The Droning Nature

My body hurts from the punches

life is throwing.

An onslaught of haymakers

are trying to finish off

what work with little reward have done…

and are doing.

Hands aren’t calloused yet,

but my soul is buried in scar tissue

and my feet…

those dogs are barking.

I drink some coffee

from a place I tend to frequent

when the sun starts to descend.

Rather than finding my center,

my jaded conscience

is now trafficking in unfiltered thoughts

and unfettered stream-of-conscience

internal dialogue

(when not chain-smoking.)

There is a line in The Old Man and the Sea that goes:

“A man is not made for defeat…

a man can be destroyed but not defeated.”

Then, I remembered

that Ernest Hemingway took his own life.

Tomorrow is payday,

which for a moment,

lessens the pain of life’s punches. 

©2012 José-Ariel Cuevas

Thoughts from the Barstool: The Hydra Monster from Within

For the most part, I live in the here and now; leaving the past in the past, and the future as something that has yet to materialize. Though at times, all it takes for me to get nostalgic is something as simple (yet monumental) as the opening guitar riff to Nirvana’s “Smells like Teen Spirit”, or the Garfield mug (with its paint faded in peeling) from McDonalds. In this instance, my mind drifted back to what I was doing the other day, which was nothing spectacular (I sat at a bench on the Paseo de San Antonio, across from Philz Coffee, reading Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story for the fifth or twentieth time.)

There was an instance that stood out: this woman walked by, dressed in a flannel-type shirt and skin-tight acid washed jeans. She had the trappings of a suburban, garden-variety, Olympia-drinking hipster. I couldn’t stop thinking about her jeans, or how everything that is old, is new again. Certain articles of clothing should remain dead and buried, but circulation-killing acid washed jeans seen to be one head of a multi-headed, never-dying hydra monster. Another head of said monster reared as she talked on her phone, “… I don’t like that place, there are too many beaners there.” Her racist remark was as casual as her checkerboard Vans. What made her vile comment even viler was that she seemed to be Latina as well (or at the very least, was of some ethnic background.)

Racism is like this old byproduct of humanity’s early days. And in-house racism seems extra-special to me. It is done with underpinning of class, a colonial mindset. A few Latin Americans have perfected this mindset and have added a few pages to the playbook that has survived since the days of the Conquistadores. A cursory glance of either Univisión or Telemundo is recommended to see how class and race are shaped by pop culture. (Side note: Among me and my friends, we always joked how Argentina, the whitest Latin-American country, with their history of Fascist-leanings and their noses forever in the air, were able to do what all the Conquistadores couldn’t.) Soap operas (novellas), especially in México, are their bread and butter. No matter if it is set in a city or in a ranch in some rural outpost, the template never changes: the main and secondary characters are either whiter than blinding light, or are light-skinned mulattos who can pass; the servants and thieves were the usual shade of indigenous brown.

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Nonopiod

I step; I bounce.

I’m shot out like a Bulleit.

Another one and I will live again.

Rising from death like the phoenix:  From the slave to the free.

My night wakes up faster than a sunrise and they walk in to brighten the day.

My turn.  The table is set for me to make my run, so I smile like a devil and pull the trigger on cue…

In Search of Destiny (Ending Up Where I Always Do)

The weather is cold,
bitter,
more bitter than my coffee,
more bitter than your
average, jealous fellow.
My hair is jostled,
my wavy,
in-between-haircut hair
moves like a spastic drug addict.
The waves become loose curls.
I pass by this store front
that has been vacant for a while now,
a clump of dirt (maybe it’s a nest,
maybe it’s just a clump of dirt)
dangles and dances
with each thrust of wind.
Couples walk by—
hands firmly held,
stares, distant and cold.
What’s left of an alt weekly
tumbles on by,
momentarily snagged on my foot.
With a gentle kick,
it becomes free,
continuing on with its random destination.
My destination is also random,
or maybe, I am looking for somewhere to go,
or looking for someone
(my destiny, or a random fuck.)
But what I find is time running out,
and where I find myself is the same place
I know where I can be me…
with some coffee,
three cigarettes,
a half-read book
and an iPod in need of charging.

