butter and chocolate and probably ejaculate too after Harry's nephew spent that week with them last summer and slept on the couch.

"Dear, you know I need to unwind after a hard day's work," he said.

"Hard day's work my fucking ass," she retorted. "What work? You're a fucking butcher for Christ's sake! Kiss my ass, work. Ha."

Harry shook his head. "I don't mean to be difficult dear, but you should try to cut hunk after hunk of meat day after day. All the blood and the meat and the fat and the cuts. It takes its toll on a person."

"Let me get the fucking baby a goddamn diaper," she screamed. "You pissbag. That's you, Harry, you're a stinkin' pissbag. You want to know what a real job is? I got a stack of fucking essays in there on the goddamned bed, and they're sure as shit not going to read themselves. By the time I get through with that shit, I'll be ready for a cyanide capsule and a shovel over the goddamn head. Got it?

"And another thing, I gotta stand up in front of a bunch of wisecracking eighth graders all goddamn day long and take their shit. You think that's fun, Harry? You think that's fun ballsack? Why don't you eat the scabby boogers in my fucking nose if you think that sounds like your cup of motherfucking tea you bastard? You gotta sit there and listen to your fucking easy fucking listening radio station while you slice goddamn filet off of a goddamn beef loin. Whoopty doo, ass scab!"

"You're right, dear," he said. They'd been through this hundreds of times before. Being an English teacher, in her eyes was simultaneously the most unrewarding job in the whole universe while also allowing her the ability to save the world from the plague of evils that were fighting for control. She saw herself as a cross between Mother Theresa and Rodney Dangerfield: doing good works, but getting no respect.

So, it's me again, the narrator. I should probably tell you that Harry Handfuls is not just a butcher. Oh yes, that's his front, but you have a lot more to learn about the life and times of this hardass. Harry's career is difficult to explain, and I will probably try to do it a little later in the story because I'm feeling kind of lazy right now, and I'm sure as hell not going to come back and revise this stuff. So, let's just say for now that Harry considers himself a freelancer. Now, you probably think that I mean assassin or hitman or some other cliche like that. Well, think again motherfucker! You're wrong. That ain't it at all. You'll just have to wait for the next chapter I guess.

Basically, Harry spent the night sitting in front of the television watching some bullshit reality shows or something and thinking about his taxes and who he might vote for in the upcoming election. Helen had goddamn essays to grade so she basically just emerged from the bedroom every hour or so to remind him that he was a worthless piece of scum and to refill her glass of Arbor Mist.

Just as Harry was about to doze off in his easy chair, the phone rang. He had a boner. He answered the phone. A man's voice was on the line. His voice was smooth and intelligent. Like a well-read stick of butter or a William Faulkner description of warm cream.

"Is this Harry Handfuls?" the man asked.

"Yes, it is," Harry said. His eyes probably like sharpened, and if you don't mind, try to imagine that Harry has some kind of like wrinkles or something around his eyes to help depict his age.

"I need to place an order," the man said. He was hell of serious.

"How did you get my number?" Harry asked. It was a standard question. A script. He asked it of all his customers, if they were first timers or old regulars.

"A friend," the man answered.

"And what's the code?" Harry asked.

"Vortex," the man answered.

"Okay," Harry said. "What can I do for you?"

Terrible Poet? Nah, Now I'm a Terrible Novelist

I have decided to expand my horizons as a writer. I will still write the same terrible poetry which you all seem to hate so much. Starting today, however, I will paint the walls of this blog with a different kind of poop. I will a terrible novel, serialized right here. Here's the first part of my terrible novel.

Chapter One

So, there was this guy. He was a pretty handsome guy, in a rugged construction worker or infantryman sort of way. A lot of people thought they'd like to sleep with him just based on his appearance. And he was hell of tough. He had really big muscles and his skin was rough like sandpaper. Not like the little grit sandpaper, like the 400 grit or whatever, but more like the 40 or 60 grit. You know the kind of stuff that feels like it has chunks of goddamn glass in it and shit. That's what this guy's skin felt like. And one way I knew he was tough was that he could sit through an entire episode of Access Hollywood and not even crack a goddamn smile. It was crazy.

Anyway, he was coming out of this bar, when all of a sudden a truckful of good-for-nothing dipshits pulled up in front of the bar. They were like these twentysomething nimrods who like ride around town on skateboards and listen to Skinny Puppy and Cradle of Filth. And so anyway, this guy, um, let's call him Harry Handfuls, he was pretty drunk okay? And he said something like, "What's up, scumbags?"

