doomed dog?

yep it’s me.

but, but i thought you were toast.

nope.

but how did you escape?

turns out you got your accounting wrong, and someone from the xbi showed up and paid for the 60th book in person.

but i heard that you were killed.

where did you hear that smart guy?

uh, uh, drudge.

Drudge? since when has that guy ever been right?

i dont know, 9 years ago.

exactly, in dog years thats like 100 years ago.

well, im glad youre alive, little puppy, you look good.

food and water will do wonders.

okay well, i wish you luck. thanks for helping me sell all those books.

dont i get a cut?

a cut? at ten bones im barely covering cost.

what are you printing them on silk? hand over my share.

look, if i wanted to give people a cut of the earnings, i would get a real publisher.

good point.

sixty books in two weeks. thats kind of amazing dude. i gotta tell you. what bookstore sells that many books of an unpublished author for a book that isnt even named?

beats me. but then, im just a stray dog probably about to drown in this surf. hey how many did you sell to friends?

about nine.

i dont know what you’ve got, mr. man. but it sure is something.

you know im starting to think you’re right, mr. dog. remember those sorority girls from oklahoma?

cant say i do.

well theres these beautiful young girls who have a very nice blog theyve just got started up. if you go to their links page where do you see my name?

holy shit. right underneath “days.”

thats respect, dog. and they bought a book.

maybe you should put together a book tour and meet your fans.

nah, once they met me they wouldnt like me no more.

yeah. probably not. and it probably isnt even worth trying.

no.

yeah, you probably wouldnt want to rent a van and get welch and layne and moxie in there and rake in the green.

nah, wouldnt want that.

woof.

well, okay fella. heres my roast beef sandwich from lunch. no hard feelings?

nah. no hard feelings. thanks for making me sorta famous for a few days.

bye lil fella enjoy the surf

woof woof!

topless bukkake

but i have good news and bad news. bad news is the little dog died. hit by a train. then he got hit by another train that dragged him a few miles until the children just wouldn’t shut up.

then the birds pecked at him. then the rats. then the ants. then the lice.

good news is all of them are full now and enjoying little naps all along the woods near the train tracks.

other good news is you still have the rest of today to buy your busblog books. just about half price. since tomorrow they’ll be flying off the shelves at the much more reasonable $19.

do you know i love you all for buying this thing? you don’t even know what it looks like. its not even named. it doesn’t even have a cover to judge it by and still you order em up like my ass was stephen king or some shit.

you know how many books ive written?

zip.

ah, those poetry chapbooks in college don’t count. maybe one counts since it got me laid, but they don’t really count.

when i was young and impressionable i would send those to publishing houses and to bob guccione each christmas with secret hopes that they’d fall for me and hire me up.

i appreciate all that you have done for me, dear readers, to get me hired on at the la times, but it looks that my path will be much like my boy bukowski and we’ll only be globally loved and paid in full when we’re old and fat and bald and near death.

so its cool.

i would much rather be like him than say joyce carol oates who is loved by all but couldn’t bust with the freestyle if you put a gun to her head. true story, in college i was an usher for arts and lectures and joyce carol did a reading from one of her silly books and people left and i asked my boss what’s the big deal about her and she said shes a genius and then two weeks later that scientist guy in the wheel chair showed up and didn’t say a word with his lips and captivated the crowd and made us laugh and laugh and laugh and ive done some public speaking in my day, make em laugh without moving your lips and you are a genius, son.

broham asks me to italicize when i interview people and dogs and fireplugs.

i appreciate his request i do and i understand how it all might seem like fingers on the blackboard, some of you can handle the lack of capital letters but grammar bad and make your imagination figure it all out and its just too much.

little do any of you know the classic works of another one of my unpaid idols, one mr. ronald sukenick, author of 98.6, Up, and my favorite Out which is out of print but for a limited time available to read on the Internet.

here’s a fun game, read Out and drink every time i rip off sukenick. then read buk and drink every time i rip him off. then read vonnegut, like karisa did and drink everytime i rip his ass off.

