2. Pluck a small hair from the outside of your nose.

3. Coat your finger with peanut butter and let your dog lick it clean, permitting as much mouth-play as you’re comfortable with. Your goal here is gnawing, but be careful to let him break the skin. That borders on basic masochism, which you’re not ready for yet.

4. Leave your thigh-high compression socks on overnight. This will not cause you lasting harm, but you will suffer slightly.

5. Use the toilet without the donut seat cushion in place.

6. Dip the end of your tongue into a hot cup of coffee. (It hurts so good.)

7. Place a few sesame seeds between your dentures and gums. It will only take two or three. Five is too many.

8. Put the tennis-ball covered leg of your walker on your gout-ridden toe. Slowly, gently press down.

9. If all else fails, dab a little bit of Preparation H in your eye. But just a touch, now. If you encounter a searing pain, then you’ve gone too far and you need to do an eyewash in the sink.

My teacher says you can’t see or hear. I get blue and orange mixed up, so maybe we can be friends. Do you know about hippos? They are very dangerous. So are wolverines. They can kill bears. Last week my dad’s sister came to our house because she’s tired of all the bullshit. Do you know what a Fluffer Nutter is? It’s peanut butter and marshmallows on graham crackers. Sometimes I put peanut butter on my cat. He’s old. Have you ever been to a water slide? I bet you can go on those. We should get my dad to take us to Raging Waters. We can get cotton candy and I can spell secret words on your hand. Like congenital. I hope you can spell. My mom’s favorite song is “The Rose” by Bette Midler. I like The Judds. They are a mother and sister group. My mom and me sing when we make Fluffer Nutters for my dad’s sister. She smells like tomato soup.

Talk to you soon,

Rachel Dawkins

Mrs. Stallworth’s Class

People are always asking me, Troy, why shoes? Why power lines?

A hanging pair of shoes sends a message. It says, “Welcome to the City. People die here.”

Is it a warning? Yes.

Is it art? Well, now we’re getting into slippery territory. Is Neil Diamond art? Is the Statue of Liberty art? What is courage? Etc. Of course it’s art…to me. It’s my art. It’s my passion.

I can’t call it destiny because what is destiny? Was it my destiny to get those old Reeboks caught on that line near 17th and Jefferson? I didn’t set out to do that this morning. I set out to hit the Dollar Menu at McDonald’s with a ten spot. Did I change course because I wanted to or because it was my destiny? You see where this is going?

Is it dangerous? Well, only when you get them down.

But I don’t get them down. I get them stuck. That’s what I do. I tie shoes together at the laces and toss them at power lines so they will hang and mark that I’ve been there.

My first time? June 20, 1987. Just off Newberry St. near Market. Took me several tosses–it didn’t come easy–but eventually they snagged. I was 13. You never forget your first hanger.

Does this define me? No. And yes.

I’m not just a power line shoe-tosser. I’m a poet. I’m someone’s child. I believe in the sanctity of life, etc.

And yet I am a power line shoe-tosser. It’s in my bones. It’s what I think about when I get up. It’s on my mind as I go to bed. Someday, God-willing, I’ll pass this on to my children. Maybe one of them will land that elusive Timberland boot snag or find a pair of Jordans and get them caught somewhere near downtown.

Where is this going? I don’t know. I’m just one man. One man who steals shoes from Goodwill, from passed out men at the bus station, and ties those laces together to heave skyward. Will it snag? Will it hit the mark and say to the neighborhood, “Drug house, everybody!”? Again, I don’t know.

It gives me purpose.

It’s the flame I protect from the storm.

]]> http://themurkyfringe.wordpress.com/2009/10/22/thrown-over-my-life-as-a-powe-line-shoe-tosser/feed/ 0 themurkyfringe shoes http://themurkyfringe.wordpress.com/2009/10/22/my-dinner-with-jack-kerouac/ http://themurkyfringe.wordpress.com/2009/10/22/my-dinner-with-jack-kerouac/#comments Thu, 22 Oct 2009 14:53:52 +0000 themurkyfringe http://themurkyfringe.com/?p=391 Continue reading →]]> Submitted by PR Griffis

Ryan’s Steakhouse, Sandusky, OH

Upon Entering

After he fills his flask in the car, then pulls his pockets inside out at the register and asks the vaguely terrified sixteen-year-old cashier if she’d like to see an elephant (which I take as a sign that I am to pay for us both) we set our plates and beverages at a table near the dessert bar.

