She won't call;
she'll say that it was because of the wine,
and because she is still shy,
like she said that she was when she was a kid,
like in the high school cheerleader picture
that she sent to me, tonight.

She indicated to me, tonight, that it was a no go,
that she was practical, that she would never
leave where she was, and that I belonged
where I was.

Come to think of it, maybe that is the real reason
that she won't call; why get something started
that can't happen anyway.

You don't have to be an alcoholic to be a novelist; Hemingway proved that. The old boy should have got on lithium and went to some twelve step meetings. He would have written a few more books that way. Instead they found him splatted all the entrance to his house in Ketchum. He went out to dinner, came home and pulled two triggers on a single shotgun. His mind had deteriorated to the point where he couldn't think of a few words to compose for Kennedy's inaugeration. That's really not what I'm here to talk about, though; I'm here to talk about me, and you; we are really what matters.

I like to sit on the front porch and watch it rain. It's kind of like going to the movies, for me, only the world in front of me is my screen. The sight of the rain, the sound of the rain; that is the show. I don't have to pay to get in. I don't need popcorn and a coke, though often I do make a nice cup of home brew coffee before I head to the porch. The dogs are my companions. They don't talk during the show. They don't have cell phones waiting to ring. There is some nice thunder happening, now. What a soundtrack it provides.
.......

I took Shitski, uh errr, Jaggar the kitty to the vet, today. Jaggar has added a whole pound to his dinky frame in just two weeks, which had the ladies in the vet's office applauding him like he had just found the solution to our woes in Iraq. Jaggar got two shots, today. What a trooper he was. The vet and the vet tech tried to distract him with food, so that when he grows up, he will not associate shots with pain caused by the vet and try to claw aforementioned vet in the face in lieu of shots. Jaggar won't eat wet cat food, though, so he got his shots straight up. Funny thing is, about this kitten, though, he will eat Morisson's wet dog food.
.......
This lady who works at the vet's office, told me this story of how she has three litter boxes for her three cats, and how one of the cats will use the other two cats' boxes, but not his own. And he won't let either of the other two cats use his box, either. His box has to stay clean!

This lady is the one who cared for Jaggar for the first six weeks of his kitty life. She related to me that Jaggar was found near a Mc Donald's. His mother was out in the road. She had been run over by a car, and was dead. Jaggar had sat in one spot for so long, that they were scared that his little chest might never recover from it.

I'm happy to report that little Jaggar, now ten weeks old, is at my feet playing a weird game of hide and seek with the power cord to my computer. Jaggar is healthy, happy, frisky and fun.

Yeaaaaah.

Whew. I'm glad that Albania has assured President Bush that Albania will not pull its troops out of Iraq, while the US is still there. Albania has 120 troops in Iraq.

Somewhere, there is a lot going on,but not where I sit. I thought this as I drove almost all by myself down a near country road coming home from the grocery store and it is still true as I sit here at this table and type, surrounded by two dogs, and two cats who seem to think that it is time, once again, for a snack; these animals have not figured out that it is I who decides when it is time for a snack, and not them.

June 2, 2007

The finches don't faze him, but a fluttering female cardinal makes a large grey squirrel run up a tree, leaving behind him a large pile of bird seed that he has knocked out of the bird feeder and onto the ground. The red bird strolls up to the pile of food that the squirrel has left behind and starts to eat. My dog, Morisson watches all this, from the front porche of the house, with a look of amusement on his face. Morisson is used to food games. His brother dog, Javi, often tries to steal food from Morisson's bowl.

Can you show me the way to the head?
By Mikel K

I remember when people used to tell me what a great guy Michael Moore was, how he was out for the little man. Bullshit, I thought to

myself, and you know what; Moore has proven me correct. He is a grandstander and a hypocrite. If he "represents" the left, then the left is fucked. The world is in sad, sad shape when it comes to leaders. Bono seems to get a headline with every leadership type thing that he does. I've never liked the music of U2 and I wouldn't follow Bono anywhere. It is the guys and girls who don't want to lead me, who interest me. By minding their own business and doing the next right thing, they wind up doing what is good for me. Leaders are out for themselves, that's why they want to lead. "Leading" fills their ego and lines their wallets and pocketbooks.

