Types

There are several types of people who visit my blog.  Most are curious randoms. Some come for (now) incendiary band interviews, record reviews and recommendations, and other music-related contact. Many more come for the poetry, including followers I've had for a decade.  I really appreciate that. Others come here for the mental-illness angle, some of them …

Throwback on Saira’s Birthday

HARD TAR The cicadas are perfect they sound like they belong here now Past exhaustion and passed by by hundreds on highways Sweat up and down stairs Ice wasting on hard tar Powdered paychecks swollen necks my word what is this weather? Hard tar encrusted desks busts of Pope John Paul the Second (II) eating …

Poem for Truckers I Knew

MICHIGAN I talk religion at work, walk away when I’m done, and Archie has the worst breath I’ve ever sniffed. Lou wants trips to MI, where lives some “broad” he’d like to give a poke.  Too much on the plate. Jersey is clogging the arteries, pornography plugging up the arsenal. Some days you wanna stick a …

I Don’t Wanna [Insert Undesirable Activity]

Hello, neighbors!  I look like like shit right now.  I'll own it. Well, technically that was on Halloween, when we got a snowstorm here in Chicago.  HO HO HO.  In any case, I'm gonna launch into Whiny Adolescent Mode, because I need to vent, and that's the easy way to do it.  This is why …

Notes of A Mad Blogger

Welcome! If I may repeat myself, I recently (as of 10/25/2019) repurposed my old, basically dormant blog (fka WAR DURING LIFETIME) to be a (mostly) music blog.  I have a large archive of stories, poems and essays here, for now at least.  But due to my obsession with music and my proclivity for writing, it …

Insomniac-Attention-Deficited-Triple-Major-Spanish-Minor

I've become an insomniac...again. The transition ocurred over a couple of idiotic nights of heavy reading, coupled with (what I thought was sufficiently reduced) coffee-drinking. I've been having this problem for a month---ie, since I last had some xanax---and was treating it sporadically with the popping of alternative pills (Advil PM; NyQuil) or, on days …

Both Feet on the Ground

I'm at a point now where if I have only moderate or even no "success" as a writer I wouldn't be so disappointed or devastated as previously thought.  That's not to say I've given up on writing, as a career, or stopped writing; it's my vocation.  I have turned my focus to the composition of …

Green Beer and Red & Blues

Motherfucker.  I worked tonight, figuring St. Pat's would be a lucrative evening, and it was.  Unfortunately, half my earnings were wiped out by some suburban schlub cop. It was after midnight, and I was making my way back to Palatine to work the downtown bars there, after taking driving three drunk chicks to a bar …

Who You Think You Be?

The first time I got a box of business cards, I was probably seven or eight years old.  They had my intitials, MRJ, and claimed I was something like a travel consultant, or whatever I told my dad I wanted to be.  The cards were his idea.  My dad was somewhat of a corporate star …

Scatological

There was life there; I could smell it.  And a mist of rain which I couldn't smell.  There just wasn't enough heat for the fragrance of wet road to rise.  I get a call, a pick up address followed by destination, requests to "drive straight to destination, no stops."  It's Patrick, the mentally retarded worker.  …

Function

I've never had a job that felt less like a job than my current and hopefully long-time one of driving a cab.  Let me clarify, though: that doesn't mean it doesn't feel like work; it absolutely does, and stressful work at times.  We've come to think of work as a synonym for job, which it's …

from the Ritz-Carlton to the Ritz Crackers diet

My Cab My first week as a cab driver, smack dab in the middle of which last week's blizzard hit and compelled me to cautiously pull myself out of commission, I had a fairly new mini-van that ran nicely, didn't stink like cabs do, and of course had a comfy interior.  I was supposed to …

A family-friendly entry

I think I've smoke five cigarettes in the past fifteen minutes. I'm playing phone-tag with a fellow named Sean M.  He called and left me a voicemail after I replied for an ad seeking newspaper delivery drivers.  I like the idea of delivering newspapers, in this case the Chicago Tribune northwest edition.  The pre-dawn hours are beautiful, peaceful, …

Chips Ahoy (by Anonymous)

Okay, I've changed my mind.  I've been sober, in the sense I haven't consumed an ounce of alchohol, for three months.  And you know what?  I want a fucking chip.  Or a keychain.  A watch, a fucking Cartier wristwatch.  Whatever you got.  90 approximate goddamn days.  It's like I'm 14.  Am I aging in reverse?  Perhaps.  …