And so these young guys had taken a lot of speed or PCP or crack or maybe just a bunch of Monster brand energy drink or whatever, and they were out of their mind raging for a fight. The leader of this band of merry pranksters said something really original like, "Fuck you buddy," or something like that. And another one sort of laughed and flipped him the bird as hopped out of the truck.

Well Harry Handfuls--let's just get one thing straight here, as narrator to reader: Harry Handfuls is a badass. He doesn't take shit from anybody, except his loving wife, who is a schoolteacher and probably like the lady at the bank drivethrough because she's sweet and reminds him of his grandma--didn't take kindly to these puckerlovers taunting him or talking back to him. Hell, they had probably not even paid their taxes last year and that made him really pissed off, being the responsible taxpayer that he was.

So, 3/4 drunk on Jack Daniels whiskey, and 1/4 drunk on some sort of Jagermeister concoction that Dick Kinisky kept ordering for him at the bar, Harry Handfuls started tearing these boys apart. The first one, their leader, looked a lot like that fucking Dauber guy from that show Coach who also does the voice for that stupid starfish on SpongeBob SquarePants--kind of a big galoof with thin blonde hair and just about awkward as hell. Harry punched this goofy motherfucker about three times before the guy could even flip the silly hair out of his eyes. He went down screaming and blood squirting out of his eyes and nose and probably his ear, too, but since I'm not totally omniscient I can't really tell or couldn't remember or something. Give me a break, I'm trying to remember. It all happened pretty fast.

Right about this time, one of the other guys, a wiry fellow who looked a lot like how a person would look if a demon made Abraham Lincoln knock up Carrot Top and they had a baby together. This dude was a huge turd. So, he grabbed his skateboard and swung it at Harry Handfuls from behind him. Harry knew it was coming, and he spun around and threw his arm up to shield the blow. The skateboard shattered on Harry's massive forearm, which looked like flesh colored granite or some other kind of strong rock. As the boy started to weep, he said, "My skateboard, it's shattered."

And Harry said, "Your face, it's shattered." And he punched that kid right between the eyes, and tears came squirting out in all directions. And blood too. Copious amounts of blood. It was funny. The kid kind of went weak-kneed and just collapsed like a tree that had been cut down or something even more pathetic than that.

Then Harry grabbed one of the parking meters and ripped it out of the sidewalk. I told you he was tough. And I think he must have had some super powers or something, too, because some of the shit this guy gets into later is really messed up, let me tell you. So, he grabbed this meter and started swinging it like a baseball bat. The rest of the guys started backing up, and saying things like, "Whoa mister we don't want any more trouble," and that kind of stuff all clicking away their switchblades and setting the safety back on their pistols.

Harry had so much DNA on his fist from the two guys he punched out that he could have made a frigging clone army. He wiped his hand on his jeans and said, "I hope you boys have learned a valuable lesson today: Don't fuck with Harry Handfuls." They were all like "Yessir," and "Mm-hmm," and just scrambling to get back in the bed of the pickup truck which probably like belonged to one of their dads or something. Idiots.

Harry walked to his Nissan Sentra and unlocked the door. He was pretty responsible, and he knew he shouldn't drive home since he was so drunk. Even though he could probably drive hell of better than most of the people on the road anyway. But he thought, Well, fuck it, I'm in the mood for a run. So, he put his car keys back in his pocket and took off running down the street. His muscles flexed and jiggled with his running pace or something.

Um let's see for the setting. Oh yeah, there were like some cars driving on the street. And lots of trees. I don't really know or care to know much about different types of trees, but they were probably some maple trees and a few oak trees. And of course people had yards with grass and flowers in them. It was a nice day outside. But there were dark clouds looming somewhere up there . . .

A Little Ditty for the Lovestruck Monkey Inside Your Soul Who Longs for an Invitation to a Dinner Party He's Never Even Heard of Before

If you like apples,
you'll love bananas,
but if you love pineapples,
then you won't love anything else at all.

Roscoe Wrangler, Honkytonk Homeslice

Like a tornado I was spun into this world,
blown free from mamma's womb in a dust
storm of blood and sweat and shit and
doctor hands and wet wailing baby cries.

Now I'm a man. It wasn't long in the coming.
I ain't nothing more than some pieces of cosmic dust,
held together by a conglomeration of badass skills and
kill, kill, kills piled one neatly on top of another.

I dance the night away like a fistfight in a crowded bar
with a drag queen for a bartender and the bar
filled with ex-cons sucking beers
who ain't seen a real vagina in years.

I shake and twist and shimmy, my hips thrust and thrive
my arms pump and shake and juke, and I jive, baby, jive,
and my throat clears at the sight of a lady.

