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I accidentally left the heavy-metal Christian songwriter’s demo out in the loft, with “Demons of the Devil” on it, the song about his pets climbing on the furniture, and it became a HUGE hit among my drunk roommates. They would play it non-stop, sing the chorus while entering a bar, and demanded that he join the band. They visited him downstairs, in the adult bookstore where he worked, and he gave them free biker-chick magazines, from the discount rack. They taped some of those pics up on the walls of my loft, with much amusement, and added more suggestive leather mag girls, for spice. I told the Christian guy to stop giving them that crap, and encouraging the design project, but he said drunk guys were the best for business, because they always came back, loaded and later, for more. Then he smiled, and told me that my bass player had just purchased a Blow-Up Doll!! I headed immediately to the bar to find out more. I began questioning the Bass-man slyly, saying I was so out of breath, I could barely blow up a balloon.. And, wasn’t he tired of inflated egos?.. Are there any real girls in this town?.. but, got back only blank stares from him. So finally, I asked him directly, and he rolled his eyes, the memory of a drunken doll-purchase returning, “Oh, that damn thing?? It LEAKS like Hell!.. And I’m taking it back.”

It’s good to be environmentally conscious, even if you’re a hard drinker. My buddy had his own machine shop, and would put toxic chemicals in his van for recycling, but then stop at the bar, and forget they were there. So, while saving the Earth, he was a menace to anyone within a two mile radius. One day the cops pulled us over, as we were leaving a downtown bar, but they found us not very drunk, due to slow service, so were heading to a better bar in Pawtucket. The cops were determined to bust us for something, so they started searching the van. I warned them it was a hazardous waste wagon / rolling toxic dump, but they just flashed skeptical smiles. My buddy pointed to a stack of permits for the chemicals, but they ignored that. We stood anxiously until the junior cop jumped violently from the back door, shaking one hand rapidly. We thought he’d been burned, but he was holding a used oil filter instead, oozing black, gritty, oil, from a rag, onto his pants and shoes. The senior cop looked down, into the black puddle on the ground, reflecting the sky-glass tower of the Providence Place Mall, and said, “So.. you boys heading out of town?” “Yeah,” we said. “Well” he replied, “you’d better get going.” As we rode up 95 my buddy smiled, saying, “I need to recycle that oil too!”

For a songwriter, analyzing songs is key. When I lived in the loft downtown, there was an adult bookstore downstairs, and a songwriter who worked there as a sales clerk. To my surprise, he was also a hardcore Christian. He had a powerful singing voice and wrote in a heavy metal style. Clean cut, from the rural south, he despised city living, but thought we should collaborate, calling us “city mouse” and “country mouse.” He gave me a demo of his original song, called “Demons of the Devil.” I listened, as his amazing tenor-baritone jumped octaves, into falsetto, then descended devilishly, growling into Hades. The lyrics started typically, “Demons of the Devil / They come into your House,” but then took a turn, with “They climb upon your furniture / Lie across your couch.” The furniture theme continued.. with dining room and bedroom sets demonized in following verses. I praised his melody and vocals, but wondered why he used all the home-furnishing imagery. He explained the song was about his pets, who refused to obey his strict “no furniture” rule, and were incorrigible, helping him understand why God didn’t allow animals into the kingdom of Heaven.

The unlikely storyteller is always good to look out for. An older, retired gent sat on a bench by the Marina and always said hi, but not much more. My family weren’t members there, but we paid to use its boat ramp, to launch an older, sleek, mahogany lake boat we’d gotten from a camp in NH. But its wood didn’t like harsh salt water, and the boat was too light and shaky for white caps on the North Shore’s Atlantic coast. Even cruising white sandy inlets behind Essex’s Crane’s Beach was a bumpy ride, plus if you went beyond Misery or Baker’s Islands, the bigger sea would buckle and batter its underbelly. The Marina manager suggested we swap the 50 HP Evinrude onto a fiberglass ocean boat, like many used ones he had for sale. My dad wasn’t sure, but looking at the weathered wood, finally agreed, but said that it’d be my boat, my responsibility. I was ready to show off my proud captain skills when the boat was ready. I confidently, steadily maneuvered from the slip, between expensive docked yachts, as my dad looked on, sunning in back with a PBR, not missing the captain’s chair. I began to corner slowly, steering right into the harbor, but panic set in, as the boat turned left instead. I spun it harder right, but went further left, crashing violently into a luxury sailboat. It hit twice, so I reversed the wheel left, gunning the throttle to break away, but it careened right now, shooting across, directly into the side of a large cabin cruiser, leaving a big dent, along with assorted gashes and gouges on both yachts. I quickly cut the engine, and dead silence overtook the morning cove, even seagulls dared not squak, as we mournfully paddled back to dock, using a seat cushion and cooler lid. The manager was flummoxed, ranting incomprehensibly, brushing us away with, “Listen, pack up and go. Now.” He’d said he’d handle this and call us. A week later the phone call came, “You’re all set.” The manager was waiting, put the keys on the counter and left, mumbling, “No charge, fellas.” We figured out the steering cable had been wrongly threaded, while switching the Evinrude motor onto this boat, the pulleys turned the motor the wrong direction. But, as we walked out, the older gent, always, and still, on the park bench started laughing, “Oh, my Lord! Well. You boys missed a lot of fun, around here!” He continued, “Well, they went searching, all of them, the whole bunch, all these boat owners spent all day, going up and down, back and forth, here and there.. climbing around the yard. But that manager feller was smart, he HID your boat, way up high, at the very top, on the end, but he wasn’t smart enough! They found it, and matched the paint. Quite a day! Must have taken a pretty penny to fix those babies..” He seemed giddy, but as the chuckle slowed, he looked back to the docks. “Thanks,” I nodded. As I descended, he yelled, “Hey, make sure you enjoy that boat!” And that whole summer I raced the shoreline birds, clipping each crest and wave, surveying the mansions on the rocky coast, not touching anything, skimming the surface, jumping waves and riding on air, saving those moments up, free of it all, having scraped through into the kingdom.