little known fact, i once sent Sukenick one of my poetry books and he sent me Vurt to review and i was so blown away that he even responded that i read the book in a week and then was so blown away by that book that i couldn’t write a word. i was typeless.

read Vurt and drink every time you see italics and see me rip his ass off too.

jd salinger, i rip him off just for fun. true story, i was at santa monica college for two years. at the end of the second year i got a C in history and i asked the lady if she could give me a B minus and she said you cannot write an essay to save your life. i said please i wont be able to transfer to ucsb unless i get a B in this class and she said i cannot in good conscious send you to a UC school with you being as bad of a writer as you are.

she meant it. that old bag. she looked back down at her papers and the discussion was over.

i started crying. i don’t cry. i didn’t cry much then. but i started crying. i cried to the library. all my best laid plans were gone. i would have to go back to the electronics store a failure, i had already given them my two weeks notice. i would have to spend six more months selling tvs just so i could retake history and get a better grade. i cried on my way to the library. i passed people who saw me crying and i didn’t care. got to the library and just roamed the stacks like i would do all through college. and i found myself in front of jd salinger, my hero at the time and i cracked open nine stories, perfect day for bananafish and i read it and i thought, if this is how you write, shes right, im really not a writer.

took the money i saved for college, flew to europe, turned twenty-one in florence kissed a girl at octoberfest and realized that i might not be a writer or a good student but by the way, what was i talking about?

oh yeah, i have been getting some foul emails from people who read ashley’s diary. let me say this once, kids. not everything that i write in here is true, and that can be said for your little friend over there too. when i last left her she said a lot of things that she didn’t feel necessary to say over there. and i think shes either lying to me or you. and until she sets the record straight shes lying to both of us.

no where in her tale does she say that she has any regrets, meanwhile that’s all she said to me. so before you judge me, which none of you could, get the entire story told to you, the entire story. and then ask yourself if i had done what she did and then crawled into her bed, what names would you call me then?

unimaginative children doomed to repeat the failures of your family and friends believing the pouts of a princess permanently tied to an idiot young dumb and full of sound and fury signifying nothing.

frankenzilla

backpack stuffed with bread, brie, two bottles of champagne, one brut one extra dry, he could never remember which one was better. he rides his bike to the subway. no one rides the subway at ten fourty pee em.

the elevator smells like industrial orange cleanser. suddenly orange is the scent of freshness. some one has urinated against the glass wall. someone has scratched the name jed below the button that says mezzanine. some one is watching him.

three people wait for the northbound train. one old man who looks at the tunnel hole willing it. not knowing that there is a wind that comes minutes before the subway, then a sound, then a light. theres nothing to look at. has the boy brought a condom? no. they’re just friends.

friends.

the thought sat like a lump in his breast. only good that word ever did him was in a heated scrabble game. seven letter triple score bitch. plus it would take about four bottles to blur the line of friendship. friends. the old man looked down in the tunnel and he’s old enough to remember la when this wasn’t the only rail in town what’s he looking for, salvation?

a mexican made it four waiting for the train and he knew about the wind and sat down. its all about astrology he thought. gemini and aquarius. just like clue. parker brothers had taught him everything. if he knew it wasn’t in the library why did he keep going there.

the train arrived he rode to her house. it was a tough ride since she lives on the top of a very high hill. it smelled like isla vista up there. eucalyptus and dynamite. gasoline and burned leaves. he put it in first gear. this was great exercise he thought and it would be fun to speed down late that night. which he did. two twenty a-em. drunk buzzed really santa anas warm, warmest night of the fall for sure. must be seventy. must be going fifty. no need to worry about rabbits darting in the road or acorns or potholes he was being guided by voices.

her hair was soft and her lips were familiar. moreso than he remembered. every night felt like a dream so he traced her outline as she laid on him pressed down on her skin until he felt bone. eighth of an inch here. sixteenth there. he wasn’t much of a romantic. he said if we had to eat you after a plane crash we wouldn’t get much meat. she said the meat is the muscle and put his hand on, muscle.

