right now
this very minute.
she’s sitting on the couch completely butchering a plate of fine cheese.
completely butchering.
the evening sun is whitewashed orange, and civil twilight pours through the window behind.
and I’ve never seen such beauty.
my god. this woman.
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.
*
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.
Viva la Revolution.
Arm the Homeless.
I must preface this rambling.
Everything I’m about to say can be considerably more poetically constructed and hogtied by my brother, theBHJ. His badassery knows know bounds and one day we’re going to steal a large wooden boat with canvas sails that catch all of the wind and be pirates that launch flaming prose and steal-y gaze at rich yacht-types. We will also moon recreational boaters.
but…
As it regards the up and coming 2012, I choose to give you two flaming middle fingers, 2012. You give me your newness and promises and starch whites hung on the line to dry in a springtime zephyr, and I pinch your promise in eight, tight, equal folds – then a triangle – and cut away until the confetti paper snow covers my feet and I unfold to reveal a paper cutout that resembles Francisco Goya’s – Tres de Mayo.
I, like my more qualified poetic pirate cohort, chose to do away with resolutions.
I will dissolve.
I will give my bones and fall limp and know that I know nothing and control nothing and I will have the upper hand.
Fear will be a stranger that I ask, “hey. don’t I know you from somewhere?” And fear will say, “more’n likely.” And I’ll laugh and fear will laugh and we’ll have a coffee and talk about flowers and birds and spring gardens with almost-frozen soil ripe with sugar snap peas that climb and cover the trellis like suspicion and a good belly laugh and smoked pork. And then I’ll get then check and fear will say, “next one’s on me,” and I’ll laugh real uncomfortable like.
Then I’ll pour sugar in fear’s gas tank and cut his brake lines as a good joke.
Yes.
2012.
You are on notice.
May you and yours build it up and burn it down this year. And yes…
there’s room on the boat.
-c.
poured a shot.
set it on fire.
drank it.
twice.
here’s to you and yours. you know who you are.
ho, ho, ho, motherfuckers.
-c.
+1 (or a shot of the distillate of your choice) if you get and love this with all your heart.
bless my spirit.
*sniff*
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