Perhaps A Novel
By Mikel K

"Both read the Bible day and night,
But thou read black where I read white."
--William Blake

"Falling in love with a writer, because you like what they write, is like falling in love with a duck because you like pate."--Margaret Atwood

“I fear the man who drinks water and so remembers this morning
what the rest of us said last night.”--Author Unknown


"I am more perfect on paper than I am in person."--Mikel K

"You don't have to TRY to be a rocknroll star. You already are.
People love you! People hate you! That's how you know you are making an impact."
--Billy Fields, Rock Star


"I LOVE your poetry."--Heather Lalita Havey

"When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.--Helen Keller

"Mikel, I finsihed the book the other day, and I really enjoyed it, you have a gift, you are so honest, and write from your heart. Artists who can share their work in an authentic way are rare-it takes a lot of guts and heart to share with the world."--Mary Tilley Zeman




The doorstep that my morning paper is now delivered to is my laptop. There is no milk at the front door for either my kittens, or I. These are the good old days, and they are passing by as fast as the free month that you sometimes get for signing up for something. The sun will shine today.

I wander off looking for something that is right in front of me. I search for answers to questions that have no solution. I need to clean my apartment, the excuse being that it is spring, the excuse being that I have new neighbors, and I might want to invite them in some time, for tea, or to meet the turtles.

Bundy and Morisson met the Great Danes, Henry and Anna, last night. Morisson, as could be expected, spent the evening with his head on the lap of both of my two new neighbors. I had told them that he was an affection addict, shortly before I let him out on the porch, and the dog proved me to be one hundred percent correct. I may not fully know myself, but I know my dogs.

Bundy was a perfect gentleman. He only barked or growled when Henry got a little too fresh, or forward, or frisky with him. I don't think that I have found the word that I am looking for to describe what it was that Bundy wouldn't stand for. This is midtown, but, as far as I could tell, the large Great Dane did not homosexually advance on Bundy.

I was proud of Bundy. He did not bite anyone; man, woman, or animal. He did not lose it in one of those bi-polar-like fits of barking mania that used to characterize his behavior. He was a perfect gentleman.

The old female cigarette commercial used to say "You've come a long way,baby" and Bundy, certainly, has. I'd like to take all the credit for his improvement. At one point in our time together, I was going to send Bundy to a kill shelter. I was going to do this because bundy broke all the rules, jumped over all the boundaries; he was, during those times, unfit for human consumption; especially my human consumtption.

Bundy was a dog that no one would want. Bundy was a dog that no one had wanted, and that's how, and why he wound up with me, but do you want to know something funny? I wound up wanting him. Sometimes misfits are a good fit, and they have to stick together, put up a united front against the fit world. The world is so homogeneous. All our elected officials wear ties. They wear suits. They dress alike. They think alike, and the rest of us are screwed.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
I had to put a sweater on, this morning. It was chilly inside this small apartment, but I am tired of the large bills that the electric company sends me every month. I went away to have my hip removed, and replaced, leaving the cats, and turtles here for nearly a month to be tended to by my daughter and her father(I'll explain later,) and when I got back from the hospital, and from rehab, the bill was the same as if I had been here the whole time. I mean what's up with that. Is it a case of some lazy meter man or woman, or is it a case of the big evil corporate monopoly extracted what it wants from you, when it wants it from you?

I can't let things like this bother me. I can't let the evil of others ruin my day. This is one reason why I am glad that I got rid of my tvs. Television is evil. It sucks you in and forces someone else's opinion down your throat. Actually, the tvs are still here. I still have them, but in today's modern world they have made it that tvs are mostly no good unless you are paying someone for there to be something there when you turn them on. Cable was commercial free when it came out. Now they've got it so that you have to pay them to watch their commercial.
Somebody is laughing all the way to the gosh darn bank about that one.

Next to where I am living, in a very small, shotgun apartment, where I pay a premium rent to be surrounded by million dollar houses, and have a grocery store, my yoga studio, and my daughter's high school nearby, is a house that a bank foreclosed on. It was once a regal house, majestic in appearance while the guy who couldn't pay for it lived in it. Now that the bank has taken it from him, it looks like a crack house; in fact crack heads of some sort were living in it for awhile, climbing in through a back window that they had broken out.

The neighborhood association didn't like this. They could see their property values going down, so as much as they professed to be concerned about the plight of the homeless, they kicked these crack heads to the curb, and planted flowers out front of the house, trying to take care of it like the bank had no interest in doing. What is the bank's interest? Love, baby; the bank is full of love.

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I'm 52, and I just cooked and ate scrambled eggs with a spoon, for the first time in my life. I used the handle of the spoon to scramble the eggs in a cup, and then I ate the scrambled eggs with a spoon. If you had asked me if this was a possible thing to do, before I had done it, I would have told you that you were crazy for even thinking so. You have to have a fork to scramble, cook, and eat scrambled eggs I would have said. Such thinking is, possibly, what kept us off the moon for so long, and just about the kind of thinking that said that it was ok to make black people pee in a separate place than white people, while the white people ran about bragging about how free we all were.

The eggs were good. I sautéed some onions in the frying pan before I dropped in the beaten eggs, and I put a little bit of bbq sauce on the plate next to the eggs to dip them in. I'm glad as heck that I am going grocery shopping later today, because there is nothing besides eggs, and bbq sauce in the house, and I do mean nothing.

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The Carpenter Bees are back: it is really spring. I had forgotten how, last year, I shared the porch with them.

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My dogs are assembled at both sides of my chair. I move my head from side to side to see who gets jealous, guessing that it will be Bundy, and then this thought come to me, which I say to the dogs, "If one of you had to die, who would die. If one of you had to die, you would die, Bundy, you would die." I say looking into Bundy's pleading eyes, as he loudly barks at me, as if to say he knows what I'm saying.

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Some people have trouble saying hello back to you, when you say hello to them; like I just did to the driver of this bus that I just got on.

I don't know if it has to do with the fact that I am a white man and she is a black woman, or if it has something to with the fact that I am a man and she is a woman, or maybe she is just having a bad day, week, month, year, life, but, today, I am not going to let it bother me that she didn't say hello back to me. There will be somebody else in my day who will say hello back to me.

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I baked some brownies from a box, last night. I prefer to make brownies from scratch, but I have to admit that at this point in my baking brownies from scratch career that the brownies that come out of the box turn out much better. This batch turned out so good that I just ate the last of them for dinner, which is a sin around, here, especially when you look at the fact that I am a diabetic. Almost half of the brownies I put in a plastic bag to give to Kevin when we hooked up to go to the government agency to talk to the man about my check, and, perhaps more importantly, my insurance.

As I said, I am a diabetic, and I desperately need insurance to get the pills that my doctor prescribes for that condition. I also need the insurance to pay for my visits to the doctor. I am, also, bi polar(there is really no end to what "I am" you will find, as you spend more time with me, and as I age.) Just today, I found out that I am a guy who is now going to be wearing glass, "to drive for sure" my eye doctor said today. Medicaid will pay for the glasses. Medicare paid for the visit to the doctor. Medicaid pays for the lithium, risperdone and cymbalta that I take as a bi polar human being to stay sane.

I have a friend who always shakes my hands and smiles at me and says, You're the guy who turned me onto Viagra." This guy is a big time musician; you have never heard of him, and he hasn't made a lot of money at it, but trust me he is big time: talent out the ass, and whenever we hook it up it is usually so that I can play huge superstar for the evening, like I am taking a stage somewhere because this guy believes in my poetry, and is always trying to get me to do it on stage with him.

"You're the guy who turned me onto Viagra," he says right before I am about to get on stage and be a huge superstar. I don' t know if I need Viagra still, that might just have been a bad patch of something that I was having, but anyway there are no girls, there is no girl around to test it out on whether I need Viagra or not.


"You're the guy who turned me onto Viagra," he says right before I am about to get on stage and be a huge superstar. Do you know how deflating that could be to the ego, to hear that right before you are going to get on stage to be a huge superstar?

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I forgot my book; I left it sitting on my porch table. I was reading it this morning in the beautiful sunlight of the earlier day.

I meant to grab the book as I headed from the house to the bus. I was sure that I would see the book, as I was leaving, but I didn't and now I have to wait for the bus without something to read.