Can you show me the way to the head?

Kobain is allowing Jaggar to use his litter box, which is incredible, when you think that we brought Jaggar home only nine days ago to a very hissing Kobain. Jaggar ate with Kobain and the two dogs, this morning. It is quite a site to see the four of them chow down in the am all together!

The sun is going down, and the sun tea is ready; I just spilled a bunch of it all over the kitchen counter. It tastes nice, to me, with stevia, a sweetener that won't give you cancer like they say that the pink, blue and yellow packeted ones will.

It's time for a session of evening poetry creation and toss the new tennis ball. Javi got to the first toss, first, so the game is on hold; he has to chew the yellow ball to death, he can't just drop it on the floor at my feet and let the game continue.

I've kind of decided to devote more time, right now, to poetry than to these journal entries. It seems that my poetry suffers when I spend too much time writing journals. Maybe there is a different head set to the two. Maybe there are only so many hours in the day. Anyway, Love likes the poetry better, and, for now, she is paying the bills, so I have to go with her preference.

Maybe...

Love and I are getting along real well, right now. She has learned to compromise. She has learned to give in. She has learned that I am the boss, that I am The Master and that she is The Slave. Hah. So not, but we are getting along real well, and she has learned how to end a fight way faster than she used to. When we first hooked up, and we would fight, she would sulk, and steal away into silence and not talk to me for days. Communication is key, we have learned. If you let the other person live in their head and imagine things, things just get worse. We have this thing called "pillow talk" where we go lie on the bed, put our head on the pillows and chat. This method has never failed to resolve any conflict between us. A nice side benefit to this method is that here we are, in the bed, all made-up from a fight and...what should we do next??!!!

We are out on the deck. Javi finally decided to give up the brand new tennis ball that he has been chewing on since I brought it out. Their is a problem though, one that Javi barks loudly about when I say, "Where's the ball?" The ball has, somehow, gotten itself lodged underneath the deck. Javi doesn't bark much, but exceptions are when his precious yellow balls roll under a couch or chair in the living room, or underneath the deck, here, outside. I really didn't want to get down in the dirt that surrounds the deck and dig the ball out, but I did. (I guess I'll do most anything for these dogs!) I'm nearly living in the country, I guess it won't hurt to get some dirt on my hands, every once in awhile, now will it?

The sun is red. The sun is to the right of me, trying to hide behind some trees. The sun is getting smaller and smaller. The sun has served us well, today. I thank the sun.

Sexy Within The Daily K
By Mikel K

Most days I don't feel sexy within. I don't feel sexy without, either. I don't much measure up to the media images of what a hot man is supposed to look like. I don't look good in a dress like Ru Paul does. I don't look good in a dress, like Kurt Cobain tried to. I don't feel right in a coat and tie; they choke me, and make me feel like I am playing somebody else's game. I look in the mirror, I see an overweight guy, who needs to shave, who never made the cover of anybody's magazine, was never GQ. The people over at Chippendale's would have laughed, had I ever asked to fill out an application. The guys and girls at Playgirl would have slammed the door in my face.

I'm ugly; inside and out. My dad made this clear to me.

That said, there are things that do make me feel sexy within; my kid, my pets, my writing.

Alcohol used to make me feel sexy, in fact alcohol was responsible for most of the sex that I had for the first thirty-four years of my life. Isn't that awful; your self-image is so low that you have to get drunk to feel good enough about yourself to chat with a lady at the bar. I could blame Dad, again, I could blame the Catholic Church, I could blame it on my genes, or my poor perception of how good I looked in those days in my jeans, but I won't. I'll take full responsibility for it. It was all my fault. I just didn't feel sexy within. Perhaps if I had, all that has happened to me wouldn't have happened to me. Not that things are bad, now. Like I said, my kids, my pets and my writing all make me feel sexy within. And there is this woman, who I met sober, who thinks I'm sexy. She makes me feel sexy within and without. I guess love is the key.

