Steve Earle - Working Class Hero

While staring at the floor, they say he could come up with an entire album worth of protest songs. At the moment however, he had all of the McKenzie auditorium's audience hanging on every languid tone of his acoustic guitar.

He paused for a moment to allow a bead of sweat to hit the floor at which moment he stomped on the floor, inviting the banjo, dobra and mandolin players to chime in as hats were thrown off the heads of audience members and on to the shiny teak stage.

The next few songs were about unions, and the lack of media attention regarding the usefulness of them. Unbeknownst to Steve, they had tailed him for weeks, hanging out backstage, waiting for the moment to make their move.

The court had approved movement against the singer, classifying him as an outside agitator. The feds had been on to Steve ever since the stunt in Portland 5 years prior, where he stood up to the unions by refusing to leave the stage after being reportedly warned about playing the songs.

It was 11pm when he left the stage on that hot New Orleans night, when the moon shone above, threatening to set the entire bedraggled swamp on fire and in doing so revealing the hiding place of hundreds of corpses rocked to sleep by the lull of bloodlust that lay heavy in the air, a salty odor that reached back to before the french had settled there, to odors of voodo and sacrifice streched out along the hundred of yards of bayou that signalled the entrance to the salty city.

Graduate Education Contract Worker

While looking at screen on the digital camera, I can rewind and playback an aerial shot of a palace in Germany. In trying to recollect when and how I got there from my front stoop in Portland, a distant bird perched on the electrial wire reminds me of the flight.

A More fantastical journey I couldn't haver concoted. Smoke, laughter and the idea that I was going it alone. Mocking laughter and coctails all all that I can bring up. The bowels of memory triggered with each pressing of the rewind and play button. The moving images of a flock of birds storming the palace.

But what for, why am I on this journey without my partner in crime. What does this all mean?

It's politically motivated, I'm certain of that. Graduate Educational Contract worker, is that what the sewn badge reads on my light blue jacket and hat?

I'm afforded with a lovely set of night vision goggles, use it to see into the plalce at night, into the netherworld zone of backhanded cigar smoked favors, international consipracies,forgotten airs of stale vennison and cubed salmon pieces.

When I've recorded the conversations I'm to leave a copy in the left panel of the right door for the troops to find ater they've shot the place up. I'm the scouting agent of sorts, belonging to an international group whose ultimate goal is unknown, only the price was right, and I deserved it somehow, what did I do?

But I can remember finding the body on my way home,the way the smell hit me on my way home, after stepping off of the bus, knowing I should have kept my mouth shut, but that was impossible.

I went out that night, singing my canary tune to whoever would listen. And they took me in, grabbed me, and dragged me to the back room as I let it all out, and I slide the disc into the open slot in the wainscotting and wander off as the camera pulls back and I once again watch the movie clip of the palace move backward, then forward again.

Alberta Street - 9:45 PM 6/24/2004

The clouds created an insular light that barely shone as if obscured
by a rickety old hand over an antiquated sepia toned lamp.

It was like walking through a bazaar in Turkey, but
one that would teleport you to the far reaches of the globe,
bargaining for Indonesian Quilts one moment the next bobbing your
head to the entombed sounds of a dervish like bassist and a
cigarette churning drummer,

We were free to roam amongst the ongoing tide,
to be propelled behind the spirit of creation, hop from one eye
catching artifact to another. Cyclists dressed in Road Warrior gear
towed a makeshift crepe paper float, a giant wingspan of a bird, who
shredded dry skin flakes of paper that floated onward within the crowd, with
people cheering, as carloads of Naderites waved arms out of fuel economical vehicles.

The Great Weightlifting, with Apologies to the Trash Can Sinatras

In the most perfect sense, it was the time of my life.

Swinging in the jubilant oceans of sleep and waking with ebullience spilling out over the days that led up to the shining moment when I would step out of the light and bury myself in my work.

I worked for months on the novel, toiling away in the midnight flame of my candle catching reflections of my abject scribblings.

The beautiful maid beside me gave me a solid foundation from which I would never doubt my place in the world again.

I saw the end of the tunnel, saw myself old and grey with children, the rabid seed of my indifference destroyed in a perfumed cloud of self reverence and cherished affection.