I mostly don't read once I get on the bus and it is rolling because, often, I get dizzy when I do. There is a lot for the mind to do while it is riding the bus; you can meditate, you can let your mind wander in thought, and you can people watch.
This young guy sporting long thin cornrows got on the bus, and for a moment, I thought that I knew him. I thought that he was a guy who I used to work with when I was a stage hand, who, among other things, moved the large boxes in and out of grand trucks that contained the equipment that rock and roll stars used on stage.

It wasn't my guy, though. I then figured that the kid was in high school, because he gave fists to the other kids on the bus, kids who were obviously in high school, and he started talking to a high school girl.

It was his hair that threw me, that made me think that he might have been a rock and roll stage hand at one time. His hair was long; the other high school males all had short hair, and I started thinking about how hair at that age is a function of you parents' permissiveness, of their willingness to let you wear your hair long.

My parents, or my dad mainly, would have no way, under no circumstances have let me have hair the length that this kid on the bus had. My dad hated John Lennon. He hated Jim Morrison. He hated the hippies, and he certainly was not going to let his son look like one.

As I sit on the bus, right now, waiting for the driver to finish his break, my hair is longer than that of the high school kid who looks like he might have been a stage hand. And I fully realize that hair length doesn't matter at all.

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The kid starts to get upset when the bus passes the fast food place. I guess that he can't believe that he is passing it by without getting a milk shake, or a burger.

His young sister is cradled in his mother's arms. His mother shushes him, every time that he gets loud.
I imagine that the mother doesn't love him, that she is taking him somewhere to give him away.

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On a crowded bus, there is always one voice louder thatn all the rest, once voice that has to let everyone on the bus know what is on their mind, where they are going, where they have been. That voice is usually a deep, scratchy voice, one that appears to have smoked more than its fair share of cigarettes in its time, and probably more than its fair share of marijuana, also. The voice has probably drank quite a lot in its lifetime, too. Mostly, you wish for the voice to shut up. You do not care where it is going. You do not care where it has been. You do not care what it thinks.

When the bus stops, you are glad. You jump from your seat to get away from the voice as fast as possible.

I hold the door for the person behind me. A mild female voice say, "Thank you." I am struck by her politeness. I was trained as a kid to be polite, to say "Please," and "Thank you," but it seems that I am often living in an impolite, thankless world.

The lady behind me on the bus must have received similar training. Being polite is a good thing. Saying, "Thank you," is a good thing. Being loud on the bus is not a good thing.

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Infinite Jest isn't a good enough novel for me to stay with it through 981 pages. I am at page 47 and I'm quitting. Half the time, I have no idea what David Foster Wallace is talking about, and the other half of the time I am trying to follow him as he jumps us from character to character with no apparent connection for the characters existence. Tennis is a theme he often uses, in these first pages, and reading him is like watching a tennis ball go aimlessly back and forth over a net with no direction. Maybe thing are going to start making sense on the 700th page of the book, but I am not wasting a month of my life reading the book to find out. My son remarked that, "That book would make a good paperweight," and you know what, he was right. Mr. Wallace is clearly my intellectual superior, but I am happy down here at my less than him level of intellectuality; it's easier to read what I write.

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Sometimes I stick my hand, or hands, in my water glass and then wipe them on my shirt.
This gets sticky or yucky stuff off of them, and saves me a trip to the bathroom, or the kitchen to clean them.

My new neighbor tried to kill the carpenter bees with a five dollar can of wasp killer. He said that he failed, and that he is not wasting any more of his money trying to kill them. He said that he doesn't want to bother the landlord about the problem, this early in the game, since he just moved in.

I went through the same process, last year, that he is going through this year; I just didn't buy anything to try to kill them with. The folks who lived in the apartment next to mine before this new couple moved in, coached me to believe that the carpenter bees are harmless. I even came up with a name for one of them, Henry, and a designated title for Henry: doorman, because he always hovered in front the porch's front door.

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When I was a kid, my mother used to take me to the library. It was quite an adventure. I loved coming home with books. Finding them, checking them out, returning them were all parts of the experience that I enjoyed. Recently, I had a job at a bookstore for a year. One of our benefits was that we could borrow two books at a time for two weeks. It was wonderful to be able to read current memoirs, and novels. I felt a loss when I lost the job,
and did not have this benefit anymore, until someone said, "Why don't you go to the library?"

I have rediscovered the library, and let me tell you, it is a wonderful experience. Finding the books, checking them out, and returning them are still the fun experiences that they were when I was a child. At the library, I have been able to find every one of the books that I want to read, and it has not cost me a dime. Sometimes, there is a bit of a wait for me to get a popular book, but there are many, many books that I can read until the ones that I want become available.

I have to go, now; I have books to read.

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I wish that I was sitting at a table, under the shade of an umbrella, like these people I just saw out the window, instead of riding a bus to the hip doctor's office.

I am certainly not complaining, but it is definitely a much more enjoyable thing to be kicked back and drinking coffee than to be riding a bus on your way to sit in a doctor's office lobby.

Usually, people riding a bus know which stop that they want to get off at. That wasn't the case, today, with this guy riding our bus. The gentleman had the lady driving the bus stop at five or six stops, before he found the right one.

The driver was quite patient, and quite pleasant about the whole thing, but I, weirdly enough, found myself getting agitated.

Henry, our Great Dane next door neighbor, and Bundy went at it, this morning, fiercely, for about ten seconds, before I broke them up. These two usually play well together, so I don't know what set them off.

Bundy retreated to his "go home" place under my desk, and Henry lay down in front of my bed, both seeming to pout. They stayed this way for, maybe, twenty minutes, and were soon pals, again.

"WHAT have you been doing?" said my hip doctor, Dr. Damien Doute, with a big smile on his face.

"Your hip looks great," he said, showing me the x rays that his assistant, Melissa, had just taken.

"I've been working it out three times a week," I told him.

"That is excellent," he said.

Before Dr. Doute came in the room, Melissa and I were discussing God. Melissa is Catholic, and her husband is Baptist. They have a seven month old son, who Melissa wants to be baptized Catholic. Her husband is not so sure about that.

I told Melissa how I had left the Catholic church when I was 19, because I was fornicating, and imbibing large amounts of liquor. She said that she did not believe everything that the Church taught. It is amazing to me where conversations about God will turn up. Melissa said that one of the girls who worked in the office was an Atheist,
and didn't believe in nothing about God.

I am taking a different bus home from the Doctor's office, today. I know the old way, very well, and want to experience something new.

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You don't know who is going to live to be old, and who is going to die along the way. So far, the ones, in my life, who have died have been the ones with the needles in their arm, or the inability to put down the bottle, or to not light up the cigarettes. I know of people with lung cancer from smoking. I know of people who need a new liver from drinking.

Joey Ramone died today, in 2001, at the age of 50. I don't know what he died from, but I do know that he died too young. The polite ones, the ones with brains,the ones who don't hurt anyone else, often go first.

God is perverse. He leaves the warmongers, the capitalist pigs on this earth the longest. Joey is running with Janis, and Jimmi and James, and Hank in heaven. They have a hell of a band, with a spoken word edge. Hell waits for the warmongers, and the capitalist pigs, but they don't know it. They think that their limousines, and their servants, and their mansions will save them; but they won't; rock on Joey; rock on.

Today is brand new enough that there is not much to write about beside the feeding of my dogs, cats, and turtles, and that first cup of coffee that I had this morning. My mornings are very similar these days: full of peace and happiness.

It wasn't always this way. The mornings of my youth were spent mostly hung over, and, often very depressed. At the end of my drinking days, I would, on way too many occasions, wake up covered in puke, and blood, in a jail cell by myself, not knowing what I had done to get there, not really remembering how I got there, though, unfortunately, I was all too aware of the process of being transported in handcuffs from a bar to a jail cell, having gone through that process many times.

These days, a large portion of my prayers are centered on my children, and a large portion of those prayers are that they don't have to go through what I went through. I was unable to learn from the mistakes of others. I was unable to listen to the advice of others, so I blazed my own trails, and went down many paths that I didn't have to go down.

Today, I can listen, which is a God send, though I do like to think that in special, safe, and sane ways, I still blaze my own path.