must have been going sixty near the bottom of the mountain. hollywood hills meets hollywood blvd. night crew mopping the popeyes. people buying magazines. people leaving bars. people dressed real nice. he had his gangsta flannel flapping behind him no lights no brakes, a game he played since a little kid called lets see how far we can coast. the lazy mans game of human curling.

pink floyd plays in his ninety nine cents store fm radio. no dial just two buttons. one scanned in the stations, one you push for the next station. is anyone out there. the wall. when he was an ice cream man he would play dark side and animals to drown out the ice cream truck tings and tangs but it bled through mixing like strawberry twirl and carmel. she had silky hair that smelled of a fresh shower. velvet pajama pants and pale skin. he wanted to touch everything like in an x dream and she didn’t care. only he was scared. she felt so comfortable with him she said often and is that failure asked his head.

thirty five whispered the wind as he turned left on sunset. go east old man. ameoba records says hi. archlight movies says hi. give us your money says the dennys the dirtiest dennys of all. now the game is called count the hookers. okay one two. three. no shes not one. oops, yes he is. four five. two people are fighting on a fire escape while one watches. not fight fighting fist fighting is one a girl don’t look keep going. hi ninety nine cents store hi tulips strip joint. i wonder if its open i wonder what the cop car is doing empty not too close to the door but not tooooo far away. i wonder what it looks like in there in seedy hollywood on a monday night at two something a-em.

donuts. okay we’ll stop here. don’t get off the bike. three russians parked sitting on their hoods talking russian. laughing. plotting. planning. hating. hi russians with your blue eyes and short hair. everyone is welcome here. donut man asks if i want coffee. do you have eclairs with creme? of course. sixty five cents. thanks keep the change. tip everyone the brain says. over tip those you should tip and tip the ones you shouldn’t. later he’d be robbed.

again.

nine, ten, eleven. that one has a shelf butt. how does she do that? that shelf is out so far its about to fall out.

two bums playing throw the screwdriver at the palm tree. hi.

hi trash making its way home. hi fallen leaves. hi everything. hi.

tony making his way home down the hill next to the church coasting feeling like a kid again as he normally does with his very good friend who asked him to call her when he made it through the jungle back home 2.6 miles all downhill all one big thrill and when he does his phone rings and its another friend who had a date and wanted to let him know how it went.

hi three am. and he wonders who had a better night than he

meesh

hi tony, please save me.

poochie, the stars were out last night did you see them?

any time i saw a light i pissed on my tail scared that it was a train. they come so close.

the stars were bright last night, cleansed by the rains that removed all the gunk of the stratosphere, blow dried by the santa anas, polished with the truth of the season, no longer disguised by the resin of halloween, twinkling where they belonged, where they should be, reliable as if they were anchored in their places. places everyone places. its not da plane, it’s the stars.

please untie me from this track tony. im hungry.

not until we have 60 pre-orders, puppy.

woof those pre-orders.

you lick your balls with that mouth, fluffy? we only have nine more to sell to get to sixty.

51 people have bought books? thats incredible.

i think 43 people bought books, a few people bought more than one so they can take advantage of the low price and give them as gifts.

please save me, tony.

a deal is a deal doggie. like the good stars i will always be there for you.

what if im bad?

are you a bad doggie?

no.

then you have nothing to be worried about. stars are never bad. theyre there for you every night through thick and thin. you can pray on them, you can wish on them. they dont need the cover of darkness to shine, indeed they love the night which is much different than darkness. they dont hide, they glitter.

im going to die, arent i tony.

we’re all going to die. but its how you go out.

i dont want to die like a dog.

then dont. live.

i saw the stars last night, tony. i saw how a few of them together made something bigger.

did you see how some made two big dips?

please untie me. i’ll be your best friend.

this is the last day to get the busblog book at the low low price of $10 + s/h, we have a deal my little one. what would i be if i backed out of a deal?

a welch.

who taught you that? thats not nice. bad doggie! matt is our friend.

a friend tied me to these tracks. left me to die. left me to get hit by a train. only wanted me around when there was nothing else to do, but whenever there was excitement around, ignored me. dissed me. turned their back on me while hiding their shame.

every dog has its day.

dumbmonkey