Absolution & Retribution from the wrong place

Cain carried in his cracked and
weather beaten hand
an Iris as beautiful as the falling sun
and the beach's twinkling sand

He gently showed the flower to some nearby little girls
with it's delicate brittle stems, it's leaves, and it's twirls

he then squeezed his hand tight
and blood flowed through his fingers and dripped

dripped down into the grass.....

Cain said to the little girls
this is what God does to all beauty

He bleeds it dry,
turning it into whores
and giving it manual duty

Cain then dropped the Iris and walked away
as the little girls laughed in their curious and naive way
they attempted to fix the mangled Iris
for the remainder of their misunderstood day

Cain walked chuckling
through a great and heavy door
Where a flick of the Morningstar's wing
slit his throat from neck to floor

From his knees
Cain gurgled and breathed his last
as Lucifer knelt down low

Putting his fingertips to his lips
he breathed....

"It's not yet for them to know."

Rhymes with Mercy Seat.

My earliest memories are of a man
who lifted me up and taught me how to stand
Left work at lunch covered in grime
just to hold his son one more time
then just minutes, just moments away
he was swept away on a summer day
I stood there watching the afternoon sky

and no one paid the price



He's no longer there at his bedroom door
thirty years of spoken words left ignored
Kept all the darkest secrets to myself
like priceless rubies way up high on a shelf
violent wants, greasy hopeless needs
buried knee deep in the mud of the reeds
the theft of him, the first unpunished crime

and no one paid the price

three decades spanned, I'd become obsessed
with the  thumbs in my temples that had been pressed
headaches grown at the thought of pain
criminal bloodstains unwashed by the rain
tears that were shed alone in the dark
caused by evil faces smiling a lark
and no one paid the price

too many open air smiles being borne
by those with bones behind closet doors
nothing to be done, no justice served
this albatross is just another bird
retribution craved, and payback wanted
as unjust freedom with grins is flaunted

and I paid the price

Will I ever stop being bothered
by crimes unrelated to the death of my father
wanted debts for his withering away
to be paid by the soulless who do not pray
people claiming God is by their side
as they wash the blood off of their hide

and I pay the price

Misinterpretation

I'm tired of the contemporary being used to dictate opinion. Tired of words and actions being bent to back up the opposite of what they meant. MLK, I'm sorry if your words and actions were misrepresented today. In honor of MLK, I wrote this:

I am history
Use me as you will
take my figures and pieces
and run them through a still
drink up the aftermath
and spit it in your defense
of all your beliefs and stances
no matter the side of the fence.

I am history
many walked my paths
take their words and their acts
and twist them into a dance
that supports your righteous angle
no matter what it may be
misquote them way out of context
from sea to shining sea

Sometimes I repeat myself
and sometimes I am nondescript
sometimes I just unleash
and my pages aren’t unripped
so learn from me carefully
for I am oft rewritten
and don’t fall in love with my rules
or with hellfire you’ve been smitten

Sinister is exactly that.

My Lady and I took a trek to the theatre last month with high, but reserved hopes for the new horror opus that had just hit screens entitled "Sinister".


Jaded and disappointed by the lackluster, cookie-cutter, over CGI-ed affairs that have passed for horror flicks in recent months, we were guarded.....

What we should have been was ready.

"Sinister" is horrifying from beginning to end.

I'm not just talking jump scares, I'm speaking of the very premise, atmosphere, use of shadow, the performances, successful (for once) non-repetitive use of the "found footage" formula, and the visuals added up to one scary flick.

Ethan Hawke, in a terrific performance is a cocky but stumbling True Crime author who has a tendency to get too close to his subjects, as proven by his track record on previous books.  He's investigating a missing girl, and the center of one of the most creepy horror film set-ups in years lies in his recently-purchased home, but connected to similar events dating back to the 60's and taking place across the country.

That's all I'm going to tell you, because I don't like to ruin things....let it happen, and unspool, don't read too much about this movie.

Do, though, go in with suspended disbelief, because people DO wander in the dark too much in this movie, and they DO have unrealistically poor hearing. That being said, this movie is a broken brake line roll down hill into some ugly territory.....