I find crowded roads to be tedious.

Jumping up onto my desk to get to his precious window, yesterday morning, Jaggar knocked my radio to the ground. It made a very loud thud sound. I picked my radio up, and moved it to another spot immediately. Jaggar is not going to quit climbing to his window to see what the outside world is up to, and if the radio can get knocked over once, it can get knocked over two, and three times, and, maybe, won't fare as well as it did this time, seeming to have come out of the fall fully intact.

The young lady who called and left a message for me, last night, on my voice mail said, that it was "personal call." Where was the personality of the credit card company when they upped my rate?

My first cup of morning coffee is delicious. The birds are singing outside my window to accompany my sipping. People have been saying that this is one of the most beautiful springs that we have ever had. The rain that was so prevalent, even recently, has stopped hitting us daily; the sun has been shining, but not unbearably, and the temperatures have been golden. You can either wear shorts, or long pants, a sweater, or a short sleeved shirt; the weather has been that cooperative.

Chris, my physical therapist, gave me to the ok to return to Yoga. "Just take it slow," were her cautionary words. Iyengar Yoga is not all that fast moving; I should be ok!

Chris also gave me the ok to return to riding my bike. "Just don't fall off," she said.

The return to Yoga, and the return to riding my bicycle mark two very important periods in a six month adventure. It was back in November that I embarked on the path to having hip replacement surgery, and, now, I am at a point where I can, once again, to two things that I love to do: take Yoga, and ride my bike.

I have to thank God, here, and I have to thank Dr. Damien Doute, the man who performed my hip replacment surgery; they both did a great job!

Do you doubt the existence of God? Is a life full of belief in a Higher Power richer than an atheistic one? Are people who believe in God stupid?

I don't have the answers to these questions, I just find that having faith in something greater than myself is an asset to my happiness. I am comfortably dumb when it comes to God.

I was practically screaming, “Someday, I will start the Revolution," standing at the bus stop, rehearsing the lines to my poem, "Someday I will start the Revolution," when up crept behind me a young man with a biology book. A student, and not a member of a musical audience was suddenly aware of my poetic plan to eventually lead us to where we had not yet been lead.

I was more scared than embarrassed. This kid was straight, as straight as they come. He obviously wanted to be a doctor, or do biological warfare research for the CIA, or some other secretive type government agency. And now, he had made me. Instant gratification cell phone photo taking ability being what it is, my picture was probaby on the wqy to Eric Holder’s desk already, and he would be having a meeting with Obama about me in the morning; first thing.

The best thing to do, I decided, was to shut up. While Mr. Straight Edge pretended to study his biology book, I pretended to study my poem. Both of us were sizing each other up; what weaponry did I possess, he was wondering. What weaponry did he possess, I was wondering. The bus showed up on time, and saved us both from any street fighting man type altercation. He was safe, and so was I.

I am back at the abode, now, several hours late, safe from the paranoia of this afternoon. I have had my dinner, and am relaxing on the porch with three of the four dogs who I have, recently, found myself hanging out with.

Morisson, one of my two dogs, is at my feet, where he mostly is when we are out on this patio, that I have come to dub, “The Love Patio.” Henry, and Anna, my Great Dane neighbors from next door, are resting on their bed, that I have dragged out from their apartment, and placed on The Love Patio floor. Henry is biding his time, until the next person or person, or person or persons with dog or dogs comes along for him to bark at, and I am biding my time to start the revolution, knowing now that "they" are aware of me.


Jumping up onto my desk to get to his precious window, yesterday morning, Jaggar knocked my radio to the ground. It made a very loud thud sound. I picked my radio up, and moved it to another spot immediately. Jaggar is not going to quit climbing to his window to see what the outside world is up to, and if the radio can get knocked over once, it can get knocked over two, and three times, and, maybe, won't fare as well as it did this time, seeming to have come out of the fall fully intact.

The young lady who called and left a message for me, last night, on my voice mail said, that it was "personal call." Where was the personality of the credit card company when they upped my rate?

My first cup of morning coffee is delicious. The birds are singing outside my window to accompany my sipping. People have been saying that this is one of the most beautiful springs that we have ever had. The rain that was so prevalent, even recently, has stopped hitting us daily; the sun has been shining, but not unbearably, and the temperatures have been golden. You can either wear shorts, or long pants, a sweater, or a short sleeved shirt; the weather has been that cooperative.

Chris, my physical therapist, gave me to the ok to return to Yoga. "Just take it slow," were her cautionary words. Iyengar Yoga is not all that fast moving; I should be ok!

Chris also gave me the ok to return to riding my bike. "Just don't fall off," she said.

The return to Yoga, and the return to riding my bicycle mark two very important periods in a six month adventure. It was back in November that I embarked on the path to having hip replacement surgery, and, now, I am at a point where I can, once again, to two things that I love to do: take Yoga, and ride my bike.

I have to thank God, here, and I have to thank Dr. Damien Doute, the man who performed my hip replacement surgery; they both did a great job!

Do you doubt the existence of God? Is a life full of belief in a Higher Power richer than an atheistic one? Are people who believe in God stupid?

I don't have the answers to these questions, I just find that having faith in something greater than myself is an asset to my happiness. I am comfortably dumb when it comes to God.

My first cup of coffee of the day goes down fast. I was not hot enough to make me sip on it, so I gulped it. It was delicious, like this new day that I have been given to breath the air of.

Thank you, Lord for letting me see the new day,
breath the air of a new day.
Guide me in thought, word, and action, Lord;
thy will be done not mine.
Please keep me off of drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, Lord.

Amen.

Christ turned a turnip into a spaceship and rode it to Mars. Today is God's day, according to the churches, according to the priests, and preachers, who collect money from you on this day. The rest of the week, you are supposed to work, because that's the way we've always heard it should be, and to make sure that you have that money to give to them on Sunday.

"For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God."-1 Corinthians 1:18

I love how Christians think that they have upper hand when it comes to God. They are going to heaven because they believe in all the supposed miracles that surrounded Christ. You are going to hell if you are Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, or Hindu.

Give me a break.


I went to Open Practice, at the Yoga studio, today. It has been six months since I have been at the studio. Steve and Julia were the only ones there. They were surprised to see me, and it was good to see them. I pulled a mat from the pile of mats, and got a wooden brick. I did all the Asanas that I remembered, and then I folded my mat back up, put my brick away, said "Goodbye," and left saying that I would be back tomorrow for class. I felt no tension on my hip. It is going to be hip getting back to class. It has been six months since I have been at the studio. This whole hip thing has been a six month ordeal. I am thankful to be where I am.

Ohm.

She's fat, and she has herpes; I'm not interested in that. Even though I am carrying extra baggage around the middle, I don't want my love interest to be an overeater, and if some asshole gave her the herp, well that sucks, but I don't want her passing it on to me. Condoms are out of the question in a committed relationship; I didn't get a vasectomy to strap balloons onto my cock before I put it in her. I like to do it natural, like God intended us to.

It is raining cats, and dogs, and one of my dogs, Morisson, won't let me sleep. He climbs in the bed with me, when it storms, and proceeds to make such a pest of himself that I am not able to close my eyes, and dream. It is a bit of a nightmare situation.

The birds don't care that the rain is pounding down; they chirp like it was an even temperatured,
sunny spring day.


Oh, if I could have gotten this poetry thing together,
yesterday, instead of today; I might have had the fun
when I was young that I am going to have when I am
old.

She is distant in many ways: geographically, and yesteday
she told me that she was young, and that I was old. I knew
that; she didn't have to point it out. Sometimes, a man
salivates for a lady, not because of her age, because she
once showed him the beauty of her heart, and soul.

The storm has stopped. It is quiet now, except for the barking of my dogs when another dog comes along. Henry is not my dog, but he is visiting, and he is the ring leader of the obnoxious behavior that he, and Bundy display when another dog walks down the sidewalk in front of our house. It is not our house. When things break down, we do not scratch our heads, and try to figure out how to fix it; we make a call to The Landlord. God is good; he has me salivate politely when a beautiful girl walks by.

Allen Ginsberg was a pedophile, but he wrote brilliant poetry, which gave him access to young boys. People are often stupid when faced with fame; they will let a well-known guy or gal get away with murder.

