Perhaps there is frivolity, a fancy-pants festooned feverish feeling in fortifying myself during the pandemic by building driftwood forts.
But I feel fortified and formidable when doing so while the First Furry Felonious Ferret Fiend fornicates up our fake, fatuous, facile, forlorn, freaked, Funhouse of a country. Land of the folderol and home of the feckless fools in untucked shirts.
Can we bring back the word fusspot?
If only a real fakir ran this unfortunate show. How fabulous and far out! He or she or the furry-antlered elk might finalize our flimsy, futile, fractured, flim flam fate as a nation. It is time we are exposed as a a fantastic failure, a fart in the flaming wind, while the brontosaurs hi-fives us a fat middle finger that will enrage the flat earth viewers of Fox News.
Fourth of July poem over. Finis. Finished.
Oh fuck, I forgot to use fetch, finagle, famish, fork and febrile in this poem.
I rambled the beach at an extreme low tide on the morning of Fourth of July. I admired sea stars and mussels. I stopped in one of my forts and made a phone call to a dear friend. I visited another fort and read the strange nonsense someone had written on the wood.
On my way home I begin to think about my country and the spectacle the President staged at Mt. Rushmore last night. I didn’t watch a second of, nor will I ever. I never thought I would live to see the day when a tinpot dictator held the highest office in the land. It all seems to be collapsing around him in disorder and death.
I got into it with a neighbor the other day. He described the mask order as Nazi. He said it was all a hoax and the flu. I rebutted this and that and then walked away. If gravity aided the Democrats, he would say gravity was a hoax and believe it. Consider this: many French reactionaries welcomed the Nazis invasion of their country. The Vichy government and all that. This time feels like that to me, a Vichy sort of government in place that rallies the fanatics with fear and hate and debasement. The old fascist playbook. It’s never changed. It never will. Consider this: there were many Germans who still believed in Hitler after it all ended. We have those kind of Americans today.
Last night I watched a movie about football and one of the extras was someone named Jack Snow, which I think is about the best male name I have ever heard. It occurred to me that I once owned the football card of Jack Snow. He was on my All-Name team, a group of players with the best football names, such as Dick Butkus and Jack Ham and Sonny Sixkiller.
As I was walking back home from the beach, I came across a dilapidated red sedan parked in front of a grange hall. The sedan was covered in moss and duct tape. The tags were expired from years ago. A young man was sleeping in the driver’s seat because the back seat was filled with shit. The man wore a black hoodie and his mouth was wide open as he slept. He face was scarred and hollow.
This scene struck me as precisely the image of America’s body politic.
The swallows soared overhead as I passed the sedan. They didn’t care about anything but flying.
I hope I don’t hear a single firecracker tonight, but I will.
I sat in Oregon Tavern Age country on a summer afternoon. Outside, a whipping wind blew the RVs to and fro as they motored somewhere or nowhere during the pandemic. Across the street from the joint, tourists packed a fudge shop. Gotta’ have fudge before you die!
Near me, a large man ordered a double Seven & Seven.
I sipped a beer and worked on a kink noir story about a hot flagger who blackmails married men. She was looking like Veronica Lake in my mind if you can ever imagine Veronica Lake directing traffic on a rural road wearing an orange vest and drinking coffee (with schnapps) from a Thermos.
In a booth not far away, an elderly couple told a story about their dog Dottie getting 86’d from another OTA joint because she took a dump under a stool.
But she didn’t do it! the couple protested. It was another dog, Tank, drunk after knocking over a can of Hamm’s and lapping up the spill. He was the turd culprit.
Someone played “Fat Bottomed Girls” on the jukebox. The big man ordered another double. Surely the fudge would run out soon. Gamblers lost money on the slots and it was all the Governor’s fault.
I was stuck on a point in the story about Veronica’s character. Would she use double negatives? I can’t really see Veronica with bad grammar. But it could be sexy and a dodge.
For your consideration: there exists a remote stretch of beach on the Secret Oregon Coast where a shack sits upon a cliff. Several Japanese glass fishing floats dangle from the eaves of the cabin.
An old man with two angry dogs visits the shack a couple times of year. He sometimes sits outside and looks at the ocean. The shack is old, dilapidated, and badly in need of paint and roof repair. One gets the idea that this man, or his father, built the shack, but somewhere along the way, the always great notion of consistent maintenance drifted away. The cabin now was clearly going to seed.
