A Marxist Coup (Not the good kind)

On the fringes of downtown Oakland, close enough to the freeway, my window when its open in the afternoon, more often weekdays, provides a steady soundtrack of traffic, the sounds of people moving along, usually one constant, dissonant noise like a gravelly river flowing outward, right on by. Most times, there isn't one noise separated from another. Unless there's a big block engine there somewhere, or a Harley rustles by or maybe a big rig, a tow truck, but more than likely I don't notice a thing unless I'm looking outside.
What I notice more than anything, is when someone is blaring tunes with their windows down, bumping bass vibrating the walls sometimes, a guitar solo now and then, or Top 40 whathaveyou, they pass and then they're gone. Most of the time, they are faceless and only leave a trace of exhaust. But once in awhile, there is a distinction. A Peach colored Buick Regal on 20s blasting "Cutie Pie" by One Way or maybe a rusted Dodge Colt taking it to the limit with Van Halen's "Right Now" through stock speakers from 1991, proudly and sadly on a horribly consistent classic rock station. So the songs move by fast, sometimes stopping at a red light on the corner, allowing me to jam out or laugh my face off, as in the latter example, for an elongated moment or two.

Yesterday, late afternoon rush, lots of cars and trucks going home, after some Mac Dre caused me to pause and momentarily tolerate life, something else came along to assault rather than caress my brain. It was louder than anything else on the street. It was stopped at the light before I could configure who it was or why.
Richard Marx, not Groucho or Karl, the one I don't like so much, with his sappy shitsong from decades back, still staining the airwaves, probably on an easy listening station, "For a smooth ride home, here is a classic..."
I felt like it went on longer than necessary, a lingering red light or maybe they were trying to fucking park, while blasting, "Wherever you go, whatever you do, I will be right here waiting for you..." You may remember this song from a recent dentist visit or perhaps some memory of being in a car with a lame, white relative in 1989. It was so loud and so goddamn strange, completely overpowering the music I had on at a low volume, I had to take a look out the window and see who this motherfucker was. For a slight moment I hesitated my generalization, my blind hatred at a stranger, after all bad music is funny sometimes, right?
Fucking wrong. Not only is that rotting cheese unacceptable in any capacity but sure as shit, the culprit was right there waiting for me, a Prius and a ponytail were involved and I just had to shake my head and throw up a middle finger, trying to laugh, trying not to puke, I think I won the battle because it ended up being kind of funny. The light changed finally and the dickhead moved along, as did Richard Marx.

And I didn't feel bad at all about blind hatred or anything else. I went back to listening to Sabbath, turning it up now as loud as it could go. No more invasions today, I thought. I listened to "Snowblind" and lit up a blunt. And kept that window open for the rest of the day.

ghettoblasters

Migration is a funny thing, it’s the story of the world and we’re no different. For reasons known and unknown, and always sung about, some people had to walk a long way or else hitch a ride, Durango, Guerrero, Michoacan, Colorado, Poland, Colombia, Indiana, Riverside, most were forced in one way or another or else trampled, shackled, fucked and deep fried for an obese god. They keep telling me what's up, getting their stories wrong, fucking up the corroboration. Mix your blood in the sand and the train’s waiting the very next day, a new slab of something to defend to the death. Factory job or whatever the fuck. A big score up in Richmond then another exile east because west you'd drown in that cold Pacific. And then if the concrete dries it loses its urgency, it’s off to the store and she never came back, or hitchhiking, hand baskets, greyhound never wins the race, bright lights, dim bulbs, big city of abandonment and death, it’s all about migration and will always be from here on out.

A seasonal shift now, end of time again, big deals coming down to strangle and scram. I'm not talking about baseball, no not at all. I'm not thinking of pretending to be lost in a park, in the neighborhood, where the fuck did Desiree go? I remember 2 houses from the corner, where the cops beat Johnny Morales half to death. I have to move along, momentarily, where she took an ice pick to the sky and let it all come down.

I'm running scared, as the song goes, but not from anyone I know. I have to go out to the desert and knee cap my cousin because he's letting a bad element eat away my grandmother's house, food, beer, cleaning supplies, these cocksuckers are worse than the roaches. You know, sometimes it's decent to have a snake in the grass or tarantulas in the garden because they eat the rats and roaches, and if your predators get outta hand, there are always more. Owls and bobcats and sawed off shot guns, no serial, bury it out by where grandma used to take you on walks, explaining what shit was and why.

So a mission is set, a loose plan to fuck people up. If it's reckless or good, I won't know for awhile. But it won't be the same without strong drink. Goddamn this ordinary ride. I think if the truth is what they say then I'll have to tell the same tale. Whispers or screams, someone's gonna have to hear it. Even if the window opens for a clean, guttural shut the fuck up over there. Then, my work will be done for a little while.

The News

There has been a lack of content on here for plenty of reasons, some inexcusable and some just because I had other shit to do. I've been writing, working on another zine, drinking beer in North Carolina and Montreal, dealt with bouts of indecision concerning what I wanted to put on a blog because I'd never written a blog and wanted to only have completed short stories, etc.

But now I realize, more often than completing or perfecting some ideal work of art, I rant on about some bullshit I did the other day or ten years ago or yell quietly about some story that has nothing to do with me. Or I just watch some 70s crime drama and shut the fuck up completely. So let this blog now be a reflection of that. Let it be a crowded backyard party in Riverside. Barbecues and blunts, flames upon each, good people and cold beer and plenty of jams. Now maybe I can't salvage the art out of it or articulate what it all means to me, not all the time anyway. But in all the perfect dissonance, maybe something will slip by. Maybe out of the chaos, a voice will be louder than the others.
Maybe some homie in the backyard pulls out a gun and fires it in the air, just to fuck with everyone. Some people turn into statues, some scatter, some disappear in a flash faster than the gunfire.
Then all you're left with is the sound of his laughter ringing in the silence. All before the music comes back, louder now as he puts the gat away and goes back to his beer.

Arpaio's Head on a Pike! Ahorita!

Take it to the streets. It's time to eradicate these culprits. We know where they are and how they feel. This isn't isolated inside the confines of that police state. Racism in general and this neo-fascist ignorance in particular thrives on the division and perpetual conquest of the working class. The truth is always deliberately suffocated. Money and might, courtesy of the U.S., are used to displace people in other countries in the name of capitalism, (rural conquest, drug war, maquilas) and the people who flee out of desperation and necessity are blamed and fucked even further. And now, it's open season for an unprecedented assault.
Since racists don't know how to think(their brains are full of naziworms and diarrhea,)I want to run a few scenarios by them...

One. A crew-cutted pig pulls somebody over for driving under the influence of brown skin, which they've always done but now can do legally,and the driver who has lived in Arizona his entire life, longer than the pig who transferred from Iowa, but is told to show paper work and then "What's that smell? Cigarettes my ass, wetback, I'm searching the car." Any reason to incarcerate and destroy.

Two. What about immigrants from Europe? Does that mean that some backwards cap, Ed Hardy motherfucker drinking Coors Light and dateraping co-eds at A.S.U. might just look like a German or an Irishman? I mean, the light complexion, the blue eyes, freckles... "We better check his paperwork, Skip."

Three. The first time a Maricopa County SS soldier pulls over an Pima or a Navajo or an Apache and accuses them of being an immigrant. Ignorant fucking scum.

It's a call to genocide for all undocumented people in this country and a blow to any American citizen who is now doomed with the connotation with this behavior until we work to together to fuck their plans up good.

NIGHT TERROR 2 (VHS and Laserdisc)

I start talking shit and then I trail off. It doesn't matter if nobody's listening because I know what I said. You can bottle up something permanent and stronger than brick and hock it like an old tyme con artist or you can leave it at the fucking bus station. It doesn't mean it's going to blow anybody's mind. But I'll keep trying like the song says a hundred times. The Impressions on the turntable. Forty fives and a forty five. A wave crashes and washes some shit away. It corrodes my mind and leaves with a mighty trace.

Figured on having this just be some stories but I get caught up in the after work, the burying of the body and now they're all piled up. Impulsive rants and bullshitting with some fools on a porch and/or a scheme of paint splattered and I'm trying to make sense of all this.

What's with the delay? I ask myself. And that's it. Too many things at once so I might as well say something about it. I tried to reserve this space in the infinite erasable canvas of bullshit that is the internet, solely for completed work. But I failed this time and I'll fail again and as soon as I'm all right with it, the sooner I'll feel better about everything.

I went to New Orleans and I saw hundreds of snakes, three alligators and a million people across that southern stretch just getting by. I drank three hundred beers, got high as shit, invasive are the good times that caress your soul before they go away for good. Now I'm back in town. Oakland, California. Twothousandten.
Now I have to call the union and hear the same asshole tell me the same asshole things. He gets paid to do so. Maybe I'll take some classes at a community college. Today I'll make chorizo and green chile, some tortillas, I'll blast Anthrax once this record ends. Among the Living. I'll be forced to be all right.
Maybe someone, just someone, will come home smiling, bloody from having taken a knife to all them ruthless fuckers out there. Maybe she'll need to change her clothes. Maybe she'll stay awhile. Maybe she also likes Anthrax and Mexican food. Maybe she likes me. I don't know but I'm down to play it cool until tomorrow shows up banging the door down at dawn, DEA/LAPD style, fifty of those assholes after a week of threatening phone calls. I have to be cool and make the silence last until they show up in the early morning, saying, "Wake up Motherfucker."

true story.

The other day I was watching Rush videos on the internet when, due to the apocalyptic shithole this is, I was assaulted by one of those bullshit dancing advertisements (programmed to go off when "Rush" is typed into cyberspace.) It was fucking horrible but then it turned hilarious when I saw it was an ad for Rusch Catheters. Yes. I used to dig the lyrics to "Subdivisions" and afternoon blunts. But now I don't need that shit because I have enough catheters to last me through a nuclear winter. Thanks Capitalism!

nowhere all the time.

I walk out the door and cross the yard. I try to let everything outside the bullshit of the house invade my mind at once. There’s the familiar scent of Mesquite, Creosote and Camel Lights. The sun recedes and leaves the sky a pale red. It’s warm but the swelter is finally gone. For a quick moment I think everything might be ok.
But before I can inhale the world to come, the screen door flies open and slams shut behind her. I think maybe Lucy meant what she said about a murder suicide. I almost laugh but I’m startled at the sight of her. She’s in the yard, throwing my shoes at me as I walk out the gate and down the street. One of them hits the top of the chain link and fails to clear. The other one rolls in front of me on the asphalt. Lucy’s screaming things at me about needing shoes and a shirt in this world sometimes and then something about respect. I have to keep walking until I can’t hear her anymore.

The road feels good under my calloused feet. I’m content to leave her forever without shoes or a shirt. I can manage. I have this urge to give her one last once-over, some look to remember me by. But I keep on going, hoping that it looks like I don’t give a fuck. I’m trying to lie to her with the language of walking away, ignoring her fit in the yard, trying desperately to find some way to tell her what’s what without the impossibility of words.
I walk through the wash in the evening, fucking up coyote tracks with every step. I try not to think about what Lucy’s doing back at the house besides smoking and cursing. I look ahead and think about the night about to fall but it’s still sweltering, hot enough to expire if I don’t think of where to go next.

There’s a short cut into town. It goes on a half mile before crossing the main road that leads to the state highway twelve miles out. That road eventually finds Las Vegas going North and Mexico going south. The “Twelve Mile” road that leads to this town is a dead end. And I’m standing at that dead end. The sweltering town of Chemehuevi, California. And the Colorado River runs beside the town unnoticed. I look at it for a long time and decide I need a drink. Water most likely, but I always settle for beer.

