Skipping the artsy stuff for now. Had a lot of fun this past Halloween at Bob Evans, my place of work. These pictures were taken with a cheap disposable cam so what you see is what you get. But we had a lot of fun.

Darlene, Me, Sue (squatting), Casey, Mike & Michelle, and Teresa (squatting).


More of the same with Jim's hand on the phone in case of emergency.


Special delivery for Bob Evans Farms Restaurants. Caution: DO NOT Open On Halloween!


Told ya.


The Wicked Witch of Bob Evans (Kim) is to the rescue.


The Maiden is rescued. Yay!

From The Blood of Poetry II

For The Blood of Roses


Love the sin, hate the sinner.
Love the virtue, hate the virtuous.
-Fran Lebowitz

Love Stains

tasting wet kisses
from the heat of
your love

breaking the reflection
the shattered image
in me

jasmine&incense
burn away
the infection
w/out the need
for redemption

and I need
because I want
and I want
because I need

I am
hollow&listless
a cane
w/out an elder

and I hate
these love stains


These Words as Those

I wrote these words
to express the feelings
of my heart,
to share a silly man’s
truth the universe
had revealed

I painted feelings
on the canvas
of this paper
through the hand
that had touched you
and reached into
your soul
to gently caress
your tattered heart

I wrote these words
in reply to the slap
of honesty God burdened
me with,
to set free and let go
the pain of my
shadow dale

Love is given freely
and paid for with freedom
What are the casualties
and who are the captives
Is it ever so simple
or always so goddamn
complicated
Can I ever get it right…?

I wrote these words
for you
And as you looked into
the eyes of another soul
I wonder if you thought
of them


Rock ‘n Roll Baby Girl

Crystal eyes sparkle
and bring the light
to reveal in clarity
the love her heart
sings for me
She moves
like a demoness
in the sheets,
satisfies my hunger,
feeds my desires
She is
sacred & sinful,
deliciously delicate,
baby in red hot ruby lips
burning my soul with
her every touch
Baby girl
dances to the rhythm
of the passion
as I beat the skin
of the sex drum

…and she is my
every breath


Stupid Whore

Desecrated you
after years of investing
a shadow of the truth in me
Staring at the jagged blade or propensity
won’t you push this dagger
through the cavity of my outer shell

Stupid whore
I never wanted to love you
How long&hard did you want me
to fuck you?

You’re not in my life today
go away - stay away from me
There are only so many ways
a prick can fuck you

You burn
like an animal in heat
Spread your lips again
and I will slap the taste of you
out of my mouth
and taint you for another man


Shadows of a Private Dancer

Conclave of innocence
radiating salutations
in the heat of a
cold winter’s night
She is
terrible&sinful
an angel in musk
for soldiers and pimps

Her tears are masked
by pretty smiles
and happy sighs
She dances
for the pleasure in his
heart - and she knows
only the intimacy of
an empty embrace

In her dreams
is the husband and the children
she will never know…


Death of The Unimportant

the world spun about me
in a haze - a whirlpool
of last-thought moment
as my car violently
ricocheted out of control
I saw in myself
that whirlpool’s eye
the images of
hopes&dreams

it was a wedding festival
and my bride smiled
in white
She looked
at me and reached from
within a mirror
and the glass shattered

…the car tumbled forever


Net Lover

I am a comfortable confident liar
You believe the bullshit I produce
Knee-deep or mountain high it’s all the same
A lie is a lie and I will make you believe

The paint will oxidize if you don’t get the shit
off the lips of your soul
It’s such a pretty picture
this deception I have painted

You’re an honest man but you’ve come too close
I can tell you what you need to get what I want
and all I want is the satisfaction
of manipulating you

I’m not so sorry to have to break your heart
After all you’re only a man
and I am a very comfortable
confident liar

For the Blood of Roses

Can’t stand to burn too long
What has become of my senses
logic and rationale?
Can’t be trusted with myself
Can’t go too long w/out the taste of you
burning the tongue of my heart
but you gave me shit for the blood of roses

Won’t be around to burn
your discreet passions into
The prison you keep your soul in
is constructed of flame®ret
Won’t save you from the warden
you have given your power to
Won’t forge a key
for the freedom you so fear

Your fingerprints have stained my heart
but you gave me shit for the blood of roses

From The Blood of Poetry - Medusa and a Few Verses

From The Blood of Poetry

Dedication

For Patricia,
the mother who lost the son
who would never grow to lose his innocence.
And for Teresa,
who just let.

