All That You Can't Leave Behind

Not A Cobra, A Dream.

"All that you can't leave behind, that's what fucks with you boy," she said as I walked out of the open door of the dressing room at Filene's. Made me feel like a thousand bucks even though the suit was less than half that.

I said, "I know, but to punctuate is just too hard, and you are not available, or so that's what I hear, or wouldn't make yourself so, because you understand my psychological dilemna so thoroughly."

I took the suit, and another and we left that place, and then to the tailor, and measurement where I realized that just as the universe is expanding, I too am expanding... take a walk, shun the sedentary lifestyle.

We went back to her place for a beer or two, and she had a quarter bottle of whisky, and some grain alcohol her daddy had procured for her a couple of years back, and a vintage bottle of Carlo Rossi, and the shit really hit the fan.

I cannot flirt you must first realize, unless I do it here, and that is no kind of way for the whole thing to go down. I can write of you before or after I fall asleep, I can make strange faces toward the moon too. My body can become a somnambulist at the turn of a phrase, and this latter thing is what concerns me the most.

Me walking 'round sleeping and you in a henhouse, nuthouse, riotact, slave cell, and me walking through the night with vacancy in heart, bed and mind.

I don't know what the sexiest song that I have ever heard is, but every song I have ever heard that I really liked made me feel sexy in some way. Forgot to mention Afghan Whigs, and you were right about Nina Simone, I've got her in my disc player which apparently granted considerable mileage at the end of a night.

But you are right, all that I can't seem to leave behind haunts me, I can see the future just as brightly as all getout, but the subdued hues of the past seem to strike chords that cannot be interrupted. I walk through Oakland Cemetery tonight with a half stallion, a half prince, a whole heart and a half head - to your house, where I hope the cobra does not bow it's neck, does not make a hiss, does not come from the basket. I have fife in hand, and multitudes in heart.

Please forgive me, all I said could never be true.

Women to Avoid pt. 1: The Wiccan

She is usually in her thirties with a string of long-term but essentially unfulfilling relationships with men who work in the public sector. You should be alerted to her tendencies when one of her first questions enquires about either: a) Your birth sign; or, b) The name and number of your aromatherapist. This woman is to be avoided at all costs.
Early on in the relationship - which she will only persue if your auras are compatible - she will insist on a number of incomprehensible tarot card readings which will later increase in frequency to eventually (within two years) replace sexual contact. At some point in the first three months you are likely to return home to find her weeping uncontrolably in the kitchen. When pressed she will admit to having visited a medium who contacted her late and extremely alcoholic father. Even though the experience has clearly disturbed her she will claim it has exorcised several "ghosts of the past".
It is certain that she will shun conventional medicine in favour of various quack practices to cure even the most treatable of everday complaints and ailments. So, expect to find blood on your bed sheets when she is treating her cystitis with crystals.
Every freak and fundamentalist is a certified evangelist. Be wary as she will try to convert you by a combination of lacing your food with various unsavoury potions and covert hypnotic suggestion. The best way to protect yourself is to tell her that everthing she believes in is a pile of horse-shit and throw the witch out into the street. Be sure to paint a pentangle (preferably in goats blood) on your door to prevent her gaining re-entry.

Pools and Platetectonics

La Virgen de Guadalupe

I was back home for summer break and all around the pool all day, everyday, were the kids from the neighborhood, the nieces and nephews, grandchildren to my parents. The summer was awash in hazy blue chlorine-ness. Having made my first paycheck at the radio station night gig, and having made a pact with Richie that we would get tatoos once we had the money and had passed final exams, we were off on the third week of break around midnight to the parlor where I got the multi-colored Virgen de Guadalupe stamped on my right shoulder - just like the ones you see on the sides of those tall, glass devotional candles. Back at home Mom was not so excited about this, especially about fact that it poked out of the bottom of the average short-sleeve shirt. She still helped me apply the salve and at least on one occasion she noted, "Well, at least it is pretty."

There was laughing, swimming and singing from the little tots all the days, and at night I would meet up with the high school friends for dinner and the occasional drink sneak, reporting to the station at shortly before midnight and spinning records (because playing CDs, whereas more truthful, just doesn't sound as good) until around sunrise.

Occasionally, Whitney would come by after she closed at the restaurant and we would talk about what was, and could of been between me and her. One time she tried to kiss me on the lips, and with an open mouth, before she left - or was it the other way around? I can't really remember the sequence of events now, but there was something of an intmate moment sparked between us, originator unknown.

Then it happened. It was three days before I was to go back to school and it was the day after my last gig at the radio station. We were all out by the pool. The neighborhood kids had all gone home, so that left me, mom and dad, my brother and sister-in-law and my nieces and nephew. The kids were playing in the shallow end and dad was fixing cocktails and slipping one to me for every three he allowed himself. We were getting ready to start up the grill and make porkchops for dinner, when I noticed that the pool was sinking.

I assure you that this is true. The pool was sinking into the ground. It was fracturing around the edges and detaching itself from the surrounding concrete patio and sinking. As it sank a fiery red glow appeared in the fractures and I watched it a full 5 minutes before calling it to the attention of anyone else. Even the kids in the pool didn't seem to notice it. Dad was only fixing me vodka tonics, which I was used to, so I was sure that my eyes were not fooling me, that this was real.

