Say it...
Speakers
There's always a way to go
Hip
Rockz-ov
The Changing Face of Everything
Raukist
The Short
Stories
M-Lake
I-Hoppin.
Motorcycle Therapy
©Brock F. Hanson 1994
Say it.
It's
always harder to start something new.
"I don't know what I'm going to do."
"He asked you Sally, you owe him an answer."
"I'm afraid."
"Afraid of what? being happy?"
"Maybe."
"I'll tell you what you're afraid of, you're afraid of seeing your desire."
She laughed.
"Not really."
"I don't mean that! Anyone can see that."
"'Anyone' ate me so good I came four times last night."
"Congratulations. Tell me though, is love the number of orgasms you managed?"
"Got a better litmus? He's nice, and we have a lot invested together."
"Bullshit! Did your mind, or your crotch tell you to say that?"
Both answers are
wrong, my girl.
"Mind-- I don't know, it's such a hard question. I never thought I'd get married."
"Denial. You're dessert for the wedding feast. Some part of you wanted to catch flowers at
Susie's wedding."
"Did not!"
"Did sso! You told me you were depressed afterwards."
"That was different."
"How?"
"I don't want to go into it."
"Look, you know our parent's marriages were disasters, so don't emulate them.
Do you think your mom knew herself well enough to hear her own answer when daddy asked her?"
"It was an honor to be even considered by a man like dad."
"So, you think she wanted to hear 'No'?"
"Hardly. He was the great provider, the man's man, 'Everybody wanted him.' mom told me
proudly."
"She doesn't even know what happened to her."
"Nope."
Will she hear what I
have to say next?
"You're just as afraid to hear."
"How can you say that!?"
"I know every daughter's worst fear is being just like her mother, but guess why? Because,
if you're not courageous, you don't look where you're standing, and few people want to test these fears.
You are looking out from quicksand my dear, and I want to know what you're doing about it."
"Some friend you are!"
"I'm the best friend you've got. The rest bullshit you with empty smiles."
"Fuck off! I'll run my life the way I want to. You're just jealous!"
And I hummed the
wedding dirge.
RRRiiinng!
"Hello? I'm sorry, that was just really hard to hear. Tell 'em, she wanted to be happy, that's all."
"Tell em yourself."
"What do you think I should do?"
"Remember the moment he asked you."
"Yea."
"Okay, now I'm going to ask you again. Ready?"
"No, but go ahead anyway."
"Is he the right man for you?"
"I don't know!"
"Are you weary of asking that question?"
"He asked once, but I asked it a thousand times."
"Close your eyes."
"Okay."
"Now imagine a stoplight."
"Easy."
"Jao, only you know this. What do you want to do?"
"I want to figure this out. It's killing me."
"Imagine he's asking you in the middle of its intersection."
"Huh?"
"The traffic light."
"On Fifth and Main."
"Fine. Now see him mouthing the words."
"Yuck."
"What color's the light?"
"Green, why?"
"What's happening now?"
"He's kissing me."
"What are you saying?"
"Nothing. I'm blank."
"What's happening with the light?"
"You're funny about this."
"Are your eyes still closed?"
"Yes."
"Tell me then."
She
wouldn't.
"Would
you like to hear our top-line speakers, sir?"
Indicators, periods at their nonexistent sentence ends straight-a head searching eyes spotted something,
note: Bic pen, but alligator-skin belt, antique watch-- gold, playing with car key-- BMW looksalike.
Investigate.
"Whatcha'got?"
Disinterested-interested, coy, I'll hit him with that fat, luscious sound and he'll crumple.
"Electrostatics,"
Quizzical look.
"Just sit right down here, in the sweet spot, while I hook this baby up. Electrostatic speakers are the current state of the art. See this grid here? 4000 volts negative, a piece of mylar, then 4000 positive."
He's getting it, I see his eyebrows light.
"What's it get me?"
"Pick a disk."
Which one? The disks' art speaks his eye. Hmm, right for the... "Ah, the audiophile, did you know they put a picture on the back to tell you exactly where the musicians sat?"
"I hate it when they mess with the sound."
Ringer.