Just Let

I can feel it,
stumbling around
in this bitter cold
shadow dale
of my soul

Comforting
beauty calls
to me as
a silent echo,
crashing though
eternity

She is a
past life lover
returning,
an evanescent
form
my hand
reaches into
and touches
the essence
of the Universe

Stars are
the brilliant centers
of her gleaming
soul

They burst
at my wanting touch
and she responds
with silent words,
command
time stand still

Her gates open,
she is unguarded
and bare

Transient
colors dance
from the dynamism
of the stars within,
and I am Man
feeding at the well
of Woman
She teaches me
with her rhythm,
explodes with
colors of passion

The red
of orgasm and
the blue of
satisfaction

There is
a lesson here,
the Universe
conveys its
wisdom to me
in her
mystic beauty

Man can
grow from the
touch of Woman
if he will
just let

INTRODUCTION:
Walking in on Mom & Dad

If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it’s to deliver people from their limited ways in which they see and feel. -Jim Morrison

It’s hard for me to say when it was, exactly, that I lost my innocence. I can recall a number of events in my young life that were traumatizing to the point of being called "innocence lost".

My sexual innocence was not really lost so much as threatened when, at the age of five, a neighborhood girl of about seven my mother had warned me to stay away from, invited me behind a building to show me her "privates" if I showed her mine. When she then started to perform fellatio on me I had no idea it was wrong and my only concern was for my ass if my mother caught me with her. So when my mother started calling my name I pushed this girl off me and ran home.

About the age of ten we lived in a house in which the bathroom was connected in the center to both bedrooms, each room with its own door. When you used the bathroom you would have to make certain both doors were closed and, in some cases, locked. Late one night I awoke with the need to relieve myself and as I walked into the bathroom I saw my mother in her bed with her husband at the time. The rest, I’m sure, you can imagine. I know there are many of us who walked in on mom and dad when we were just kids. For myself, I just quietly shut the door, finished my business and then went back to bed with many lovely images dancing in my fragile little head.

Perhaps the most traumatizing event in my young life was the drowning death of my brother Dustin. We had become Boy Scouts with a group of friends from the projects (ghetto) and it was our first outing of the summer. The Scout Leaders were just young men themselves and while driving us to Otter Creek State Park they decided to stop off and buy a few cases of beer. The drowning of my brother was not entirely their faults but they were in no condition to save either of us while we struggled against each other and the under tow. My mother sued the Boy Scouts of America, life went on without my baby brother and I blamed myself for his death until, twenty two years later, I went back to Otter Creek State Park and resolved it within myself.

While writing this book I have struggled with the concept of innocence. What is it, really, that causes a child to stop being a boy or girl and become a man or woman? Surely it cannot be as simple as losing one’s virginity, or the trauma of losing a loved one. Maybe in the end it’s just the reality of life. We grow up. We live our lives and, if we have been taught anything, we take responsibility for all that we do. For if we do not Humanity will never grow up.

The common theme of this book is indeed innocence. For me the most tragic and misunderstood figure of classic mythology is Medusa. Once a beautiful maiden she becomes something hideous and shunned because of the jealousy of a goddess. Many of us already know the story.

What some of us do not know about the classic myth is that, according to some of the legends, the Muses were created from her blood. Yes. The Muses credited for inspiring poetry and the arts in mortals were created from the blood of a monster; from the blood of that which became hated; from the blood of a woman in love. Innocence…
from the blood of poetry.



Medusa and a Few Verses

A woman
who loves a woman
is forever you.
-Anne Sexton


Medusa

In her veins
flows the iron-hot
ravenous passion
of Infinity’s flames
For the sake
of a man’s touch
she suffers the curse
of Woman’s hate
For the sake
of lust/love/vengeance
her glaring gaze
is the lure
to a man’s end
To the end
of a man’s love
she is forsaken

She is mother,
sister/lover
Her image snakes
through my flesh
to feed me
a serpent’s lust
Her song resounds
through the chambers
of my heart

I stare into
her eyes forever,
a woman disrespected
by a woman rejected
There is no victory,
no freedom from jealousy
The only life she gives
is from the blood
of poetry


Verses

1

I am the here&now
you are the then&there
And what will be
Is it you
Is it me
…?

