You have seen all of this before. To be disillusioned by things will only make it harder for you to remain focused on what’s important. Cutthroat attitudes and strategic ploys are making it hard for you to remember how to avoid getting sucked into those games. In your quieter moments part of you wonders if you have to turn into a Muggle to survive – or if it’s OK to keep thriving on the notion that life is a magical thing and we all get to be who we are. You’re in an interesting position. Keep in mind that it’s safe to maintain your integrity, especially when the stakes are high.

Just finished a telephone call with my broken hearted, always from the sleeve, tornado of a sister. Shit. Only two cigarettes left in my pack. Counting the one smoking hangman from my lips. I was talking with her on the porch while overlooking the back parking lot of B-Dubs, Bangkok, & the lair of that infamous & waving Liberty Tax Junkie. Saying goodbye to a sister sitting outside on the curb of her work crying puddles is a difficult thing to do. Though since I’m a Big-Brother, I need to be an influence of strength and composure, and dammit I do it well. As much as I know how good it feels to torment ones self, I know it’s a dark & alienated back-country road to walk down. A seed in our soul as vital as our vibrating orchestra of internal organs. A bittersweet smorgasbord open 7 Eleven. But god damn, as much as the hunger is strong, especially after a night of drinking, drive past the moth’s flame for home. Make yourself a good hearted meal.

Ok, ranting on the analogy above had my head spinning for a moment. Time to cut off the bulls balls.
I finished the call. Walked off the back porch and into the house. B.B. King singing soul for the soul from an old cassette tape mix I found at the thrift store; playing serendipitously on it’s reels. Libra’s. Immediately my good and sexy friend Leigh comes to mind. Then i remember Hunter. That little 16 year old girl Hunter S. Thompson. And this is what he said.

“Let us toast to animal pleasures, to escapism, to rain on the roof and instant coffee, to unemployment insurance and library cards, to absinthe and good-hearted landlords, to music and warm bodies and contraceptives… and to the “good life”, whatever it is and wherever it happens to be.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman

So here I am. Sitting close to my computer, with a sunny day on my left. Sipping $2.00 coffee at a “regulars” kind of price. And it’s good. And my cigarette is good. And my throat is sore from the Jerry Springer episode I endured last night. Sore, because it was fucking funny. And I laughed until the hiccups came. All because my buddy Tony Tartaduder released a drunken pit viper tongue with a 4 lettered lash. CUNT. It was all he had to do. CUNT. All of a sudden the room filled with tears and anger. Fights were proposed and somebody called somebody a faggot. Tony tripped over the coffee table to land face first in some designer fucking couch on his way out. And as much as I re-assured him that we were walking in the right direction home, his skepticism lasted until we spotted the bright lights of 9-Mile. Only then did he believe me. Joshua led Moses’s people to the promised land. Our promised land is home. All in all. Shut the fuck up. Grab a beer, a cocktail, a Mineral water for all I care. Whatever it is just grab it. Throw on an old record, an old cassette. Fuck, turn the television on and bask in it’s glow, let the jingles invade you, let the music grab you. For me it’s B.B. For me it’s Coffee, a 40, and a half-pint of poison.
Take that slow drag and just shut the fuck up.

Life is how you live it. Don’t repress. Express. Shut the fuck up. Don’t think to much about it.
You want what you want. You get what you ask for. And you get what’s coming to you.

Love,
Joshua Alphonse Gaudette

“Take the biggest bill and put it on your ass, then take the next biggest bill and put it on your dick. Tell them they have two choices, you can either suck it, or fuck it.”

Another great man said something similar, he said

“It doesn’t matter who they are. Their money is just as good as everyone else’s.”

And my favorite quip of wisdom to finish this triad of illustration

“First you have to be ordinary, before you can become extraordinary!”

The philosophers scribed above are not as you expect them to be.
No flowing white beards with contemplating fingers.
History has not yet carved them out in marble busts to display in city squares.
No books written or masses swooning for their attention and grace.

Their words, are gems hidden within a mountain of garbage.
Wise pearls, found while scuba diving blind, down a crude oil pipeline.

Their souls are stained, by one common denominator. One common dominator.
Infamous Money. Victims of Joe Blow syndrome.

These men are homeless, some in home, mostly heart.
These men are fathers, to their children, to themselves.
Blue Collar workers with a heavenly white collar perspective.
Bruised by years of success and missing teeth.
Crossing Lemming.
Dragging roots, atop bloody sidewalks.

These men, their grace, in contrast to the dungeon they keep.

Here I am pulling gems from the earth.
Finger nails in a reverse french manicure.
Digging for the cure.

I am the narrator.
I play no part.
I am the compositor.

Yet I’m always roped in.
From my ivory ship.
Can’t I just float at sea peacefully?
With my binoculars and my notepad?

No need to justify with man-made dualities.
No need to be pegged with a fancy label.
It’s the questions that curse me.

If you tame the stallion. Cage him up; with horseshoe dress shoes and a combed mane.
His spirit begins to fade through the meat-grinder.
His spirit is juiced and served on doily side tables during brunch.
For the real show. For the freak show.

How much longer will we let the plastic vampires re-define our joy.

Who would these men have been.
If loving ourselves was trump to the love of money.
Instead of how it rolls.
Like red carpet out.
A runway of promise.
With thirsty and less-fortunate alongside.
With their bloodied green eyes.
Coveting.

How good it must feel.
A fleeting taste.