Whenever I feel like I should condemn a person, or a group, I try to remember what an “artful dodger” Jesus was. With the tax collectors, He said, “Give Unto Caesar.” With sinners, Roman soldiers and hypocrites, he included them in “All God’s children.” And pleaded for the ones who’d condemned Him, saying, “Forgive them.. they know not what they do.” Strong and loud voices fill up our world, but it’s still hard to get past one from long ago.

You’ve got to know when to “cut and run.” I was living in an artist’s loft downtown, rehearsing the band there, but the place was getting destroyed by drunk roommates. It was leased to me, but when they lined up in solidarity, I grabbed a few things and ran. I signed the lease over to my drinking buddy, left the landlord a voicemail, and found a quiet apartment on the Hill, left empty by my gregarious sales pal who was away, working in Hong Kong. I wrote at the kitchen table, looking out at a small back garden with a stone path, winding its way into a grove of plants and bushes before disappearing. There was free laundry down in the basement, a student upstairs, and a cute, fun, flirty girl on the third floor, whom I’d met at gigs. But as I retrieved my remaining stuff from the loft, the scene got grimmer. One guy bought a pot-bellied pig, who ate the food left out by non-stop partiers. They cooked endless crockpot-stews, each day adding more meat or vegetables to it, but never starting the thing over.. My ex-buddy tried to rein it in, but with no luck. They partied so loudly at night that he bought a tent, and climbed a rusty fire escape, sleeping on an adjacent roof, boasting how he could cross the narrow ledge between the building and a lower roof, even when drunk. A few weeks later it all ended, on the morning news. A drunk woman had fallen, crossing the ledge, attempting to reach the tent, tumbling onto the lower roof, about 15 feet down. The firemen used a ladder to hoist her stretcher up and away from the buildings, her slowly-rotating, sedated body crossing the sharp-edged brick and iron cityscape, while a reporter mumbled she had suffered only a dislocated shoulder. I saw my drinking buddy directing the firemen, frantically waving his arms, dragging on his non-filter, sensing his empire in ruins. At a bar, the next week, another roommate sheepishly recounted how the landlord had sent three hard-nosed guys, a work crew “borrowed” from the prison, and a dumpster, to immediately empty the place out, and it was all gone within a few hours. I asked if any cops were there. He replied, “Oh, no.. they didn’t need ’em.”

I was part of the Beat Poets group, hippies more than hipsters, but sometimes we’d ambush the much cooler Slam Poetry group downtown, a very different scene! Our host asked me to write a Slam poem, and join him in the raid.. He said it had to be an edgy, catchy, pop-culture “hit,” that could pass muster downtown..
WHOLE CANDY BAR by frank martyn
i don’t need bang for my buck
i just need tang for my truck
because it runs on astronaut juice
from the spaceship filling station
and love and luck
i sing intergalactic mojo blues to the
spirit in the sky
for you
part of your hair pulled back
and part hanging down
a half pony tail erect
with zero gravity moving laterally
like we did in breathless atmospheres
special dishevelled undress
slap happy and dapper
but time fish tail whacked my face
everyone has gone
except us two
and the candy bar
let’s walk the earth from birth
to dearth and hurt
like multi syllabic serfs in a crew
polyphonic fools
shiny new tools
hanging side by side
on god’s workbench
we hammer drill
spill sawdust grease
onto broken worlds of
dry dreams
wet eyes
screaming laptops
atop stylish girls
gourmet newfactory coffee scents
expensive cents with no sense
matching dot coms
yahooing ad mausoleum
to lonely boney cheeks
hard honey
all money are bicycle cards
when you break it down
line it up and stack houses of love
love just kicks money’s ass
any time day or night
i knew that for so long
i can’t even remember
when i was twenty years old i ate a whole candy bar
bought and wanted another more only
hungry and bungling
again
and again until someone took it
ate it and left empty wrapper alley
take it bake it fake it make it
hold it sold it stepped in it wept in it
no matter how you wear your hair
go ahead, bite it
don’t hesitate unabated
i ate a whole candy bar once
while God and His moon men laughed
because half laughs last fast
and until that day, we split it
it was never really whole at all

“Ain’t no cryin’ in the club.” -Ben Franklin

King Trumpalumpa visited the land of Redneckia, promising to conquer Scoundrelia and restore the principles of Waybackwhenia!

My Dad’s 2nd favorite joke was seasonal, so you had to have it ready: “Today is Muggy.. followed by Toogy!” (: