Rosenbush Cafe

Element: Goddesses grant me the serenity remain inspired in the face of adversity
Leitmotif: Dadaism spiced with an attitude of nefarious posturing
Primary goal: to alleviate migraine headaches through chemicals, caffeine and chocolate-coated salt peter

eXisTenTiaLNihLisT

Warning: the usual cynical themes and the profane ranting of an individual who believes absolutely nothing at face value and enjoys writing stuff that is off the planet, earth that is….

My morning started with a cat, Pink Martini, sitting on my chest and exclaiming, “Man, you talk some crazy shit when you are having nightmares.”

I had barely enough time to move before realizing my entire left side was paralyzed, that I was experiencing my first migraine of 2010 and that I had dreamed about an old dope-smoking friend from twenty plus years ago and how in the dream I swiped several joints from him of supremely potent Columbian and not from South Carolina, but South America.

I haven’t seen this dude since he was busted the third time for possession and hit the road rather than take the jail time. We’ll call him Steve, even though his name was Stephen(!) and I can only recount that I came within ten minutes of getting busted with him one cold winter’s night in 1989. It was the difference in taking a left turn rather than right and I will always thank the Goddesses of Chance for the fact I actually went the wrong way and got lost in one of the most dangerous sections of the Magic City.

So, I wake up and begin recalling the dream to Pink, while he shows his interest by licking his balls. I know how to captivate a feline’s inner muse.

There we sat, Steve, his girlfriend of that time, who we’ll call Leigh, although her name was Lee, who was one of those redneck babes who was a slightly masculine bi-sexual but surreally sensual. She was always armed and one could ever guess what she would say next while under the influence. Case in point, one night after Steve had crashed, she and I sat, smoking some herb and listening to Rush, who was her favorite group and if Neil Peart had dropped by looking for directions to the Interstate she would have tied him to the love seat and ravished his drum stick, when out of the proverbial left field offered:

“You know, more men wear women’s panties than you might suspect.”

Taking a toke, I replied, “Izzat a fact.”

I expected her to ask me if I had ever worn women’s underwear and I almost asked her for a pair for the 60 mile trip home but that was the end of that conversation!

Uh-huh. Maybe Steve wore her clothes although he never looked like the kind of guy who would look good in drag with his Fu-Manchu. I know that hasn’t stopped men from dressing up but it was typical of Leigh, who loved to drop unexpected gems into any conversation.

Her next sentence was about a lesbian friend who had attended a rock concert with her and how they were accosted by a foolish would-be rapist who they both beat senseless and held at gun point while they relieved him of his coin purse! Got to love these kinds of women. Her friend wanted to castrate him but Leigh implied they did a few less emasculating, but properly humiliating, fun things to him in the darkened alley where he made his futile attempt to be a dangerous man-fuck, concluding, “When we were through with this asshole he would think twice about pulling a .22 on two women packing 9 mils!”

Fuck me. She wasn’t kidding either.

There is an intrinsic camaraderie in this era when most everyone in South Side were either a doper or supplier of all things illicit and for every five dwellings with pot-smoking-acid-dropping-coked-up tenants there was at least one straight Christian with their middle finger on 911, ready to call the fuzz on their drug-infused neighbors.

Aaaaaah, those were the days.

Well, the dream had nothing to do with these real life incidents, but if was fun seeing the two of them again, even if it was a dream and Steve and Lee parted company a fuck load long time ago.

Madness seems to follow my dreams and I have inscribed my recent nightmares into a diary called: “Hell Basket.” On the morning of January 14th I awoke from a particularly enthusiastic hypnagogic state to scribble incoherently, “Hell basket for ‘aw, hell, not again.’”

Dupa volova.

Look it up, it’s Ukrainian. Oh, no Ukrainian translations guide? Lazy fuckers. It means ‘cow’s ass.’ Next time, I won’t be so forthcoming so go out and get your own U-E trans guide.

So, here I am, vacationing on the shores of Hypnos, Planet Thanatos, wondering why I suddenly dream about people I once hung with but not for a very long time and then I realize how truly blessed I am to be mad. Not insane or angry just Barmy.