16-26,000 Hz + 2dB Horizontal 30 dispersion w/6' vertical line source capable of handling 300w p-channel ELS and 950 subwoofer total: 5-12" die cast set w/low-mass 10g cone...
"SAY, NOW THAT'S SOME SOUND!"
That's nothing though, "WHAT'S THAT COIL MADE OF?"
Turn it up.
"Beryllium copper-edge wound, w-optional 20lb 25T-M field strength magnet."
"Whoa."
"Gimme the downside."
He always hated this part.
"Okay, I'll be honest with you. These speakers are merciless. All those metal-film resistors and inductorless polypropylene capacitors reproduce everything, and I mean everything. You'll hear every flaw in every piece of your system."
They're big too.
"Then there's the size problem. The whole shebang weighs more than a Volkswagen, and you have to put them in the center of the room."
"Basically, you're telling me I have to upgrade everything?"
"Look, that membrane in there is only eighteen angstroms thick. See how big it is?
How fast do you think a massless speaker panel refers your sound?"
"I think I see the problem."
Lost him? The guy's got a bundle tied up in his system, so how do I...
"I'll take it."
"Whaat!"
"I said, I'll take
it."
The sound rains down and around you, you're literally compressed in it, you can tell the shape of the instruments playing, what else was he going to say?
"You look a kiddle sunned!
I mean, you look a little stunned. Damn, this thing gets loud."
"It shouldn't be that easy."
"Why not? You think I'm not millionaire material?"
"Sorry, I just thought you'd be a hard-sell."
"I
am."
Plastic: big-fat, luscious limit.
"I love selling the high-end, that's what makes this fun."
"Why's that?"
"You have to appreciate sound to even listen to the good stuff."
Fear of seeing an old stereo anachronism.
Fear of looking at your life digging it's own grave.
"When you said they put all the weak spots right in your face, I knew I had to have it."
"You're brave."
"Not really. You have to live with this stuff."
"I just work with it."
"That's where you're wrong."
"It", is the whole-damned thing.
There's always away to go
The hardest part is always deciding. It's really tough to think your possibilities are almost endless.
It tends to stress people out, so ... They draw their favorite limitations around themselves.
It's an old theme in an even older story, 'cept,
we like to blame God for doing it. That's part of the ruse.
Which way?
God wanted us to see ourselves backwards, to spill the shadows' guts.
Hip
Put another quarter in the electric sharkd watch it wiggle someone
spent a long time inventioning that ten-foot marvel. Their eyes light, junk
falls out their mouths, transfixxed, as a little, loud Harley Davidson fills the timy room with
booming, round sounds.
Walls a pastel montage of shadows seeking objects to with-with, people buy their one-single cigarettes
and wish patience for another
to share their lonely worlds. Flowers dry in a late-summer sun, grind your molars scuff
the already creased floor, the skies' the limit, but
Where is it?
Neon flickers its imminent messages as aging, grey poneytails drift by
the open door policy
and single-smoke people drink time.
ROCKZ-OV
Hot, tight shorts over a liquid white body, look at the difference from the pitch-black world! Naturally they eat it up. Nautilus shells never had such fascination to them. What's wrong with mathematicians?
Look at those creamy legs leader to creamier imagination thighs. Their codpiece swiftly stiffens sniffing the air for sweet. succulent juices their person may have activated.
"In your dreams."
They're buddies with those woes, thinking exact-same things. She smiles ads, gives eyes
you's forsaken to see. Of course she wants you somewhere. What's "wrong" is always the best fantasy.
Every man thinks he's the lucky one
just waiting to happen.
"If she's so fun, why dint
she signal me inta that neighboring room?"
Are you kidding? Do wet thighs know how many wills prospect every opportunity yet to be even seen? You have'ta take it, or never be done satisfying the will to flesh.
That's the fantasy everyone's afraid of.
Love? We're missing it, for
needing to know what we're going to be doing in every last minute.
THE CHANGING FACE OF EVERYTHING
(OLD TECHNOLOGY)
stay tuned
Raukist
--------------
They were a warring tribe - he'd come and taken their reason to fight
and so they'd boil him alive.
The dog ran home to his tribe, stood shivering. He was hurt by the horses silence.
The brave saw the dog in heat, of fear and moved, grabbed, brought im'near.
