I keep looking over my shoulder because I know that I’m being followed. I know this because I know this and that’s all and I reckon that’s a good thing because it keeps me sharp.
knowing that there are shadow figures in puddled, dark alleyways.
waiting. watching. plotting.
it’s good to know that they’re there and in a weird masochistic way, the sense of that keeps me level. a real backward peace. like if an angel choir sang Scandinavian black metal songs.
so, back-alley shadows, know that I know you’re there.
know that in my giddiness and foolish merriment, I reserve a bit of back-in-the-day steel.
I am ready for you. much as I always was and I always will be. your existence is a soft pillow to me. you can be the big spoon or the little spoon, it matters not to me. sweet dreams, jellybean.
you and your dark puddles will not ruin this.
I swim in a bottomless ocean of love and good fortune. I am soul-rich and my motorcycle will sometimes start on cold winter mornings and the ice isn’t as slippery as all that and in third gear with the throttle full and my head snapped back – I feel god kiss my cheek as the devil gives chase because it don’t hurt to be h(a)unted by something.
I am sunlight and wildflowers and forest floor and fire.
-bourbon helped write this. for good or ill. you’re welcome.
it was ten in the a.m. and the late sun was being poured through the transom light – the bathroom one on the south side – like it does just so about that time on regular days and she walked into the living room wearing nothing save for a swath of Target cotton while steam followed in a fairy tail breadcrumb wake.
the thoughts claiming residence in my shitty, factory floor brain were foreclosed upon like, a violent wind – BLAMMO! in flat-ass Kansas topography when you see it on the news.
complete devastation with tears and the whole thing.
I reckon the sunlight stayed for a bit. and it hung there and speckled and fuzzed like the off-air local station(s) – the same as it always does, until she closed the door and then it was gone like the way it always did about that time.
in the battle between hours and kinetic energy, it’s a toss-up on who/what gets dibs. mostly.
*
sometimes, in the bat-shit crazy, silent hours before the real morning starts burning indigo fuel, one can’t be sure what the Mayans had in mind as it regards “days” as we definitively understand it to be. and when the deck oven(s) gets too hot and I have to take the air and there’s that Indigo color sneaking up on me it feels like the old days when someone hit you closefisted by surprise. things rattle and there’s electricity and a primal howl.
not unlike seeing her in Target swath unannounced.
and it reminds me of starting over and seeing everything through the eyes of children like the way the greeting cards say.
and I mean that in the Bad way too. in the way when the rug gets pulled out from under you and all the dust that you swept under there, before, on those summer days at mid-morning and it swirls up and make you sneeze. like the way when you never see it coming.
i mean it both ways.
*
blinded and sidetracked by wet hair and bare thighs and sneezes.
My best ideas have been born in bathtub gin. But this particular ride?
I had good company on this ride.
There was also street food. Street food so good and Right that I ate six of them with minimal consequence.
So there’s me, the lovely and talented – and my Bad Lieutenant when the zombie invasion finally comes – kdiddy, and a bottle of gin. We’re hashing out things.
Life Things.
And it’s late. Like “hey(!), I just spilled the cat’s water all over the kitchen floor! Another gin and tonic?!(rhetoric)” late. And something was said about cornbread and how it was most assuredly the last bastion of Good in an otherwise genital-punch existence. No sooner was that “something” said, me and Diddy looked at each other and said,
“Motherfuckin cornbread, man.”
Because, well…motherfuckin cornbread. That’s why. Cornbread’s simplicity is it’s truth and ultimately it’s triumph and that’s all.
*
The Cornbread Manifesto.
Enjoy the small things. Go sit barefoot in the backyard, pluck a blade of grass. Stare closely and think about how this small thing sucks water from the soil and takes it all the way to it’s tip. Feel the sun on every part of your face. Make a clover necklace. Make a wish on dandelion parachutes and eat a spoonful of peanut butter then…
Realize that you are a fucking miracle of insignificance.
Fuck The Sharper Image.
Love everything close to you – the ones right. there. Love ‘em hard.
Fuck Dean and Deluca.
Cheese and bacon make everything more awesome but not all the time. Not everything, every time, has to be all Ric Flair WHOOOOO(!). Dig?
Fuck a BUNCH of six-course tasting menus. Fuck ‘em right in their ear.
Everything, no matter how unimportant it may seem to you, is something. Quit being so goddamn glum and selfish, Eeyore. It matters. Just do that thing that you think, “should I even bother?” Do that shit. Skip a rock and make a few ripples. Boats may rock but they probly won’t sink.
Fuck dinner and a movie. (Unless you can do both naked without the cops coming.)
Failure happens and unless it kills you dead, sack-up and move on.
Fuck frozen dinners. (Marie Callender’s pot pies get a pass because they take more’n 5 minutes to prepare and that technically makes it “cooking” and those things are fucking crack, that’s why. bahbahbahbahbah…shut up. this is MY manifesto.)
Recipes and Five-Year-Plans are a nice idea. But those things aint the fucking gospel. Write your own plan and burn it to ash and wonder around aimlessly for a while and write a recipe and replace milk with ricotta and be fucking fabulous. Live gloriously.
Fuck sherbet in any form, fashion or flavor. There, I said it.
Cast iron is a family heirloom. Treat it as such.
Fuck Cracker Barrel and Bob Evans. You can make all that stuff in your kitchen. Naked.
A good earthenware mixing bowl is something to trust. You should trust things.
Fuck cookie dough that comes in a tube.
There’s a voice inside you that whispers gray vapor and ethereal lace. It envelopes you sometimes like a fourth generation quilt. You’ve heard it.
We don’t care to admit to the things we can’t explain because we’re afraid. Fear, contrary to popular belief, is a good thing. It keeps us -when we lean over to take a peak – from falling over the edge. Mostly.
Fuck Pabst Blue Ribbon and National Bohemian beer. That shit does NOT taste good and you know it.
Stand up for things that can’t stand up for themselves.
Unless there’s vodka in it – Fuck JELLO.
What Would Willie Nelson Do? He’d smoke weed on the roof of the White House, that’s what.
Fuck turning the other cheek. Hit first. Hit hard. Stay on ‘em.
This:
…which should make you laugh because it condenses how ridiculous and silly and fun life is.
*
This is The Cornbread Manifesto and this is what you get when cat water floods and the gin runs smooth and fast – chasing the moon around the corner and into an alley where it is mugged for a poem.