You cannot free this child

2

I’m just doin the do
that I do
and no one else
can do
that thing I do
with me
and you
and it’s always
just so cool
with you

…ain’t no one
ever gonna do it
like you

3

I painted opiate feelings
on the canvas of this page
to honor the eternal honesty
of my suppressed conflicting rage

The fabric of the universe
in the fingers of your touch
wrapped around my bruised and tattered heart
and whispered it’s not too much

God can speak to me
in the whisper of insanity
Man can feed from the well of Woman


Love is given freely
and freely we must give
To honor love’s eternal honesty
we must freely choose to live


Medusa
(omitted verses from original)

For the sake
of a mortal’s touch
her face has
suffered the curse
of a most high goddess
in her maddening jealousy

She is mother,
sister/lover/goddess
of beauty

Tragedy is
my love’s companion,
sorrow her comfort
Upon her
long-desired murder
she has received
no grave - no marker
Her death is celebrated
I mourn in solitude,
a bitter old man
touched by the hand
that struck my love
and left me
cold

Wings from her blood
to a horse is given,
seeds for the inception
of the muses

Countless
her victims have been,
all for the sake
of jealousy

The REAL Animal

Alright, so it is obvious that I have a great affection for the Muppet's Animal. As a child I can remember watching the TV show The Muppets and anticipating the moments when Animal would fill the screen with some new antics. Perhaps a great moment that would prove to be long-lasting was Buddy Rich's appearance on the show when he and Animal faced off.

The real Animal is the drummer appearing in The Muppet Show. He has also appeared on the Muppets Tonight show, as well as the Muppet Babies cartoon and all the Muppet movies. During performances, Animal is usually chained to the drum set, as his musical outbursts are extremely violent.

Animal: [roars]
Floyd Pepper: Oh, yeah, that's Animal. Show 'em what you do, Animal.
Animal: I what do: Eat drums!
[chews on a cymbal]
Dr Teeth: No, no, beat drums, beat drums!
Animal: Beat drums! Beat drums! [beats the drums with his head]
Floyd Pepper: Down, Animal!
Animal: Down!
Floyd Pepper: Back!
Animal: Back!
Floyd Pepper: Sit!
Animal: Sit! [He sits quietly for a moment, panting, then sniggers to the camera]

However, sometimes his wild and crazy appearance, attitude and antics are used as the source of a joke by way of a reversal of what the audience might expect from Animal, such as in this piece of dialogue during a break in the song, "Happiness Hotel", in The Great Muppet Caper:

Kermit the Frog: What's wrong with your drummer? He looks a little crazed.
Zoot: Oh, he's just upset about missing the Rembrandt exhibit at The National Gallery.
Animal: [Correcting him in a wild, angry tone] Renoir! Renoir!

He opts to wear football shoulder pads instead of a shirt (when he is not in his maroon band uniform, which is the one I have). Despite the antics, Animal was a very good drummer, and was able to hold his own with legends such as Buddy Rich.

He usually speaks in grunts and monosyllables, and has a violent temper. Animal bowls overhand. He has been depicted as a literal skirt-chaser (in The Muppets Take Manhattan, he chases a female co-ed out of the auditorium, chanting "Woo-maaaan!" after her). He also chases cars. Animal is performed and voiced by Frank Oz while his drumming is performed by Ronnie Verrell.

Fans of The Who's drummer Keith Moon claim that the character of Animal was based on Moon, who was known for his wild antics. However, there is no evidence in the original sketches for the character that suggest that he was based on anybody in particular. Three of the other members of the Electric Mayhem were created by Muppet designer Michael K. Frith, and the sketches reproduced in the book Of Muppets and Men show that they were based on famous musicians. Dr. Teeth is a cross between Dr. John and Elton John; Sgt. Floyd Pepper is based on the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album and Pink Floyd, and the original concept for Janice was a skinny, long-haired male character based on Mick Jagger. Animal, on the other hand, was designed by Jim Henson, and the rough sketch (also seen in Of Muppets and Men), but does bear a strange resemblance to the drummer Mick Fleetwood of the band Fleetwood Mac. A regular shtick is that when someone says a figure of speech to him, Animal turns to the audience, his eyes go wide and then he goes berserk taking it literally. For instance, Jim Nabors once gave the traditional theatrical good luck wish to Animal, "Break a leg," and Animal decided to indulge him by trying to break Nabors' leg.

