Cup Of Coffee

I once knew a guy that was saved
by a cup of coffee
and I don't mean it brought him to Jesus
or started him an account at the bank
but it did pull him out of a burning building
at least a metaphorical one
that raged silently beneath his rib cage
and ate savagely away at his soul
and so it went
that he told me his tale
one windswept night
in the Mojave desert
when we rode around the darkness
in search of dead men's souls
two dudes and a gurney
not swift enough to find employment
anywhere else except
a funeral home.

He said, "Shawn ..."

and I said, "... what now?"

and he retorted (quite sharply mind you), "Now look here!
Relationships are like those cheap ass promotional items
you get from the Time Warner Cable Company!
Fun and shiny and cool and novel at first. But once you take em' out
of the package and play with em' for a few hours ... well, they just seem to fall apart."

My reply to that was, "You shouldn't take em' out of the package."

and he exclaimed, "your damn straight! Admire relationships from a far!"

so I said, "Amen to that!" and cracked the window of the first call van
and lit a smoke.

I idled up to the stop light at
the corner of Avalon and the 5800 block of Hwy. 62

"I have had suicidal thoughts all weekend."

I looked over at him, "Did you love the wrong woman again, brother?"

and he said, "Why ... yes, yes I did!"

"That's not good."

"Your telling me!"

The light turned green and I made a right
he continued, "Yesterday, I came home and went to the mail box.
I looked at the ground as I walked. I couldn't look up. Haven't been
able to do that for two weeks."

I nodded sympathetically.

"In the mail box was a letter from GEICO.
You know, that auto insurance company. Had that cute little gecko on it and the words ...
THIS JOURNEY'S NOT ABOUT THE DESTINATION."

"Oh, yeah. Did you open it?"

"Hell no! I put it in the garbage can. Then I walked
to my front door and noticed a bunch of roofing nails on the ground.
Damn pigeons tearing up the roof again! Bird shit every where.
So I got to thinking about all the dead bodies with their dead eyes
that stare only upwards
and my pretty gal that left me high and dry.
Went back to shack up with her ex old man.
Carrying that thing in her belly
that I once thought was beautiful! But now just seems ill and gruesome!"

"Jesus man! Get a grip on yourself. We'll be at the hospital soon," I replied with uneasy apprehension.

"So I got a bottle of whiskey out of the cabinet, a length of rope, a shot glass, some pills, pack of razor blades, my revolver, buck knife, a box of bullets, a Mexican bible, and some antifreeze."

I flicked my cigarette butt out of the window, "Jesus man! Were you expecting company?!"

He stared straight ahead at the dark, desert road and quietly spoke,
"I walked in a circle around the table, where I placed all these things. Around and around I went.
Until I must have circled 30 or 40 times!"

"And?"

"I decided to make a cup of coffee."

"Then what?"

"I felt better," he said.

"Better then what?!" I exclaimed.

"Nothing I guess."

I pulled the van into the hospital parking lot
drove around back to the morgue
he didn't say anything else the rest of the time
as we took the body off ice
and loaded it casually into our van.

Jim quit and moved shortly there after
not sure with the girl, or the baby, or both
perhaps just by himself
but I walked around my kitchen table several times
this evening
when the sick orange moon hung low
in the lonely desert sky
like the flaming epicenter of an empty noose
ready for a naked neck
and my Time Warner Promotional Gift
had been out of the box
for a few hours
and now looked man handled, beat up and broken
so I stopped circling when I got tired
and decided to just
make myself
a cup of coffee.

NO PAY ... NO SEE

Friday night. Not drunk enough to be text messaging "dick pics" randomly out into the universe but inebriated to the point of dangerous sentimentality and desperate nostalgia. A few burials took place this week. We put Mr. Anderson down at Inglewood Park Cemetery. An old negro gentleman sat stoic on the cemetery casket cart and stared out at the universe with a cold indifference that could chill a new born baby. His lazy bull frog features radiated a frightening calm and gave nothing away. The stone face of a top notch poker player. The family wanted to stick around to witness the lowering. The old negro was the cemetery liaison. He had the walkie-talkie and the power. I walked back and forth between him and the wife as others lingered around the grave site. His frog lips would just croak, "no pay, no see." That was it.

"I know a place where a royal flush never beat a pair."

Then, there was every liquor known to man poured down my throat until my heart was in cardiac arrest and I fumbled text messages to every one and their mom, during a severely broken and uncompromising  3 a.m. Including my ex old lady in San Francisco. I complained that I couldn't go through "another one" like that. Didn't have the right stuff. The true grit. You get the girl of your dreams and then you realize that you didn't. Powerful truths to try and handle with a head full of whiskey and a gut twisted with hot sake and beer. My ex thinks I am an idiot. Seems the general consensus by all. I am okay with being an idiot. I am just not alright with losing this latest one. Not to on board with all the deception and lies either.