The characters spewed out of me as I cast their trajectories headlong into each other as they screwed and drank their way through three, four hundred pages of dialogue and plotlines.

On the weekends, with her away from work, we'd drive out to the beach house in the isolated chill of winter. With a fantastic sense of emptiness looming in the sky, the lines and words, syllables and stanzas soared out of my fevered brain and we’d run across the beach with dog following closely behind. With invisible mist breathing over us, we’d run down Pacific City beach diving after a bright blue Frisbee.

I spent more and more time at the beach house, alone more often than not, and after a particularly prosperous day of prose I walked out on the ramshackle deck and saw a bright pink bikini dancing through the waves. It seemed to float on air in the way it snagged itself to the crab trap 500 meters from my gaze. Intrigued, I made my way down dunes, approaching the lapping shore with my salty hand habitually stretched across my brow blocking the invisible sunlight.

It had been days since I heard another’s voice, so when it blasted into my right ear, I almost fell down, such was I overtaken by the rich baritone of the barrel-chested man who wore loud Bermuda shorts and spoke with a clipped New England Accent.

“It’s a beautiful day aint it?” he concluded, shades pitched up at the sheep’s wool colored sky. His skin was bright orange, had a pallor that jumped right out at you, declaring health and radiance with megaphone like subtlety.

“Yeah.” Wits now recovered, my eyes danced up to the sky and I shrugged my shoulders. “But what’s with the bikini out there”

“I’ve been here for three days, and the fishing just grand!” With no fishing gear on him to speak of, his eyes shifted behind his bright green ray bans.

I felt the nausea hit me as the silence between us persisted. The echo of the seagulls rang through me as I smelled the salt in the air and caught a glimpse of the bright red stains that faintly covered his outstretched hand. “I’m Tim from Massachusetts.” he finally managed. “What do you guys do around here for fun?”

The Great Weightlifting

In the most perfect sense, it was the time of my life.


Swinging in the jubilant oceans of sleep and waking with ebullience spilling out over the days that led up to the shining moment when I would step out of the light and bury myself in my work.

I worked for months on the novel, toiling away in the midnight flame of my candle catching reflections of my abject scribblings.

The beautiful maid beside me gave me a solid foundation from which I would never doubt my place in the world again.

I saw the end of the tunnel, saw myself old and grey with children, the rabid seed of my indifference destroyed in a perfumed cloud of self reverence and cherished affection.

The characters spewed out of me as I cast their trajectories headlong into each other as they screwed and drank their way through three, four hundred pages of dialogue and plotlines.

On the weekends, with her away from work, we'd drive out to the beach house in the isolated chill of winter. With a fantastic sense of emptiness looming in the sky, the lines and words, syllables and stanzas soared out of my fevered brain and we’d run across the beach with dog following closely behind. With invisible mist breathing over us, we’d run down pacific city beach diving after a bright blue Frisbee.

I spent more and more time at the beach house, alone more often than not, and after a particularly prosperous day of prose I walked out on the ramshackle deck and saw a bright pink bikini dancing through the waves. It seemed to float on air in the way it snagged itself to the crab trap 500 meters from my gaze. Intrigued, I made my way down dunes, approaching the lapping shore with my salty hand habitually stretched across my brow blocking the invisible sunlight.

It had been days since I heard another’s voice, so when It blasted into my right ear, I almost fell down, such was I overtaken by the rich baritone of the barrel-chested man who wore loud Bermuda shorts and spoke with a clipped New England Accent.

“It’s a beautiful day aint it?” he concluded, shades pitched up at the sheep’s wool colored sky. His skin was bright orange, had a pallor that jumped right out at you, declaring health and radiance with a megaphone like subtlety.

“Yeah.” Wits now recovered, my eyes danced up to the sky and I shrugged my shoulders. “But what’s with the bikini out there”

“I’ve been here for three days, and the fishing just grand!” With no fishing gear on him to speak of, his eyes shifted behind his bright green ray bans.

I felt the nausea hit me as the silence between us persisted. The echo of the seagulls rang through me as I smelled the salt in the air and caught a glimpse of the bright red stains that faintly covered his outstretched hand. “I’m Tim from Massachusetts.” he finally managed. “What do you guys do around here for fun?”