I'll try to show you some love from within this Sexy Within Website. From what I can tell, Lori has noble goals. I'll probably bitch some, though, because that is still my nature, though I strive on a daily basis to overcome it. I don't want to be a bitch; I want to be sexy within, don't you?

I write a near daily column called The Daily K. I post a lot of it at my myspace blog(www.myspace.com/mikelkpoet) Sometimes, in this column, I will be copying and pasting parts of The Daily K that I think that you just can't live without, that will make you feel sexy within. Hmmmmmmmm. Something like that. I'll also throw poems at you; because I'm a poet.

Enjoy.

When I was a kid, my dad let me buy a turtle. I loved that turtle. That turtle was like a turtle to me. I fed it. I changed its water. I petted its shell. I stared at it for hours.

We went to the beach for a week, one summer, and my dad made me let my turtle go. He said that I wasn't taking care of it. I think that he was full of shit. I think that he just started feeling sorry for that turtle stuck there in a bowl in my bedroom.

Anyway, I have always missed my turtle. Today, I saw two cool turtles at this neat little homegrown store, out here in the near-country. My heart fluttered and skipped a beat or two.

Love and I took Javi to the vet, today, for a follow up look at his ears. The Vet said that his ears were looking way better, today, than they had two and four weeks ago, when we first visited her. She gave me a new bottle of medicine to squeeze in his ears, with a slightly different application schedule. She said that we were trying to get the old dog up to a maintenance level, where we would only have to treat his ears once or twice a week.

When we walked into the vet's office, one of the girls who works there came walking up with this precious little black kitten in her arms, and laid that precious black kitten in the arms of Love. The ladies at the office havc been trying to get us to become a good home for this little kitty, for weeks. I could tell, that with this little kitten in her arms, Love was smitten and we would become parents for the first time in our relationship. I had nicknamed the cat, Jaggar, two weeks ago and told the vet girls that if we took the kitten, that Jaggar would be his name.

Jagger is hiding in our house, somewhere, right now. He took a nap with Love, and when Love split to go hang out with her mother, Jaggar hung out with me in the office for about an hour and then went into hiding. He didn't get the warmest hello from Kobain, our other cat. Kobain sniffed Jaggar a bit and then hissed at him and stalked off, like he owned the place. At the vet's office, when we introduced Javi to Jagger, Javi snapped at him, which was cause for alarm for Love.

Morisson stalks the kitty, following him everywhere, when he is visible. Only in this household could a Jaggar and a Morisson get it together.

Every time that I walk past the sprinkler that blocks the small path in our back yard that takes you to the deck, I think of Kevin, because he put the sprinkler there on Saturday and turned it on not knowing, and neither did I, that there was a ban on watering out here in Demorest.

Kevin helped me move on Saturday, from the city(Atlanta) where I have lived for the last twenty five years to the near country(Demorest) where Love wrote on our message board, "Welcome to the rest of your life!"

Helping someone move is a sure sign of friendship. Moving your own things is a pain in the ass, moving someone else's things is being a Saint. Kevin has been a Saint, in my life, for nearly two decades. He was a father to my son for the first three years of my son's life, when I was still "out there," still drinking and trying to be some sort of poet rockstar in the clubs of Atlanta. And when I sobered up, Kevin was still there, a step-father(I hate the word step) to my son, a friend to me. Kevin was there this past Friday night when my son graduated from high school.

What a beautiful man
........

The dogs now know that when I put on my sandals, the ones that I leave by the back door, that we are soon headed out the back door, and down the small path to the deck. The dogs get very excited when I put my sandals on. They love going out the back door and heading towards the deck. They love hanging out on and around the deck. For the greater parts of the past eight years, my two dogs have lived in the city in a very cramped, small apartment. Now, they live very close to the country in a house that has a very nice backyard, a very nice deck. They get to stare at squirrels and listen to birds. They are very happy.