Then my brother noticed and went to get the kids out of the pool. As he approached, the incresingly red breach between concrete and pool widened, he had to to do a full strained straddle over it to grab each one of the kids and pull them out.

Then came smoke and gurgles, sounds that Richie's stomach would make after going to Burrito Hut #4. Then from the breach came oozing and bubbling lava, just like what I had seen on those Discovery Channel documentaries about the volcanoes in Hawaii. But, I mean, this was a fucking pool, man! The smoke and bubbles increased and under the patio, where we are all still just sitting watching the pool sink into the earth, tremors could be felt. The tremors turned to full-blown shakes, and everything became a bit blurry and wavey, the way that my computer screen looks when I have my electric toothbrush in my mouth.

THen came the crack, the sound, and I can focus again, but only on one thing... the floating, slow motion, globule of lava that is coming for me. I turn left in slow motion as well, to avoid this steamy projectile when it hits me. I mean it really hits me. Right on the shoulder, my right shoulder, right on the Virgen de Guadalupe, and I fell to the concrete. Laying there, listenening to my skin sizzle, I look and the pool is completely gone now. The smoke has cleared. My father brings the fire extinguisher and tries to put out my sizzling shoulder. I look down at it for the first time and all that is recognizable as shoulder, or anything, is her shrouded head with eyes looking toward the ground.

We Have Liftoff

Open for Business.

Hankvegas.com has launched for all of the hungry masses. Go there now for video and audio samples, most of which have never been posted here. A more substantial site will be coming in the near future, but we needed to get something out there right now. For any of you that will happen to be in the Macon area for the Cherry Blossom Festival, come see us on Saturday, March 29 at Riverfront Bluez where there is sure to be ample amonts of rascalism going on. If you can't make it, look for us out elsewhere soon, and if you have ideas of where we should play near you please email us.

Conflicted

A whalebone revisted.

Because it was raining tonight, and St. Patrick's day, that crazy Briton, and the fact that I had no water at my house as the H2O department made a periodic sweep of the non-payers, I tried to call you tonight at 12:30. The snails have returned to the porch and whales are out swimming off-shore again. Blubber to bluberty blub, I might find my way to the pub and a half pint later make the swoon eyes toward the door. But know darling, my aim is true now, nothing but heartfelt sentiment, a little Hamlet, a little argonaut, and you to finish out a secret potion I have kept for a time now. Please be aware of my indiscretions as they are not me at all, I write them off like taxes from an unknown ancestor. You make your way across the street and the whole of the cosmos comes together, at least here in this little place. I have seen you dancing, seen you strumming, 5-string banjos and pedal steel guitars to make light of the situation. Tomorrow I will be back to work. This has to end somehow. I smell it in the air, on this night, a harpoon waiting at starboard, a new whalebone sinking into the setting sun.

Man & Wife

She met this guy at a bar in Austin, Texas. She' d graduated from UT about six months earlier and was drinking hard and taking drugs when she wasn't waiting tables for minimum wage. He was originally from St. Louis but was in town to see his grandparents before he headed off for the Army. They got talking and at some point - she never made the time-scale clear - they decided to get married.

She said she was tired of feeling lost and lonely, her thoughts distressed her, that this could save her. He was kind, smart, gentle; he was funny. They figured that instead of letting what they'd found fall by the wayside they'd do somethig about it. And that's the reason you marry someone. Right?
The day after they were married he started basic training, their only means of communication was by mail. She was lonely again, but at least now she had hope. When basic was over they got together and it seemed that they still wanted the same things from life, from each other. So now she's living with him in North Carolina and life is slower, safer. She loves him, worries about him; and he loves her, too. She said that now she finally has someone else to think about instead of just concentrating on her own hang-ups. She said that she couldn't handle any criticism of what she'd done - not that she expected me to be critical. She said a lot of things.
Whatever she has to do, however long she has to wait, she still wants me in her life, still needs my support.
How, when disaster is looming with such imminence, when sooner or later this crazy world of hers will coming crashing down, can I tell her that I never want to see her again?

Me, The Devil & Her

Mozart similarly met the devil.

Baby, it was your hair that made me fall in love with you. Ginger from head to to toe burned through my body upon the first touch ... and the last. I didn't know upon meeting you that violin was your proclivity, and the night I found you, violin prone with the hair wound up, bow-bound, into the stings up to your ear, with safety scissors I delicately hacked trying to extricate you from that mess. Your hair, horse hair, all one entangled mess. The way you got into it always made me worry a bit. Writhing about like the women in the front row at a Mississippi tent revival. Like some spirit overtook you when that eggshell of an instrument began to resonate from your hands pulling the bow across it. I always thought luthier sounded a bit like lucifer, and that night, I am convinced, the hand of the devil came down to tangle your locks into that bow. The hand of the devil is what made me walk across that floor to you and and cut until a good inch in length was removed from all sides of your left ear. That failing, we had to break the bow in three places to finally free you from the hellish mess. Scissors to the side and various pieces of bow strewn about, I took you crying in my arms there and we rolled the floor like we hadn't since the first time, that first night. I went to see string shop on 9th Street in the morning to get a new bow for you and as I left the merchant said to me with his red eyes glowing, his forked tongue waggling, "Try to be more careful with this one."