Three Cheers for the Semi Good Stuntman

Everyone's got one last stunt up their sleeve.




when the Army started testing artillery
in the mountains at night
my jail cell shook under the heavy handshake
of thick violence and midnight wilderness
and it was bright.
BRIGHT. AS. HELL.

by the sound of it
the shells must've punched a solar system
of moon craters into that mountain

it sounded like Gods buckshot,
like HE was sitting up there
on his fancy cloud porch,
shooting and howling
"Don't ever TRY to come up here again."

Don't. EVER. Try.
Again...

you might ask me where it all began
and I might tell you

but you must remember
that I have as many secrets as I have teeth
and my mouth has become VERY crowded

tonight I will spit out my wisdom teeth
and you might catch your shiny magazine story
and you might not
sometimes you do not see or hear things,

sometimes you just understand

I have never looked for stars in a woman's eyes
starry eyes are a load of poetic bullshit
most woman's eyes
are ugly plane crashes in the Andes
the kind where people end up eating each other

I've earned a lot of wrinkles as a sleeping pilot
and I only earned a sore throat as a flight control tower
sometimes I still speak in radio transmissions

Can you hear me?
......Over.
Come in. Over....

the secret is to find a woman
and I mean a a REAL woman!
the kind of woman that you would fake the moon landing for
the kind of woman that would make stilts high enough
to walk out to Catalina
and bring back a shell for you
and in that shell
she'd hide a decades worth
of "Groovy"
every time you held it to your ear
you'd feel like a dear in her headlights

you want to find the kind of woman that's soft on the outside
and fierce on the inside
you want a pair of perfect "You know whats"
banging against tiger cage ribs
that's a REAL woman
HOT DAMN!

you want to find a woman who's got
some professional tonsil hockey skills
and a vagina like a new chainsaw

you want a woman who declares thumb wars like a samurai
and knows how to destroy cities

you want to give her a chandelier
so she can make it a BROKEN chandelier
to better tell dinner guests
the story of how you collided with her
one summer night
like two trains at top speed
wreckage flung across four states

and when you decide to go to the moon
and not come back

you want the kind of woman that says
"Its hard to know you..."

because it is

what you DO NOT want
is to inhale crabs
that is a fact. Not a molar.

my mother is a good woman
she always makes too much food for dinner
she doesn't know why she does this

But I do

because when my brother Sammy came back from Korea
he was one tough motherfucker
he got hired as a local weatherman
just part time
he liked to say
"Let me tell you something"
and then he'd tell you somethin'

his usual forecast was
"Its hot as balls out there"
and nobody said anything.
that's America!
THATS THE RABBIT HOLE!
that's the real beat man!

he had 26 years of gravity
swelling in his voice
the kind of gravity that could make the moon
follow you when you drove around town

when a blizzard blew in
he didn't give a shit about any temperatures
we would just pontificate
and talk about how this was "Pussy Shit"
and that in Bravo company's retreat from Chosin
guys had to choose between freezing to death
or being turned into pink mist by snipers
stay warm by a camp-fire
or freeze in the dark

his weatherman career was short lived
but people listened
because he categorized days into two groups:
days when he would choose the fire
and days when he just couldn't make one

we stayed up late on the porch
spitting into 2 AM darkness
and he'd tell me how his barrel melted
from shooting down a hill at 300,000 Chinese regulars
"Chinks can't fight their way out of a piss soaked paper bag.
But there's a million of em. Yuh dig?"

he had some heavy god damn boots

so we had a party for him
down by the river
on the 4th of July
and most of town came to see him
mom cooked her heart out
because she was happy
and very proud

it was my favorite 4th of July I can remember
because Sammy was home
but I didn't tell him
because that would have been some "Pussy Shit"

everyone ate and swam and laughed
and slapped Sammy on the back
and their was an earthquake
Pa said it meant God was happy too

when Sammy took Pa's shotgun
and started shooting all the squirrels in the trees
he'd yell "Airborne!" every time he squeezed the trigger
blasting rodents
into squeaking explosions of fur and flying buck teeth

Sam!

-Airborne!
BAM

SAM! What the hell...

-Airborne!
BAM BAM

Sam....

I put my hand on his shoulder and said
"You can't get them all"
he said he knew.
I don't think we were talking about squirrels

he'd been home for a few months
when he told us he had to find himself.
he "HAD to go"
I understand now. But I didn't then.

Pa looked at the floor
Ma demanded one more night
the way moms demand
and Sammy said "Of course"

mother cooked quietly
she cooked fast
she was in a hurry
so we could watch a box of home videos
from when Sammy and I were little
the ones when Ma and Pa pulled us in rusty wagons
and we decorated a sidewalk
with blue chalk celebration

there was no sound for home movies back then
so we invented the words
and they went something like this:

Ma-"Whats your favorite color Sammy?"