In the movie The Great Muppet Caper, it is revealed that Animal has a passion for impressionist paintings, especially those of Pierre-Auguste Renoir. To get into the Gallery, Kermit asks if Animal can quietly eat through the iron bars. Animal responds by saying "eat through bars ahhhhhhh" and then ripping the bars apart, making as much noise as possible.

In the movie Muppets from Space, Animal meets his match in the form of a security guard played by Kathy Griffin - after chasing her down a hallway with his "Woo-man" call, she later returns with him, with Animal acting submissive and sheepish, and lets him go (after reminding him to call her and blowing him a kiss).

Ty Pennington commented that Animal had ADHD, when the character was appearing on an episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. This fact is disputable, as the appearance can easily be considered not part of the Muppets canon.

Animal recently revealed a talent for Jazz, by appearing in a television advert for the Renault Clio car with French footballer Thierry Henry.

In an episode of Adult Swim's Robot Chicken, Dr.Teeth and The Electric Mayhem were in a fake VH1 Behind The Music sketch into what happened after the band did The Muppet Show. It showed that Dr. Teeth gives Piano lessons and that no one has seen Zoot since he was arrested in Japan with a suitcase of Marijuana. Also, in a fake episode of The Howard Stern Show, Janice reveals that Tommy Lee gave her an STD and that she only has 5 years to live. After that was stated Howard asks if Janice will show him her breasts. Finally, due to an Electric Mayhem Performance on Star Search the bands drummer Animal had to be put down for a vicious attack on Ed McMahon after McMahon made fun of Animal.

But we all know the real Animal lives on!

As for the drummer who portrayed Animal's skills...

Ronnie Verrell

Born: February 21, 1926 in Rochester, Kent

Died: February 22, 2002. Ronnie Verrell played drums for two of the most famous big band in British jazz, the Ted Heath Orchestra and the Syd Lawrence Orchestra. He was both a driving band drummer and an exciting soloist on his special features, the most famous of which was Hawaiian War Chant with the Heath band.

His contributions to British music went well beyond those more visible manifestations however. Verrell was a sought after session drummer in London throughout his career, and played on literally countless film and television soundtracks, as well as many record sessions in both pop and jazz settings. He was an expert reader of even the most complex percussion charts, and a highly adaptable drummer.

One of his television contracts was The Muppet Show, where he played in the band, and also provided the frenetic drum solos for the puppet drummer known as Animal. In the course of filming one of the programmes, Verrell achieved a long held ambition to meet his greatest drumming hero, Buddy Rich, a guest on the show. Rich, not an easy man to please, admitted the admiration was mutual.

Ronald Thomas Verrell was not brought up in a musical household, and showed little interest until he saw the Benny Goodman band perform in a film in 1938. His conversion was instant, and he taught himself to play drums. He made his professional debut as an evacuee in the seaside resort of Porthcawl during the World War II.

He linked up with Scottish saxophonist Tommy Whittle back in London, the beginning of a lifelong association. They worked with Belgian trumpeter Johnny Claes before Verrell moved on to bands led by Carl Barriteau (1947-48) and Cyril Stapleton (1949-51).

He joined the Ted Heath Band in September, 1951, as a replacement for Jack Parnell. Heath's group was the leading British big band, and the first to make an impact in America in the late 1950s. Verrell remained with the band until Heath's retirement in 1964, but was not inclined to participate in the subsequent "ghost bands" which bore his name, feeling that the magic had gone with the leader.

The drummer began to concentrate on session work, backing popular singers like Winifred Atwell, Jack Jones, Tony Bennett, Tom Jones and Shirley Bassey, among others. He joined Jack Parnell's house band at ATV, and remained a member of that group for ten years, with a short break to work with Tom Jones in Los Angeles.

In 1980 he received a call from band leader Syd Lawrence, who found himself short of a drummer for an imminent concert. Verrell agreed to fill in, and savoured the return to playing in front of an audience so much that he ended up playing with the band for the best part of two decades.