The boy they knew was herd, caught, soon to be diced. They led'it shot, worded.
disfigure suffice. Arrive the rut and fall pray: here in this village, save your
wants, darkenedday.
They banished him and wolfen friend into th'fort, from whence he came.
Returned now with sign of hin,
forthelp in dim decaves.
The brashen dog was calmed un'salm,
trembling rigid-fixed.
Spreading words or'certain earths, ohCain...
The asking heat upon his durth iz leiys
in human eyes.
Relection running tall and here,said they be
oh mightnt we inception once again.
" To boil before the unwed score
is dignity. "
And so we; cast him well away
send him near the dearest fray
find him clawing in your night
take oursword as pierceing right.
Better knowledge jailed us all lonbefree da samesaid fall
take his stick ogreazon fowwll, poke yourneye and heed our call.
Lockedaway in trunk we keep
cast in mortal seanson sleep.
Yes, I rid to see this pall.
herd , the bondage of it all.Start another chapter here
raising,Cur, our senent mirrior!
Oh but if he hadn't coime,
riots now of hand'ngun--peace untoven hintched-ant-yarn
crumpled relics piled a'cairn
Walkaways for those who come. Dopplebachens berrtwon.
Unssated lessons for ust allhere truncheons'gone...
Clearred sertile let us be
thy'every single golden key.
Come the here and off we go the badger's rising snakes below
to punis hithr tired friend whose kinden word our hearts do fent.
Rise you up unto these saddle ever-soren hear bedaddle.
Ho then heed to losent way
Riders sally setd; quajay
End be near o'v what noon tide
mery chice of eithr died.
/---------------------------------------------|
/ Year's the difference b'tween vague
/ an'Astrakt. One takes you deeper than stand,
\ an'the other
\ lies you be.
\---------------------------------------------|
Life's been interesting.
Cooking but intuition "interferes"
what I'm really trying to do
Drop that candy bar in.
Pasta sauce!?
Thazright. That stuff over there too.
Ooooh-boy. This will be... interesting.
Isn't that what people say, when they don't know what else to?
Now I'm cooking for the dog, right?
I realize this amazing dog is my own reflection.
Would I feed myself something I wouldn't eat?
Double portions, lets go.
This is always true you know.
You treat the world with the most kindness when It's you,
all little pieces of the whole.
I appologize to the axe when I miss, and chink its handle.
I ask the generator how its doing, if It Needs a little more oil. It sez no, but i wouldn't mind a drop or two
just to talk awhile. The cliff it calls me once again,
its leeward side the wind doth pin. Climb me up you lazy fool, bow in close and tell I do.
It sez: be me when it's hard. Remember who you are, that we are one. I'll be here for a million years, far after your days are done. On my sands shall wash your soul, well touch again,well never part, remember when the waylay start.
And on the grace and on the shore I backwards walk the wind's implore. The planet's power courses through
I yell the air and pass it through.
I taste the things I should not dare,
make friends together, christen stare
by acting out what eyes implore, hands suggest and muscles wore. Associate the hint of sorrow, take upon what falls tomarrow, vindicate the slightest hint, bless the rising of the lint. Food becomes the path to knowledge, keys of virtue, paint abstollic, peeling for the childhood walls, stripped and varnished finger crawls.
Could people here see all the magic
fell the trauma, quell the panic?
Or in fact would fearsome lie
put its finger through the pie?
Crazy Bastard you could say, them's the words that save the day. Give you reason all amiss, turn your cheek,
avoid the kiss.
conclusion:
If your inner voice isn't speaking
and you can hear it.
Congradulations.
You're doing it.
The eternal now holds no conductivity
to has-beens, wherefors and to-dos
There's only action instantaneous
that words hold no liking for
Ode to corn and diet Coke:
Eating things like popcorn (alot)
is running for fear of being still.
M-Lake
The moon rose light rays across
our well-worn path
as we sat there, dew falling heavily on
Summer's last hurrah.
Extinct volcano harbors shallow, weed filled lake
crisp with dry, white timber waiting for the
aquatic salamander's crawl. We drop our packs to throw pebbles
in its stock-still surface
wondering if we're really here.