Scattered thoughts from a day in May

I am far too lacking in focus to ever have any great "success," as a writer. I will wallow in the minor leagues while far less talented writers bask in the glory of the best selling lists.


Birds are chirping outside my window. When some men hear birds chirping, they grab their gun and go out and try to shoot them some breakfast. When other men, such as myself, hear birds they become calm, full of the beauty of life. I mostly have oatmeal for breakfast.

Sunday is a God Morning, but not more so than any other day of the week. God is, or he, or she, isn't, or maybe God is just a maybe...

Sometimes, I wish that I could take back a friend request on the internet. I just sent one out that I did not mean to send, one that could be possibly embarrassing. I hate to be embarrassed.


Some women appreciate it when you tell them that they have delightful breasts, and other women get pissed off, saying that you are a sexist pig, satanic in nature, an asshole, surely not a child of God, so the urge to compliment a woman's tits must be held in, until you are sure of the nature of the beast who you are dealing with.


She is famous now. She was friendly to me, when I had the ink to give her, when I could put her name, and her picture in the newspaper, and when I was no longer doing that, she was no longer interested in sending me adoring letters. I am sure that she is still sending out adoring letters to the people who still have ink, because she adores seeing her name in the paper.

My ear itches. My ear often itches. I scratch it, but it itches more. I don't like having an ear that itches, but I would never cut it off.


The two window air conditioners make my space chilly, which is important to me. Heat rattles my brain, makes me angry, and confused, like the meds are not working, and I simply can not have that. It is a brilliant new day. I am so blessed to have awoken once more, and be here to face all that life offers me. These first sips of this first cup of coffee are dazzling. I am so blessed to be allowed to taste such a nectar of the angels.

Somebody, who I don't know just died, and left me a fortune, according to an email that I just received. What a great way to start a Sunday. I haven't even had my first cup of coffee, yet, and already, I am a millionaire. I slept well last night, having no idea how great my fortune was to be, today. I no longer have to worry about how I am going to pay for the cats and dogs shots. Praise the Lord.

I've never met a cat that I couldn't lick to ecstasy.

I ain't got the secret; I still got to reach.
I need a little bit of love. I need a little bit of love.

--Mikel K

It is the time of year for Bundy, and Morison, my dogs, and Kobain, and Jaggar, my cats, to have their shots. I find myself a day late and a dollar short. Please help a brother out by putting some money in The Mikel K Tip Jar. The tip jar is lonely, baby; talk to it.

I'll scare her away; watch, but I'll attract ten others, but none of them will be suited to me. I'm a curmudgeon, a hermit; I'm most comfortable seated alone at my laptop, dogs at my feet, cats running back and forth, turtles moving about happily in their water.


The garbagemen are doing their thing. Our house, with five apartments in it, is doing a great job of recycling; we hardly ever have very much real trash for the landfill. How is your day going? I am still high from doing, "Someday I Will Start The Revolution," with Mudcat and his band, yesterday at The Eddie Tigner Benefit.

Mikel K Poet Mudcat is such a professional, such a great human being. I am happy, and proud, that he lets me get up on the same stage with him, and do my thing.

I am shooting more of The Mikel K Movie with James Truax tomorrow. James is a huge filmmaking talent. He has turned the project into a 90 minute movie. We are looking for people who know me know, and knew me in the day to be in the movie talking about ME. Contact ME if you are interested.

It looks overcast out there, and it is a bit hot in here: that is the weather forecast for today. I am thrilled to be alive, this morning, and I glad that you are here to share in the beauty of this day with me. Someday...we will start The Revolution!!

Mudcat, his band, and I did a searing rendition of, "Someday I Will Start The Revolution," last night. You know when you are on. You know when Mudcat is on, which is all of the time, and you know when his band is on(all of the time, also). You also know when the audience, is onto what you are doing, and they were ferociously onto it, last night.

My good friend, Puchi, was there, last night. Puchi was my first Atlanta love, way back in 1983. She and I met in Little Five Points, I asked her out, and I cooked dinner for her, at the rooming house that I was living in, in Little Five Points, at the time. She laughs to this day that the chicken I cooked for her was raw! She also laughs that I invited a homeles man to have dinner with us! That homeless man was Kerry Wendell Thornley, the internationally known writer, and conspiracy theorist. It speaks well for Puchi that she can eat raw chicken with a then very alcoholic poet, and a homeless man, and not bat an eyelash. Recently, I was telling people that Puchi was my first girlfriend in Atlanta, which is what I think of her, and she was saying, "No, we just fucked a couple of times..." Last night, though, Puchi was telling people that we were in love, as we still are; it is hard to be friends for almost 30 years, and not be in love.


In a bar, people will come up and stick there face in front of your face, as if they know you, and smile. I stand there racking my brain trying to figure out where I know this friendly face from, and then I realize that I do not know them, that they have been drinking, and are probably going about the bar sticking their face in most everybody's face.


I was thinking yesterday how I am a hypocrite in calling for a boycott of BP.

I was walking with my dog Morisson to the grocery store, and Morrisson stopped and took a shit on the grass that lies between the sidewalk, and the road. I reached into my bag to get a poop picker upper bag, but I didn't have any with me, so Morisson's big pile of shit was left there for the rest of the world to deal with.

On the way back from the store, Mo took another shit, this time on the sidewalk, where people coming behind me could step in it.

What is the difference between me letting my dog shit anywhere on the planet and not clean it up, and BP's dumping oil into our precious waters?



All that I had to do to make coffee, this morning, was to push a button. I had forgotten that, sometime last night, I had filled a coffee filter with ground coffee, and had poured 8 cups of water into the coffee maker. I woke not much in the mood to make coffee, this morning, so I was very glad that I had anticipated myself.

I think that this is a morning where I am going to drink one, or two, cups of coffee, and then crawl back into the bed. My right leg was not much cooperating when I first used it, this morning, and, it, along with my sagging eyes could benefit from more shut eye.

My laptop was not working this morning, so I had chocolate for breakfast. Chocolate soothes me, and eases frustration. I think that we should eat chocolate before we go to war, and we might be less likely to go to war.

I don't know, fully, what this day holds, but I do know that I am looking forward to it, that I am ready to embrace it. I may not have a working laptop, but I have the gift of this day, the gift of life.

Where she lives, my friend just told me, they let prisoners take care of the dogs that you don't want, or can't take care of. Man, and dog, locked up together: there is something both weird, and beautiful about it, at the same time, if the dogs are given a second chance at life. I wonder who gets out first, man or dog?

The Weather Channel says that it is 67 degrees, right now, in Atlanta, Georgia, but it is far hotter than that in this apartment. In order to not commit suicide, or become a serial killer, I have to have air conditioning. I am sure that it is an evil plot put forth by the electric company to soak you and I of nearly every penny that we have. They don't want us having money to go to the swimming pool at the park, or to buy ice cream for our children; they want to take from us every penny that we have so that they can have swimming pools at each of there twenty two vacation houses.

If life was fair, I would be King of the World, and then we would all be in trouble.

There is a cat whining outside my window. Normally, I feel sorry for cats that whine; in fact, I often feed them to help them out with their whining, but this morning, my meds either are not working, or have not kicked in, and I am not at peace with the world so far in this new day. I mean why is the fucking cat whining outside MY window. I don't think that it is Monkey, the sort of stray cat, that gets taken care of my six tenths of this neighborhood, because I just went outside with my dogs, and blew kisses in the vicinity of the whining, and Monkey did not come running like she normally does when I blow kisses in her direction. (Kisses mean food to this Monkey.)

I started thinking that maybe Monkey, or some other cat was impaled on a fence in the back yard. I certainly did not want to go view such. When my kitty, Madonna, was run over by some asshole in the parking lot of the apartments that I then lived in, I was thankful that someone else had cleaned her up off the pavement. I would not like to have my last memories of my cat be blood and guts splattered across the ground, anymore than I would want to view you dead, and caked with expensive death makeup, in a casket.

That is just the way I am. I have certain things that I am good at, and certain things that I suck at. Life I am good at; death I don't do, so I am going to have to live forever, won't you come with me?