Not too long ago, on a bright morning, a regular beachcomber walked past the shack and noticed something new about it. He was jolted by what he saw: TRUMP 2020 painted in red on the front of the blue shack. The shack was falling apart but here was a bold and freshly painted political advertisement in the middle of nowhere that virtually no one would ever see. Was the old man trying to convince the ocean to vote for Trump, or the whales and gulls and otters? It was an astonishing and unlikely sight for the beachcomber to encounter and it braced him. It made him think hard about the man’s act and commitment to the President’s reelection. Perhaps the ad was merely for him to read as a daily affirmation, but of course he was only there a couple times a year. Was it wholly incongruous to place a political ad in the midst of such sweeping natural beauty? Where did the fervor to paint the ad originate? Did painting the ad make him happy? Are Biden supporters doing something similar with their ramshackle beachfront properties? The beachcomber’s political beliefs did not align with the old man’s. (The beachcomber was practically a communist.) Still, he sort of admired the effort. The old man had at least got off his ass for a few minutes to declare a political belief. If more Americans did that (and voted), this would be a far better nation.
A final question entered the beachcomber’s mind: once the election was over, would the old man paint over the ad? Or it would it remain and fade and weather and decompose in concert with the cabin’s inevitable demise? Was it all one really big fat metaphor?
What ignites a writing idea? Sometimes they magically appear in the most mundane of moments. Sometimes they emerge from a totally unexpected encounter with a bird, song, person or book. And at other times, they reveal themselves through writing activities and discussion with other writers in a workshop setting.
On Saturday September 19 in Astoria, I will teach a writing workshop called “Igniting New Writing via Richard Hugo.” The workshop will run from 1-3:30 pm and cost $50. It is based largely in part on the poet Richard Hugo’s influential book about writing titled, Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing and feature writing and discussion exercises based on Hugo’s unique ideas about how to bring about good writing.
Weather permitting, the workshop will be held outdoors on a lawn of a private residence and adhere to social distancing protocols. In the case of inclement weather, the workshop will be moved indoors and participants are encouraged/required to wear masks. (More on this as the story of the virus unfolds and protocols change.)
The workshop is ideal for beginning or advanced writers of any genre: poetry, fiction, essay, memoir, even songwriting, It can help launch a new project or inspire a refresh of an existing one.
The class is limited to ten participants. To register, send a private message or email to me.
I didn’t really catch on to the Great Debasing of Americans (by Americans) until I landed in a domicile that offered free cable television. I hadn’t had cable in over 20 years, but a friend gave me a big flatscreen and I hooked it up…and Jesus…
As I surfed the channels, I noticed a pattern right away: many of the shows, whether reality-based or dramas, showed Americans being debased by some asshole boss/expert or the cops or their so-called friends and family. The debasement was subtle or loud, but usually loud. It came in the chef shows. The bar rescue shows. The wedding shows. The cops kicking ass shows. The wives of (insert city here) shows. The homestead shows. The losers at sea fishing shows. The pitch-me-your-bullshit-idea shows.
The latter is what the Great Debaser Donald Trump rode to not being elected by a popular vote majority in the 2016 election. (Remember he lost by three million votes.)
Trump has ratcheted up his Debasing via twitter and speeches to a heretofore unknown cesspool level in American history. He took to the gutter and slimed it into a vile rock and roll. He debases: Immigrants. LGBTQ. Liberals. Reporters in wheelchairs. Female (Democratic) governors. Blacks. Parents of a young man killed int the service of his country. Female reporters. The land. The ocean. Obama. Canada.
Why didn’t many Americans reject the Great Debasing in Chief and the debasing of Americans for sport and entertainment in general? How did it come to this?
Easy. It makes a lot more money than being a nation of Uplifting. Uplifting people doesn’t sell nearly as well or deliver the high ratings. Debasing does.
Cue the Pixies song “Debaser.” This is our real national anthem. Make sure you grovel when you listen to it here:
When someone is debased long enough or debases others for a long time, they will go insane. They will root for more debasement and relish in others getting debased. They love watching it on TV. They think it’s not them being debased as they watch. They are wrong. They are complicit. I’m not sure you really ever come back from that. There seems no way to break this spell in my country.
Steve Wonder’s “Higher Ground” just came on the radio as I was writing this. How to proceed as a nation is contained within that song. It’s all right there. Higher ground, let’s get there and get out of the gutter.
