The way I got rich is not that important.  The thing that is important is that my wealth allows me to get an oil change for my car every day.  The kind of car I drive is not important.  What is important here are the oil changes.

At first, the guy at the shop was like “Dude, you were just in here yesterday” and I said, “If you won’t change the oil in my car I’ll take my business elsewhere”, and being a wise businessperson such as he was he accepted my business.  After a while I noticed I had become the butt of a joke up at the shop.  So I took my business elsewhere.

It is not difficult to project the outcome here.  The toll this can take on a person’s life.  Eventually I had to start driving out of town.  Lost my wife, my friends.  All of my time driving to get oil changes.  It is not difficult to see the metaphorical brick wall here.  A man runs out of money, out of strength, lives on the street, fends for his life, exposed to the elements.  His mind frayed and disheveled from rationalizing his existence.  His ego destroyed by perpetual humbleness.  Crying out for salvation in his foggy stupor.  On his knees weeping, gnashing his teeth in anguish.  Alone in the darkness, disgusted in misery.  An enormous wall growing ever taller between him and his desires.

Keeping Track
by Dirk Michener

When I first got iTunes I saw the box that says I listened to whatever song however many times.  I probably had half a million songs on there and maybe 50 of them had a little number 1 next to them.  I was so ashamed about this and didn’t want anybody looking at my computer.  I would listen to music intently and make sure I listened to at least 95% of the song lest the little number not appear.  If you listened to less than that it said you didn’t listen to it ever.  I guess you probably didn’t unless you listened to at least 95%.

After a while I got sick of doing this and started leaving the music on when I left the house.  Coming home seeing the number of “listens” just rise and rise.  This made me proud and I didn’t feel so ashamed anymore.

After I listened to every song at least one time I was ashamed again.  It looked like I just let my iTunes play for about 37 days non-stop, which is ridiculous and pitiful.  I tried removing the display of song-listens but I knew they were still being counted.  I began writing it down in a notebook instead.  What songs I listened to and the number of times I listened, and the date.  I filled up about 30 notebooks before I decided to start storing them in my gun-safe.  My daughter saw one in the bathroom one day and asked me what it was.  I was ashamed and embarrassed and told her it was something daddy did in junior-high school having to do with basketball.

After Paul Revere fucked Ken’s wife backstage

Ken shipped out to ‘Nam

When he got back from the ‘Nam

He was spat on at the airport

Like Rambo

And moved out to the woods.

Chigger bites don’t bother Ken

Because he learned some trick about it in The ‘Nam

In the funny-books they call it “The ‘Nam”

Is why I call it that.

Ken’s woods-girlfriend has a broken leg

And a tattoo that says “Bad Co.”

Like the band from the 70’s

Ken laughs at his woods-girlfriend as she hobbles thru the woods on her crutches

Ken’s soul went away during The ‘Nam

The Nam sucked for Ken

But he learned better how to live in the woods

Way better than Paul Revere taught him back in Idaho

When they would play a 45 record of a distressed rabbit

So as to attract mountain lions and shoot them with pistols

Once Ken shot a mountain lion about 15 times

10 years later he’d be out in the bush killing gooks

10 years after that he’d be working at a car wash

10 years after that he’d be in the VA hospital

Then later he moved back to the woods

Where he met his Bad Co. girlfriend

Together they built a raft out of pallets and tarps

Left over from the Kroger’s in front of the woods

The raft is tethered to a tree

It floats on the drainage collected from the street

They keep their expired eggs and milk in the raft

Mosquito’s don’t bother Ken

He can build a fire that doesn’t smoke

And stay one step ahead of everybody.

Scene 24 Episode 17- occurrence at owl cave

The tattoos matched up, the leg and the back
Each indication revealed itself anew
A rather poignant smell began to seep thru the doorway
Papers in the room began to turn yellow and crackled
The ringing telephone’s pitch shifted 3 octaves lower
A moth on the wall fluttered over to my hand and landed
It began to gently scratch with its tiny moth mouth
No sooner had it started scratching than I could feel a slight pain from the spot
I brushed off the moth and it winged its way toward the lamp
There was pin-prick of blood on the moth spot and it began to itch
I licked the spot of blood and a slight swelling like a sting manifested
The swollen spot grew to the size of a dime and started drying out and flaking
Flaking became cracking then the wound opened, but no fluid came forth
Rather several dozen silver beads about the size of BB’s
I put the beads from my hand into a shot glass I bought at the top of Pike’s Peak
Antiseptic and bandages on the wound, which still was not bleeding
My cousin Greg came into the room
He asked if I had any water so I gave him a glass full
Greg drank the water and thanked me then asked if I had any liquor
I proceeded to explain to him what had just happened with the moth and all
He looked at the shot glass, filled the rest of it with southern comfort and drank the concoction in one drink and told me that I didn’t have anything to worry about
I carefully took off the bandage on my hand
The swelling and cracking had completely subsided
The spot where the wound was had now become a mark, like a flower
It was dark brown like a mole and about the size of a 50 cent piece
The flower had 8 petals
Greg looked at it and said I should get it removed
I thought of all the laser process and laser removal surgery ads I had seen on billboards
It seemed like a safe enough process