Pink finally finishing licking himself, looked up and mewed: “So that’s it?”

“That’s it.”

and just like that, the migraine ran away, afraid i’d make it wear women’s panties….

See An Entire Movie in Seconds!

I am currently writing two extensive works that will be posted by the end of January and beginning of February. The first, “Hatching Inspirational Omelets from the Misery Egg” about the process of imagination and how a little boy named Henry began his journey towards becoming a writer and a look at Brian DePalma’s 2002 film, “Femme Fatale,” which next to “Sisters,” and “The Phantom of the Paradise” are my favorite works by the American director whose movies have always courted controversy.

With “Hatching” I pay homage to my friend and favorite contemporary artist, photographer and poetess, Kalliope Amorphous, who became my muse in 2008 and whose masterful photographic art exhibition, opened Monday in Rhode Island with: Resurrecting Ophelia

I will reveal an intense look back at the beat poets, authors, artists and magazines that shaped my early visions of myself through the portrait of struggling artistic aspirant.

“Femme” gives me the opportunity to present a retrospective of DePalma’s numerous works dealing with women which many film historians and critics have deemed misogynistic. With strong lesbian and hetero sexual overtures, a nifty time shifting dual performance by Rebecca Romijin as the “fatal woman” and Antonio Banderas as a doomed - or maybe not - photographer, utilized a non linear narrative that confused most movie goers expecting a straightforward plot. It also made great use of Ravel’s “Bolero” in the extremely impressive single take opening scenes with a jewel heist and a sensual bathroom coupling between Romijin and ultra sexy model, artist, director and actress Rie Rasmussen.

Both works will feature adult and sexual themes, visual imagery of lesbianism, violence and graphic language and will be inappropriate for the very young and anyone uncomfortable with such topics.

born beneath clover
immediately seeking the sun
time is over
before it begun

chasing dreams
sleeping in water
improbable schemes
do not matter

illusions all are we
fine particled spectres alas
early light we barely see
time wasted reliving the past

memories fleeting
bodies wilting
shortness the meeting
perception tilting

expressions of morn
through colorless vision
taste evening scorn
soulful revision

twinkles beyond skies of regret
illusions all
avoiding fate not met
time will fall

thoughts will we send
a lovely refrain
recycled will we begin
aboard our cosmic train

Renaissance Man: Gary and customer

eXisTenTiaLNihLisT

Sexual themes, graphic profanity, love of music, prose and disdain and disgust for men

How many advertisements for “erectile dysfunction” are needed to pollute our minds before the promise of impotence becomes the blessing, rather than curse, to free men from the irritating belief an erection is somehow more important than the pursuit of the cerebral?

As I deleted hundreds of spams promoting erections I once again realize the unimportance of the male erection. Somehow the spammers believe Rosenbush Cafe needs medical attention and I sincerely wish for them all to become incapable of hard ons.
I realize that if one reverses the last two letters of spams it becomes spasm and I know that is not accidental syntax. Certainly spam was created by men and not women. It is too close to the words sperm or spume to circumvent language rules and only men are brainless enough to think they are clever when they are merely dim-witted.

Advertisements have become more than vaguely pornographic in depicting happy couples enjoying sex. Even a car rental commercial shows a couple preparing for a weekend of intercourse as the woman gives her mate the choice of “red or black lingerie?” I would like to smash his face with a brick when he smirks and replies: “both.” I hope I am not the only viewer who knows her role will be dominatrix and she will wear the black lingerie while he dons the red. I envision bondage and spanking and he will be the one with the red ass and sore nipples after Enterprise gets them to their destination.

Doctors warn of the danger of erections lasting more than four hours yet these purveyors of penis enhancement peddle drugs that can work for 72 hours.

What the fuck?

If a man has an erection for longer than for hours and is alone masturbating to internet porn than maybe he should consult someone other than a physician. If he is with a partner, male or female, no one is going to call anyone.

“Doc, I’m kinda scared. My cock won’t get soft.”

Good. Hope it stays that way in church you arrogant and selfish bastard.