Sweat drips from my brow, and yet I dance the ceiling, dance the floors.
It's, it's, it's in the very double helix of my being,
I'll dance and stomp that floor until the walls fall down and
the ceiling collapses o'erhead, and then I'll grab my hat
and dance on down the road to the next gin joint
filled with easy women and sawdust on the floor.

I'm Roscoe Wrangler, Honkytonk Homeslice,
I'm like a flaming drink spilled on your lap,
or a rattlesnake in your bed.

There Are Only Three Arms in This Race to the Pudding

Once, twice, three times a
squab.
Up, jump, turn around and
kill, kill, kill.
Down times three plus seventy
eight, eight, eight.

The French might eat you,
they might gobble you up,
but fear nothing, for their
accents are far worse than their bites.

The bite of a nightowl in the throes
of seduction by suction,
a disemboweled dream, and a disconnected
tissue of memory. We make sounds,
but they are not always nice
or angry, sometimes they are loving and soft,
like the bristles on the underbelly of a dead rhinoceros.

Ceros! Ceros!
they've come to get you again.
Wake up, I cannot carry you again,
not this time. I am too weak.
Their poisons have made my muscles
tired and small, and my mucous
is no longer wet, but dry and
hard, and it makes me
wheeze in the air of this world
I will soon depart,
but Ceros, please,
before they arrive, you must leave
or you will leave this world for good.

And then comes the cannibals of
Necchaubinzalim, they who eat the hair
as well as the flesh and the air that permeates
the membranes of their 18" of personal space,
they gnash and bite at the flies that hum and
hover over redness and wetness, as if to say,
"YOU STAY AWAY! THIS IS MINE, MINE, MINE!!"
But then they will grow up to become fine
young politicians some day, concerned with only
the hairs and fleshes of those silly enough
to cast a vote in their direction.

Up to bed,
and an organ plays softly in the night air,
a body on its downward rot, and the mind
not quite what it used to be,
that organ always reminds her of her younger
church days, when she believed,
believed in something, but now what does
she believe in?
Liver spots or liverwurst, but surely not a
God who protects and cherishes. Rather in
hurricanes that sweep over land and air, sucking
and heaving and whipping and pushing,
and the smell of people who just couldn't swim any
more.
The news tells her all about it now.

Zip top flash pan, up and coming Naobi,
a turn in the tin suck is a fourscore
and seven years ago. The much muck created
in the scundulous, skindulour is of no
use in the fly's only abode. In the ear
of a man, is the wax we need to keep breathing
our air.

Don't go anywhere!
Don't go away.
Can't you see they need you?
Their bodies need your eyes.
Keep watching them on your TV.
Keep reading the scandal sheets on your computer.
Their bodies will waste away without your eyes.
They will waste away to nothing without your words,
scathing or praising, it doesn't matter.
They feed off of you,
the parasites of Celebricity.

Thomas Edison, you goddamn sonofabitch,
Topsy didn't deserve to die just
because she killed three people.
An eye is definitely an eye when
it comes to marketing electricity.
She was abused:
how would you feel if
you were fed a lit cigarette?

Say Hello to Dr. Carl

Dr. Carl is an associate of mine,
if you really want to get down to lead poisoning.
After receiving his M.D. in Carnage,
Dr. Carl started his own practice . . .
practicing his sadistic techniques on
anyone who would come in the front door,
be they man, ape, woman, child, pinky finger,
or Pinky Tuscadero (goddamn you Fonzie!)
He advertised in little local rags,
with a picture of his smiling, flawless
face and gentle, masculine hands, saying,
"Come on in. See Dr. Carl. I'll cure what ails you."
And they did, and he did.
Cured them all the way into shallow graves
out back of his house of horrors.
Till the law got wise, started sniffing around
Carl's axe-shack of love and biohazard.
Carl took to the hills, and he's been on the run
ever since.
I never pass judgment on ol' Carl, who's grown out
a beard now, and passes his time here and there
in the malls of small cities or along their recently
renovated riverfront plazas, passing out fliers advertising
love and fun
and new attractions, he's just trying to earn an honest
buck, and what business is it of mine?

Is he a damn good man? Hell no.
He's a devil in fleshtones, and in tribute,
I present some of examples of my terrible artwork
called "Themes on Dr. Carl's Something Something."

Early a Man

I'm grisled.
And chiseled from old wood,
and like an old stump in the ground,
I'm rooted in my ways.