I'm going to go on the record here and say that chicks who give you their phone number, and then don't answer when you call, are useless pieces of shit. I guess they get some weird happiness out of looking at the caller i.d. on their cell phone and saying, giggle, giggle...he is calling, again.

Why not have the intestinal fortitude to give out a fake number; be honest from the beginning that you don't want to ever talk to the chump, again. Better yet, why don't you go take a flying fucking leap in a fast moving river!!

Enjoy your day.

My Plenty O Phish Profile

About Me


I am Seeking a Woman
For Activity Partner

Do you drink? No
Marital Status Single
Profession Poet
Smarts Bachelors degree
Do you want children? Does not want children
Do you do drugs? No
Do you have children ?All my kids are over 18
Do you have a car? No

The day went by slow, as all days that are mostly spent in bed do. I wasn't hungover, a strong excuse, in my distant past, to stay in bed all day. I lacked energy, for some unknown reason, and the bed seemed like the most reasonable place to be. I got a lot done, tonight, though. The cats have a clean litter box. They are happy about this. They have been doing sprints, of joy, up and down the hallway. I cleaned the turtles' tank, also. The turtles are not sprinting anywhere. They are not exhibiting joy. They are being the same old turtles that they always are. A funny thing about my turtles is that when I push the top back on their cage to feed them, they come to the edge of the aquarium where I am, and look up at me; but if someone else feeds them, in the same manner, they swim to the back of the box, away from that person. I guess that my turtles know who I am. This is a funny thing to think about to me, turtles knowing who the hand that feeds them belongs to.

On a normal day, first I pray. I thank The Lord, the Creator, My Higher Power for letting me see the new day, breath the air of a new day. I ask him to guide me in thought, word, and action, and I ask him to please keep me off of drugs alcohol, and cigarettes, which he has done, one day at a time, for the past eighteen years.

I feed the cats, then I feed the dogs, then I feed the turtles, then I either make me a cup of coffee, malita style, or I push the button on the regular coffee brewing machine to get the ball rolling on some caffeine.

I sit down and face the laptop. I check mail, and then I start writing poems, and memoir entries. I am a poet, and a memoirist. I spend much of my day writing. I write an average of ten poems a day and five to ten pages on one of the memoirs that I am currently writing.

I'm on Facebook under mikel k poet.
I am thankful for each new day that The Lord gives me to be alive.
I hope that you are happy.


First Date
Coffee and Conversation.

I will never ride a roller coaster, again, so this is not an option.
I live in Midtown, so there are plenty of things to do in walking distance.
There is Piedmont Park. There is a Starbucks. There is Apre Diem,
a wonderful, wonderful cafe. There is Stillwater Yoga, where I take
Iyengar Yoga. There is a bike shop. I have a bike, do you?

Plenty O Phish is a free online dating service.
It is waaaaaaaay less intrusive than, say, Match 1.
Maybe you, and I, are a "match!!"






I try not to click onto the article that says, "Lohan's new look took 9 hours." I didn't care about her old look, why should I care about her new look? Another click this link headline says that, "BP has stopped the oil leak with mud." I have trouble believing that, and don't feel like starting my day with anger, and despair, so I don't click on that link, either.

One of the great things about not having a tv, is that I don't get sucked into the news; and thus I am not force-fed all the horror stories that they inject into my brain as "news."

There is happy news out there, but someone, probably the advertisers who pay the tv people, and thus control the programming, I would assume, have decided that bad things sell more soap than good things.

When I get my news from the net, I pick and choose what I put into my brain, and I am pretty sure that my brain is happier for it.

I like having a happy brain.

How to defeat all the bad in the world

It is five minutes until noon. It is really important that you know this. In five minutes, it will be noon. A lot can happen in five minutes, but probably won't. The world will change a lot in five minutes, but the world will also stand still in that time period.

As a poet, I could write one, or several, poems in five minutes, but that probably would not have a great effect on anything: no wars would end, no oil spills would be cleaned up, and stopped from killing plant, and animal, life, no love would be lost, or found.

If I am not careful, I could feel powerless. I could feel very, very powerless. I am a poet, and perhaps, my poems can affect nothing. I am a man, and I am alone, unable to battle the bad in the world around me. I can not create great change. I can only do good things in my immediate surroundings. I can love you. I can love my children. I can love my dogs, cats, and turtles.

And when I love those in my immediate surroundings, I do not feel so powerless about what is going on in the world around me. I feel love, and love is good, and maybe if there is enough love going around, all of us can defeat the bad in the world.


It's nice to sit on The Love Patio when it is raining. Listening to rain on the porch can make me thoughtful. Tonight, I am thinking about the difference between wants, and needs, and how that applies to love, and the whole process of love, starting with being alone on a porch listening to the rain, until whatever lies out there ahead for me, or you, regarding love.

I'm up at six, and so are the cats, turtles, and dogs. I just saw Kobain intrude into Jaggar's food bowl. For a minute, Jaggar seemed to care, but then he blew off the argument, and walked away. The two of them have been brothers for a long time.
I had something else that I wanted to say, but I have forgotten what it was. My father would have said, "it mustn't have been that important." What is important to me, may not have been important to him. That is just the way life is. I am thankful for this gift of life, which I have been given, once again, this morning. I hope that your day is precious. The coffee is ready. Ahhhhhhh.

The day is ending. It was a good day. I hung out with friends for a large part of it. My dogs missed me. They missed me so much that they practically pushed their way out of the door when I opened it. That is true love, baby.

The Celtics beat L.A., in a playoff game, which is really important, and soldiers died, or were maimed, in Iraq, and Afghanistan, which doesn't really matter so much.

Bob Dylan cares; he really does. Some day, he will start The Revolution.

Last night, I was laughing with The Good Neighbor about how only squirrels came to eat her seed in our bird feeders. She said, "Maybe you are not there when they are."
I laughed, and this morning, five finch-like birds ate from our feeders right in front of me, as I sat on The Love Porch. At that time, I wished that some cardinals would, also, come...and just a minute ago two of them landed on the feeders, and had them some dinner.



There was a car with a corporate pizza chain sign lit up on its roof slowly going down our street, just a minute ago. It's almost two a.m. I delivered pizza for a long time, and I can not imagine delivering it at this ungodly hour of the day. The stores that I delivered pizza for were owned by individuals, and their hours were more humane. Of course, the delivery person inside that car, tonight, may love to be delivering pizza at a time when most folks are asleep; who am I to point the finger, or criticize?

I got a bit of sun working in my garden today. I transfered my prize cucumber plant from its pot into the good earth, this morning. Tomorrow, I am going to take a bunch of tomato plants from pots, and put them in the earth, also. The tomato, spinach, cucumber, and pumpkin seeds that I planted awhile back are starting to pop their little heads through the dirt, also. A neighbor dug up some canna plants from his patch of them, and gave them to me, so that I could plant them in our front yard. It feels, somehow, special to walk among these majestic plants in a spot, that yesterday was just grass. I am hoping that the landlord enjoys this improvement that I have made to his property!

I went swimming today; did laps at the pool. I feel good about this. Exercise makes my mood wonderful. Exercise is probably better than any pill that can be prescribed for your head.

The Good Neighbors are both gone, this weekend, and I am going to be babysitting Henry and Anna, the Great Danes. I am not so much really babysitting them as hanging out with them. Henry likes to hang out with us a lot. Anna is older, and she sleeps a bunch. They are both really great dogs. It is going to be a wonderful weekend!
(Gosh, it is only Wednesday, and I am talking about the weekend...!)

May the peace, and love of The Lord, the Creator, your Higher Power be with you, now, and always. Is it not a blessing to be alive. Is not life the best gift that The Creator can bestow upon us. Let's live life to the fullest: you, and me, myself, and I!


Hope is a funny thing. It can be very fickle. I have hope for the world, for the planet, for my future, for your future, for the future of my children, and my young grandson, Elliot. I have to have hope, for without hope where would I be? I was hanging out with Dave Sloan, last night, and I told him how I thought the majority of Catholic people were great, great people, but how I wasn't down with The Pope, or The Bishops; how I wasn't down with all the money that The Church has, and has socked away when there are people out there, Catholics, and beyond, who could use it to improve their impoverished lives, and Dave said that you had to have passion for those who were all about the money, that you couldn't just have passion for one set of folks, and I agree with him. Compassion must be given freely to all men, and women; you can't just save it for one group. I am going to try to be more compassionate to EVERYBODY from here on in. Lord help me!!