He formed his own quintet in the mid-1990s, reverting to the small-group formula of his original inspiration, Benny Goodman, often with clarinettist David Shepherd. He appeared on occasion with the Pizza Express All-Stars and the touring band Best of British, despite a serious road accident which put him out of action for almost a year. [Source - Drummerworld.com]

And there you have it. Animal! Hope that clears up any confusion.

The "F" Word

Fuck You!

With all these multi-purposed applications, how can anyone be offended when you use the word? Use this unique, flexible word more often in your daily speech. It will identify the quality of your character immediately. Say it loudly and proudly: FUCK YOU!
~Monty Python

My only true resource for material is that of my own life. The rest I consider “research findings”. My best resource is that of my childhood. Keeping that in mind, please read on.

My mother was, and is to this day, a very straight forward and expressive person. She feels it and she expresses it. To her that’s just the way it is. She hates pretension and she is far from subtle. If you have a hard time understanding her expressions you either don’t want to understand or you are so offended by her polite profanity that you would rather be at ground zero in Hiroshima the day the bomb was dropped than to have to listen to her. You would probably get another deletive explitive as you walked away from what you thought should have been a gentle conversation with slight disagreements.

I paint such a lovely picture of my mother, I know, but I love her. What she taught me most of all is be yourself and fuck the world. You don’t need anyone’s approval and you don’t need anyone who doesn’t want to be with the real you. Thanks, mom.

The most real thing about my mother, and myself, is the need to express. Now in polite society this can be seen as vulgar and indeed unwanted. The phrase Shit! That motherfuckin’ bus better hurry the fuck up before I piss my motherfuckin’ pants will make most Christians uncomfortable (excluding Catholics) and cause mothers everywhere to cover the ears of their children. But let’s not panic here. Perhaps a translation of the above sentence would be more polite and helpful: Golly! I sure do hope the mass transit vehicle arrives soon so I may hurry home to use the facilities to relieve myself and not soil my pants and thus be embarrassed in public.

That doesn’t clear anything up for me but maybe it helps you. See, language is a strange creature. For example: My girlfriend likes Buffy The Vampire Slayer but hasn’t caught all of the episodes in their consecutive order. Thanks to TiVo we had been watching the episodes but it’s hard to watch two episodes every day. When the series finished its run with the show’s finale the next day the network started the series from the beginning once again. Fantastic. So if I said to my girlfriend, “Baby girl (she loves my pet name for her), let’s just watch the start of the show instead of the end of it” she could easily mistake my meaning as, “Hey, moron, when you watch a TV show it’s traditional to start at the beginning of the episode instead of in the reverse.” And I’m sure with such a misunderstanding an argument would ensue and thus the couch be my comforter for that night’s sleep. One sentence can have two, or even several, meanings.

Shortly after the publication of Naked Vitality people started asking me why I used so much profanity. To most I was being polite with the reply, “Profanity may be vulgar but it’s far more effective than a censored expletive.” What I really meant was, “because I fuckin’ felt like it.” Those two sentences may not sound the same but they both get the point across. The first seems to be painted with education while the latter expresses my true emotion on the subject.

“But, David. Couldn’t you just say it upsets you to have to explain and justify yourself?”

Couldn’t you kiss my ass and shut the fuck up?

Freedom, people! The U.S. is still (for the most part) a free country and I’m still a free man. I’m free to write what I want to write and you still have the freedom to make the choice to not read it.

“But all that profanity makes you sound like an uneducated redneck.”

Alright, first off I’m not a redneck. Until the age of about fifteen I was raised in and around the projects. To all you suburbanites that’s the ghetto. Profanity was (is) a big part of everyday vocabulary in those neighborhoods and it’s not a big deal. Kids don’t get sent home from school in those neighborhoods because they said shit or fuck. They go to jail because they tried to shoot the teacher’s face off. It has nothing to do with the right vocabulary. They are just symptoms of a distopic life. If you weren’t raised there you have no idea what that life is like. Just the same as I have no idea what it is like to have to go to school afraid a bomb might be dropped on the building.

Secondly, what’s all this “education” talk? But, to see the point of view of the opposition to the use of profanity, I have to understand that to use a word responsibly I should fully know and understand that word. This is where education is important. Too many of us have no idea of the origins of our favorite expletives. When my mother washed my mouth out with soap for saying the F-word she had no idea where her favorite word came from. Only that I had smarted off and said I learned it from her.

