i found myself hooked on the casino cleveland didn't have gambling for the longest northeastern holierthanthou with their antisin crusades the same old song and dance kept mgm at bay but then the horseshoe took over the old higbees building texas holdum blackjack and floors of ding ding singing slots at first i stuck my snot nose up at the mess saying that the tripe weren't for me but a friend took me to the buffet and while we waited for seating put a quarter in a machine lining them all up gave me two hundred and fifty bucks made my day night after night pressing buttons looking for ladyluck to smile on me again i won a lot and lost more a blast but hard on my wallet over three years in the hole about ten thousand at least but awarded diamond membership parking and casino perks teasing me to live in the joint a man i met at microcenter salesman i saw night after night too he looked older and older to my eyes sucked dry of his sales commissions grew a beard looking rough and unkempt i feltsorry for him until i looked in the mirror and looked rough like him with crazy eyes he died after a year i stopped going lost my diamond membership so i wouldnt 2.5 10/10 © Brian Peter Hodgkinson
Monthly Archives: April 2022
The Sucker
The Christmas Card
did you ever see someone so striking you were magnetically drawn to them that took place when i walked out the safeway supermarket that day i was stranded in hawaii after three months of job training on my bottom dollar went to the store to buy a coke february nineteen-eighty-two dripping from the ninety-degree island strolling the steaming cement sidewalk complaining to myself whimpering within begging for an answer for marching orders like praying please send me a messenger felt abandoned by friends not even a christmas card the past holidays not even a card to say thinking of you i wasnt embracing the suck from the cashier coke in hand leaving near the entrance grocery baskets she an elder lady stuffing plastic bags into her hip dress pockets puffed out like a mountie looked like a bag-lady her lizard-like skin leathery orange from the island sun i said hello asking her how's the day and asked if she were looking for hand to her car she said no but you do then fixing me with her smiling gaze we exited the glass doors side by side (( i don't have family or friends in hawaii just a hoale mainlander visitor from ohio for the short training camp but no air ticket back )) but this elder lady told me all about myself as we walked the length of the store's parking lot she told me details of my whining soliloquy while footing to the safeway an hour past like she were listening on my shoulder in my head to my self-talk i swooned as if having a panic attack found it hard to catch my breath she saw like a window inside my head i mouthed asking how how but i only gasped with lips quivering she put her finger to my lips and said shush stop you can't even begin to understand how i've walked with you from birth she told me of the whole sweep of my history everything she said true - spot on we came to her car blue model thirty years out of date a birdcage in the back seat sat her wide frame down into that small car me still standing eyes wide in partial shock rolled down the window and said turn around oneeighty i did don't even peek i didn't turn back i did she smiled with an envelope in hand for me don't read this until i'm out of here turn around again i did as she commanded waited... waited... no sound of the blue car's engine turning over i wouldve heard the ears were seriously listening after a while i looked over the shoulder the car just vanished no drivers were leaving the lot i looked at a distance just empty exit roads but the envelope still in my hand tore it and inside a christmas card baby jesus held by mother mary her writing inside remember me 3.5 10/10 © Brian Peter Hodgkinson
Going Bananas
captain cook went to the hawaiian islands in the seventeen-seventies he originally called them the sandwich islands after the earl of sandwich at first-contact with the europeans, the islanders looked at the ships the iron implements with ideas to obtain some for themselves captain cook and crew were like-the-gods trading their sex and jewels with the crew for cook's iron nails and trinkets but when cook landed the bigisland the 2nd-time the islanders saw cook and crew taking a siesta eating bananas this gave them cognitive-indigestion for the gods don't eat food the third landing in seventeen-seventy-nine the polynesians killed cook and crew on the shore of kealakekua bay during the festival to the fertility god lono i saw the monument saying this the spot captain cook fell cook didn't die for eating bananas but for lying to the polynesian people pretending he was god skinning them for sex and jewels just as some (some not all) televangelists and politicians overawe the gullible people today pretending they are sent from above skinning millions out of their money and brains two hundred and fifty years after cook wake up they eat bananas 2.2 10/8 © Brian Peter Hodgkinson
Limbic Lucidity