 
©2011 José-Ariel Cuevas

I Got Soul, But I'm Not A Soldier (An Honest Mistake)

My most emotional year was probably when I was Twenty-five.  It was for so many reasons, but the events of the year before really created that.  I didn’t know how to deal with life much for the previous decade or more; I just kept riding highs and running away from lows.  I’d been through so many drugs and moves and chaos and disasters, of which I created about half of, and finally was starting to put it together.  I thought I had it down the year before.  I had girls, I had music, I had work, I had school, I had a place to live… but by the end of that year it was all falling apart again.  It’s probably my own fault, but I know it also all revolves around a single girl, and well, honestly, that was always my problem…

I met this girl online.  We had similar music tastes, and were both writers.  We were both looking for something else in life.  We didn’t know what, we just knew that we’d both been dealt a shit hand, and we wanted something different.  The American dream doesn’t work for dreamers, so we kept chasing something new…

She was a Russian model, a disaster of a human being who had only been out of jail for a few weeks when I met her, still bearing the scars of when the police shot her, and I was infatuated before I laid eyes on her.  She was enthralled by me, the chaotic poet, before we met in person too.  She had a boyfriend at the time, but we still fucked in my car the first night we met.

She had called me while I was gone, when I was on a week long lake trip with my friends, with no phone service, and she left me a message.

(People
They don’t mean a thing to you
They move right through you 
Just like your breath)

I called her on the way back.

The first night we met was on campus at the school I was attending at the time.  She was an out of work veterinarian, living with the engineer who had fucked her over, but still paid all her bills.  We spent the night driving around, listening to music, smoking cigarettes, and trying to deny the connection between us.

As I was driving her home, that first night, we pulled up to the corner of her building, and I said “Fuck it.”

We had been listening to the Bravery’s “Honest Mistake” which was brand new at the time, and was a song we both loved.  She told me she liked the way I sang along, and I pulled the car to the curb and kissed her.

(But sometimes
I still think of you
And I just wanted to
Just wanted you to know
My old friend…
I swear I never meant for this
I never meant…)

I drove to the nearest parking garage.  I dropped the seat, and fucked her in her skirt.  I couldn’t resist her.  I let her go that night, knowing there was so much more to come.

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Thoughts from the Bar Stool: Passion of the Moz

Wednesday is my day of leisure—work and home life have dictated it so. It is kind of like all the other ones that have preceded it. The only factors that set it apart from the other Wednesdays are that it’s starting to feel like autumn and the City of San José is already in the process of decorating the Plaza de César Chávez with Christmas décor. The air is brisk and the days are getting shorter. With the evening starting earlier, the lunatic brigade is out in full force. My dogs are tired from walking. My mind is tired from thinking. I find the café that I frequent in the afternoons and early evenings. I go in and I get a coffee. I unshackle myself from the doldrums of television and the internet; in exchange, I sit at the same table, at the same café, drinking the same coffee, smoking the same cigarettes. I crack open the same book (well, I do have to finish it.) The darkness of the night sky compels me to put my book down (my eyes are not what they used to be), put on my headphones, put my iPod into shuffle mode, and zone-out. Three songs into my music-appreciation session, “Suedehead” by Morrissey starts to play. 

      I decided to do some more walking, to see what the mid-week city life has to offer me, nothing more than the same old sea of strangers ebbing and flowing past me. Their banter (both idle and banal) drifts past me.  I make my way to the bar. A beer is in order to counterbalance the caffeine that is fraying my already-frayed nerves. As I walk in, “Panic” by the Smiths comes on. I nod my head as I swirl my pint of Guinness, nodding in approval, occasionally lip-syncing to it. Of course, there are some patrons who listen to the song and immediately begin to snort and mouth-breath some profane words of disapproval. C’est la vie. Life goes on, and so does my appreciation.