"The only job where you start at the top, is digging ahole."--Anonymous


Mikel K Poet I dug some holes yesterday, and planted canna plants in them, and tomato plants, and cucumber plants, so I must be at the top, which is certainly where I feel that I am, when I am in my garden.


'm always worried, as I eat fish that I have just fried, that I have not cooked it long enough, and that it will kill me, or make me very sick. So far, that has not happened. Would such an experience be like eating


Having breakfast often signals the end of my morning writing session. The blood going to my gut to digest my food is no longer circulating about my brain helping me to create. Sylvester Stallone told me that that was how food affected him, also, back when I spoke to him in 1982. Stallone said that he couldn't get any writing done on a full stomach. I lived in Los Angeles at the time, and running into famous people wasn't as hard there in L.A. as it is here in Atlanta.

Almost the minute that I moved from Los Angeles, though, to Atlanta, in 1983, I ran into, and started hanging out with Ru Paul. Now if you lived in Atlanta, in the early '80's, and you did the club thing, you probably hung out with Ru Paul, as he had this knack for hanging out with just about everybody.

I was a pot dealer for about 20 minutes in my life, and I sold both bags that I had to sell to Ru Paul. Since that time, both Ru, and I, have given up what was a very regular part of our existence, back then: drugs, and alcohol.

Ru was my roommate, briefly, at a hotel in Midtown, The Flex. The little apartment that a young lady by the name of Penny C. and I had rented to live in, had an extra room, and we rented it to Ru, and this young gal by the name of Jennifer.

It was during this time that Ru talked Larry T. into letting me have a show at The Celebrity Club, and I was off to the races, so to speak. Ru, also, gave me my first hit of LSD, which for me, lead to stints in Georgia Regional.

I learned a lot about self-promotion, and about life, from Ru Paul. Isn't it funny that I got my first hit of LSD from a seven foot tall man who wore dresses and high heels, and not from, say, Timothy Leary, Carlos Castanada, or Jim Morrison?

My medium, the one to help me break on through to the other side, was a drag queen; THE drag queen, actually, as it turned out!!

Heather Lalita Havey u r a wild poetic dragqueen loving nut!!!

i remember when ru paul did those drag shows at the club in midtown (cant remember the club name) and i used to be a bit intimidated to attend them because of the ways he would call out people and make fun of them so much!!
5 minutes ago ·

Mikel K Poet The club was called Weekends. My gal, Penny C., and I went there almost every night when we were living in that hotel in midtown. One night, on LSD, I got this wild idea to spray paint my name on the bathroom wall. I woke up the next morning, and said, "Fuck," realizing what I had done. I called the club, and said, "Hey, this is Mikel, I was tripping last night, and I spray painted my name on your bathroom wall. I'm sorry. Can I come down, and paint over it."

"We know, Mikel, and don't worry about painting it. We've got it."

Funny thing is they never charged me a cover to come into that club, again...!!


Penny Cooke Yeah. Mikel K quoting scriptures. Just a little surprised....
3 minutes ago ·

Mikel K Poet (:

Mikel K Poet The closer you get to death, Penny C, the closer you want to get to The Lord, and I am not saying that The Lord is necessarily in The Scriptures, but I feel that I should not hate The Scriptures because they are The Scriptures. There are bad scriptures, and there are good scriptures, just like there is good porn, and there is bad porn. Hah. You know that I am not, and have never been into porn. I am more of a hands on type of person when it comes to all of that. People change. It has been almost thirty years since you and I were partners!!


Colossians 3:13: "Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you."


Being in a "relationship" for the bills is an awful reason to be in a "relationship," but I understand. My parents came from Ireland to The States; they were Catholic. He lived in the garage, and she lived in the kitchen. They stayed married for The Pope. I thought it sad. Maybe it is why I never married. There is a lesson in there, somewhere.

I'm almost done cleaning the turtles' tank. I got diverted by a nice chat with The Two Lisas, King and Cohen, and a visit to my garden to water my lovely flowers, and vegetables. Carlos, my horticulturist neighbor, pulled up a couple of red flowers from his garden that he said should attract butterflies, and handed them to me, to plant in my garden. I like me some butterflies. In Key West, not too far from Hemingway's house, and all its polydactyl cats, there is a butterfly museum. You walk through it, amongst all these uncaged butterflies. It is really quite an experience. Butterflies make me feel young, and well, yes...fluttery.

I'm tight on milk, this morning, so I am actually drinking a beverage that nearer resembles coffee, instead of having milk, and sugar, with a little coffee added. The turtles have fresh water. It is always fun to watch them cavort about their tank when their water has just been changed; you can see things so clearly in the aquarium, and the turtles seem to be so much happier when their water is fresh and clean.

My neighbor, Carlos, who is quite the gardener, pulled up several clumps of these red flowers that he says will attract butterflies, and gave them to me, yesterday evening. I immediately planted them, and can't wait for the butterflies to arrive.

I am trying to not be sickened to my stomach by this BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. I figure that there are things that I have control of, and things that I don't have control of, and this oil spill is something that I don't have control of, so why sicken myself over it like so many of my friends, and acquaintances are?

The Good Nieghbor, and I, went to The Highlander, a bar that is right down the street from where we live, to watch the fifth game of the NBA Championships. Normally, I like to bellyache about how sports are the opiate of the people, keeping the mass of man, and woman, diverted from what is really going on, like feeding people to the lions did in times past Roman, but I accidentally got sucked into this series while hanging out with Art Linton and Kyle Caldwell, last week.

Kyle is truly opiated, was all about yelling and screaming at the television that was showing the game at Steinbeck's, the bar/restaurant where we were hanging out in Oakhurst, and so was everybody else assembled that day.

When I was a kid, growing up in Hartford, Connecticut, The Celtics were my team. Players such as Bill Russell, and John Havlicek excited me, as The Celtics won championship after championship. The Celtics will be wearing their green, on the road, clothing that I like so much better than their white, playing at home, uniforms as the series head back to Los Angeles with The Celtics leading the series 3-2. I am, now, happily opiated myself, and looking forward to seeing The Celtics win their 18th Championship.

Hanging at The Highlander was a truly great experience. The bartender, who was covered in tattoos, and wore a white wife beater T-shirt, with The Highlander logo emblazoned on it, was decent enough to change the tv that was in front of us to the game. A shaved head, multi large spike wearing young lady, groaned a bit to learn that the game was now on in front of her. I told her that I fully understood, that sports were an instrument of big brother to keep the masses happily where they were at.

Despite my understanding of her situation, the young lady still took her drink, and moved down to the other tv that was seated behind the bar. You can't always get what you want.

What was really cool about this bartender, is that he did not bat a lash, did not let out a moan, or a groan, when I ordered coffee with cream and sugar; and he actually asked me, several times, if I wanted a refill. I have come to find that, often, bartenders look upon making, and serving, coffee as a pain in their ass. I told the bartender, with a smile, that I hadn't had a drink in eighteen years, and didn't want to start now, as I was tired of getting locked up. He smiled a smile of recognition, which was heart warming. He also smiled when we tipped him!

K Sidenote: I have flies in this effin apartment, at least five of them. This is the first time, in two years that I have lived here, where these little bastards have gotten in my front door. Partnered with the little German cockroaches that are running about the space, it is enough to drive a grown man crazy with piss-off-idness.

I don't want to pay for an exterminator, don't want to put the chemicals into the planet, but I may have to just to have piece of mind. I'm looking at do it yourself methods, but the process is slow. I want to get rid of the bugs, but I get tied into chats on Facebook, and lose track of time. Is there a 12 step program for Facebook addiction?

The little box on my computer says that it is 76 degrees at 6:24 a.m. I wonder what type of day we are in for heat wise? I am so glad to be alive. I hope that your day is beautiful. God Bless us all.

The little Weather Channel box on the bottom of my computer says that it is 92 degrees outside, right now. I just came in from letting the dogs out, and watering the garden, and, while outside, I was remarking to myself about how much cooler it felt today than yesterday. Well, yesterday, the little box at the bottom of my computer never went higher than 91 degrees. Funny how that is working, that it feels cooler today than yesterday, but it isn't.

