A Nested Blog

 

  

I woke, getting out of my futon at 5AM. I live in a rotten fucking room, where a putrescent smell reeks through the floorboards. 

There are 9 rooms on the 6th floor of our old apartment building where 15 people, 8 men, and 7 women live with 2 shower rooms, one is for women and the other is coed. 

We shower coed at times, sex-free, instead, having conversations about philosophers and poets like Nietzsche and William Carlos Williams.

Nietzsche has a pitiful attitude towards life, particularly death, he makes a big deal about being an atheist, very unimaginative,  he's not a fun philosopher. He gives nothingness a bad name.

Many people see nothingness in a different light, meditating to encounter it, aligning the body and mind.

Nietzsche’s nothingness is 100% nothingness, 100% unawareness. It’s awful. There is no beauty or color, only casket darkness.  

William Carlos Williams was a doctor and a Beat mentor.

You couldn’t find 2 people who saw the world more differently than Williams and  Nietzsche. 

Imagine being a doctor and romantic poet? Doing Hernia operations during the day and writing at night. 

My grandfather was a doctor, a lousy one, who eventually lost his license, getting a job at a hardware store.

I worked as the nightwatchman at the original Harley Davidson plant when it was a partial factory, painting gas tanks, with a small room of historic Harleys, in Milwaukee.

In the 80s the plant lacked security at night, no CCTV cameras, and no bosses. I quickly realized you could party there at night within reason, not raves, just a few close friends. 

I invite Paul the rat,  Tracy the Lost Thespian, and James Tin.

At 10PM I open the gate and let em in, the first floor was handicap accessible for tours, James Tin was paraplegic. 

They bring everything, herbal juice, joints, cocaine. 

We party in the brick museum room, bikes from the 20s to 80s. Including the WLA, the WWII bike, and the Harley goat. Even the Brits and the Russians used them during the war. 

Tracy the Lost Thespian, slowly pours 8 lines onto the metal ammo box of the WLA.

With the radio on, listening to John Coltrane, First Mediation— sounding like otherwordly Indian spiritual music because of Trains' wife Alices' influence. 

Before the day shift begins, Paul the Rat and Tracy the Lost Thespian leave with Jim Tin driving to his suburban house where they make pancakes.

I show after my shift, talking at the kitchen table with Tin about jazz and drinking coffee.

In a haze, Paul the rat, and Tracy escape into the basement and ball on an old mattress.  

It was a sneaky deal because Jim Tin was Tracy the Lost Thespians' boyfriend, and the two knew Tin couldn't access the basement. Life and cheating go on

There's too much violence in the world and most people are opposed to it. 

Violence and murder are sadistic mental acts, thoughtless mistakes, and communication breakdowns. 

John Lennon’s song Imagine is a major poetic truism telling it like it should or could be.

Imagine there's no heaven

It's easy if you try

No hell below us

Above us, only sky

Imagine all the people

Livin' for today

Ah

Imagine there's no countries

It isn't hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion, too

Imagine all the people

Livin' life in peace

You

You may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us

And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions

I wonder if you can

No need for greed or hunger

A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people

Sharing all the world

You

You may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us

And the world will live as one

Is Blogging Creative Writing?

 

I’m a guy who didn’t go to college who writes anyway. I don’t know shit about MA programs at universities. 

I’m uneducated but people like my stuff, I get 1000s of hits on my blog. 

Every  body wants to write.

Write about your life, pissing in the alley as a tranny walks by watching

After a gummy my mind wants to write like Cy Twombly

draws and squabbles with pencils on shopping bags.

flow of consciousness shit—

many people prefer to sleep with their toes out and exposed to the air, others bury their feet in the blanket.

All the problems of the world will be solved.

I was one of the kids who drank out of a house hose.

sex is fast movie so you have to pay attention or you will miss something.

do you love your sex partner 100%, or let’s say 66%?  Do you feel like laying in bed planning life, or marriage, after you've gotten you rocks off?

Lucowski you’re a blogger —  if you had what the MA crowd has, you'd write short stories, novels, haiku, plays. People with MAs are cut from higher stuff.

Let me give you some advice Henry, if you don't have a MA, don't write, or write if you want, but burn your work with the leaves in the background.

What's a fucking story? I'll write one for you — 

Julie and Dicky went to see Gone With the Wind, as they shared popcorn, watching darkies brutully whipped by southern whitebread.

Dicky gets a woody and realizes he wants to marry Julie, so he says?

Julie, I love you, will you marry me?

Julie says yes, joy radiates throughout the theater. 

Sad to say, the Gods didn’t care about Dicky’s majestic proposal to Julie. The Gods hate people. 