Harry Pascal, Portait of a Politician-In-Waiting Part 1

On the afternoon of our son’s wedding, in the lush fields that overlooked the bayous of southern Louisiana, a horse and buggy rumbled in the distance, quivering like an ant that grew larger as it crossed the horizon line and fell into our field of vision as hoofs and snarls of horses fastly approached.

It was the 7th of July and the heat was intolerable. We came in on Flagler’s line from Connecticut to see our Harry marry a Creole woman. Not to our utmost approval, we nevertheless found contentment in seeing him happy, our northern policies being slightly more tolerant than those held by our southern brethren.

He founded a school in the midst of the swamp, one that would provide rigorous instructions for colored children. Harry had received all of the charitable traits we had bestowed upon him, using the profits of his successful door stop manufacturing company to start this little endeavor.

We all secretly knew that Harry was perusing a career in politics and aware of the racial significance this move had. Adelaide was smart and had been trained adequately by slave hands that knew how to read but would ultimately serve as a symbol of Harry’s tolerance, an act that would make him famous as the first White landowner to marry a colored girl, the marriage having been born into the public eye. He had contacted numerous publishers to ensure that plenty of press would be on hand to view and praise for this ultimate act of charity.

The silhouette of the bowler hat that gradually came into view belonged to Harry, and his dismounting in full view of the reporters with Adelaide at his side was presidential in its premeditated candor.

It’s six fifteen when I stumble back to the office, to bang out the remnants of the case on my little Remington situated immediately in front of my trembling hands, its slides away from me as I enter in words and adventures from the night before.

I’m a failure at dictating my own thoughts, a faulty private dick who can’t remember the name of the lady I interviewed a few hours ago.

I get frustrated with my own lack of follow through in my cases. I linger on year after year as a symbol of a bygone era.

But all is not lost on my little typewriter, the evenings reality fades away into egregious stories of flighty fiction, of routine cases blown wide open, deep corruptions of government laced up with history ripped apart by my tenacious investigations.

It always comes back to the booze. It’s been written about for centuries and will continue to plague and bewilder mankind. Yet we still write about it, intrigued as we are by a man run head on by a Mack truck.

He lived further out this time, a few hundred miles past Columbia in a place that steadfastly refused to stay in the present and remained true to its past with all the authenticity that seemed to be absent in most hokey recreations.

He said he was fed up with the city and (he later told me how he was almost forced to leave.) His wife, but at the time of the dream she was still his girlfriend, lived in the closest large city, corrupted by drink and the occasional traffic jam.

He’d quit most of the bands he’d been in and focused all his attention on gardening.
He’d play for me out in the fields where he toiled during the day after a meal of chocolate malteds and large farm burgers served from the local pharmacy where we slid into the red velvet velour booths with gleeful ease.

We had a lot of catching up to do. I’d been away for many nears now in the pacific northwest, a beautiful part of the country no doubt, but missed certain people down south with such a fervor, that I would often dream of these places and people to fill in the gaps.

And I created this place, somewhere between the Norman Rockwell paintings and the raw lived in farms mixed with a west coast sense of airiness to it. She was never discussed, she hung in the back of our minds, remaining at the library gig, smoking cigarettes years after we’d quit.

Reprocessed condensed soup
A brighter holiday for all
Consolidated returns for frauds transcendent
Absolute bollocks by tamed hacks
Domesticated bribery as a way of life

Inhibited lucidity
Makes one sound smarter than you are
Click refresh in five seconds for the same thing

I am forced to shut the message board down.

Unfortunately, an individual has taken it upon himself to destroy what ever good was meant by the board in the first place. To call me and my "work" (I don't take myself THAT seriously) a 'fraud' while hiding behind ridiculous pseudonyms is completely ridiculous and pointless for anyone to read.

With very little effort I can pinpoint all of the comments (and their accompanying characters) to a disturbed individual, one whom I was friends with years ago but ended up being a little to disturbed for his (and mine) own good.

Not that it was being used anyways in any other way than the occasional 'what’s up?’ from old friends, which the board itself was intended for originally.

I guess you can't escape your past completely and I wouldn't want to. I just don't want to give this disturbed individual any power with his smear campaign; I'll leave that to Karl Rove.

Sincerely,

Dr. Kronski
Editor in Chief,
www.kronski.com