Take it like a Man

Why can't I come to an understanding with
you
could have told me the
truth
is it's hard lying down in this empty
bed(t)
you're still running around

Can't we just get off this cliff we stumbled up
to(o)
late to send rescue
now
looking down, beginning to under-
stand
up for something, stand down your feelings, stand up and take it like a man

I Do

Snow covers the foothills in the winter. In autumn, summer leaves begin to fall. The taste of harvest air outside the trailer, from gravel drives, is writing on the wall. All you ever had to do was lift a finger, and you had me coming to your beckon call. Maybe it's not fair of me to wonder how much you ever cared for me at all, but I do.
The baby came that February evening, drafty bedroom warming from the stove. When I was through you cut the cord and held me, delivered of the fear and full of hope. All you ever had to do was lift a finger, and you had me coming to your beckon call. Maybe it's not fair of me to wonder, if ever you'd consider moving on, but I do.
It's been years now driving down your demons, and we've seen richer, we've seen poorer times. But baby, if you ever start to wonder if I know always I'll be by your side, I do.

Sandcastles

Gather your buckets, your shovels, and tools, and walk down to the shoreline today. Build a sandcastle complete with a wall, and watch the tide wash it away. On top of the tower we'll raise up a beautiful flag that we painted to say, "This one's for all the folks who recognize the lord giveth and taketh away." In all of the cities all over the word there are people slaving away, storing their treasure in houses and cars, hoping nobody takes it away.
Consider the sparrow and look at the lilies.
Gather your buckets your shovels and tools and walk down to the shoreline today. Build a sandcastle complete with a wall and watch the tide wash it away.

Someplace Tropical

I don’t want to write if I can read
Please don’t make me think
I’d rather sing
I got nothing to say
But I can not close my eyes

No rest for the obsessively remorseful

When the time comes for you to rise and take a number
Take one for me I’ll be right over
Quick as I pull my shit together

I see colors and warm and dark
Hard and soft
Sweet and sour

Objects at rest are not at rest but do
Appear to be so until the instant
That it’s over.
Moving objects will continue but only for a while
Before gravity and friction take them down
And they will
Cuz they always do
Don’t think for a minute you’re something special
Everbody does
Forget about it
Shut your mouth forget about it
Everybody will
Simplify your life my friend and pay your bills
Plan a trip to someplace tropical

Steam From Your Coffee Cup

At times
I can be good to you
And you can be all of it
At the same time

And I can be here and now
And I bet I could change your mind again

You look at me that way
And I deserve it
Probably I wasn’t thinking
Clearly enough to know the difference

Light amplifies even faster as morning sun shining
Warm through the front room window
Meets steam from your coffee cup

Pablo Trucker Playlist: Nonstop to SXSW 2010

Elvis Costello and the Attractions Greatest Hits
The Cops Free Electricity
Elliot Smith Either Or

350 miles
Cake Fashion Nugget
The Roots Phrenology
Ray LaMontagne Until the Sun Turns Black
Lucero Tennessee
535
Metric (the new one at the time)
Ottis Redding
TW Walsh How We Spend Our Days
Fugazi
(some Christian radio for a bit)
Gillian Welch
900
M. Ward Post War
Smog A River Is Not Too Much To Love
1050
Paul Simon Graceland
Radiohead In Rainbows
Breeders Last Splash
John Vanderslice Life and Death of an American 4-Tracker
Loose Fur
1401
Rage Against the Machine Evil Empire
Spoon Girls Can Tell
Weezer Pinkerton
Neil Young Harvest
AA Bondy When the Devil’s Loose
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers Hard Promises
Ryan Adams Love is Hell pt. 1
1673
Low The Great Destroyer
(Coast to Coast radio and then sleeping in the snow on an overpass in New Mexico)
1992
Bob Dylan Highway 61 Revisited
Wilco More like the Moon
Nina Nastasia and Jim White I Follow You
(Fresh Air podcast)
2277
Modest Mouse Good News for People Who Llike Bad News
The Toadies Rubberneck

Aurora Shorts 4

Dos Guys-

There were twenty of us at 7:30 watching the road and the bus stop on the other side that took workers downtown. They were mostly sipping coffee and talking on cell phones.

A truck slowed and turned down the driveway toward the contractor loading area. It stopped.

“Tile! Dos guys.”

I ran from the south side of the road around the front of the truck.

