2003-03-27 - 3:26 a.m.

So today i was awakened by my sister at 10 am. Usually its my nephew Jason pounding on the door wanting to say hello and goodbye all in our hug before he is off to preschool. But today it is my sister knocking on my window telling the family cat to wake me. She doesn’t have a key any more to the house because my mother is upset at her. Oh to be 22 and sleeping in the bedroom that I slept in since before i can remember. The bedroom that housed the boy that loved michael jackson and mr. T (and still does). the boy without any pubic hair that wanted to be a star baseball player. the boy that could never dress in the right style to fit in, so he gave up (and has still given up.) The boy that finally got pubic hair. The boy that thought he was a bad ass punk rocker when he was in seventh grade. the boy that had a mohawk several times every few years (and still do). the boy that wrote poetry and wanted to be a rock star. The boy that was a virgin. the boy that never made into an honor’s class until his junior year of high school. the boy that never really thought that he would be able to go to college. The boy that finally lost his virginity. the boy that thought, very delusional, that he was a great poet (he’s wised up by now). the boy that moved out of this room for four years and wasted his life or just lived it, whichever way you want to believe. And now this boy or man or monster (whatever) is back in this same room. Windows every in this room. No room in this room between the book shelves and the dressers and the bed. A family of carpenters leaves no room to stand, empty space needs to be storage space, and storage space needs to be contained space. So some sort of furniture is everywhere.

My sister needs a ride to work, she needs to be there at 1:30. I tell her okay. she lives 100 feet away from the room where I sleep in in a home in the backyard. I go back to bed but then get up awhile later to do work on the computer. i update writeclub.net. Then my sister, Katy, asks me for help because there is a leak in the water line to the property. Apartenty she fucked it up digging up flowers in the front yard to give to a friend. I go out and look to see what needs to be done. i try to turn this knob that is 2 feet deep in the ground but it won’t budge. Its like trying to twist a nose upside down. i find this tool that i think will do the job but its to flimsy and doesn’t have enough leverage. or maybe to flimsy without enough leverage.

I drive my sister to Home depot where she works. Killing to babies with one stone because i can pick up the tool I need there for the pipe. i run into an old friend from church. patrick, one of my best friends when i was growing up. Of course by best friend i meet for the two days a week that i went to church. he is a nice guy but he’s to much of a sissy. he’s a church going man and i am not. We talk about what we’re doing with our lives and i’m actually interested to know. He’s going to community college and living at home. what a loser, living at home... oh wait. i don’t really live at home, I store my shit at home and live at school and in my car. Its where you spend your time that counts, right? We talk about the horrible pictures of me at the hospital after the car wreck that made me even uglier and gave me brain damage - that’s right, made me even dumber. My mother talks to everyone and shows them pictures too, he has been a victim. After a while we grew tired of each other and said that we still have the same phone numbers that we used to and acted like we’re going to call each other. he’ll call me before i call him, because with his voice comes the words of god - eventually, and i don’t want to hear it.

Outside the hardware stare at a stop light this woman with eighties black town car full of teenage girls gives me the thumbs up sign and motions for me to roll down the window and as i do I hear her mumbling to the girls about how i look interest. (Its always interesting, never sexy.) She says she likes my hair cut. i say thanks. she asks how old I am. I say 22. she says that’s too old to have my kind of hair cut. i say i got my first mohawk when i was 4 years old. My father is bald on top but he has a mohawk because he’s dyslexic, so his is inverted. She didn’t get the joke but her daughter and the girls in the back did. Her daughter some some fucked up teeth, but the mother looked like she was too young to have her and was too young to stop smoking and drinking while she was pregnant so the fucked up teeth are a side effect of teenage pregnancy. The light turned green and I’ll never see them again. I thought about how dumb it is to nod at people or give people thumbs up because you like their hair cut. You’re assuming that they are constantly think of their haircut and recognize every time a person does the thumbs up sign that they are approving of a hair cut. I know people are just saying they like my hair, but i just look at them like they are crazy. I mean I’ve had many a mohawk, its just natural to me.

I work more on my web site. I put a link to a photo of me at dailycal.com and a like to my diaryland page.