Enjoy.

Welcome to the Cut Out Bin: Hormel Frank N Stuff.

Ok, some of you may be grossed out by this.
Back in the day, (which according to Dane Cook was a Wednesday) The think tank known as Hormel released a product on the unwitting public known as the Frankenweenie!! (nothing to do with Tim Burton's short film nor the upcoming feature film of the same name).

I'm kidding.  It should have been called that, though.

It was the named "Frank N Stuff", which was a hot dog stuffed with their semi-toxic beef pudding known as "Chili". I use the term Chili here loosely.

Obviously, I have no photographs of the packaging save for a video screen shot since there won't be, God willing,  any collectors of the packaging.   As it was in the cooler section of your local grocery store and was sold the same way as all hot dogs, in a thick plastic shrink wrap, there shouldn't be.  I thought I'd be able to dig up some marketing material from days gone by, but alas, no go.

But, thanks to the miracle of YouTube, there's this:






Ew.

The Cut-Out Bin Volume One

There was so much cool stuff when I was only a lad (Oingo Boingo reference intended complete and full), and most of it's gone now. Some things you can read, listen to, collect, even eat. I'll start with the latterest. (I am fully aware as a writer of some aptitude, that latterest, is indeed, not a word.)

The Cut-Out Bin is a flashback to that.....

I like chocolate. I like caramel. Who wouldn't like the combination of both, with so much of them that they are in a measurable quantity, and just for giggles, braided? It happened. It did.

In England, Snickers is currently called Marathon. Poor Sods never knew.

I think this thing was two feet long or something, never the kind of thing that you can finish in one sitting. I mourn for it's loss,

and while I'm at it, I mourn for the loss of the Forever Yours bar for my poor sainted mother. She loved those things.....


Nowadays it's known as the Milky Way Dark, but there's no telling her that......

I love you, Mom.

I Hate This Movie!!

"That movie sucked. I hate that movie!" -- My girlfriend, Frani.

Now, Frani is exceedingly sweet, open minded, and very understanding. For her to scowl at a television screen and let a just-finished motion picture have it like that, is a rarity. It must have been awful.

So here, I go....I don't usually negatively review anything, but there's been a line crossed here.

Being a bit of a cinephile, I've seen a ton of movies. Not so many these last few years, but in the past. It takes a LOT for me to hate a movie. A lot. I can find something redeemable in almost anything. (Almost, is most certainly a key term in that cluster of words.) That being said, every once in a Bleu Cheese a piece of tripe floats by that makes me almost as angry as Waldorf Salad or Dexter from The Offspring.

Enter "The Time Traveler's Wife". Time travel movies defy logic as part of their very existence, obviously. There's no exception here. But when it happens here, it's so muddy, that you find yourself looking at the person you're viewing the film with, (lucky me in this case, the breathtaking Frani) and saying "The What Who?"

You don't know thanks to the terrible plotline, which version of the Time Traveler (Eric Bana) you're watching. All of the characters in this flick are terribly underwritten anyway, so you don't care when it ventures into tear-jerker territory. Now, before you go all "He's a guy, he doesn't get it!", I happen to enjoy the occasional "Chick Flick", (hate that term), and I knew that's what this was before watching it.

It doesn't excuse it.

I didn't like any version of the people in this movie, past, present, or future, and that dooms a flick. It's hard to root for people you don't like. Eric Bana is about as enjoyable to watch as a slow growing headache. Rachel McAdams, the put-upon wife of a man who time travels on accident when stressed out, ( I know, What the Hell? Wouldn't most of us like to go somewhere far away when life becomes a crapstorm?) acts so belligerent half the time, it's hard to empathize with her. She knew Bana did this.....

The movie becomes a muddy mess that doesn't make a whole lot of sense from the get-go, so I found myself just grieving for the loss of time I spent watching it.

Well, I did get to cuddle with my girl while watching it, so I guess it was actually a very good viewing experience. But still, this movie has to go.....really.....if some version of me could travel back in time and erase it, I would...

Yuck.