Dragonflies crinkle air stalking total movement's lack,
fish breach mirror surface confusing up from down
and trees eye their reflection from steep, sheer walls,
contemplating the gravity of their
eventual demise.
"Are we here?"
"Are we not?"
The poetry of my association caught
on the lack of possible meaning.
"In that case, I'm all over it."
But it was the one who called bets and
eventual shots.
"What'll we have for dinner?"
Nothing.
Stillness. Illusion.
The grandest feast of all.
All the way up our trail we'd laughed
and it laughed with us. Our legs hurt so much
we'd had to laugh hard, doubling over dropping tears
on the deep, dark earth. "You did what?!"
It couldn't be true.
Waterfalls obscured the trudge, as the rivers' worn rocks
dreamed
of more torrents coming.
"Who said that?"
Nobody did. They were thinking what
dreams were forced to verbalize.
Salamander crawled towards us, following veins of
dark-colored rock.
"You exhausted?"
"Me too."
head nod betrayed, embraced,
encircled.
Fish leapt knowledge no fishing poles were brought
while tear ducts buttered dry white bagels.
"You sad?"
"Yea. How'd you know?"
"I am too."
Laughter precursors flying
down opposite kinds of roads.
"I think it's this place."
"Is it?"
It's so melancholy. Put down that bread and listen
To whispers caught in a sensaround echo.
"It's so quiet."
Quiet rings of rocks' hunger, to push back sound.
"I don't go places like this enough."
The Pleicies twinkle their birth of new planets' suns
"See the shooting star?"
It left a bright vapor trail.
"Make a wish."
"That's for kids."
"So?!"
(I wish I could take this with me.)
(I wish my life had this peaceful scenery.)
Go to bed
forget it all.
Awake in the sun last seen this time a year ago.
Stay prickling with cold alpine water left from a jump in its stream.
Bees buzz around your glisten—listen hard to the church bells
ring resounding, from the sharp catch of ice, raised to the back of throats.
"That was refreshing!"
"Ain't no swimming pool with chlorine."
That's for sure.
Scrotums tight with boyhood glee—
"What's this?"
SPLASH!
"A can opener."
He shakes the water rivulets from hair tickling his eyebrows
and hoists himself up the rock.
Mmmm. Nice."
Pine needles carpet, warm breezed blueberries
who said you had to leave?
The food's run out.
So!?
What's food—define it.
Food is nourishment.
Are you nourished?
In a way, yes.
Then don't leave.
Dreaming: That's my wish, isn't it?
Dreaming: I won't, but I will.
I-Hoppin'
Twelve hours.
That's how long I had to drive down flooded roads to arrive at Raleigh's airport.
It was five hours too long.
At the Holiday Inn there's a riot in the check-in lobby. Nobody told the staff a delegation of YMCA officials, aged ten to twenty three, were descending. One hundred fifty screaming patrons lined up at the elevators wanting up, in-between gulps of soft drinks soon to be spilled and breaths of what the "congress" had insisted YMCA policy should insist. It was a mini government of pizza call out white children gone Raleigh Durham amuck.
Your flight sir, has been moved up to 3:00 tomorrow.
Peachy. What to do till then?
"Where's some night life?"
Oh there's..., and there's...
You taking notes? You should. Good luck finding half of them.
I walked the sixteen flights up.
For a scenic capital city, the streets were awfully deserted. The only other pedestrians I saw were dressed in dirty camouflage, or dangerous-looking lunatics ransacking dumpsters.
I thought they said this was a "nice" town?
A guy hits me up for change to buy his girlfriend some protective pads.
That's a new one.
At the old city market, there's suddenly wall-to-wall cars. One square block holds the entire Yuppie entertainment package for miles around. Those dogs all over the walls were cute, but where's the verve? Overly-polite couples drink the sophisticated drunkenness of tech-triangle's hundred twenty companies' think-tank. Wake up you people! Where's the black in you!?
That certainly wasn't the place.
I'm driving my nice new car now.
I'm like all the other drivers.
Now I fit in.
So many policemen!
Only the non-natives wonder.
Six bars in two hours.
Blech.
And then, I found it.