Worst of all is that all this bullshit is geared towards men. Somehow men always believe sex and pleasure is all about us. Men are in control of so much that it isn’t surprising they created the chastity belt. A female friend once told me, after I professed that I liked how women’s legs looked in pantyhose, that it was the most singularly uncomfortable inventions ever conceived and that only men would ever design a garment that would restrict circulation and

Impossibly high heeled shoes are so much fun on the ankles, too, and even my mother eventually decided she would rather have her breasts sag than punish them with brassieres.

That dear reader is more disturbing than the erection itself. Men want everything for them and aside from models and cross dressers I doubt the average man wants to spend hours trying on different outfits, curling their hair and applying make up to woo some illiterate redneck back for a after-the-bars-close tryst.

Women are not always interested in your penises and I wager many would enjoy an evening of mental rather than men.

Friday night, I left town for a few hours to visit an old friend who owns one of last record stores in Birmingham. I drove over an hour to get my mind off myself and look a vinyl but instead found myself a positioned observer of the very subject I wanted to avoid:

Sex.

I watched with disdain as two young men salivated and ogled an equally young lady, with average breasts, wearing a low cut blouse. Over thirty years ago that was probably me, fantasizing and hopeful of an evening of pleasure; although I was generally ignored by women and did not even start dating until in my twenties.

I ended up taking a picture of my friend, with the two guys and girl sitting on a couch and one fellow convinced the girl to sit in his lap so he could “unintentionally” touch her breasts. The girl clearly enjoyed the attention, although she feigned embarrassment, and after she left, one guy taunted the other guy for having a boner.

One would suspect that as a man, albeit about thirty fives their senior, to somehow appreciate the situation.

I did not.

Since I was there to visit my friend I let them have their giddily inane moment of excitement but secretly I was sad. Men spend so much wasted energy conversing about their prowess and sexuality never realizing it must inevitably cease to be the driving force.

If I never attain an erection again I will the happiest male on this planet. In the not distant future, but the relatively soon present, the acceptance of replacing sexual gratification with palpable pleasures of the mind and soul is rapidly becoming more prosaic than preposterous.

With gratitude that I accept what most men will never recognize, or admit, that at some point in their lives sexual pleasure must be replaced with a yearning for the cerebral. Intuitively, I realized I could have stayed home and gone to bed early.
Perhaps, like destiny itself, it was intended for me to see this vulgar display to remind me of why, even though I am a man, how much I hate men. We are such assholes and we want other assholes to think we are cool and essential beings when all we really are assholes in faded blue jeans with inadequacies.

I leave you with the wonderful paradoxical poem, Parachutes, My Love, Could Carry Us Higher, by Barbara Guest who died in 2006. Barbara arrived on the scene in the 1950s during the beat generation of such notable writers and poets as Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Diane di Prima, Denise Levertov and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

I will not interpret her poem because it is self-explanatory. I include it to remind you how we are all adrift in uncertain seas, drowning in the fabric of the self-absorbed human condition. While most of you are probably involved in more carnal and less poetic acts I embrace the onset of Juxtapositional Erectile Dysfunction and I am content with my prose rather than sans my clothes.

I yearn for that impending moment where my corporeal maleness will become inconsequential and my remaining desires solely for the satisfaction and stimulation of my inspirational muse.

Parachutes, My Love, Could Carry Us Higher (1960)

I just said I didn’t know
And now you are holding me
In your arms,
How kind.
Parachutes, my love, could carry us higher.
Yet around the net I am floating
Pink and pale blue fish are caught in it,
They are beautiful,
But they are not good for eating.
Parachutes, my love, could carry us higher
Than this mid-air in which we tremble,
Having exercised our arms in swimming,
Now the suspension, you say,
Is exquisite. I do not know.
There is coral below the surface,
There is sand, and berries
Like pomegranates grow.
This wide net, I am treading water
Near it, bubbles are rising and salt
Drying on my lashes, yet I am no nearer
Air than water. I am closer to you
Than land and I am in a stranger ocean
Than I wished.

time to leave for a while and enjoy the pleasures inside the head
unfocused displacements of reality
reality is a man-made construct
time to unmake that reality
the weekend may swallow me whole
and
regurgitate wholly renewed
or digest and void me into the cosmos