.......

A little dog just walked up, from somewhere down the street. He stopped and looked at my two dogs and I for a minute or so, probably trying to figure out what our dog Morisson was going to do. Morisson didn't seem interested in doing anything.

I was wasting my time telling Morisson "no."

The little dog continued down the street. He seemed to have purpose, seemed to know exactly where he was going. He stayed to the side of the street, much like a human on a bicycle or a person walking down the street alone or with his or her dog might do. I would never let my dogs get out of my sight to do such a thing, and I wondered about the person or persons who would.

The street in front of our house is not a highway, but the few cars that do travel on it, daily, seem to think that they are running in a Nascar race; I mean they haul ass. I wish the little dog well; may he get where he is going safely.

......

It's 8:21am. The birds are really going at it; they seem very happy to be alive, this morning. I'm happy to be alive, and I hope that you are happy to be alive.
......

The first day that I was here, living in sin with Love, in the near country, Love asked me if I was doing ok?

"Yes," I said. "Why do you ask?"

"Well," she said, "I just thought that you might be depressed, having left your old home and all."

I wasn't depressed. I was happy with my new environment. I was in love with a great women, and I was away from all the traffic in the city, the panhandlers, the lousy attitudes. Out here, in what I am calling the "near-country" people smile at you more, the pace is slower, there is almost no traffic. True, there is no Starbucks or Caribou or Java Lords to get cappuccinos at, but I'll live.
.......

I have started timed writing this morning. I will write The Daily K for 45 minutes, each morning, and then I will write poetry for 45 minutes each morning. I will devote an hour to editing "I Am The Female Anne Lammot and I will devote a half hour to re-editing "The Delivery Guy."

Dear Dickhead:

Thanks for all the bad things you have done to our great nation in the last eight years.

I'm going to make no moves until I have had that fifteenth cup of coffee. Old dog Javi is licking his foot, furiously. Young dog Morisson just put his head on my leg. Things are normal, here. Normal. Normal. Normal. We move out in two days, from the city to the country.

The old dog is asleep next to my bed. The young dog is probably asleep on the kid's bed. The cat has been kidnapped; he is at the house of Love, but he is not lonely. He is my only cat. He comes when I rattle this bottle full of cat treats. He actually comes when I start to pull out the pills to feed old dog for his old dog maladies. Who cares? Who cares about me? What cares about you? Who cares about my dogs and cat? It can get lonely in the middle of the night when you feel that you are alone. You are never alone. God is always stoned and about. The angels are high; you'll get by. Why don't you try; why don't you try not to be an imbecile. Don't you love her gladly?

There is no fairness. I am not fair; you are not fair. Things are fatal. All things hurtle us towards the end. The Funeral Industry Personnel are waiting to sell you a plot. They drive cadillacs, while you rot. You would have rotted, anyway; but you bought them a new car, a new house, paid for their supper.

There is a comfort in feeling like shit. Feeling like shit is an old friend of mine. I'm not hear to whine, but if you are here to listen, you might not like what you glisten from the experience. I'm not here to sell you a motivational cd. Jenny the cyber whore just popped onto the screen. She wants me to look at her nude pictures. Jim Morrisson is singing The End. Maybe I should be listening to a song about the beginning.

I'm amazed at the number of persons "associated" with the publishing "industry" who brag about their booze consumption. There are morons everywhere.

Riders on the storm rattle through my brain. There is nothing to eat in the refrigerator, but that is ok, I have acid reflux anyway. What if the publishing world was controlled by gay men and women, and you were straight? Should you put a gun to your head or self-publish? Putting a gun to your head is not an option, because getting "published" is basically a crock of shit. You will attract to you a bunch of morons and bring on a stress that you most likely can't handle.

This apartment now has water. The hot water heater was located across the hall from the furnace, which is what we turned on, last night. The furnace does not heat the water. I am not a very mechanical male. Some people are good at some things, and others are good at other things. I'm still looking for what I am good at; that is the way that I feel on certain days, that I am good at nothing.