The parking lot spoke happening. Cars zoomed in and out jockeying for position like the Indy's final lap was only two blocks away. All the lights were on, and heavy breath steamed the windows with good things' promise. There's a waiting line out the door at 11:44 p.m.,
as I pull in a handicap spot.
This is it. Gott'a be.
It was.
"Pecan pancakes with bananas; make it a sooper-special."
"Right."
She'd dumped the place setting over the menu.
The place was in an uproar. Next to me, a family of local Appalachian dropouts thumbed their noses at the waitress' proper southern drawl b'tween huge bites of syrup-drenched platters all mixed up. Jambalia breakfast at midnight. Junior ate a hamburger twice as big as he was.
I didn't remember any of this stuff from my childhood.
This was a pancake house, wasn't it?
"Whatda-ya need to drink?"
"Water."
Comes in a big styrofoam cup. What do they have against glass?
Nobody seems too bothered.
Why aren't these kids in bed? Why are those people swilling cup after cup of coffee?
More questions every minute. Two tables over, a big burley high school football player is fascinating his faking-it date with covert stratagems. This is his idea of a get-lucky night out?
An eerie mass-murder spin-out sits in the corner shaking his seventh cup with a walkman on.
He's rocking back and forth, with a stare that retracts timid testicles.
Wow.
The girl is hungry, and wants to taste all the syrups lined to the table's extreme rear.
She opened one a little too far. Napkins smeared the evidence before the main course came.
(That should have been a lesson to me.)
It's amazing.
This is definitely where it's happening.
My five dollar ninety cent pancakes arrive in a molten pool of butter. The cholesterol count is notable higher in this establishment, because the only place to deposit the whipped baseball of residual "butter" is in the non-dairy creamer dish. It's a fitting end few find in time to employ, for the plate's so hot it nearly incinerates your hand to touch it. "Watch it!" she said, running to another table. The plate slid to me like a five cent beer in an old TV western.
Watch what? I'm thinking.
Surprise!
Only airports get away with charging this much for so little service.
Still, people flock in for artificial blueberry syrup that pours all over everything as soon as a finger even quivers to its little white tab. Gravity beats you. There's a man in stinky-looking overalls who doesn't seem to mind that a man in a blazing green tux sitting next to him used too much cologne, and is starring obtrusively at the double order of piggies in blankets topped with scoops of diligently mined jelly from the little Vesuvias of empty peel-back containers the syrup's influence couldn't unify. He's taking them in whole, white-knuckled grip on the closed-fist fork clanking ominously against his silver-lining teeth, like some great machine gnashing its gears.
This is really where it's happening. Two hookers dressed to the Raleigh nines come in and occupy a far corner table, eyeing the dark-skinned Cuban in slick mirror glasses, like they'd do nothing for money's sake in some cases.
I'm finished. They're looking at me greedily,
those people lined out the door. I look back with an appetite sharpened by so much dementia
reliving their childhood memories of pancakes, dripping in butter and syrup. It was a cold, sterile world out those doors.
I paid the man with the large bulging eyes
that glazed over with twenty hour days of cash register drawers
stuffed with green-suited twenties East Indians' loved to possess.
Every bell was the food bar pressed. "Thank you. Come back."
"Thank you, come back." The drawer bangs. Pancake batter? How much a prepackaged
just-add-water ton? Of course they'll come back. It's hare to tortoise
where being a kid again is concerned.
Raleigh. Park.
Walk back - it's raining
up those sixteen flights of stairs.
Motorcycle Therapy
Blue.
It's one of those days.
We stare out the window while the clouds mist a lethal shine to the oil-slick roads. The TV is playing to itself and we wonder what's on, pretending to watch it and feeling
a little bit dead.
It's got a very low battery and
it's covered with sawdust, barricaded by too much stuff, as apportioned
to the American Way.
"Why don't you fragg your motorcycle?" she asked to my what are you doing? Oh-nothing...
She liked to say it that way, and get the sexual reference.
What she really meant to say was:
"Get your ass on that seat and go get some help."
Hello?
"No man, you gotta be kidding. This ain't no kind'a day to be pushing a motorcycle around."
I know he's going to say it. "Why couldn't you do it yesterday?"
But yesterday already happened.