Sullenly I walk through the parking lot that sits beside the road. Across the weathered blacktop sits the gas station and liquor mart and video store and deli. The center of town. Farther down, against the river, an ancient motel is being renovated along with but sitting apart from the main attraction, a small and unimpressive casino. It had long been a place for the older and surlier townsfolk, both white and Indian, to gamble away whatever meagerness they still possessed. But three years back, a Paiute businessman from hundreds of miles away, bought the land around the casino. He then began a venture to attract tourists with the usual allure of gambling, drinking and air conditioning. But a slew of financial problems stalled the project. The intention had been to create and sell a more remote and less bustling alternative to Las Vegas but was now just the same shit hole with a few new slot machines and half built add-ons protruding from every side. And all of this surrounded by the iconic American Southwest. It didn’t happen as rapidly as planned but it was certainly happening. I never thought it looked like much of a postcard. I can see the slow, interrupted renovation to the sign facing the river. It will soon attractively spell C-A-S-I-N-O…CASINO…in neon lights that flash big and gloriously. But for now it’s just lying there half built against the outside wall of the Whisper Valley Casino and Card Room. Motel coming soon.

As I make my way toward the deli and liquor mart, an old Chevy pick up with a fresh coat of rust and a bed full of Indians erratically drives into the parking lot and skids into an open spot in front. The truck jumps the curb enough to startle some children hanging out in front. Bouncing around the back of the truck are five men, locals with long hair and furious dispositions. I recognize the driver, an old friend named Dez, but I don’t say anything, just keep walking. He looks as pissed off as anyone. One Indian jumps out of the back with a tire iron in his hand. He swiftly walks over to a newer and much larger truck parked out front and busts the tail lights out, the left one and then the right, all the while saying things angrily under his breath then more audibly screaming “MOTHERFUCKER” after each muttering. The Indian gives it everything he has. Red-orange shards litter the blacktop. Then the headlights. The other men in the truck get out and stand by. A woman sitting shotgun remains in the truck. Nobody else in the parking lot asks questions or takes any action.
Then this bleached-haired white kid, maybe seventeen, comes out of the store with another kid who looks about the same but wearing a backwards baseball hat. Both of them look terrified and rightfully surprised.
“What the fuck, bro?” the white kid says.
“I saw you up there motherfucker! I saw you!” The man has passion and rage pouring out of his eyes. His impressively long hair is tied back in one long braid. He points the tire iron at the white kids and threatens, “I told you to stay the fuck out! Keep your ass out, motherfucker!”
The white kids retaliate with counter threats but they are only half-assed attempts at intimidation. These kids are frightened and outnumbered by their evening adversaries. The five Indians all stand silently behind their spokesman, waiting for these kids to make a move. There’s all kinds of shit lying around the parking lot just asking to be used as a makeshift weapon.
I walk past all this uninterested, thinking on another scuffle, the one back at the house. The hateful exchange of words and the subsequent bullshit of the parking lot fades behind me in a loud and awful dissonance. Out of the sun and past the domestic dispute, I find momentary shelter on the other side of a glass door. The small deli has its own entrance to the right of the liquor mart. With all scuffles and bloodshed out of sight and mind, I walk in, to a woman waiting just for me.

Irene is reading a paperback that she drops, startled by my entrance. She throws off her thick black frames but then seems mildly relieved to see a familiar face, not another bullshit customer and not her boss. The place is otherwise empty.
“Hello Irene.”
She says nothing and doesn’t have to. She pops open a tall can and puts a slice of cheese pizza in the oven. I’m a regular customer.
Irene is a Chemehuevi about the same age as me, an old friend in a way. She always ignores me but knows my every move, speaks only when she has something important to say.
She puts her glasses back on and goes back to her book. I take the tall can and thank her.
“What are you reading today?” I ask.
“Looks like you got some sun today, half-breed,” she says, her eyes marvelously big and dark behind the thick windows staring at the page.
“Yeah you could say that,” as I take a good first swig from the tall can, “Sure, something like that.”
“Can I get you anything else?” she says, her eyes still fixed inside her book.
“I’ll stick with the usual, thank you.”
Then she catches me looking at her. I realize I’m just standing there awkwardly, exhausted and alone. So I take a seat at the small table by the window.
“What is it? Are you thinking about leaving again?” Irene looks at me a moment then goes back to her book.
“Yeah, I think so,” I tell her, “But seriously this time. I need to. I need something different, you know?”
“No, I don’t know.” Then she laughs. “White boy drifter.”
“Well, half white.” I say.
“What?”
“Nothing. Nevermind. I was talking to someone else.”
“You’re weirder than you think, Daniel.” And she goes over to the oven to fix my slice, hiding each smile and small bout of laughter. I do the same, although it’s easier for me considering how tired and out of place I feel today. She sets it down on the counter then makes sure she hasn’t lost her place, adjusts her glasses and continues to read.