       I don’t remember when or where I first heard Morrissey’s music - or whether it was his solo work or his oeuvre with The Smiths - but I do recall that I was a teenager, and I remember feeling a sort of primal connection to his particular strain of pining and angst-ridden music. Up to that point, I listened to a variety of music (and still do), never committing to a single genre, or mutation of said genre. Though to be honest, I have always been partial to música norteña, baladas and rock music (some subsets more than others.) Then, from some horn-rimmed-glasses-wearing ether, his brand of music with witty, erudite lyrics came into my consciousness. My musical revelation was met with derision of others. Being laughed at by friends, by strangers, by the folks that ask for spare change; comes with the territory. For a good portion of the world at large, Morrissey’s music is as antiquated as the British Empire. As for those who were into him since day one, his music is either on the shelf collecting dust, or they are staunch classicalists (any music that he made after 1995 is deemed blasphemous by them.) Then all of a sudden, in the midst of his irrelevancy, a Moz renaissance began (a resurreción if you will.)

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Fuck It All

Fuck it all

Fuck it again

I tried to fuck her, she wouldn’t have it

I could’ve taken it, but that just doesn’t get me off.

So I drank in the park until it was time to

I got a ride back from a nigger and a spick

They thought it was funny as fuck.

A white boy in a truck.

Chase the dragon with a demon of noise.

A beer and a brutality.

She thinks I’m cute, so I drink in a park with her.

I’ll fuck her in her house, once, maybe twice, but I leave when we are done.

My best friend doesn’t know what to do with me, so he stays at home and studies and paints.

Your best friend has his kids and his wife.

What do we do, to kill the pain, to kill the brain…

I listen to the screamers, when all I want is the pain.

The regret.

Work and school and family and everyone wants something from me…

Kill them all.

Kill the rich, and kill the cops and kill the bosses till there’s no one left to kill

Can I get a witness?

What more do you want from me?  I’m just a fuck up who’s too smart for his own good.  My father says I am my own worst enemy and I hate the fact that he’s right.  I didn’t talk to him for a decade because he was right, and I don’t know why I do it now.  You all want me to be something but I don’t know how to be anything but the fuck up that I am so fuck you…

What do you want?  I just want to fuck this girl, there isn’t anything more interesting right now and I don’t care about tomorrow…

What A Week: My Stimulus Package

Fall is here, It’s summer in San Francisco, and The Second Great Depression is upon us.

A lot has been going on the last week or two.  It came out that the FBI keeps you on terrorist watchlists even if you’ve been cleared of any wrongdoing.  Not sure what is worse here, that there are innocent people on the list or that there are people the FBI thinks are terrorists that “are not the subject of any active investigation (!!!)”  In New York, the police (who can also shoot down planes!) are beating up peaceful protesters and the mainstream news is ignoring it.  Israel is building 1,200 more homes in the West Bank and is derailing any chance of even starting a peace process.  Attacks in Afghanistan are increasing.  At a recent debate Republicans Presidential candidates didn’t admonish the crowd for booing a soldier on national TV and neither did the moderators.  Candidate Rick Santorum said that he would shove all of the gays back into the closet by re-instating Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, to which he received thunderous applause.  I’m guessing that there are a lot of closeted gays in the audience who were missing all the newly out gay servicemen. 

Insurance premiums are going up by 10% this year.  The health care reform package is going to the Supreme Court and could be ruled unconstitutional by the current conservative majority.  Remember that the US is barred by law to negotiate down prescription drug rates.  The drug firms would have prevented this bill from passing if a provision had been included to allow the government to negotiate prices.  The US faces another potential government shutdown in November by a conservative Congress looking for any way to shrink the government in order to pander to their ultra-conservative, anti-government, Christian base.  Why would you want to curtail the biggest spender, the US Government, during a recession?  Morons.  The unemployment rate has more than doubled from 4.5% to 9.1% since September 2006 (Blame Bush-43, The Supreme court for putting him in when not elected, and Al Gore for not suing to get him out).  The US (never mind European) economy is in the toilet and if it doesn’t turn around we’ll have either Mitt Romney (Jesus:  The Mormons are from Mars Dad, we’ve had it checked out) or Pastor Rick Perry as President (Christ is alive?  What millennium does he think it is?!?!).

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Thoughts From The Bar Stool: Ignorance Is Bliss

Starting from the beginning, I love my city of San José (California.) It is a big city with a small-town feel. It has weight issues (its slimmer sister, San Francisco, lords herself over her.) Her insecurities leads her to do some things to get attention: sweetheart tax deals for housing developments that will never be more than 40% full, closing mom-n-pop ethnic restaurants to make room for a chain eatery that will close six months later, sending as many homeless people to Modesto as possible.

