A Day In The Life Of An Earthworm

What’s punk without the soul of grunge and the spirit of funk? A heavier world includes blues-inspired grunge metal as the perfect sound for earth and dirt and worms. Nothing in the world could stop me from worming my way in. Flashback to a West Coast mid-summer’s night in 1994 after Kurt Cobain’s stupid death.

He was fondly remembered. I wrote him poems as a die-hard fan and I liked his music. I saw a few of his first gigs when I visited my aunt and uncle in Seattle. Across the street played my childhood idol slowly losing atoms to chaos amidst the indifferent mountains and hardcore punk rivals. Piece by piece he’d give his soul. Piece by piece I’d join him. And then I went back one last time. To say that I wasn’t part of the whole problem was like not believing Green Eggs and Ham and Fried Green Tomatoes could be made into cool rhythm and blues.

One memorable night in Seattle, I took a page out of the post-grunge post-death of Kurt Cobain. Tilting my head back, the glass of scotch had given me a huge buzz, slowly focusing my eyes at the vaulted ceiling, posters of The Doors and Black Sabbath, but Kurt Cobain was to-die-for. Freely visiting from Burlington, Ontario, Canada and I'd made it inside a rich penthouse in Seattle, Washington to join in on a party dedicated to Kurt’s sick memory. Courtney Love walked over to me and the black leather couch, beside the rustic bar area. She was pale. She wore a long black dress with gold beads draping down from her neck. I'd never forget her don’t-fuck-with-me attitude and sexy, bitchy, out-of-this-world, whore-like attraction almost as though she'd just come off the set of Casting Couch.

“Never-mind the suicide note,” she said.

            

“What?” I asked. I actually never saw the note.

         

“Kurt really wanted to go to Starbucks with you.” There was a tear in her eye.

            

“What? How do you know this?” I asked.

            

“I talked to him on the phone before he got stoned and took his life.”

            

“Seriously?”

            

“Kurt read Earthworms Squirming On A Fishhook and he liked it.”

            

“Thanks,” I said, “I wrote the poem after getting high on a fishing trip.”

            

“A lot of good that did,” she said sarcastically. “What difference does it make?”

            

“Earthworms breathe through the skin and they can’t stay outside in the light for more than hour or they will die. But they don’t feel pain.”

            

“Kurt was a worm,” she said.

            

“I know,” I said and sighed.        

            

“He needed help.”

            

“I’m sorry.” Holy shit, I thought to myself how suddenly I’d become a part of the whole fucking problem. I stared at her sad eyes and her freshly powdered nose.

"You're not sorry." 

Hole's troubled star singer turned away. Her bleached clothes, dyed-purple hair and watery eyes made me think maybe poets were Brothers In Arms and maybe I’d listened to enough Suicidal Tendencies mixed with a twinge of Nirvana. They opened the door to me, so I could join the party and I was grateful. My eyes were wide open watching everyone with drinks in their hands and stoned frowns like the world had ended. Sir Paul McCartney stood in a lonely corner.

Courtney rudely ended the conversation and went to the bathroom. Background music of The Doors whisked her away into another room where she closed the bathroom door. Roadhouse Blues got louder and louder.

The more I got drunk, the more I thought (and believed) how I was separated at birth with Kurt and owed him all apologies for not sitting down to talk over Zen Green Tea and a good old-fashioned orgy of poetry.

I shook my head (almost like I was listening to AC/DC) and just thought wow the whole night.

Do You Know How Much A Gorilla Is Worth?

Too Not Good To Believe

But this is not time for change. I don't want this to fool you, so I’m warning you that this blog would be better if I was fully conscious and if I was writing from the perspective of a gorilla. If I was a gorilla, I would be blogging from the top of the Empire State Building in 3-D. I want to set up a Gorilla Academy as the last new school available to mankind.

Speaking Gorilla

This phrase stemmed from a period when the American legendary wrestler and great commentator, Gorilla Monsoon, spent time working in the city of Bern, Switzerland at a Cuckoo Clock repair shop. The clockmaker would insist on cleaning the face of the clock after the necessary adjustments had been made. On the point of sale with a receipt in the hand of a customer about to exit, Gorilla popped up from the workshop, located at the back of the store, and declared: “He just got his clock cleaned!” It was charming at first, but Gorilla did it every time with every customer after that, and soon it began to tire and he was fired from the job and banned from Switzerland. Whenever I’m asleep, it’s like I’ve been punched out by a gorilla in the middle of a monsoon. The more you learn about the dignity of the gorilla, the more you want to avoid people. For some reason, lately, all of my dark thoughts are with axes.

It’s like I’m drugged out of my mind, but my head feels lighter than a cloud of alcoholic vapor. Turning onto the other side of the pillow, I wake up still drunk. The alarm goes off and it’s the sound of a soothing jungle, but something seems a bit wrong and everything doesn’t quite add up. I’m confused and laughing at my mistakes. Dreading going to work without taking a shower all weekend, I’m feeling the static electricity pulling at my hair, causing it to stand up. Everything seems crazy and it’s even more weird that my dreams are becoming real. Quickly, I grab a pen and paper and write at a time where I’m feeling sheer panic and I’m at the height of paranoia. Popping a few bedside pills, I write more and feel relaxed in the darkness of thoughts.

I put down my writing devices and check my phone. My phone has pictures of trees from The Enchanted Forest. As I check my Facebook profile, there are links to the Hole problem. I check iTunes and my playlist is everything Nirvana and the Hole dark romance. The ape truth.

The Hole Problem In A Nutshell

I’m stuck in the 90s but Home Improvement is real and no longer a show on TV (my wife called to have renovations done to the bedroom bathroom). As I turn on the TV, the enlarged picture of a dead gorilla is staring me in the face. Kurt Cobain’s suicide is not being reported from Seattle. 

(But The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air is still a funky fresh flashback. The morning news is live from a zoo in Ohio. But why do I care about a fucking dead gorilla? And why am I scared I won't be able to afford banana bread when I'm free to write about the jungle of life? The lost banana?)

I’m bad axe throwing every Saturday and convinced I need to take the sharp axe to the talking tree in The Enchanted Forest on the edge of reality. I’m reading The Legend Of The Wicked Path while passing out staring at a can of Coke beside the night table of the bed. My head falls backward onto a pillow. I close my eyes and want to take an axe to the forest and chop down the talking tree from my fucked up flashbacks. Running faster and faster, sweat is running down my forehead. I’m madder than a gorilla with a sharp axe, but without bananas and fearing death from the animal response team. I’m looking behind me and see nobody. I’m alone in my dreams. I look up and see the tree that’s been talking to me. I hear voices, but the animal response team probably think I’m causing a riot on the golf course. Just because Hunter S. Thompson would golf on acid doesn’t mean I enjoy hacking. I fooled the animal response team. My eyes open; now I hear the sound of a ringtone. It’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and With A Little Help From My Friends. I’m listening to a high-pitched radio frequency in my mind with nobody around. I grab my phone, playing fucked up Beatles music, and I throw my phone against the wall. It smashes and the music stops and there's nothing but the legendary silence of darkness.

Unpublished on most planets