Henry and Bundy are going at it on my floor. They are not going at it as intensely as they used to; I think because they know that I will start hollering at them, if they do. I can put up with so much dog play in my house, but when it gets too intense, I have to put a stop to it.

It is important to me, for some reason, that my dogs, and cats, eat out of their own bowl. I do not like it when Bundy slips over to Morisson's bowl, and starts chowing down, nor do I like it when Kobain steps up to Jaggar's bowl, and starts to eat the cat snacks that I have just put in that bowl, leaving Jaggar to go over to Kobain's bowl in order to have a snack.

I guess that it does not matter to the animals which bowl that they eat out of. I guess that a bowl is a bowl to them. I am not sure why I am so concerned about this, other than I do not want one animal eating all the other animal's food.

I truly suspect that Bundy might eat all of his food, first, and then wander over to Morisson's bowl, and eat all of Mo's food, and I truly suspect that Kobain might do the same thing to Jaggar.

Morisson, and Jaggar are a bit submissive. Bundy, and Kobain, are a bit dominant, but since I am the Alpha male leader of the pack, I supervise things,and allow none of this stealing of food to occur. (Bundy and Kobain are smirking at this.)

Friends come in a variety of shapes, sizes, colors, and types. I have many friends, online, who I have never met, and, even though, I have never met them, I feel very close to many of them. I have friends who disappear for years, and then suddenly come back in my life, and we hang out like there have not been years between the times that we have hung out. I have friendships that have grown very slowly, and I have friendships that have grown very fast. I can never tell which friendships will last, and which ones will fizzle with time, and I have no earthly idea, for the most part, why the ones that fizzled, fizzled. I love having friendships; be my friend, won't you?

I'm going to have to move out of my home because flies have taken over. One fly has the audacity to land on my coffee cup. Can you imagine; the little stinker goes from dog shit on the grass, outside, to my coffee cup, and I am expected to sip beverage from the cup. It's not going to happen. That cup is headed for the dishwasher. I hate the appearance of them, but I am going to have to buy some of those ugly, ugly fly strips that are so effective in wiping out a fly population. This is my second summer in this abode, and the first where flies have been a problem. What the F?

If reincarnation is a truth, and I come back as a fly, will someone please swat me as soon after I spend time in some animal shit as possible. I am overrun in my very small apartment by these cruel, and speedy, little bastards, and in my kitchen especially. I hate these effin mudders, I really do.

I am having a simple lunch today. I microwaved some celery soup, and I am adding saltine crackers into the soup. The crackers are the star of this meal. It is a bit hot in here, today, as I just turned on my second window air conditioning unit, and I don't want to fire up the gas oven.

I try to swim laps five days a week at the local park pool. Today, for the first time ever, in my two summers of swimming in this pool, the water was hot. It was effin' hot; not much fun to swim in. I swam as many laps as I could in it, and then headed for the sidelines. The temperature today is 93 degrees, which is, probably, as hot as we have had it, here in Atlanta, in awhile. I hope that the water somehow becomes cooler sooner. It is much more rewarding to swim in a cool pool.

I just popped a zit on my shoulder. I don't know what sent my hand up there to feel that very small zit out. Maybe zits call out to the subconscious to be squeezed when they need to be squeezed. When I was in high school I had a fairly bad problem with zits. My zits were enough of a problem that my parents sent me a dermatologist to look into the problem, and they never sent me to any doctor, if at all possible, because they were cheap.

Once, in Junior High School, I broke my collar bone, wrestling with this other kid, and my parents did not take me to the doctor for about two weeks. They were trying to save on the bill, while I suffered like hell. I've really had it bad in my time, at times, can't you tell?!

I bought a package of the fly strips, last evening. The yellow package says, "No baiting. No poisons. No vapors. No mess." Well, guess what: after a whole night of the strip hanging on the entrance to my hallway, it has caught "No flies."

It did catch my hair in it, last night, as I was going to bed. I'm glad that, at that point, there were no dead flies in the strip, to mingle with my long brown locks,but I would have liked to seen a bunch of them there, this morning.

I'm having a birthday party for me, this Sunday. I will be 53; shhhhh, don't tell anybody. Actually, the party is being thrown for me by Amber, my next door neighbor, The Good Neighbor.

We are going to have cake, and ice cream, and hot dogs, and not dogs, and banana bread. I sent invites out via the FB event mechanism. If you did not get one and you want one, please let me know. If you can't make it, and you would like to send me a Birthday card, please do. Please send it to: Mikel K, 858 Vedado Way #2, Atlanta, Ga. 30308. If you would like to include a BD gift in it, please make it cash, or a money order, towards getting shots for my dogs, and cats. I hope that it is not impolite to ask in this manner. God bless you.

It is 9:55 a.m. and I have, already, had my first cup of coffee, and I am, immediately, headed back to the pot for that second cup. The turtles, and cats, have been fed; the dogs have been let out, but I need to feed them. The little box at the bottom of my computer says that it is 85 degrees. I wonder if it is going to hit 93 like it did, yesterday?


I love half and half in my coffee, but for the last couple of weeks I have been using two percent milk. I would assume that this should help me lose a pound, or two. It is certainly more cost effective on the wallet. I bought a one quart container of my favorite brand of half and half, yesterday. I also bought a higher grade container of coffee. Both the coffee, and the half and half are going to be for special occasions, like once a day, for my afternoon cup of coffee.

Dave Sloan says that discipline is a good thing. I, now, feel highly disciplined in my coffee usage. Praise the Lord!

The Good Neighbors just lent me a carpet cleaner; I thank them so much, and think that, now, some of my B Day Party may actually take place in this space that I inhabit. The hallway was NASTY, and I did not want any of my guests seeing it! It is 92, according to the little blue box on my computer screen. If feels good in here. I thank my higher power for the air conditioning that is conditioning our air. I just got notice that Virgogray Press will publish my poem, "We Are The Children." These motherfuckers got taste! Check them out at: http://virgograypress.wordpress.com/

I just saw a fly fly right past the fly strip. He was laughing. He was pointing at the fly strip, and asking me if I though that he was so stupid as to fly into such an obvious trap.

I just scowled at him, proceeded to make the cup of coffee that I had been working on before the fly's rude interruption, and wondered to myself if I should make a batch of chocolate chip cookies.

I had bought no chocolate bars at the grocery store, last night, when I was doing one of my near bi-weekly stops to shop, a true test of good will over bad, but I did not know that I could overcome the chocolate urge, this afternoon.

I had the chocolate chips. I had the flower. I had the sugar, and the baking powder. The only thing that might stop me was that I was not sure if I wanted to heat my oven up to 400 degrees, with the air conditioners working so hard in this 93 degree weather.

If you want a cd to make you dance in the kitchen while you are cooking chocolate chip cookies in the air conditioning on a hot summer day, I suggest that you get you a copy of, Juice," by The Grapes.

I'm a stiff white boy with very limited dance moves until I've had that third, or fourth, gin and tonic. I quit drinking anything 18 years ago, but, "Juice," by The Grapes gets me moving on my kitchen floor, hands covered in flour, like I was John Travolta dancing in the day.

Dog, and cat hair, infests this place. I am surprised that I have not been degenerated into a totally sneezing being. I have two vacuum cleaners, that people were nice enough to give me, but neither of them seems to have the informational strength to do what needs to be done on this carpet. My shop vac works, but you can't vacuum the whole relatively large carpet with the certainly small area gathering dirt shop vac. I wouldn't be so worried about it, but I have folks coming over the house on Sunday for my birthday. I don't want them to see the filth that I usually live under. I can't make that kind of impression on them; I just can't.

I'm not really looking forward to going to the pool, today, and taking a swim. It's not that I am a lazy bastard, who mostly shuns exercise, in favor of sitting in front of a computer screen, and cranking out great works of literature, it is that the pool water was extremely uncomfortable, and not enjoyable, because it was so hot. I just took a look at a ten day weather forecast. It says that along with a lot of rain, that the temperature is going to be 90 or above for the next ten days. I thought that, maybe, if it was going to be cooler, soon, I could skip doing my laps today, in favor of cooler water. That is not the case, though, so I am shutting the laptop down, for now.