I think it must be childhood animosity which drove me to want to understand that word and why it’s so offensive. Why is it so understood and misunderstood at the same time? I think it has to do with emotion. If someone tells me fuck you I understand they have no desire to continue the conversation. Or maybe they were joking. How do I know? The answer has got to be in the emotion of the delivery.

Oh, but there is so much more to learn about this four-letter word. It’s incredibly versatile and useful. It’s the only word everyone understands when you say, “Little Timmy used the F-word.”

Monty Python once wrote a humorous essay about the F-word that was never taken seriously. Personally I think it should be taught in public schools but what the fuck do I know?

In brief I will summarize Monty Python’s educational piece: The F-word can describe all of the human emotions. In English the word falls into many grammatical categories. Transital verb: “John fucked Shirley”. Intransitive verb: “Shirley fucks”. Adjective: “John’s doing all the fucking work”. Adverb: “Shirley talks too fucking much”. Adverb enhancing an adjective: “Shirley is fucking beautiful”. Noun: “I don’t give a fuck”. Part of a word: “Abso-fucking-lutely” or “in-fucking-credible”. Or as almost every word in a sentence: “Fuck those fucking fuckers” or the more popular “fuck you, you fucking fuck”.

The F-word expresses fraud: “I got fucked”, trouble: “I guess I’m really fucked now”, dismay: “oh, fuck it!”, aggression: “Don’t fuck with me, buddy”, difficulty: “I don’t understand this fucking question”, inquery: “Who the fuck was that?”, dissatisfaction: “I don’t like what the fuck is going on here”, incompetence: “He’s a fuck off”, and dismissal: “Why don’t you go outside and play hide-and-go-fuck-yourself?”

Why is it then, seeing as how versatile the F-word really is, society shuns its usefulness? Some would say it’s a simple matter of class and polite regard, such as television censors. You can say copulate, which (to the censors) means the same thing but you cannot say the F-word itself on TV. Although with the increasing popularity of many cable shows we are seeing more lenient rules amongst the major TV networks. But along with the TV censors there are still many who only view the F-word as a deletive explitive only used to shock and offend. So let’s see if it helps to look at profanity as a whole.

The history of profanity in the English language is the part of social class in England. Most vulgar words, like fuck, cock, shit and piss, have old Anglic, Gaelic and Saxonic roots. But words having the same meaning, like copulate, penis, defecate and urinate, have Latin and French origins, which were indeed the royal and upper class of society. The former words were relegated to the lower classes because they had been in use for so long as to become common. And we all know how much royalty hates anything common. Seems like nothing changes. Profanity is in common use among the lower class, such as the neighborhoods where I grew up, and polite words having the same meaning are preferred by the upper class, such as the censors who rule over television.

This may explain a few things but it doesn’t help me understand the F-word anymore than before. The history of the word fuck is debatable. Some say it is derived from the German word fliechen, meaning to strike. There are likewise sources that say it was a placard. FUCK (Fornication Under Consent of the King). It seems some people in ancient England could not get it on without the king’s approval. Guess it is good to be the king.

It was also used in American Colonial times when someone would be punished for prostitution or having sex outside of marriage or the likes: FUCK (For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge). The acronym was written on their stocks.

Jesse Sheidlower however, (author of “The F-word”, Random House, 1999) dismisses the former sources. According to him the earliest claims in print of the supposed acronym appeared in the 1960’s. Some of the more ridiculous acronyms have been Forced Unnatural Carnal Knowledge (rape) and Found Under Carnal Knowledge (doctors’ medical diagnosis of soldiers with VD). Sheidlower says it’s all wrong and he agrees with the American Heritage Dictionary, which tells us the first use of the F-word occurred in English literature with the satirical poem “Flen, Flyss” (1500) deciphered as fuccant, psuedo-Latin for “they fuck”.

Yeah. That explains everything now. Ugh! There simply is no way of knowing for certain where this magically offensive word comes from.

I had a lot of “research findings” with this subject but I opted not to go into it all. It’s interesting and I’m sure you could do the same research and be as entertained as I was, staring for hours on end at your computer screen and in the end getting no where. So I just went back to my mother and asked her about the F-word, to which she said, “What the fuck about it?”