“That’s where the most truly righteous and down-for-a-balling ladies congregate,” he tells me.

He says this loudly enough that the well-fed and honest-faced family of four behind us stops – forks in midair – and doesn’t begin masticating again until we pick up our plates and head to the salad bar.

Round One

Rather, I take my plate to the salad bar and fill it with leafy greens while he berates me.

“Fairies eat salad,” he tells me around a mouthful of Bourbon Street Chicken, scooped directly from the steam tray into his mouth. With his hand.

The muscular, well dressed, possibly gay couple (In Ohio? At a Ryan’s? On second thought, maybe so.) stops and watches him the way you might a homeless Vietnam veteran chasing pigeons in the park. While screaming. Which, come to think of it…

Round Two

“The Jews own all these places,” he says while ladling starches onto his plate – potato salad and mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese and five (five!) of those puffy rolls. You know the ones.

“It may say Ryan’s on the door, but don’t believe it,” he adds, glancing left and right before stuffing two of the rolls down the front of his pants, winking conspiratorially at me as he does.

“They should call it Shlomo’s. Shlomo’s Steakhouse,” he says. “It’s honest, and it sounds better, too.”

I put my first edition of On The Road back into my jacket pocket. I’d hoped for so much. Too much, I see now. This is the delusion of youth being mashed. Like a puffy roll in a too-small pair of stained slacks.

Round Three

After returning from the bathroom and patting his stomach – “Had to make a little room,” he says – he pulls his flask out and empties most of its contents into his iced tea, then returns it to the waistband of his pants, nestled between the two rolls, which are now leaving grease stains on his shirt.

He tries to get me to bet him that he can’t drink the whole glass in a single go. Which, had he not already stuck me with dinner (and, I’m guessing, tip), I might have been willing to do. Now, no way. He shrugs and drinks most of it down, then upchucks a little. Into the glass.

“No harm, no foul,” he says, and drains it.

Round Four

His head is on the table. He groans, lets one rip. It sounds wet. I go to the dessert bar, looking over the possibilities. There really aren’t any.

“I loved him, you know,” he says. “It would’ve been a lot easier if me and Neal just coulda balled each other. Would’ve saved a whole lot of people a whole lot of misery.”

I nod, clap him on the shoulder, begin walking towards the door. This much honesty doesn’t bode well.

“I love America,” he shouts at the beefy patrons, none too steady, a chicken leg in his hand, his napkin now around his head. “I am a Catholic and a Patriot. I wasn’t ever a pinko beatnik, ever, and I’ll fight anyone who says otherwise.”

I pause at the door, try to embrace The Myth in my mind, try not to notice The Man pocketing the tip money from the table before throwing up down his front and collapsing to the floor, where he lays for a surprising amount of time.

We weren’t much for sparrows or ‘keets. We were canary people, long as I can remember. They died quick—first whiff of that bad air. Sparrows were fighters, and my people liked an early alarm.

• Little Dan. He was my first. Birds don’t sing much in mines, but I whistled him up good and he gave me a note or two.

• Captain Whitmore. Meanest canary ever caged. Like a goat been slapped on the mouth.

• Lumiere. Only French Pa ever taught me. Means bear.

• Liza. I put her in a doll dress and told her to “make my damn dinner.” She liked that.

• Roland. Should’ve learned with Liza that you can’t put a bird in your pocket, then jump off your roof. Roland never saw the mines.

• Pig. He wasn’t fat, just loved to roll in his shit.

• Wynona. Unlike Pa, she understood me. I’d say, “Why I gotta be a person? Why ain’t we off in a nest somewhere?”

• Jonah. That bird wanted to die. We did him a favor.

• Stonewall Jackson. Sacrilege, of course. I called him Sherman in front of Pa, which was the only name allowed.