when the music ribbons the limbic edges the hours of the night into the wee morning only you can descale my eyes face-lines are the true chart to the tycho of the child's smile revolving past my lunar dark side the spiraling walled path is hemmed by bogs of those empty years you were not snaking the roots of the night shadows elongate but then de vine clings true making the granite rain another climb to the mossy bed at the foot of the knife-inscribed beech tree if we just...if we but sinking in quagmire loss of breath but only as i lost you you became the night eclipsed from the light but my leaves are still dotted with dewdrops from you 3.3 9/7 © Brian Peter Hodgkinson
Crazy Haunted John
john drank beer smelled like a brewery we walked from the highway to the fish sanctuary at captain cooks monument on the bigisland of hawaii near the plantations for kona coffee we snorkeled looking at zebra fish angelfish starfish kaleidoscopic colors saw a spotted openmouth wideeye creature staring up from rocks on the kealakekua bay's ocean bed john the former marine drunk nutcase three-prong speared the staring head part of a hidden eight-foot snakelike body wrapping around the shaft of the spear snapping to bite him in the end crazy john killed it and cooked it on shore with breadfruit and coconut delish like roast chicken (though feeling guilty, i tasted it) but the ghost of the moray eel together with captain cook's barnacled shade and numerous hawaiian deity haunt crazy john the rude beer drinker with the DTs biting him in the arse for unhallowing their sanctuary 4.3 10/10 © Brian Peter Hodgkinson
Beast
the beast looms over land and sea like a simulacrum of a giant raptor made of hundreds of darkiron birds the green ocean foams dark gray the shadow of fire spitting wings the light flees flames rise as the poison tipped feathers fly inland from the floating ocean aeries silence then sirens along the black sea coast the flapping as the guided droppings fall bodies charred on the street trembling pinned under rubble buildings gutted the smoke of hell a teddybear mourns near a black body bag teardrop crusted running dogs homeless as the carrion bird with the head of a bear appetite the size of countries eyes western skies the beast of the desolate gobbling won't stop 4.0 10/10 © Brian Peter Hodgkinson
Liminal
the trees are truncheon sentinels inhaling the green from the sun's prism stare their branches sky hangars for departing and arriving aerobat the panoply of siesta terminals for shufti wings twig hands spinning emerald palms drop mission helicopters chiasmus liminal bridges spraddle the sienna land and blue seas heliotrope rhizomatous sundials rangy from the core trees creaking out woodwind songs arrangements by the blowing minstrels the swaying abstruse voice of earth 3.7 10/10 © Brian Peter Hodgkinson
Flat
a tanned boy in brown trunks on the beach like a dead fish washed up on the shore a few people standing around stare at a boy dead from surfing hit the breakwater wall on the beach flat young face statue-still body bronzed well-muscled dead looked at by the blase scratching their heads most vacationers just walk on by shutting out the scene from their eyes shaking their heads takes the police an hour to arrive pick up the beach litter put the stiff in a truck expressionless faces the print of the boy in the sand russia put many corpses on the ground today so did ukraine lifeless bleached dolls litter the ground dressed in slacks and leather shoes hands tied behind their backs blood-prints in the shape of nameless bodies thrown in trenches some onlookers scratch their heads some shake them side to side all walk away 2.8 10/10 © Brian Peter Hodgkinson
Providence In Paradise
waikiki beach resonates the ocean's roar spear fish that night but swimming close to shore now and then, a warning shout of shark paddling back to sand from the ocean's dark by three prong spears, our bags full of fish the locals begin to fabricate a large wooden dish from flat dry planks, found washed up on the beach the fire's lit, the hawaiian friends to teach old coconuts tinder from their stringy husks as dry fuel, the fire quickly starts fish are cleaned laid across the driftwood planks that the coconut-husk fire made into hot plates roasting fish odors scent the ocean air thirsty, but they didn't bring the beer our teachers show how the coconut is drained with a whipping crack, milk pours out like the rain fish and coconut water sate us like paradise the siesta near the fire with smiles on our face the hosts tell us their stories how the island is alive and how they've utilized the palm tree to thrivingly provide 4.5 10/10 © 15 minutes ago, Brian Peter Hodgkinson
Crossing Over The Equator
i flew dutch airlines to kakamega kenya at the age of twenty eight near lake victoria in east africa took twenty-two hours to relocate from the nairobi airport to kakamega driving five hours by landrover through the pot-holed roads of kenya seeing giraffe and herds of zebra i lived among the luyia tribe they adopted me as their own stayed for twenty years, though from ohio but now share a distant home i've another loving family five thousand miles to the east we see beyond our skins and nationality we share together our global feast 2.3 10/8 © Brian Peter Hodgkinson