I was on Facebook earlier, checked my messages, and group postings (some are more active than others.) One of the groups that I joined is called “You Know You’re from San Jose When…”, which is hyper-active, a lot of posts by people that have moved away and are nostalgic for certain things that are no longer there (Woolworth, an orange-domed hot dog restaurants, the last public lynching in this country—which was at St. James Park in downtown San José); while others’ wax nostalgic over where one bought their Z Cavaricci’s, over listening to hi-nrg (freestyle) music. Others still fondly recollect over recent trends and fads that were popular with the Mexican-Americans. A big deal for a lot of my people tends to be gangs (with “chicas”, cruising, cruising for chicas a close second.) The culture in San José is par for the course with Northern California—Norteños vs. Sureños.

Unlike in Southern California where it is mostly about neighborhoods or race, in Northern California, the militarized zone is colored in red or blue. (I’ll spare the historic details of the origins of each; suffice it to say that you can catch it on a Gangland rerun on Spike TV.) Though regional, the sides are usually dibbed-up by origins; Mexican-Americans tend to become Norteños while Mexican-nationals tend to gravitate towards the Sureños—but then again, it all depends on what neighborhood you are raised in.

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Postcard from The End of the World: Chapter One

Nothing puts a damper on a vacation in the same way as nearly getting yourself killed. Yet there I was, perilously close to drowning, having blatantly ignored the crew of the booze cruise I have jumped off from about a half hour previously. “Stick to the rocks near the shore close to the boat. DON’T go the other side of the bay and DON’T get too far from shore! The currents are dangerous, guys!!”  But I knew better….yeah, right. Chasing a school of tropical fish in my snorkel gear in Santa Maria Bay in Cabo San Lucas had placed me about 100 yards away from my boat and further away by the second - each successive wave’s undertow dragging me away from shore and thus closer to becoming Pacific Ocean fish food. I was running the last reel of “Open Water” through my mind – that movie about two scuba divers who get left behind by their charter boat and after they accept the hand of fate there’s a lot of soul-searching for a half hour until they eventually become shark snacks. Back in real life, I was getting tossed about by the waves, inhaling a foul cocktail that was half sea water, half air. Adding to my predicament was the foggy head of someone who had, until 31 minutes ago, been actively trying to recreate the perfect buzz through use of beer and liquor with the help of Paco, the 17-year-old cruise bartender on board. The booze’s buzz was replaced with internal panic. Years of swimming lessons were instantly forgotten, and the hundred yards to my boat may have well been the first leg of the Ironman Triathlon. In flailing around, however, I caught sight of a catamaran about 15 yards away. I did some more inspired flailing – this time in the direction of the cat’s crew, who didn’t appear overly alarmed by my current dire situation.  With a bit of well-timed confidence, I caught a second wind and doggie paddled my way toward the catamaran. As I got to within a yard of the bow, one of the crew jumped in the water to assist. Next thing I know a police boat has pulled up behind us and I am literally hauled aboard by my arms. So now I’m on a boat with two damp cops and three other policemen, each of whom is brandishing machine guns, and I’m kinda thinking - this is exactly what they mean by ‘out of the frying pan into the fire,’ you know? Aboard the SS La Policia, we’re motoring in the direction of my cruise boat and I’m wondering if I’m going to be on TV on ‘Locked Up Abroad’ next season. Mind you that this is my optimistic outcome for my current situation. In trying to avoid eye contact with the gendarmes, I find I’m looking directly at a row of AK-47’s. As soon as we’re within a few feet of the ladder of my cruise boat, I gingerly move towards it. No one is stopping me, so I figure one of the cops is going to be right behind me gesturing with his weapon for me to get the rest of my stuff and come back aboard with them.  I flopped down on a bench to catch my breath. A pregnant pause, and then, fatalistically, I turned my head in the direction of the police boat, but…they’re already leaving?? No arrest, no bribe, not even a stern lecture from El Jefe? Without a doubt, the most relieving anticlimax I’ve ever had. My only proof that it ever happened was the playful snickering from Paco during the ride home whenever I approached the bar. Back on shore I knew I had been given the divine chance to turn my vacation around… To be continued…(this time I mean it!!!)