*weekly cross post with my subscribers only artist Patreon account.*
At 45, I have lived through more than 2,350 Mondays. Some of them have been more noteworthy than others. Today was one of them.
I began to write this at 7am Central Standard Time, while I was sitting in the library-quiet of an auto repair shop in Mount Vernon, IN, the westernmost town in the Hoosier state. I didn’t get far before I was interrupted by a five foot tall, 73 year old man with exceptionally large ears in comparison to the rest of him. His voice was squeaky pitched as he insisted on telling me about his dogs. Then how his mother died giving birth, how he was adopted, and how his wife wouldn’t move south so he was stuck forever in southern Indiana.
Me and the notorious Portsmouth poet J.I.B. were driving straight through from a big, heart warming reading in St. Louis last night, when we blew out a tire going 77MPH down a midnight black highway right at the Illinois/Indiana line. If it wasn’t 1am when it happened, we could have viewed the famed Wabash River from where we sat while we waited for a tow truck from a town 30 miles away. They don’t put spare tires in many new cars, because automakers are cheap capitalists and have figured that’s a good way to save money. Or, as one company engineer at the Toledo Jeep Plant once told me, “80% of Americans have roadside assistance anyway.” I am not one of them, by the way.
After a long night of short naps and car camping in the auto repair parking lot, me and J.I.B. sat stoically far more disheveled and unwashed than usual, as our new friend that we did not consent to having, filled us in on some YouTube preacher’s prophecies of an earthquake following the recent eclipse. It was wild shit, and me and J.I.B. were on the verge of potentially hurting our new friend’s feelings any second, like we were both squirming in our seats with extreme politeness, when the only tire shop for 30 miles let me know that my twice-as-expensive-as-anywhere-else-in-modern-civilization tire was on and we were set to split town. Thank God for lucky timing.
So, I’m finally back in Portsmouth, OH for our last night of the six straight night poetry tour, and I need a nap like a starving man needs fed. But it’s another Monday, and sometimes we get to microdose it, and sometimes it’s a hero’s dose.
The last week has been so fucking amazing that it’ll take me days and weeks to figure out how to tell y’all about it. I can’t tell you how grateful and lucky I am to get to do the things I keep showing up for and getting invited to.
After five days and 2,650 miles of heartland highway, after five shows, five days of non stop art talk and driving, riotous laughter, joyous yelps and rebellious yawps, after a hundred marijuana cigarettes, many smoked two or three at a time, and 200 cigarettes, too much coffee and not enough sleep, my voice is nearly gone, and my determination to keep driving one more hour is as frayed as my favorite trucker hat.
It would still take three flat tires, two biblical plagues and seven horny angels to keep me from reading poems and celebrating late into the wee hours of tomorrow in honor of J.I.B.’s new book of poetry, American Television. It’s one worth celebrating, and deserving of a proper rager. So, tonight we give of what is left, and awaken tomorrow to pick up the pieces, collect our dirty stray socks, and limp back home smiling like a petty thief that’s just gotten away with the haul of a lifetime. Damn. Who has it better than us?
This week. There’s a show tonight in Portsmouth at the Landing. Doors at 7. It’s the official book release party for American Television and unofficial end of the official tour. I imagine it’ll be noteworthy.
Then who knows, except somehow I’m going to be in Owensboro Kentucky Saturday for Bards & Busker Fest. You should get there, too.
Love y’all. Thanks for helping make all this possible this past week.
-Dan
Imagine trying to convince this man of earthquake and E-clipse doomsday prophecies. Photo of J.I.B. in aforementioned tire shop at 7:05am this morning.
American gas stations are their own art form
On the bar at the Spine Bookstore in St. Louis. You can stop in and buy a copy of The Dead and the Desperate. It’s now on their shelves.
Wow. What a time! I hope there's a poem about your big eared buddy.
I know the barbarian book he is reading😊