Sam-"Purple"

Ma-"Why"

Sam-"Because that's the color my finger turns
when I tie a string around it"


he'd be gone by the time we woke up
so when he was asleep
I went to his room and sat next to him in the dark

I thought about waking him up
tell him I loved him
tell him I was proud of him.
ask him not to go
but that would have been sissy.

so, instead I cried.
I sobbed.
I wept like a twelve year old school girl
and that...
that was the first time I died

in the morning there was a note

To my little brother:
Let me tell you something,
Purple is the color of home-sick blood.

that was the last time we ever heard from Sammy
it is what he wanted I think

Airborne!
I wonder if there's a squirrel heaven....

now for more radio lingo

Can you hear me? Over.
Quit being purple. Over.

my inner radio is broken.
sometimes my fillings tingle
I hear faint static when I eat grilled cheese

I pretend its the sound of my brother
and somewhere in Mexico
he's untying his string

just for mom
so she doesn't have to keep throwing away food
every night

ever since I turned 18
Ive been living on the skin of my teeth
eating fire and glass,
shoving nails through my cheeks
balancing on balls, and juggling swords
living in unfinished buildings
trying to perfect the art of sawing women in half

I was a semi-good stuntman
some days I paid for my sins.
some days I tried to pay for everybody elses

I learned how to blow my head off
splatter my voice-box on the sidewalk
so the rats could carry home a clumsy song

I became part of a super secret club
to replace every white light bulb in LA
with a purple one
its was going to be fantastic

I helped fake the moon landing in '69
and the night I did
my limbs were heavy prosthetics
filled with my brothers melted barrels
and bloody snow

Ive secretly kept a bucket of blue chalk
on my fathers porch
because mom said that he's old now
but he stills gets on his creaking
hands and knees to draw stuff every 4th of July
and then he sits in his rocking chair
and talks to himself and smiles
Mom says he's got dimentia
I say "Its better this way"

someday, just like every other secret
these things wont have to be kept so quiet

I got arrested in in 1980
for sawing a women in half at a cheap carnival

I told the jury
THEIR truth is like that

THEIR truth is in the gas chamber
in their slaughterhouses
on their reservations,
it built their railroads

their truth is small pox gift-baskets
their truth is rotting in the subways
and kneeling in church pews
their truth is uniformed roadkill on desert highways
nerve gas cake candles, and date rape
it's the bullet that killed John Dillinger
their truth is paid for with silver and gold

their truth is without magic.
their truth is a woman sawed in half in Dayton Ohio
in front of three hundred people

the judge sentenced me to life in prison
and Ive been burning through calendars
like a scientist burns through rats

how long do I have to pay for my sins
I am getting tired

Can you hear me? Over.
I am getting tired. Over.

30 years later I am headed for the chair
I am a dead man walking
it is what I want

You want to know MY truth for your magazine
you want to know who I am

the truth is that magic does not happen at magic shows

magic is muting your TV
and inventing the words

magic is saying sissy things

it is artillery in your chest
smashing away, shouting:
SHOW ME YOUR BUCKSHOT HEART
SHOW ME YOUR BOOTS FILLED WITH GRAVITY AND BOOZE
SHOW ME YOUR CHAINSAW VAGINA
SHOW ME YOUR AIRBORNE SOUL
SHOW ME YOUR WET STILTS
SHOW ME YOUR ILLEGAL PURPLE LIGHTBULBS
SHOW ME YOUR TRAINWRECK GROOVYNESS
SHOW ME YOUR MELTING ASTRONAUT DINNER GUESTS

magic is truth

and the truth is childhood is written in chalk
and that is why old people dislike rain

the truth is flexing your wheelie
from the river to the porch just because

the truth is plane crash cannibalism
and snowy campfire graveyards
and purple fingers
pulling the trigger to a melting barrel
aimed at a moon nobody ever walked on
because its better that way

the truth is hot as balls

this is my last stunt....

I'm leaving my molars and fillings for my mother
so she can hear the static of strings untying
so she can be ready for her suprise dinner guest

I'm leaving a bucket of chalk for my father
so he never forgets the weight of rusty wagons

I'm leaving my jacket for my brother
so he wont have to categorize his days anymore

I am leaving my secrets to the woman I never sawed in half
so they can teach the audience
that they do not need to listen or watch anything
to understand magic

I am just a semi-good stuntman

when the switch to my electric love seat flips
my restrained hands will shake like San Fran in 89'

my fingers will scratch out the trenches of world war one
on my arm rests

flames and smoke will climb out the windows of my face

I am scared to die for the second time

but it is good to know, some places will always feel
like the fourth of July