The mighty divinity laugh at the neopyte lovers, splashing mead in the clouds, knowing Julie is going to fuck the whole thing up when she tells Dicky,

marriage is a big step in our lives. Let’s have a big wedding, with a band, and lot’s of expensive booze. We can get a wedding planner, they’re not much, 

Dicky farts and excuses himself to go to the bathroom, instead, when he gets to concessions he runs for dear life, Dicky never saw Julie again.

Is that a story ending?

I know an old pharmacist in Harlem, Art, His pharmacy is made of wood, hardwood floors, cabinets, ceiling fans, there's a  cedar Dime Store Indian at the front door.

Art's a voodoo man from Baton Rouge

He has a complete line of voodoo paraphernalia for his Wigan customers— Mugwort, Jasmine Root, Lucky hand Root. 

And Rastafarian and Wall Street Executives go to Art’s for Thai stick, fruit flavored ganja, Humboldt Country, and so on.

Louis Armstrong was Old Al’s regular customer in the early 40s, the great one bought weed and Seena natural laxative.  

Weed for Louie was like junk for Keith Richards, it fogged the bullshit of society keeping the two feeling safe inside.

When I listen to expansive music I wonder how the fuck they can do it? Coltrane, Monk, Charlie Watts, Bill Evans, Art Pepper. 

Where's the sound come from?. The august ones are gifted, not by the Gods, it comes from somewhere else, inside them.

If your work has something special a publisher will contact you.  As for publishers, I was reincarnated for a day as a cockroach and Marshal Schuster stepped on me, I was in the urinal.

Hey Mr. Publisher man, I got hundreds of short stories, there not all good, but some are great, Mr. Publisher man says, 

Go fuck yourself cockroach. Don't bother us.

This is a blog, there is no storyline or plot in it. 

Short story writers, journalists, novelists, playwrights, and haikus are the royalty of the writing world.

Neither Bukowski nor Kerouac were hippies, they hatted hippies. They didn’t care about the Grateful Dead and neither had a MA.

Kerouac wrote at his mother's house in Massachusetts, and Buk wrote in his tree-lined ranch house in Santa Ana. 

Bukowski was more productive than Kerouac. 

Kerouac would go on benders, then write for long periods, while Buk would write every day, drunk or not.

My best friend Andy told me to stay on anti-depressants. He’s my voice of reason.

In that I don't have a MA, I will call myself poet blogger.

That's it for writing retired on applications, now I'll sign  Lucowski the poet blogger.

I want to end this work with an MA-certified ending, a summation if you wish.

You all know my life has been a train wreck of romantic episodes, death-defying espionage, and killer clowns.

But I made it— today I drive the kiddy train at Coney Island.

 

Dream Girl Warehouse

After my best friend Slim died there was no reason to live in New York. The winters were remorseless. 

And, you know the I Love New York bumper stickers, LOVE? Say it again motha fucker, yeah, there're a few nickels and dimes of love there. 

I was broke, needed to pay rent, there was no ganja available in the city, something to do with a NARC crackdown, so I had to get a job.

I went to answer an ad for working security for Burns. 

I'm sitting at Captain Dick’s desk, he looks like a WWE wrestler,  with a square-shaped head, and a flat-top haircut. 

In the 80s people didn’t use computers much and Dick tells me, 

give me your social security card. 

He calls the 9th precinct and asks for detective Bud Marrow saying,

hey Bud, how's the wife, how about a drink later at Louies, anyway, can you check your files on Henry Lucowski, Social Security number— 362456876? 

Ok, Dick hold on, 

It took a long time but the detective comes back giving the OK,

the kid’s clean, Dick says thanks telling Henry, 

you look like a good kid to me, you don’t smoke that shit do ya? 

Oh, no sir, 

I’m gonna put you on the night shift to start, at Dream Girl Sex Toy Warehouse, it’s in Queens, my secretary will give you your uniforms, and lucky for you, no hats, laugh.

You'll need to relieve the day guy at 5PM, then he'll show again at 8AM to sign the workers in. 

What a motha fucken dream job and trust me I was going to take full advantage of it.

The first night I brought cocaine, weed, and Jack Daniels, walked the floor, doin my job, amazed at the different kinds of sex toys, and assorted loungery. 

Most of the sexy stuff was stored in large paper boxes but they had a lot on display— there were double-cocks, electric dildos, strap-on dildos with balls, dildos without balls, squirting dildos with syringes attached to a tube that would shoot fake cum out of the penis. 

There were all kinds of lingerie, string-like straps that wrapped around the tits and ass, pussy cut-out panties, nurse's uniforms, and maid outfits, you name it. 

I got so worked up looking at the sexy stuff that I had to sit down and cool off. I sit at my desk, snorting coke, and drinking Jack. 

The next night I bring an old pal with me, Trickie, a hooker.