Three times down the block wheel skidding in the surface tension of tiny water droplets
asking from more to join them--Hey, you got any gas in this thing?
Slosh.
Yea.
"Well why don't
you try their f-ing reserve tank?"
Sweat joined the mist's dispersion.
RRRooaar!
That's embarrassing. It's a sin as bad as the kill switch.
Thanks!
"Say, what about mine now?"
I thought this weren't no day for mean men, or rabid beasts?
"That's before I saw blue."
The sky opened.
We moved a dozen lead-boxed somethings
to expose the rusted-chrome Virago competing with Valdez
for the world's worst oil disaster.
Looks like it shit its pants.
Yuck.
Shame on you. It told him.
I'm not going to start until you be nice to me.
"You better go." He said. "This may take a while."
Yea
Braaack!
The fairing of the 500 Interceptor rattled god-almighty in
first gear
so I avoided going slow. It was no stranger to the ground–
so it took speed with its breath held. Maybe that's why I have to choke this beast
so-damn long. But it was fine. My wife was secretly jealous.
I rode her blown front seal high-speed shimmy
with a loose grip, and sliding thoughts
fluid around the corners.
It's cold, but pavement's dry on Claremont.
The tires smell their heat-up and
it's kind'a sexual.
A man's hitchhiking with a helmet, I stop and
pick him up.
One hundred yards up the road, there's this peculiar smell and I look down to see
its infected oil leak not happening.
"Look out!"
I pull the bike up straight on hairpin number three to sluice through four gallons of mineral oil
dropped from an alien spaceship.
"How the hell did that get there!?"
Serpentine squiggle slow to dust off the rubber, check the feet and watch
them glisten their warning.
"You nearly bit the big one."
If I hadn't-a picked you up, I'd be...
"Dead." he finished the sentence.
Turn number three had been my specialty.
"That's my stop!"
I'm smiling so much it hurts. Did I have any cares? Wasn't there some things I...
was suppose to do today?
F-'em.
Grizzly peak, back-n-forth, wait for the cars to
get a lot of headway, then... Vrooom!
Atop the Lawrence Livermore is the evening rendezvous of suspended jet jockeys.
That's the showplace corner, where hyper-age technology leans that extra two degrees to silently wow the onlookers who–
pretend not to care.
I lean my mean beast over and grind the shoe I'm
barely attached to.
B+ for good effort I feel, borrowing a look in my sagging one-way mirror.
Next contestant.
A minus roar.
The sky's clear and cold as the yellow falls down. There's a old hippie couple in a runaway yuppie truck, smoking a joint for the Oakland time they did that in the sixties, all agush with lust
for life.
He smiles as I don my sunset rain bibs, just to save warmth.
Hello?
San Francisco is calling.
The Bay bridge is a surreal adventure to thrill in, I decide out loud.
5:00 straight up. Rush hour Friday deluxe. Carpool lane, roar through he toll booth...
I'm getting better, aren't I?
Fit as a fiddle.
Look at the drivers, asleep at their wheels. I
pity them
and their senseless lives, as they pity the shmuck on the motorcycle
shivering in a storm of tidal wave cars, his life hinging slightly
on each one's love for not killing
just to see what a motorized corpse would look like
with one more outlaw missing from the roads
to remind them:
That was me a
year-and-a-half ago
as I shiver some more.
Blue.
Too beautiful:
All those crawling red lights at the Treasure Island gate to rising spans of Christmas light
backed by blankets of chrome yellow haze. The buildings are...
so surreal it seems I was a traveler from another time, who read some brochures about Earth
and how you could do this thing
of crossing this bridge at sunset
and see this miraculous sight that never before existed, and never will happen again,
and how you can ride this machine, that makes you feel so alive
you'll never want to go home
and you didn't believe it, but—
had to try anyway.
The traffic is crawling; I don't even care. Later,
I'll adrenaline rush between standing cars
heading for South 101's Que Sirah.
They ask why this thing's legal, being so fun and all.
Blue?!
"Life's too
fucking great!"
I scream at the top of my lungs.
(Did you get your money's worth?)
somebody whispered.
1994 Brock Foxworthy Hanson
240 and a half 27th Street, SF, CA 94131
--or--PO Box 45492 Seattle WA 98145