Tag: #John Curran

Girls’ School

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Girls’ School

Girls’ School

 

By John Curran

 

Hi, I’m Joe, the landscape gardener for this wealthy fat cat Washington, DC so-called power player and we are here on his beautiful estate out here in the Hamptons where he is fixing to have an evening get together for some other fat cats so called power players and their wives or servants in tow. And even though I do do house functions as well as tending to the grounds, Mr. C. has decreed that I make myself scarce for this particular gathering.

You see I am not one of those. I am just a regular ‘ol middle aged black guy from originally the deep south, Podunk, Alabama; and I know how to make myself scarce up here in the Hamptons, going invisible in million dollar shrubbery as the sun is going down over the million dollar horizon and the limousines are pulling up. I slip through the cracks, just a black man, they know what that’s all about, I guess. So, just Joe the gardener, making himself scarce. ‘An it just so happens my favorite hideaway is this cool little grotto type arrangement right outside of and underneath the dining room where the big cat gathering was gonna happen.

I tucked in there, I could hear everything, and I must say these white people just never come with a dull moment, its always entertaining. I sat right back down back up against the wall, last beams of sunlight streaming in on me, all warm and comfy, and took it all in ‘an most interesting it was, the proceedings. Early on I’d kinda’ thought this was gonna be like some big important kind of thing where the actual fate of the entire planet was gonna sorta depend on the state of these very important people’s digestion.

But no, seems otherwise, seems it was more like gonna be a party, with this comedian even, this guy, I’d heard his name, Mr. C. talking ’bout this guy, like serious. But no again, now it’s like this guy is actually the comedian, Hegseth his name I think, Pedro, ‘cept he prefers Pete, says no Pedro for Pete. One of his jokes I guess.

Anyway, there I am in position as where I can hear them arriving. And there’s the usual low murmuring thing rising now a bit in volume as more and more of ‘m pile. And then one more louder voice among the rest, damn they ain’t all even got seated in there yet, and this one guy, already starting in with a veritable non stop one liners and zingers demolition. And so I figured this must be the comedian ‘n he can’t even wait to get started and he’s getting into this theme of demolition like the way a good comic can milk a depressing subject for laughs sometimes for laughs and it becomes like a kind of therapy, facing up like to the bogeyman.

And this guy at least was coming on with it good, he actually sounded a little drunk but damn sure wasn’t stopping him until someone yells out, like a heckler would do, saying, “So Pete, tell us about the girls’ school.” And then, right then, the Pete guy, the sorta comedian, well I could hear as his whole voice tone speaking thing had bouncy along so like suddenly became more like the hissing of some reptiles I have encountered as he says back to the heckler, “okay pal, I guess you were there huh, ’cause ya sound pretty girlish to me. Well, I’m sorry I missed ya, ha ha. And man,  it got quiet in that room, and afterwards nobody was laughing much at all. White people, Lawd, I’m saying, I ain’t never gonna figure them out.

The Big Beat

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The Big Beat

 

The Big Beat

 

By John Curran

 

Well you can close your eyes now Angel and fly away, you’ve done your best; you tried to help them right to the end, trying to alleviate the distress of them coming at that poor helpless person, a woman was it not? Yes, and them coming at her in that big bunch with guns ‘n all the rest of that. All charging at her the way they do, to frighten, intimidate, and control, and oft times physically hurt. But you were there filming and you stepped in-your last great gesture-one more time to try again to ease some ‘a the suffering of this world. It’s ramping up now. The senseless, needless killings, state killings…and you tried to help out the woman when they were coming all over her…and now you are gonna see what good that’s gonna get ya, today yeah ’cause today you’re gonna see it all.

And I’m sorry you have to see it. You were a good man and they beat ya down, they pounded you in the head with the metal canister an’ then they laid you out like Christ on that cross and they pumped you full of lead. I’m sorry you had to see that. Nobody should have to see that, but you can close your eyes now and fly away angel and remember always ‘radio loves you’. Your name is heard, all over the land, love’s ya’, and they be trembling now, before that mighty voice.