"My head is spinning round
my heart is in my shoes
I went and set the Thames on fire
now I must come back down
she's laughing in her sleeve, boys
I can feel it in my bones."

By morning my heart was dead and buried. I felt the cold dead eyes of the Negro cemetery attendant. His frog lips moved in the back of my head, "No pay ... no see." I paid my brother. I paid more then my share. I whispered it over and over to myself. The scam was set in the bear trap. And the joke was on me. I would never see her again.

The next day, Death Ray and I took our hangovers to the used bookstore on Hwy. 62. The dust on the old jackets was comforting. Lost phrases and neglected knowledge was spread ankle deep in the place. Books upon glorious books. I picked up Steinbeck's Travels With Charlie and held it up to Death Ray, "This one will change your life, man! Not sure if your ready for it ... game changer!"

Death Ray laughed. The lady at the counter scribbling notes looked at me like I was insane as I picked up the pocket Aquinas and said the same thing, adding, "Aquinas is not something you can read straight through. It's more of a random passage turner. But you will pull mad ass if chicks see you thumbing the pages of the good Saint!"

When we got to the register Death Ray and I did the whole comedy routine again with a box set of the great American classics, illustrated and abridged. The ones for the kids. Death Ray was picking it up for his four year old son. The lady at the counter was letting him swap out a few of the novels and customize the set. I launched into a long discussion about Jack London's White Fang as he attempted to trade it out for Treasure Island.

"White Fang is a game changer! Changed my life. I became a man after reading White Fang. I don't know man ... it was 7th grade and I considered buying a parka and a bus ticket to Anchorage."

We went back and forth between Moby Dick and Jungle Book. The lady behind the counter finally got into the whole thing. It's alright to laugh at serious works of literature and appreciate them at the same time. When she attempted to do the same thing regarding here 13 year old nephew jumping from White Fang to The Sea-Wolf and not being able to bridge the divide we hurriedly paid and left. Leave the stand-up to the professionals sweet-heart. We left her standing among her graveyard of books. Burials all around. 

"And they all pretend they're Orphans
and their memory's like a train
you can see it getting smaller as it pulls away ..."

Later, when I was at home, I spoke with another friend on the phone. He is dating a smokin' hottie with cars, money, houses, and everything in between. A divorcee back on the make. Says she is not looking for a relationship. Friends with benefits for now. Relationships don't work, according to her. I heard it said once that relationships work until they don't. In everything in life their is a beginning and an end. People are so stuck on the ending part. It has to end a certain way. People will suffer through misery because they only care about how it ends. They have that perfect ideal in their head and they will die for it. Ride it out to the bitter end! Their brains can't fathom anything else but how it looks in the end. 

Myself, I care more about all the stuff in-between. We all know the ending is out their lurking in the shadows. Waiting. Don't miss out on all the moments along the way. That's the good stuff. The only stuff. Leave the end to the gravediggers.  

Where there are tombs sometimes there are resurrections. I think Nietzsche said that. Next time I am going to date a sword shallower form the circus. Or maybe a snake charmer. Somebody interesting. A real game changer. Somebody that will change my life ... like the John Steinbeck novel,  Travels With Charley. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Yrs Truly,

Mafia

    

Plain Old Blog

Wow ... have not posted anything since January. Can't hardly believe it. I'm logged in direct to the "post" dock. Slamming it in the main vein. Shooting form the hip. Rambling freestyle. No ho's barred! I mean holds, excuse me. Putting the boots to it in the corner.

WCPE (Raleigh-Durham, NC) is pledging hard this morning. They must have taken a whole fist full of tribulus terrestris. The blood is pulsing. They've got their veiny cock thrust across the internet airwaves! Give us money! Support classical music! Music is mind control. Sex is the magic wand. The unfortunate thing is that they keep playing gregorian chants. I'm not a big fan. I don't hate this form of music. It just doesn't help me write. It helps me not in anything ... hahaha! Except maybe doing triangle push ups. It makes walking to the mail box seem more epic.