I pay and thank her again and sit window side, trying not to bother her. Outside, a sheriff’s deputy and his Native counterpart, both of them notorious assholes, have the group of Indians seated on the curb. The one who had the tire iron is in handcuffs and pleading to deaf ears. The white kid is bloody and talking to another authority figure. A group of women stand around watching and a child is crying real loud.

I look out beyond all this. A fine line of dark has settled on the other side of the river, the growing darkness hiding the tall granite mountains beyond the blood red walls against the water. Stars begin to fade into the sky but the sun is still setting slowly in another direction. Soon it will be nighttime and although it will still be warm, I wonder if I’ll need something more besides the jeans I’m wearing and the seventeen dollars I have in my pocket. I have no idea what I need, not in the least, so I leave it alone.
The food isn’t that good but bad pizza is better than most things. And beer is almost always good. And I like Irene. She continues leaning on the counter reading. I want to say something but can’t think of a goddamn thing.

There’s this obscure painting on the wall. It’s no masterpiece but it has always mesmerized me. It isn’t quite Mount Rushmore, just the stars of the show. Washington. Lincoln. Roosevelt. Jefferson. All in proper attire. And each one hanging from the same lonely gallows. No crowd. No executioner. Just four dead figures hanging. I’ve never said anything to anyone about it nor asked any questions. But since I was leaving town forever, I decided to ask my friend.

“Hey, Irene. What’s up with this painting here?”
“That? Oh, some drifter painted that, like ten years ago. Lived up there on Bonair Road. He painted that for the guy who owns the place and it’s been up there since.” Irene takes her glasses off and stares at the painting more intently. “It’s kind of a memorial,” she says.
“To who? These assholes?” I ask.
“No. To the artist,” she says. “The guy blew his brains out after that. They found him a month or two after. Kind of sad, right?”
“I wish I could do something like that.” The painting now coming alive for me in all its wonder.
“What’s that? Blow your brains out?”
“No. Not exactly.” I say.
We both laugh. And I look at Irene one last time, perhaps for too long. She looks at me awhile and offers a slight wave from behind those wonderful eyes. Goodbye. She puts her glasses back on and continues. And I walk back out into the desert.

I take the path that goes past the casino and down to the river. Once alongside the river, you can hike around rocks and reeds for several miles south of town.
Drifting down the riverside, I’m able to avoid the possible clusters of people taking it easy on a warm night. Drunk teenagers, people fishing and so forth. But I can’t avoid what’s constantly invading my thoughts.
About a hundred faceless questions circle around my mind like vultures unsatisfied. Any one thing I want to say or scream back in Lucy’s direction simply dead ends and dies. Still, her glare won’t go away. I start to feel bad, kicking the sand, calling myself an asshole, things like that. Then I stop because there’s no reason for it now. It’s kind of stupid pretending like things are so painless when I’m out here like this, without anybody around. I know what’s what. I’m leaving a decent house behind, a mobile estate to be accurate. And I’m leaving a decent woman behind. A radiant queen sometimes. But I’m thinking maybe that’s the problem. This is the wrong place for royalty and we’re the wrong fucking people. It comes down hard but it doesn’t matter now anyway. Then these thoughts recede a little and the river waits in front of me. We fucked up somewhere. Lucy and me, we’re just a mess. And that’s it.

The heat dissipates the moment my feet touch the cold water. I walk down between the reeds that gather at the banks, concealing a shallow pool I’m fortunate to find in the dark. Sand gnats fly up and off and back into the ground psychotically. Nocturnal things come out and about in all forms, in every way. I think about coyotes and tarantulas and rattlesnakes hiding, waiting for me to pass.