Hot Damn

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Hot Damn 

Hot Damn 

ON TOUR

Hollowed Out Heg and the Hit Squad with ICE  

Editor: John Curran states his short story, “Hot Damn” is total, complete, fiction.

 

By John Curran

“Hollowed out Heg and the Hit Squad with ICE,” said the poster, “On Tour with special guests,” to perhaps include Lord Lord, the big one himself, live out of the cage. And that was enough, baby, leave ’em dangling, the way they always do. Wow, Heg and the Hits, coming ‘right here’ to little Scranton, PA and we were the kickoff site. ‘Course it made perfect sense though, this was Scrappy Joe’s turf and the ‘here’ had more meaning ‘here’ than was stated on any poster.

We all knew what was coming though, perfect sense ‘n no surprise. I headed back home and got out the old zoot suit that I’d been saving for just such an occasion. The thing was on this very night. Whatever night it was, it didn’t even matter. It was always chaos with this bunch anyway; ‘ya expected it by now ‘n just went with it, whatever ‘it’ was.  What ‘ya might not know is that, in fact, Scrappy Joe’s back, believe it, and he’s been briefed on things. He’s feeln’ good, that cancer thing is done…maybe, and the Corvette’s never been faster, nor more dangerous.

“Let’s roll boys,” Joe said, pulling out of New York, headed to Scranton, to answer the challenge.

So, I pull up. Yeah, it’s a scene.  Hot Tulsi, “da Silver Streaks” is working the door; handing out red hats and small cups of green Kool Aid.

“Make you strong,” she says.

I ignore her and just bust my way in. That’s how ‘ya gotta be at these things now, act like you’re big, ‘ya know somebody, like you are somebody, it’s easy ‘ya just gotta show balls, is all. So I’m in ‘n right away I notice the little drones, sorta buzzing around. I remember that great novel, “Dune,” how prescient that was.

‘N then center stage it’s the Heg, up there face into the mike, doin’ the scowl, the famous scowl, the tough guy things he does, wow…’n then he’s into that latest ‘n greatest the Two Tap Shuffle, like he just don’t care. Well…

After that, I can’t remember much, I mighta’ had some of that green Kool Aid stuff…things got fuzzy…seems at some point a bear handler with a big ass bear, wearin’ an orange diaper ‘n a red hat, did a great rendition of ‘Heaven, It’s a Hoax, Its only Hell That’s Real,” and brought down the house, literally, as when the bomb blew up.

I was nowhere around, and Scrappy Joe in that ‘vette was half-way home, but I heard all about it.

 

Guernica

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Guernica 

Guernica 

By John Curran

 

I knew him in the years after that, he never would speak about it until the one day, and then it all came pouring out ….

Morning, the little fishing village. Columbia, the Baha de Santa Maria, and all the fishing boats were lined up on the beach, going nowhere, as it had been for two weeks now. No fishing, no trade, no tourists, no nothing. The word was there was death from the skies. The big nation, Estados Unidos, was raining deadly missile strikes on the single boats traveling across the open Caribbean. For what reason, who knows. Drugs they say. There were verified accounts from reliable sources up the coast. The people were afraid and didn’t know what to do. People here are dependent on their boats. With a boat you can do many things. Without one there is nothing.

One day my friend told me he’d had enough of the fear. There was a special mission. A little donkey had been born. A very special little donkey; the offspring of his own donkey from an arrangement he’d had with a special amigo down the coast, an old old friend. The little donkey had been the product of Dave the Great and his buddy’s hot little mare, Juanita, in return for a steady supply of corn. And so now he’d got the word, come get the cute as buttons newborn and bring plenty corn. And so with that, my friend loaded his boat.