Around midnight I unlock the warehouse gate and sneak her in. She was gorgeous, with a perfect body which she liked to show off wearing tight clothes. 

We were snorting and drinking at my desk and I say to Trickie,

let's play a card game, we draw from a deck, and the lowest card has to do what the winning card tells them to do.

I pulled the high card and was in for a challenge. 

Let's try the syringe dildo, the one with the hypodermic attached to a thin plastic tube that inserts in your pussy.

Trixie got turned on before we started, the idea got her really horny.

Holding on to the rubber cock and the syringe took dexterity, but I pulled it off, inserting the thin rubber tube deep into her vagina with the tip of the rubber prick inserted partially in her pussy.

Finally, I let go, inserting the fluid in the hypodermic, and when the fack cum splatters into her pussy she goes insane, screaming ungodly.

Then out of nowhere Captain Dick shows, saying, 

Lucowski, get that slut outta here, and come to the office and dropped off your uniforms in the morning. 

The party was over, laugh, but it was sensational and worth getting busted by Captain Dickhead. 

Captain Dick didn’t pay me for the 2 nights I worked. Who cares?

After a waffle at The Waffle House, I go to central park for a walk. 

It was 1980 and the calamity of John Lennon’s horrid death at the hands of a nut case wannabe, who should have had his dick and balls cut off, hadn’t happened yet.

I sit at a bench and watch the ducks, they didn’t have a care in the world— no taxes, wearing suits of feathers, all the food they wanted in the world. They'd have a dream life if it wasn’t for fucking hunters.

I knew goddamn well I was sick in the fucking head. All I could do is hawk ganja for a living.

Thankfully, the new FDA boss decided to declare war on crack, like it was Satan himself. The FDA prick couldn't do nothin about weed, it was out of the box— cops walking their beats smoked it, wall street guys, hookers, hot dog vendors, you name it.

So crack was the new devil, lucky for me, I was back in business and as if the Angels were looking, I scored a kilo of Thai stick, the one that was the size of your baby finger wrapped in tiny threads of bamboo and soaked in opium

The Thai stick sold fast, I made so much money I could live for a year without working.

I decided to take a trip up north to Vermont, buying a used RV, a small house on wheels.

Instead of parking at a proper campsite, I hooked my RV up at Vermont Freedom Campground, a nudist resort. 

There was a nice lake there you could swim in nude, and people took it for granted that everyone was nude.

I stripped down like the rest, feeling self-conscious because I uncircumcised.  

At night the nudist sat around campfires—  partying nude, there was plenty of weed and booze around. 

Another perk was wife swapping, since I was alone I got in on threesomes. 

There’s nothing like walking naked in the forest. Suddenly you feel the skin of your whole body. That's what the nudist said anyway.

I lasted  2 nights at the nudist colony,  the nudist were self-righteous, like naked Nazis. 

I parked my RV in Burlington at Fletcher’s Free Lot, nobody cared. 

The town was full of college kids from the University of Burlington, loaded with bars. 

I was broke so I got took a job at a bar, the Whiskey Room, all I did was make Irish Coffee night and day— adding one tablespoon of brown sugar to a hefty measure of Irish Whiskey, filling the class partially with a shot of hot coffee, then pouring half whipped cream over a spoon to top off the drink.

I began hitting the booze, swigging from bottles of stuff I liked— Grand Mariner and Jack Daniels, just picking them out of the rack and gulping.

I’d be loaded by quitting time and would rip off bottles hiding them in my overcoat. Eventually, I got busted and canned.

I sleep that night in my RV, still, with a bundle of cash from the Thai stick, deciding to head out to Taos, New Mexico, thinking about going to the Lama Foundation and becoming a guru. Being a guru was a good hustle.

My Best Friend Died

 

My best friend Slim, the guy with the biggest afro in Harlem started getting into the hard stuff after a while, junk. He wanted me to shoot up with him saying, 

you gotta try mainlining baby, you feel like nothing in the world can touch ya, like your back in your ma’s belly. All the shit that gets you in a flap, making you sweat, evaporates. I sell ten bags for Ricco and he gives me one, Henry answers succinctly, 

there are two things in the world that scar me, rats, and getting shots. So I’m out Slim, it’s your thing baby, I’ll hang with weed, Cuba Libres, and getting laid, that’s all I need to rock my boat.

Two months later Slim dies having scored a bag laced with strychnine from Rico.

Slim didn't have nobody, so he listed me as his guardian.  

I'm home and the phone rings, an office worker asks,

Are you Henry Lucowski? 

Yes, 

as you know your friend Slim Williams died of strychnine poisoning, he has no family so he listed you as his guardian. He was indigent so we will have to cremate him. 