I'm getting to know my flies by name. Ralph is particularly pesky when I bake. He tells me that in his immediate past life he owned a bakery in France. That was all he got to say to me today, as I pulled out my trusty yellow fly swatter, and tried to kill him. As I just missed him, I heard hideous laughter coming from Ralph's poop licking mouth. Until you kill them, these flies think that this whole thing of them invading my apartment is just a game. They could just as easily be outside, eating dog poop for their meals, but some flies, such as Ralph, take delight in irritating humans, and in avoiding human attempts to kill them.

When the going gets weird, baby.

Fred just landed on a plate of mixed berries, covered with generic whipped topping, that I was fixing for myself in the kitchen. The nerve of the bastard. I'm surprised that he didn't just lay down in the white whipped cream like material, and roll around, before he flew off. I could tell by the sly look in his once French eyes that he knew that landing on my desert plate would piss me off an extra amount. It was the first time ever, as an adult, that I had bought the whipped topping for myself. As kids, we had it often, but as an overweight, diabetic, adult, it's not the type of thing that I normally grab from the grocery freezer for myself. The concoction is as good as it was when I was a kid, though. Fred did not trespass onto my plate while I was eating. He knows better. You don't mess with a man's woman, and you don't mess with his dessert, especially if he is having whipped topping for the first time as an adult.

Is it ruder to use a screwdriver, or you fingers, to get the last couple of bites of food up off of your plate, and into your mouth? Those were the choices that I just had sitting here at my table. Of course, if you were sitting here with me, I would have made a different choice, a wiser, more polite choice, but, really, when it is just me, and Fred, and his friends, sitting here, does it matter how I get the last few bites of berries, and whipped topping into my mouth?

I realized today, as I was cleaning around it, getting ready for the big birthday bash, on Sunday, that I had not cleaned the filter to my air conditioner in forever. No wonder I had been wondering to myself why it was so hot on that half of the house.
There was more dust in that filter than there ever had been. This had been the longest that I had ever gone without cleaning it. Somebody should slap me silly. But remember, I am a trained assassin.

My fan was covered in crud also, the fan that sits by my desk and blows supposedly cold air from the other air conditioner onto me. The other air conditioner? Oh my gosh, I have not changed its filter in centuries, either. I must like to stew in the heat, when I don not have to. My father was correct when he said that I didn't have much gumption. I'm glad that we don't live in a society where stupidity is forced to walk the planks. Where would that put most of our politicians?

Coming into day two of having hung it in the hallway, the fly strip has caught no flies. There do appear to be less flies in the household, however. Maybe Fred put the word out, and his brethren have split, back to the outside shit.

Morisson, and Bundy have reversed bowls tonight.


Fred just landed on the handle of the yellow fly swatter. He is taunting me. He is saying, "You are a wimp. You can't catch me." He then landed on my sponge. My sponge; the thing that I clean all my dishes with. If I thought that it would do any good, I might buy a gun. I am really pissed off. Fred has got to go.

I used to say that sports were the opiate of the people, that "they" wanted you to turn onto sports, so that you would not tune into what is really going on in the world, like they did in the old days with lion feedings in the coliseums. Recently, I got hooked on this 2010 Laker Celtic NBA Championship. I am listening to it on the radio right now, because I got rid of my cable so that I wouldn't watch t.v. Anyway, I realized that I am not paying much attention to what is going on in the Gulf of Mexico with the BP oil spill, and to what is going on with this "surprise" discovery of a trillion dollars worth of minerals in Afghanistan.

So, I thought that I had solved my laptop issues by hooking up a new cord to the puter, but now the computer is doing the same thing that it did with the old cord. I shut it down, yesterday, for the day, as I was gone, and now a box on the puter keeps appearing telling me to change my battery or to switch to outlet power, and then the computer immediately shuts off, so it appears to not be getting juice from my chord, again...It must be something with the puter, as this is the second cord that I have used, recently.

Any ideas?
Thanks,
Mikel

I am blessed to have this little memory pad, so I am not completely shut down in my writing, and FB pursuits, but I am greatly limited by not having the larger computer to write, and think, onto. Such is life, though, and it is not as if I have cancer, or aids.

I spent the day, yesterday, with my wonderful friend, Michelle Kellye, her too cool as hell kids, and her smart, and fun dog, Shadow. Michelle is blessed to have a pool at the house that she is losing because she lost her job, and we spent about an hour, yesterday, by that pool getting just the right amount of sun.

I am fair skinned, and burn easily, so I really watch how much sun I get. Also, I heed the warnings about skin cancer from too much exposure to the sun. I didn't fight the long, and hard, battle to quit smoking, to let another form of cancer get me.

Fred, the fly, has gotten really cocky. He is spending a lot of time on my desk, while I am spending time there. He likes to lay down on my fluorescent light, even though it is, mostly, not turned on. Most of Fred's buddies seem to have disappeared, though none of them has shown up on the fly strip that I bought severaldays ago.

You shouldn't think about how many times you got dumped, you should thing about how many times you were held onto, not about how many times you were rejected, but about how many times that you have been loved.

Fred's days are numbered; trust me!

You shouldn't think about how many times you got dumped, you should thing about how many times you were held onto, not about how many times you were rejected, but about how many times that you have been loved.

Fred's friends are back, and none of them are stopping by, and sticking to, the fly strip. They are hovering above me, as I fix food in the kitchen, waiting for their chance to land on whatever I am about to eat.

How cruel, and disgusting, of these shit sitting on fiends; to try to land on something that I am about to eat. I haven't seen Fred, so far today, but I feel that he is somehow behind this new gathering of his brethren above my kitchen.

Someone told me to take the battery out of my computer, and see if it will, then, work with cord power. This is a very good suggestion, but there is just one problem: I can't get the batter out of the computer. Whoever designed the battery mechanism the way that it is designed, should be shout. My guess is that they make it hard for you to get out, so that you will bring it in to an "authorized" shop where you will get fucked in the ass, financially. I have set the laptop down, and will try, again, later to get the battery out.

Sometimes, a fresh perspective on things is an asset.

I was never a huge fan of the music of The Grateful Dead. I respected it, but I didn't really "get" it. I have this Jerry Garcia Band cd called, "After Midnight," Live at Keane State College, in either 80 or 83, which I find fascinating. Garcia's take on several Dylan songs is mesmerizing. Is there something wrong with me to "get" The Jerry Garcia Band, but not fully "get" The Grateful Dead?

I kept him out, while I was awake, but I awoke, this morning, to find Henry laying in the bed next to me. You would think that a Great Dane would wake you, crawling into the bed next to you, in the middle of the night, but it didn't happen. Now, I am trying to keep Henry out of Morrison and Bundy's food bowls. Henry gets fed the expensive stuff, but he seems to prefer the cheap food that my dogs get. Mudcat, with band, plays, tonight, at The Northside Tavern. I am going to, maybe, try to kick start The Revolution with Mud. I have wheels for the weekend, which is grand. I am polluting the air, and sucking down gasoline just like the rest of you! Scout got back from NYC, last night, her first time ever there. I can't wait to talk to her about it, and see the pictures that she took. Graem, and I are going to see The Banksy film, on Saturday. You can interact with your children more when you have transportation that is not public. I am so very glad to see this new day. Guide me, Lord, and please keep me off the booze, drugs, and cigarettes! Amen.

Bundy doesn't want to come in, when we are out for the last time, today. Morisson is obedient, and ready to head down the narrow path to The Love Porch, when I am. When finally in, both dogs watch me intensely, as I do my Yoga asanas. They have seen this behavior before, but, somehow, it always seems to fascinate them. The cats are not fascinated, and, actually, they are staring at the dogs, tonight, as I go from downward facing dog to triangle pose, and beyond. "Primal Heart," by Bill Hunt is playing in the background. What an incredible piano player Mr. Hunt is; what an incredible cd he has created. I'm having a chamomile tea to wind the day down with. I didn't put a headache powder in my beverage, in fact, I did not have a headache powder all day. I didn't need one. Today was a beautiful day. Tomorrow I take a diet class at my doctor's office, and tomorrow I start to work with my friend Heather on transitioning into a raw diet. How great to be alive, and have these challenges to face, and a good friend to face them with.