Everyone said he should not do this. Not now. The fear was very strong, there had been sightings now, military ships, fighter aircraft. Another boat blown up, somewhere, nobody knew exactly where, or for what, they only knew all were killed every time, and no one took any blame nor gave any  explanation.  His young wife, Gabriella, she pleaded, the children cried, the fear of all now was very strong. Yet still he loaded his boat. Plenty bundles of corn. You could almost say it was bundles of something else. But no, just corn, plenty corn. And so he prepared. They chided, they begged, “No, no, not to risk it now. And for what? A baby donkey?! But no, not to be dissuaded, “Give the bastards an inch, they take your souls,” he would say.

And so at the last his wife Gabriella and the oldest boy came too. He could not tell them no, what could he do. And so they set out. A wonderful bouncy ride. The boat was not large but it would handle plenty bundles of corn and three people father mother and son, on a short run of just a few leagues down the coast. It happened coming back. They had the baby donkey, the cutest little thing, there with them, hobbled and bewildered. My friend would say even then he knew, this would grow into one fine strong animal. Ah, but such was not to be.

Just short of back home they were hit. My friend was thrown, ejected. For some reason he’d been in the far stern when the missile hit, up front. All he heard were the screams, all he remembers seeing as he hit the water was the enormous fireball and a flying head, disembodied, crossing his vision like some macabre scene from Hell. And it was not until now that he could tell it, to me, finally. We were in front of that painting that we’d come to see, and he said “yeah, that’s it. It was just like that.”

The painting was Guernica. On that bench in front of that painting we sat for a long time and he cried and he cried, did my friend. That was a long time ago. I remember him well.

 

Perfection, Imperfected

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Perfection, Imperfected

 

Perfection, Imperfected

 

By John Curran

Well, let me tell ya. It’s hard being a radical leftist bloodthirsty murderous lunatic who hates America, God, and even apple pie. I’m telling ya, as Rodney Dangerfield would say, “I get no respect.” So, once they tarred and feathered me for too much space taken up by my tent in a designated enclosure, I just said enough is enough. All my friends, some of them homeless people, that’s right I admit it, anyway they all said….Phoenix, Arizona? Why would I want to go there? Well the answer was I just threw a dart at my USA wall map ‘n that’s where it stuck. So that was it.

When I hit Phoenix, I looked for a job at this organization that I must keep secret as my good reputation is on the line. I applied for the job of janitor. I was invited up to Personnel. There was a group of them when I walked in, a dozen or so, all sitting in a circle. There was an empty chair in the middle of the circle, that was for me. “Sit yourself down right here ‘ol timer,” says the one guy, standing tall. The others, all dudes, were seated. They were all young.

“So, you want to take out the trash and stuff like that, huh? says the tall guy. “Well tell me this then, do you believe in Jesus? Well, they all turned to me intently, as if everything, everything, depended on my answer to this, and so I told them, Yes, I do. He’s a good neighbor. His last name is Garcia, Jesus Garcia, a very good next door neighbor. Of course this was all just made up. I was just lying to see how far all this would take me. The circle seemed to find all this amusing. Tall guy then asks me, “Would you die for this Jesus Garcia?” Well, I said, I would, “of course,” and that my cat would too, and has in fact,  only recently come back from the dead. “The dead, the dead, yeah I like that,” says Tall guy and proceeds to get a chant going, “The dead, the dead, yes we do, we love the dead, the dead, the dead, the dead, the dead….”

And boy I tell ya they got going with that one, sure did. This spontaneous levity in fact took a few moments to die back down, before calm was finally restored. Tall tells me, “you can empty trash buckets but first the Queen must give final approval,” and then in walks this gorgeous blonde who walks right up to me and tells me that first I better get a haircut, the ‘company cut’ it was called. The idea being complete similarity to all the rest.

And then I woke up. Wow, wicked dream. Hey, no more late night Fox News for me, brother. And so I got up, got dressed, ‘n saw the sun was shining. I knew I was late but I did not want to miss the Sunday service, where I wash the feet of the homeless.