I know that freedom ain't cheap,
and I got blood on my hands,
and memories I'd sure like to get rid of,
but whatta you know about it, ya punk.
You young punks who think everything
ought to be handed to you.
It was my trigger finger that gave you
the privilege to wear
your hair long and sleep till noon
and listen to that goddamn hippie music.
But you don't have a clue.
You just see me sitting in my booth at
Hardee's and drinking coffee with my
friends and you think I'm old and strange.

Well, I was young once, and I was early a man.
And I would've kicked that smirk
right the hell offa your face
if you'd treated me
with anything but the utmost respect.
That's how we did things back then.

Upon My Break-in at the Sperm Bank to Retrieve a Changed Mind

I've been around long enough
to know which semen is my semen,
but you can never be too sure
in a place like this.

And I don't have much time.

So I'll fill my backpack with
every entry under "M" I can find and
make a run for it.

What was I thinking, anyway?
I already have enough kids
I don't know,
and who don't,
know me, or probably care to
after what their mothers have
told them about me.

As long as these vials don't thaw out
or burst before I can bury them,
I'll be fine.

Jesus Christ!

It's Doctor

To my wife, I'm Dan.
To my kids, Daddy.
To my mom, it's Danny Boy.
But to you, pal,
it's Dr. Bailey.

p.s. You are a bag of ballsweat.

Zing sing-a-ding ding ding

Imagine a world where Vachel Lindsay
had balls made of titanium, and he
traveled back and forth across the vast
plains of this country, smashing them
in a vise for applause and booze money.

Imagine a world where Abraham Lincoln
never died, but was instead abducted
by rabid alien forces and forcefully
evolved into an ass-kicking robot
that wore a stovepipe hat.

Imagine a world where Joan of Arc
fed her entrails to vultures atop some
pristine French hillside while
she doodled in a notebook all the things
she imagined a life could become.

Or imagine this!
A world where Bob Dylan and Ronald Reagan
slept spoon handle to handle together every
night and raised their adopted children in a
quaint little blue working class home.

Imagine. Imagine this, too.
Imagine a world where
JFK was hacked to bits by a crazy with an axe
instead of shot to death by a conspiracy
on a Fall day in Texas.

Gleam of Knife

I'm a good man,
who got pushed too far.

There's no love in San Sulpice,
there's no twist in Penelope's neck,
there's no anger in that old prick's face over there,
there's no reason to be jealous,
but there is a gleam of knife with your name on it.

I've been drinking, sure,
and I'm drunk right now.
My name is James Herring,
and I'm going to kill you
for what you've done to me.
When I find you, your time's run out,
you've wasted it on a life
that lacked courage and
the ability to forge healthy relationships.

I believe in things,
I do.
And when you believe in things,
you can only be so flexible,
before you realize something
needs done.

It's time to clean up this mess.

A tree is planted in the forest
by the forces of nature
and THAT is no different than what
I'm about to do.

My name is James Herring.

I'm a good man,
who got pushed too far.

The Barber of Seville

My sister was murdered,
by a man named Smith,
but the police had forgotten her name.

"I'll nail that sumbitch,
I'll nail him good,"
I said,
and my road took me to Seville.

High school year books and librarians
can't help me.
They only spin tales
of the past,
but a call from a brother and a word from a mother,
and once again I am sniffing the trail.

Smith, you see, once made a box.
It held the remains of his wife,
but not of my sister, of another young
blister on the palm of this man's life.

He killed her and chopped her
and laid her to rest
in this hard, cold splintery grave.

A divorce she had asked, but it was his will
to kill her and hide her away,
and not till his brother came forward to speak,
his brother, the barber of Seville
did I have a good lead
to find where my sister might lay.

That barber, o barber who trimmed men's hairs
all the livelong. He'd visited AA meetings
for twelve long years but this secret still
ate him alive.

He knew the box, both inside and out,
he'd seen her face and her rainbow hair
and the rolls of clothes folded 'neath her.
And he went to the cops,
finally,
after all these long years and told them
of grandpa's old barn.

Someday, I hope to forget Seville,
that little old town in Ohio,
but until then, I will wait in my skin
and mourn my dear lost lonely sister.

Ode on Tasteless Little Sausages and Fat, Fat Cows

The meat grinder of time
grinds on, grinds you down
into little sausages.

Little tasteless sausages,
terrified sausages, afraid to speak,
afraid to think or act.

You've been seasoned white
with fear, worry, and anger;
the seasonings of modern experience.

Once you marched along,
such tender, sweet pieces of meat,
and so pure and unique.

Now you're tainted by fenced-in cows
who will only eat the green grass of home,
and tell you you're no longer safe in your own backyard.

And that meat grinder blends you
all together into that same batch
of tasteless, quivering sausage.