My father comes over. We look at the water valve, which has been tampered with by my brother in law while i was gone, but he doesn’t admit this. My father and i eventually go to burger Kings. I tell my father about my life. the parking tickets that I got while driving his car. One because i didn’t move my car over night. One because I parked in a no parking zone. And the other for parking on private property, all within a week. God hates me. Or maybe he doesn’t, but that’s because he may not exist. I tell him about what classes I’m taking, my situation with women. I talk a lot about Aisha because i am particularly fascinated by her at this time, seeing as I’m interested in dating her. He talks about his time in the military for the first time with me in great detail. All because he saw a plaque at a school which names of dead men he new on it the other day. the men lay dead and rotted in Viet nam now, but my father new them in high school in the sixties.

Back at home we find out what wrong with the pipes. While I tell my dad about the army recruiter that tried to sign me up the day after the war started. My father and i agree to fix the water problem on Saturday.

I drive to Davis because I’m going to do an open mic night at delta venus cafe. i have never attended one of these nights, let alone read at them. I read a Charles Bukowski book while i wait for people to show up. I don’t know if it will happen because of spring break. the college town is half alive because it is half empty. But its going to happen. they set up a sign in sheet. Other people sign before i do. I sign up for slot 11. There is no announcement that the show starts but this girls starts mumbling into a microphone while she rumbles her guitar’s strings. No one pays attention, but they clap when the song ends. Repeat twice. More people sing and play guitar. Well actually, every one sings and plays guitar. They all around the same age and look the same, probably think the same. they choose to be alternative coffee drinking rebel hipsters, just like the alternative coffee drinking rebel hipster right next to them. They go on and on singing at least three songs that were too long. Everyone of them does this. one guy impersonates john mayer rather well (i don’t think he would admit that he was trying though). Another guy plays a 9 verse song as an opening number, he had three similar songs after that. one guy banging on a drum and sang, or rather he skinned a dog while burning its ears, it all sounded the same. One guy with a mohawk impersonated Ryan Adams, and couldn’t play or sing. there were three dead heads, two with guitars and one with a banjo that did a pretty good rendition of the soggy bottom boys singing “I smoke two Joints.” Eventually i got up and was the first poet. i said ‘I can’t sing, but that really isn’t an obstacle, now is it?’ No one got the joke. I read “Always be prepared,” a poem about the boy scouts, or rather i just pick on the boy scouts. I read “a lonely ode to my desire” then i said that i was done, but some one asked for another. So i actually did an encore, how cool is that. I read “Disneyland or bust.’ i think people paid attention while I read because i was a change of pace and i didn’t waste time like everyone else did. People just talked and ignored everyone that was singing unless they knew them. When i was bored I just read my book. i got about 40 pages worth of reading done. After me another poet read, he did a good job. And then i guy did a fucking awesome electric cello recital. It was unlike anything i had every heard before.

Dan actually showed up in the last few minutes and then the open mic ended. i talked to dan about how drunk he got on his birthday. he went home to Santa Rosa and went to a bar. he wanted to know what happened to me at the party so i gave him a gentlemanly abridged version of the events. then i went over to Dan’s place and talked about Allen Ginsberg and all the dead people that we have known. then i went home to write out my day and post it on the web.

I wrote a poem while at the coffee shop.

“Open Mic night - march 26, 2003.”

Women want to be Natalie Merchant, Stevie Nicks, or Ani Difranco.

men want to be the same icons, with or with penises, the men are unsure of.

i want to be Jim Jones.

putting the poison in the kool-aid,

in the espresso, in the beer, and the

fucking lemonade.

Its like someone picked up a shovel and moved Greenwich village into Davis California.

Is this a coffee house or a seance

because i think someone is conjuring the spirits of the dead.

Jeff Buckley ain’t singing to the dead wastelands

he’s too busy being exploited by mouths rotten with caffeinated breath

and cheap arty words.

Folk music doesn’t smell like Altoids or Jack Daniels,

it smells disgustingly in between it all, like Chai or French Roast.

Its inspiration is grown in Columbia,

but its not rock and roll cocaine fueling these folks.

its sorrowful, I know a few cords and can rhyme like everyone over the age of eight,

$3 cups of coffee that runs in the blood of this “art”.

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