Scene 23 episode 17: Occurrence at Owl Cave

At the laser surgeon’s office I was waiting for over 2 hours
Many extremely fat women and men were also in the waiting room
The surgeon looked and prodded at the mark and suggested I have a skin doctor look at it
2 weeks later my appointment with the skin doctor arrived
The skin doctor wanted to run some tests on the mark
1 week later the doctor calls me up and tells me to drive over and look at the results
Downtown the doctor tells me the mark needs to be removed as a health precaution
2 weeks later the day for my skin surgery arrives
The doctor gives me a general anesthetic
The blackness of heavy sedation ensues
Deep non-dreams shot into total unconsciousness
Afterwards there’s a cut on the edge of my mouth
My mother swore that I had done that to myself and to just take the medicine and it would be fine to lay back and listen to the television from downstairs on Saturday night
Eventually the cut healed and the flower marking was gone
3 weeks later the doctor calls me on the phone saying he has something important to tell me

6/2004

Rich people get the newest in technology
Poor people get the oldest
Then later, Rich people also get the oldest
Poor people get the not quite as old
Then later, Poor people get the almost newest
But not the Most New
Only Rich people get that
Also the very oldest
Only Rich people get that too
Poor people get shuffled around
Rich people get everything
Then later, Poor people get everything
But it’s shuffled around
So they forget that they have everything
But Rich people always remember
They have everything
Poor people forget
Poor kids and Rich kids
Like watching Betamax
Rich kids like watching poor kid movies
Poor kid like richie rich movies
Rich kid like lars von treier
Poor kid like jeff Foxworthy
Jeff Foxworthy had everything
But didn’t know it
Jeff Foxworthy had a Betamax player in his basement
But didn’t know it
Lars Von Treier had a Betamax in his guest bedroom
And he would sneak up there at night,
After his wife would fall asleep
And watch “The Prince and the Pauper”
Until the scene where they were found out
Then later, “The Parent Trap”
The original version
Not the remake version
Poor people movies made by Rich people
Everyone loves those best
Nobody likes John Waters
It’s where I first found out what “Emasculation” meant
John Waters Betamax tapes go for a lot of money
A Dike got her post-op sex-change penis emasculated
By her weirdo Mortville lover
In Mortville everything is backwards
Externally

Little finch perches with wife

In banana tree by the window

He sees his reflection in the window

And thinks the reflection is trying

To steal his wife

Little finch attacks window

Breaks his neck and falls to the

Ground mortally wounded

His wife sees that little

Finch has lost

And the reflection has won.

Little finch wife waits

For the reflection to come

Perch next to her

In the banana tree

But the reflection is gone.

Little finch wife jerks

Her neck around

Flutters off

To the birdbath

In the yard.

Sometimes people can smell ghosts – or god or a miracle happening
Moving around doing invisible business
Producing it’s own rankness between sulfur and plasma
Much like lightening- invisibility strikes
It’s a little funky
Like baking cookies and boiling down cabbage.

I can home one day and the apartment smelled like garbage
& I says, I says “what’s that awful smell?”
& Reed says “it’s my food. But it rhymes with garbage”
…later that night we made a special trip to the dumpster behind Einstein’s
to get a double bagged bundle of day old bagels
you see, they have to throw them away
otherwise they’d have to mark the price down
then everyone on the strip would stop buying fresh bagels
in lieu of saving a dollar
which is smart, on the parts of both parties

Invisibility is a chemical reaction
Like AIDS or bombs or Dr. Pepper or schizophrenia or spontaneous combustion
There’s a time and a place and person or a people
When all the factors are in order
The unseen mathematics begin rounding and rounding
Multiplying and dividing

The next thing you know you’re about to get laid
And you realize the pheromone spray is paying off
And the breath spray is doing its job
And the hairspray has remained wholly steadfast if only a little flaky

You take off your watch
You roll on your latex
And disappear

Your partner suddenly looks up
At no one
And you think
-why is she looking at me like that
why is she looking through me.

My Private Beard
by dirk michener

today i began growing my beard
its at sandpaper level
girls don’t like beards
too much like their privates
my beard is very private no
keeps to itself
girls don’t like kissing their privates
unless they’re queer
then they’ve no reason to kiss me
one who has a private beard

All my friends are dead
I come to the graveyard every single day
Talk to the gravestones and mothermary’s
Talk to the flowers and to God about it
Why did it happen?
Why did all my friends die?
Some days you have to make a decision
Some days you have to make a terrible decision
Sometimes it’s about money
Sometimes it’s about love
Sometimes it’s about revenge
Sometimes it’s about terrible terrible shame
Shame so terrible it results in dead friends

I went to all their funerals in my suit
I have only one suit
The suit my grandfather was buried in
They take the suits off before burial and…
No, now I’m lying
I got the suit off’n my dead grandfather’s corpse
I went to trial wearing the suit
I went to trial for exhuming my grandfather’s corpse
But I knew.
I knew, as I acted as my own lawyer
I knew, as I used myself as my primary witness
I knew, as I cross-examined myself
My grandfather wanted me to have that suit
And what was granted me, I shall receive
And I’m not a thief
And I’m not a lawyer
And I’m not a gravedigger
And I’m not a businessman
And I’m not a happy person
Until I get everything that’s coming to me

I’ve made terrible decisions
None of which I regret
None of which I can change
Lord, grant me the strength to accept what I cannot change
To change what I want to change
To destroy what I will not change
To accept what I have destroyed

All my friends are dead