Why am I associating sex with classical music? It makes no sense. Must be the slow, Sunday sand spread out across the Mojave desert. It has seeped into my skull until my dopamine pathways are filled with dirt. The synapses can't fire. Just now, I got a text from my buddy in Cinny, Ohio. He was partying with all barrels firing last night in Indy. Got high as all hell on this medical marijuana called Death Star. Him and his pals were also hitting this other killer bud (according to him) called the Green Wookie. Some street grade shit that makes you feel all "hairy." You might even bust out with that Chewbacca scream after the first bong hit. The whole point of his evening was to attend a Pirates of the Carribean Live Orchestra Concert. Enhance the experience, perhaps? I don't know. One must assume. I didn't get all the details yet. Some heavy rum drinking was mixed into the equation. He drove across the state line this morning on two hours of sleep feeling extremely green and hairy. I guess that is the type of thing law enforcement is accustom to in Indiana. Manic-wheel-gripping-hairy-green-fuckers in dark shades with extremely high BAC's barreling down the 74 at Harrison in the wee hours of the morning. Making a last ditch attempt at salvaging their employment status. He made it to work. The man is a true warrior! A breed of human the likes of which I rarely encounter.

Man, I remember a very precarious position of the same circumstance that I was involved in. I was going the opposite way though. This was back in 2005? Anyway, I was partying with the aforementioned friend. It was the weekend that speedway Ron closed up the gas station and mini mart in Loveland, Ohio at 11:00 p.m. Told all the customers that the filing station was closing. Going out of business. That was it! No mas! He was off to Florida to test time travel portals. Some top secret NASA shit. My buddy, my then girlfriend from Chicago, and myself bought a 24 pack of Bud and helped him lock the door.

I got gas there the next morning. Apparently the Speedway corporate office didn't get the memo about the branch closure! I was driving a rented Chevy Impala and I was extremely hungover, sleep deprived and disoriented. I had to be at Chicago O'hare that evening to catch my flight back to Palm Springs. It was a mad dash West then North in the middle of December with snow covering the land and black ice laid invisible across the asphalt. It was a true test of endurance. Both physical and mental. I remember when I got over the state line into Indiana I pulled over at a rest stop. Went inside to drop a load and fell asleep on the toilet! My girlfriend was pissed! To a large degree! I don't think she ever forgave me. Oh, well. D.J., if your out there, I am sorry ... really baby.

By a mother-trucking wing and a prayer I persevered and made my flight. I don't think I managed to drop my girlfriend off at her house though. She lived way up on the Northside, almost to Evanston, and I was in a hurry. She had to take the L-train home from O'Hare. Which is like an hour or so ride on the train. With all her luggage and shit. Total dick move on my behalf. No wonder the gentler species hates me!

Really though, not much of a "night-lifer" these days. My Saturday evening (last night) was about as eventful as nothing. I laid in bed in my underwear watching Keira Knightley in the motion picture Domino. I tell you  what, short hair even looks good on that woman. Not to many chicks can pull it off. Mickey and Tom were great in the movie to. Even those Jabroni's from Beverly Hills 90210 were slightly amusing. Man, what is becoming of me lately. I have been down in the mouth but really, Shawn? I am about as threatening as a wood sliver these days. All kinds of shame in my game.

Well now ... let me see ... what is it I am doing in this "blog" today? I guess I am just checking in. Trying to figure. Throwing some memories up into the air. I've been away from this to long. Been playing gigs. Burying bodies. Chasing love around. Getting burned in the process.

My hairdresser is moving to Austin, Texas in a few months. I heard the news yesterday. Out like a porch light in the ghetto. She is just going to hang out with friends for a bit. Needs a change of pace. A new couch to crash on. A change of scenery. New faces and new possibilities. Maybe, she will never come back. I am a true fucking fan of those "dangerous maybes." A co-worker of mine down at the mortuary wants to go back to college but doesn't know what for. Not sure of her career path or money ambitions.She just needs a catalyst. When you have no direction you just got to start walking. Get on the bus and see where it takes you.

Me on the other hand, I have always known exactly what I wanted out of life but I could never attain it! I've been hitching my horse to the wrong post for as long as I can remember. Strange paradox my existence. Maybe I am scared little shit with serious commitment issues. Perhaps I just attract nothing but failure and bad luck. Or, it just might be that I've planted my seeds in the wrong soil for all these years. Maybe it is time to light out for the territory ... parts unknown ... dangerous maybes?!

I've been locked down in the "dark desert" for a long spell now. So long in fact that I can no longer see the possibilities. I can no longer reach out and feel for a dream. My roommate said it best, "Shawn, you gotta get out of here man! I always think to myself that one day I will come home from work and find that you hung yourself in the garage!" Whenever he is not at the job he is leaving the desert. Down in San Diego for the rest of this week. He will transfer out of this sand trap in the near future.  

I fought against the "dark desert" my whole life. In the last year it has owned me completely ... mind, body and soul. All men enter ... no man leaves. At least not alive.
 

New Skin

Walking forward
heavy on the shoulders
an invisible pall
death moves into my footsteps
as I lift a shoe, the reaper quickly steps down
into my footprint
the grimness is chasing me
we are close to being one …

Tired
the evenings are Chinese lanterns
floating in dark waters
slow movement
the low undulation of moaning
a woman’s voice
faint in the distance
whispering my first name
I see a seagull take flight
followed by a black crow
then a bottle rocket
streaming of red, blue, yellow
life yawns
crocodiles spin in the water
pirouetting like dangerous ballerinas
hungry for my
fresh flesh
warm blood.