“Ok, you two let’s go.”

I walked back as two of us and one white man pulled away. Across the street, the bus arrived and we couldn’t see any coffee or cell phones.

Good Luck

I fell into line behind a round, upper middle-aged woman at the customer service counter. She’d been there a few minutes already.
“The first one worked?” she asked the cashier.
“Mmhmm.” Lotto tickets are like scantrons or other multiple choice answer forms you use in school where you fill in little bubbles for the numbers you want and then someone feeds the form through a machine that uses a technology called Optical Mark Recognition to convert your written choices into digital data that is then recorded and transferred back to you via a receipt for you to look at when the winning combination of digits is announced. The second ticket wasn’t working. “Give me a minute here.”
The cashier continued periodically feeding the leading edge of the ticket into the scanner portion of the Lotto machine and the machine would take it in an eighth or even a quarter of an inch sometimes and then push it back out. Then she would try to straighten it, or blow it off -- scanning for errant spots or blemishes -- and give it to the machine again with the same result. She got another ticket and placed it underneath the actual ticket, doubling the thickness of the offering and tried that. Nothing. The woman in front of me began to seem uncomfortable with the delay.
“Maybe you weren’t supposed to play those numbers,” I said.
“That’s how I look at it,” she turned and looked at me. “I think you may be right.” She turned back to the counter as the machine pushed the ticket out again. “That’s ok,” she said, “let’s just void it -- I’ll just fill in another.” She moved to the left slightly so I could move up in line.
“How can I help you?” the cashier asked as she was putting away the extra ticket and the various implements she’d employed in her attempts of the last moments.
“I’ll take some Top rolling tobacco please.”
She retrieved her keys from under the counter and turned to the case with the cigarettes and Swisher Sweets cigars and the Nicorette gum and the lighters and gave the lock a try. And then she gave another key a try.

“You know it’s funny how everything is connected,” the middle-aged woman smiled at me. “If I go in to play the lottery and everything doesn’t go just right, I don’t even bother.”

“You have to be feeling it huh?”
“Yeah, I’ve just learned that it’s not going to work out if everything isn’t right.”

The cashier finally finished struggling with the lock and called across the walkway to a nearby check stand, “Hey Tessa, do you have a key to the case?”

“Sure, give me a minute.”

To the Lotto lady next to me: “Maybe I wasn’t supposed to smoke tonight,” I smiled.

“Maybe you’re right!”

Tessa brought the key and I paid for my tobacco and started to go as the Lotto lady handed her new ticket to the cashier.

“Good luck to you young man.”

“Thanks. Good luck to you too.”

Aurora Shorts 1-3

Slug Bug Blue-

“Slug bug blue.”

“You miss ‘em?”
“Who’s that?”
“It’s gotta be tough.”
“Wanna mc double it again?”
“Yeah that’s cool.”
He turned onto Aurora. “Yeah I miss them I guess,” he said, accelerating. “I don’t think about it.”
“How is she?”
“I don’t know. We haven’t—slug bug yellow—we haven’t talked. I’m hungry.”
“Yeah.”
They turned off the highway and idled into line. They sat while the minivan in front rolled to the first window.
“…Would you like to try a McRib…?”
“We’ll have three McDoubles and three McChickens. Slug bug black! See it? Leaving that taco truck!”

Pepper-
Hell man, thermodynamics beats inertia every time.
What I’m saying is inertia is the tendency.
Waitress: Okay boys?
Yes mamn.
Brother, things fall apart, okay? Nothing stays the same. Don’t let any damn therapist tell you different.
The point is, all things being equal, if an object is moving, it’ll just keep on.
That’s the difference between you and me man. Nothing is equal, we both know it, but you think it’s so damned important to know what it’d be like if things were. Pass the pepper.
You always pepper that omelet.
Next week I’ll get crepes.
Yeah right.

Silhouettes-
She saw silhouettes of condos. Most slept. Some needed the night for other reasons. Some were junkies or dealers or hustlers or whores and some just drove around and looked for things.
“Hey, can I help you?” A cold voice startled her from a porch. She quickened her pace.
“Hey! You hear me?” There were steps behind her. She broke into a run. Around the corner, down the block toward Aurora, Japanese maples, darkness, finally falling on her face in a patch of viburnum.
Behind her it was quiet. Ahead was the noise and the light of the highway.