There’s a long wait, but when Mr. Williams is cremated we’ll send you a small container of his ashes, just part of them. Perplexed I ask? 

What ya do with the rest of the ashes, I know there's a good size bag?  

We throw them in a secret place, probably Riker's Island.

OK dude my address is Henry Lucowski, 

20 Cooper Square, New York, NY 10003, USA

Thank you for your cooperation Mr. Lucowski.

In a few months, I'm delivered a Folgers Coffee size of bone chunks and ashes wrapped ornate container. 

I walk to Willis Avenue Bridge with the fancy container of Slim Williams' ashes and a Buddhist prayer book in hand. 

Reading a short Buddhist prayer for the dead—

Through your blessing, grace, and guidance, through the power of the light that streams from you:

May all your negative karma, destructive emotions, obscurations, and blockages be purified and removed.

Then casting Slim’s ashes into the Harlem River, watching them captured in the waft of the air, going anywhere.

I  feel guilt-ridden because Slim’s send-off was shallow and heartbreaking— with the importance of a speck of dust on a sidewalk in the city. 

When I grew up my parents weren't around. My dad was a traveling salesman who drove a pickup truck with a metal cargo box on the back, driving from Pennsylvania to Maine, selling sexy garments to exotic apparel shops.

My mom was a drunk who loved black men, in Harlem bars from dawn till dusk.

I was raised by my nanny, Nil, she was 20 and I was 10.

I loved Nil as a woman, and she loved me as a younger brother.

On weekends we’d go to the aquarium, the zoo, and to Mary’s Pancake House to eat, I liked the king-sized German cakes and she liked Buckwheat cakes. 

After pancakes, we’d go to Central Park Zoo— Nil loved the birdhouse and I loved petting the baby lions and tigers. I wanted to take a baby lion to the apartment, but when the tiger grew up it'd become Siegfried & Roy size job.

Nil loved the Birds of Paradise, their colorful sapphire wing spans, and the exotic tropical plants in their cages, growing in the winter, Anthuriums, and Jasmine.

One night late my ma, Betty, came home drunk, having had a nervous breakdown. Nil called 911 and the medics showed strapping my mother into a straight jacket. She was 46 and spent the rest of her life in various mental institutions. I never saw her again, but she had psycho genes that luckily bypassed me. 

As for my old man, he was good for a check every month to cover— rent, food, clothes, and money for Nil to buy extras.  He would send the check to her account.

My dad's name was Fred Lucowski, he visited six or so times a year. I didn’t have a male influence in my life and should have been gay, but wasn't.

I was a good student in 5th Grade, tops in my class in math, science, and English, 

But I was no athlete, I was uncoordinated, and my classmates called me a spaz. The gods bless us with certain talents.

Saturday night Nil and I were bored shitless so we went out. She was a 20-year-old Swedish beauty with natural blond hair, guys eyeballed her.

Neither of us drove, so we’d walk the streets of Manhattan at night, beautifully naive, open to everything, and on the run.

Nil goes to the liquor store and buys a bottle of Night Train Express, keeping it wrapped in a paper bag. We passed the booze back and forth like two Bowery bums, taking pulls as we walked, the low-down wine got me outstandingly high because I was only 10.

In the Meatpacking District, we went to a working man’s bar called Axels, looking like million other blue-collar joints— with a wooden bar and stools, and a hard brown tile floor. 

At the bar, there was a level of top-shelve booze, and bottles of rail booze in the speed rack for easy access. 

On the back bar, there was an old NCR cash register, and gallon jars of pigs' feet, hot dogs, and hardboiled eggs all pickled.

We walk into Axels and sat at an empty table, surrounded by Columbia and NYU students dressed like truck drivers and stevedores wearing jeans and safety boots— college kids slumming it for the weekend, Sinclair Lewis and Nelson Lichtenstein readers.

Merl haggard’s song Misery and Gin blares from a large speaker hung on a thick chain from the ceiling. 

Nil walks to the bar, the guys really looked her over.

She orders 2 vodka and orange juices.

Vodka and orange juice is the type of drink newbies drink because the orange juice taste overpowers vodka which is tasteless.

The bartender, an older man wearing a checkered shirt who has bushy eyebrows pours the drinks, looking at Henry, knowing the kid is underage, not caring because New Yorkers don’t give a shit about small things.

Coming from nowhere the bartender hacks snot open-mouthed, splashing Nil in the face. Unnerved, she takes a hanky from her purse, wipes herself, yells at the bartender,

COVER YOUR MOUTH NEXT TIME YOU HAWK ON SOMEONE, ASSHOLE. 

And the fucking bartender has the nerve to say,

sit on my face and you can drink free.

Nil lets both the drinks fly on the bartender, walking to me and saying, 

Let’s catch a taxi and go home, Henry.