Here's some more TShirts:

Sunshine


Mountain

Fundraiser To Ensure I Get Probation: Victim's Restitution:

Thank you for keeping up with my thoughts over the last couple of years. I have by July 21st, to raise some money for the victim's medical bills to keep me from what my attorney says, "would be worse off " than if I didn't take the plea for probation. (I was facing 2-10 years prison). So what I have done is set myself up to make you a t- shirt for a suggested donation of $20. Less or more is fine. Please include which shirt you would like, what size, how to deliver/provide pick up, and your donation.

And if you don't see one you like, I have caps... I do have a deadline of July 21st to come up with at least $5ooo of the restitution to be assured probation and not prison time. I have $3000 pledged so far, so that leaves $2000 to come up with right off the bat. The other stipulations of probation will be no license for 2 years, 30 days jail (time served), AA, anabuse, $1500 fine, $5000 further restitution payments, 250 community service hours, and probation requirements.

There are other fundraisers in the works, so read to the bottom of this entry for other opportunities...

Here are the shirt designs so far, and thanks for all your faith, support, love, patience, and forgiveness.


"No Mas"



"Free Bologna"



"Mug Shot"



"Big Ern"
(thanks Bill)


Buy your handmade shirt today!
Any questions, call 210-527-0406.


Coming up...

Rummage Sale (donations accepted),
Friday and Saturday, June 27th and 28th.


And:

"Weenie Roast":
Hot Dog Plates for $5 suggested donation
Saturday, June 28th between 12-5.

Both at 735 E Myrtle, 78212.

Thanks for all your support!

Ernest

Reading The Dash

Street lamps yellowed my walk,
and the sirens of the law and medicine
remind me that I think God doesn't have time for me.
I'm awake still, and it's far past time for me to dream.
I'm trying to press forward on a dilemna that has no answer it seems.

I'm warming myself by an orange fire tonight, and as the planes fly overhead,
blinking red lights and pointing steady headlights,
I think these flights are something I want that pass over me as quickly, as fat, and as loudly.
I just can't have them right now, with this body, not with my stifled head;
I'm listening to sirens of law and medicine tell me God's so busy right now.

God's so busy, but blink anyway, He says, as if to reassure me that
I can ask or not, either way, it ends.

Delight of a Conquistador

I'm concerned. She's increasingly obsessing with psychic predictions and I know less and less how to engage her in any conversation where I could understand her. Talk to her. Tell me what to say.

It's late, and this and other troubling thoughts run through my mind. After the prayers have been said, laying on the couch, the one I sleep on when I don't feel like being on a bed.

Her sister had called and I could have said that, I think now. And then other thoughts. The ones to tell my son when he's older; now only five and not ready to hear about what daddy's drinking cost from his life.

I drank before I met your mommy. We seperated because of it. Then when we had too much to settle, I turned to it again, and you became less important to what I thought I had been missing out on.

No, son, your father is a very imperfect man. He struggles to face himself in the mirror. He struggles to look within. It's not easy for him. Not easy for me. But I have made many mistakes for which I am not proud. I only want you to learn from these mistakes, as I am learning from them. Don't but excel. Don't but do what is right by you, your God, your people.

Then the blame. First the blame. The order here is wrong. If only I had not put so much hope on money. Thought that it was important enough that if I were around it, networked with it, I would count. This, and I trail off to thinking of all the immensely important people who have been in my life. Some fleeting brushes with greatness, some enduring bonds with it.

If all were networking, being at the right social status, my life would have been more than alright. In fact, meeting a Nobel Peace Prize winner could have turned into a collaboration for social movements here. The bonds with those great people around me, my support to acheive what I truly dream for my world. The one your involved in.

But I keep coming full circle back within. After all, its only me and my dog on the sofa tonight. Only myself, pecking away at these keys. Only the thoughts of my own mind producing the necessary activity to run through these things with me. And you.

And the books. The offer for a ghostwriter opportunity. The one for a biography. Was I really too tired, all the hours of menial labor I was doing? Being in a new marriage and having a new son? Was it really so much to try and do that which excited me? Wasn't I ready for it?

And I remember now how long it's been, and how it was only once, that my likeness appeared halfway on a self portrait. Here I wonder what my reluctance is to look so long at myself.

And I remember the mistakes. So many of them. The cruelty I have. Violence. Poverty. Addiction. I have enough on my agenda to work through. Enough so that I haven't wanted to get started on it until now. I am thirty one, as I told my barber today. Thirty one, and only now realizing its easier to be bad. But inwardly I know its so much less rewarding.

So what of the poets and artista who said it was better that way? The tumult that brings art to life? Lies? Or is it that I am not strong as they? That my destiny is not like theirs? Not anymore. Not in the excess that i have practised it. Not when it affects those I love. I am not Bukowski. I have a loving family, believe or not, a loving ex wife, a loving child, and loving friends, whichever remember me or are still around.

I can be likable, although I remember bringing up a dark secret of hers with the rabbi and feeling like I had gained a victory. I tell my sister I have a machismo issue like it is a joke, afraid to tell her the truth as truth. I lie with the truth that way. Divert its intelligence by cracking it up with humorous tone, and cackling ends.

I am mad. No, Dali, nothing seperates me from the madman. I am he. There is not the difference of my not being mad. The fact is that I have slipped into it as soon as I stopped being sane.

And I am wondering when that was, if at all it ever was. The Catholic Church Seder where I drank all my wine to piss off my mother? The time I shot beebies at my brother's G.I Joe's, pretending I was a firing squad? The time I almost choked on a cookie?