I look up and down the banks and then out across the river. Out into Arizona and more desert beyond. A few dim lights on the other side of the river that seem to be fading, about to burn out as they flicker so far away. And a billion other dim bulbs above me.
Behind me lies a changing place. The up and coming casino. The ruins of HUD homes and doublewides and many smaller dwellings. Shacks and shanties invisible to the passing eye because there rarely is a passing eye. The vacationers can’t see things like this. Every time I get some part time construction gig, it’s for one of these rich people’s houses. And with every add-on we build, it seems like part of the past is taken away. Living here year round, all the time, it’s hard to see beyond what’s right in front of you. Everyone’s distracted by survival. It’s never been a great town or anything. But it had it’s time. Now it’s just monotony and resilience and nowhere all the time.


I enter the river in my jeans. As it soaks my legs, the town around me and all others beyond falter and fade away. All grandiose disasters die swiftly as I wade out of the pool and into the flow of the river. I can float all the way to Mexico, into that fine blue Gulf. I can stay put and drown and it’d be just as well. I put my head underneath the black water and let the river take me slowly down past the casino where the neon flashing sign will soon be erected. Past the larger mobile homes at the edge of town, huge and empty places only inhabited from May to September. I drift on past the sound of their laughter and past the hum of dirt bikes and dune buggies in the distance. And past the early cries of coyotes scavenging for something to end their hunger.
It carries me about a mile before it grows cold and the dark consumes all remaining lights along the river. I’m alone and cold and submerged and ready for death. Let it go, brother.

Then at some point, I can feel a sandbar under my feet. And soon enough I’m standing with water at my waist. In one last pathetic maneuver, I sit down in the water to be finally carried away but it’s hopeless. No avail anywhere. I stand up again. I see the sad lights of the town over some large sand dunes. I wade back toward the shore where the sandbar emerged. There’s empty cans of Bud Light all over the place. An empty bag of Doritos floats past me. Nobody’s around. I shiver in my jeans but know I’ll soon be dry in the summer night again. I feel embarrassed there in front of no one but the desert. The quiet things are all laughing at me and I’ll just have to do the same. Fuck it.

There’s a trail at the far end of the dune. It goes steeply up some rocks and then straight toward a dirt road that leads into town. I find the trail. Drenched and stumbling, I make my way back. Reluctant in the desert dark.

Last Days of Joaquin Murrieta

"California's gonna die," she said. "And I'm pretty sad about it."

If you cut someone's arms off, one then the other, they will eventually bleed to death. Even if it takes a good long while, it happens. While it's ignorant to think otherwise, it's convenient as fuck. So people did that awhile. People moved into and around this place. Other people, a good slimy handful, made a killing. And made some money. Lives with breaths and blood and sacred places under a distant audience of fading stars were sold out and sold off like sickly cattle. An oblivious execution trip. Keys to the cages were thrown into the ocean. And the rich hid while the poor starved. It had happened before but not in this place, in this way. The real culprits got out clean. And they left the TV on and the engine running.
Their racket went on until the well ran dry and me and my kind are waiting around what was home, shells of cities in deserts and forests shaking heads and fists, saying, screaming, pointless questions. Why now and what for, etc.

California, she's not alone. In fact, it's not even that bad. It's just the enormity and symbolic importance of such a state of mind finally succoming to the strangulation is sad and it leaves my head spinning sometimes. I see the faces and hear the voices and it makes me want to take up arms, and without ideology or prejudice go down to the old factory where the scabs came in and blow them all away. 6112 Crosby Ave. Oakland, California. I can see you, you can see me. That's all technology has done.


But I'm just sitting down with you on a makeshift porch and we're discussing the weather, the strange and ruthless storm about to hit. Otherwise the sun usually shines. California like a motherfucker. Sometimes I can hide out and really lose it. And these times are becoming the only times I can revel in or hang with. A blanket on the grass. There's a baseball game somewhere. Dominoes in the park. A wanderer has reached the summit of a great and unnamed peak. Some longhairs have infiltrated a localized point break on the coast and will kill the rich fucks who think they know something about territory. A lowered Cutlass cruises for the last time, can't believe they could outlaw such a thing. Fresh tortillas all the time. A joint of native herb ignites. A soccer ball on the sand. Shitspeakers on a jambox. War, 2pac, Black Flag and The Beach Boys. The wind shuffles the past around softly. The sun smiles. California comes out and shines. The scent and the sight and the sound. I can dig it.
But it's too late to dig. Too goddamn late for anything.