Phone call
Chinese New Year
red pouch filled with burnt dollar bills
I make a motion
like I want you to come
here
but you text me madness and silly love
until I can’t stand
anymore
and still
my beckoning
goes
unrequited.

The dance is slowing down
the record skips
someone turns on the light
the room exposed
everyone scurries away
and I am standing here alone
again,
once again.

Where Are They Now

Life is the strangest thing going
all you have to do is
take the old photographs out
let the eyes wonder at all
the different people that pass through our lives
stop and think about
where this ex-girlfriend is now
that friend dead before his time
shallow acquaintances that shared the stage with you
for only a few seconds
and now have faded into
the maze of modern being.

Eddie is doing 3 yards in county
for violating parole
Bernadine moved to Frisco
with a man twice her age
Aunt Millie died from congestive heart failure
after that road trip to the Grand Tetons
Doug is a paramedic
Steve is a merchant marine
that Drag Queen from Laguna Beach
with the best blow
is now a seven digit salary commanding CEO
and Joanne is still living in Chicago
on the Northside with her mother
and she works on Michigan Avenue
still, to this day
and that homeless guy running through the streets
with a purple bed comforter wrapped around his shoulders
screaming, "I need money for a salad!"
is now eating his salad somewhere
in God's lonely heaven.

We wonder all the time where it goes
but Time doesn't care
what we wonder
it just moves, man!
like the demon light of an electrical current
a shark in the water
a long distance runner on amphetamines
moving, moving, moving
the ocean tide crashing in
and slowly stealing people from your shoreline
as it crawls back into the depths
and that little baby girl in that picture
your daughter
that mystery of becoming
is now 16 years old
she is someone completely new and different
and, in a few years
she will become someone different
yet again
as you stand
with your back to the sun
decomposing towards your own inevitable end.

I'm looking for some clarity
that divine shot into the heart of the question
and I miss them all so much
the ones that I talk to every day
the ones that I will never lay eyes on again
the ones that live in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico
the ones that broke my heart
the ones who stole my wallet
and got drunk and passed out on my kitchen floor
even all those that I made to feel bad
and swept under the rug
just because I could
and something told me I should
because it was high time
to discover others
and move on.

If your reading this
and wondering about me
just know I am thinking about you too
with all sincerity and apologies owed
I didn't mean to get you knocked up
or to not return your calls
it was sheer coincidence and no fault of accidental happenings
that I stole your car
and robbed that liquor store
in St. George
thanks for picking me up
when the money ran out
and, by the way
I am sorry I got you evicted
from your apartment in Houston, Texas
for pissing on the neighbors head
from the second story balcony
that shit was really uncalled for
so, the next time you pass through town
drop me a
line.

Crestview Drive

The last good times I spent drinking

were with a real gone gal in Chicago, Illinois
many a grand night spent in taxi cabs speeding towards kicks
I remember tall laughter and wild talk in dark bars
and humor in spades
dressed to the nines and full of spit and vinegar
adventures and tales, boy oh boy
how we did  hoot and holler and …

it’s a cold January night now
a Sunday in 2012
it’s all over
any spin of the bottle bringing bleeding and muted sorrow
an image of myself
coming apart in slow motion
any city laws against burying in the garden
I shake my head and tell myself
it’s not a comeback it’s a return

an uncomfortable reminder that time has passed

dust on my exposed bulb
shadows crouch in every corner of this room
the lifestyle I was living
unsustainable
hitting walls are fun
even funnier at 157 mph

a touch of melancholy on the rocks

drunk with nothing every night
not even nostalgia can save this

nothing like tile floors for the tango
crumbling to dirt and poverty
nothing like shadows to spin around with
and only the silence
to dip down to the floor
cold dead eyes in your arms

they’re all loose in here
memories with hatchets and hacksaws
I lay in bed chained to the night
nothing but another writer without a publisher

a musician without a label
an entertainer without a stage

I’m starving for a soft shoulder to cry on
the darkness is the desert and vice versa
no way in and no longer any way out

I’ll send a picture postcard care of

Chicago, IL.

Shawn Mafia | Last Call on Christmas Eve | CD Baby

Shawn Mafia | Last Call on Christmas Eve | CD Baby

Click the link above and Download "Last Call on Christmas Eve" & "All I Got For Xmas Was a D.U.I." MP3's for free! That's $0.00! Merry Christmas to all! Offer ends at Midnight ~ 19x13 ` TTBO