Eat and drink to excess. Dioneses, you wish me death. And to the process of death by gluttoney and consumption doesn't seem to have any mysterious attraction to me now. Can I reverse this spell, or only slow it down now? I've grown fat, my mind is dull, and I have lost the color of my cheeks and eyes. Their is nothing attractive about that. I have become an embodiment of Mr. Fender's wasted days and wasted nights. I am now wasted years. What romance can be had from it?

The years without true love. The days without true work. My ambitions have softened with my age and my age accelerated by my lifestyle. I can only allow myself promises of improvements.

And I let her go. Their were chances to win her back. It gets harder every passing day. The relationship was founded on poor excuses, but their are every right reasons to remain together. Isn't a child a reason enough to try and rekindle love, and try dutifully to sustain it? Doesn't another parent understand this?

It's lost, let it go, I correct myself. What happened, like so many things for normal people, the kind that are sane and know it, if only insecurely, is that life provides each of us with psychological problems. It is our duty to process them, to learn from them, to grow from them.
It is this process that makes us each unique; not so much what we live through, but how we live through it that gives us our peronality.

I have not done so, for many of these problems. The ones that were par with my kind, neither the ones that were more specialized to my own life experience. And then what, what am I left with? Tableu Larasza, is it? The Eternal Sunshine of a Blank Lobotomy?

A full inbox to go through. A full agenda to complete. While my son keeps growing, and reaching new milestones. While my career is somewhere around oblivion waiting to be resurrected. While my friends drift further apart from my affections. While my body aches and slows all the more.

So within. The spiritual center where their is bliss. Where I fear and find complete comfort. Where I am most myself, and most afraid of my own power. This deity that God has placed within each of us. This is where I seek endurance and strength. The clarity to stay away from deceitful things, the questions which will send me packing for the hermetic lifestyle. Here I ask myself who I have become, what I am, and who dwells here within. And I know, and find comfort again...

waiting for the growing to begin anew. Twain, the youth would be wasted on the young, if youth were only a fountain of de Vaca.

Have a sweet night peddler of theives

Brisciut out the back of her car,
half used deoderant and lotion to sweeten the deal,
the change is a box of soda.

The deal on the night streets of San Antonio.

And perhaps I'll never learn right,
the way that's harder than this,
the way that makes all my troubles go away.

Keep them to the right, you say,
you and so many in their way.

And so the cool night welcomes the roaring trains,
the barking dogs,
the little bit of life left on a Friday night,
on the skirts of the city.

I am welcoming the night sweats of lovers,
commercial deals into fantasies.
I am bucking the sanity of the forlorn,
with scent and imagination gone, sitting alone.

empty vision.
empty vision for all with cable subscriptions.
the youth in the wealth, commodities of thought.
the plastic of this youthfulness, and the library of their knowledge curropted by the absence of real experience.
and I think, this is scary, as it seems to reveal what my fears are,
the ignorant supervision of my life.
the supervision of my life by the ignorant.
the ignored,
other than by day cares, and money trails.

ignoring the human quality of being involved in our dreams,
and the chthonian quality of entangling them with sacrifice.

And I wonder what hasn't sold,
whether outside in the street,
by the back of an unkown car,
by the arms of an untold woman.

What hasn't sold yet,
rebellion on empty visions,
redemptions on racial divisions.

What hasn't sold yet, is perhaps the hope
that something can't be bought or traded.
Dashed by divinity preachings,
devoured by the natural encyclics.

What a brisquit,
and I was hoping to barbeque,
she asked whether I did.
past midnight on a quiet evening.

Food stamp payola,
and my monitor tightens;
ignorance is not the lesson of law,
or isn't meant to be.

What hasn't sold,
isn't perhaps worthwhile,
except for the dreamers and believers,
the visionaries and young,
the old and forgotten,
who want to breathe in love,

without restrictions.

Cicadas

cicadas are back, am I ready for this time of year? I am wondering how long I will be monitored by the state, how much more of my life an interest of our county. I am wondering too, what time will it be whne it runs out for my family; the time it will be that I am in fact relieved of the roles that hinder my excellence, when I will excel beyond the roles I am seen for. I wonder this along with everyone else on trial. Wondering how to erase time, how to level the playing field, and how to capitalize and exploit it all at once. The path is a razors edge, difficult to traverse.

I am called a plagerist, by someone who hasn't read my writing before, and thinks it's anothers. Still, it feels unjust for some reason. By definition, she is correct, he is, the friend, yet I am inseperable as I wrote for him, and did so as the foolish friend. I wonder what path will I take to lead me to better friends, better people, who exploit life's grander themes, life's grander schemes. Or lesser, as the case may be in my chosen words, my chosen alliances, my reactions to lonliness.

And a year now has brought me to the point of knowing that life is passing us by, as I am home alone this weekend. I call and wait for company, and have none. The calls are telemarketers, and I play on the telephone with them. Sad, I think now. I read a little on the Upanishads, watch a little television, and take a call from the same friend who stole my language, my work, and used it for his business school assignment. Something to wail about, that may be why I agreed to it; speculated the return and did it to whine about the injustice. While waiting home alone for someone to make some sense for me, to lose it with me, to let me loose, and to benefit from life's delicacies with me; a company to lose sanity, and tumble with, to fall upwards with...

It's hot and I'm sweating a little. I still haven't showered today, somehow still feel clean, even as I masturbated earlier today to programming on television; I don't remember what. I still don't know if I am ready to build my garden for the year, if I've decided what I'll grow. I see the buds blooming on the trees, the warmth and dewy days are here, and the cicadas are chirping these nights, the last two. I have to go. The friend is here.

Hard and Heavy Thought

on the surface of things
it appears I'm doing;
the best I can,
and upon closer inspection
it's all I can do: to get by,
trying while skimming,
while skimming by.