9/11, Remembered

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Remembering 9/11

Remembering 9/11

 

By John Curran

My first time ever in New York, I’d been there 13 days, n I’m already hooked up with Social Services. On this beautiful early Fall morning I was on Lafeyette Street at the food stamp offices, ostensibly to pick up my ID card. I signed in at 8:45. One minute later the first plane hit the North Tower. At that moment nobody, not even witnesses knew what was really going down. It wasn’t until the second plane….so, I’m just sitting there waiting to be called back to the window to get my card n then head back to the park and another day when this woman comes rushing in. She’s distraught, she says to me n the other guy sitting there, that a second plane had just hit the South Tower. I’ll never forget her words “It’s a disaster” Well, something now is up. I’m hearing the sirens starting up outside as by this time every fire house in Manhattan has been alerted and the units are rolling a mad rush down Second Avenue to the towers. And me, I still don’t know nothing only that this is taking too long. I go up to the window and the nice lady says,  “well you can wait or you can come back later.” She don’t know anything either of what’s happening but that is all fixing to change, real fast and I did not get my card that day. So, I leave, walk outside, and that’s when it was starting to register. Myself, I still did not know anything else, but to walk back over to Thompson Park the hangout. But as I’m walking I’m catching snatches of talk now, everybody come out now, n I hear someone talking about the damn hit and that you can see the building actually on fire from over on Third Street ‘n Second Avenue, the main one way going south, where all the fire trucks were now streaming full tilt and sirens blasting. And as this was not far from where I was, I figured I might as well have a look, what could it be? Well, what it was was that famous Time magazine cover photo live right before my eyes. Both buildings on fire and the city in the process of shutting down, for the most unforeseen damn thing that anybody had seen, maybe ever. And nobody that I know, had any idea that they weren’t yet seeing the half of this, that these buildings were actually going to completely collapse from the weight of all this;  maybe some structural planner somewhere might coulda figured it out, maybe. We were bewildered, New York would never be the same. I saw it for the first time in it’s saddest time, Lord have mercy, I love New York. That’s all I can say, right now.

Jeopardy

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Jeopardy

Jeopardy

 

By John Curran

 

Yeah I used to be kind of a news junkie, more like a news nerd actually, but truthfully now its come to such a point that I am just losing interest, brother. Not that I ain’t there. Make no mistake concerning the big picture, when that clarion trumpet calls, I will be there. But for now, and its not more than a sad reflection of the times, that I find my mind wandering now and wondering how many minutes until Jeopardy. I used to love Jeopardy, I’m finding that now, I still do. And ya know, Jeopardy is, has been, and probably always will be, just the greatest damn game show ever. But there was a time, going back to just the last year and for the three years preceding, so four years back, when I was living my life without Jeopardy.

I had no TV. It was a magic time, a time when I became re-inspired as a painter and was again feeling it and doing real serious stuff. It was great. Really great. See I’d left my old place in Texas feeling kind of  burned out after a long number of years there. I’d been doing painting there. I’d been in a great Art program and had been doing good work with this group, even making money selling, complete validation, the pride of that. But real art reflects off the real life I feel and towards the end of all these years in Austin I was getting stale. The life was getting stale in many ways correspondingly. When a problem came about at this time with my local housing arrangement, I jumped at the chance to make a change. And so, not knowing nothing or nobody I came up here to Portland, Oregon and was provided with a decent little one bedroom single guy apartment in an area spinoff of the main metropolis. A small apartment complex, it had kids, that was new. A lot of these places don’t allow kids, or so it seems. It was a small place and what with that it soon became common knowledge that I was a painter. A like artist guy. That definitely raised some eyebrows, people be funny, but it didn’t bother me as far as my work was concerned. I was suddenly so totally back again into what was really some of my best painting ever.

The Afghan sisters who to me were the most beautiful girls I had ever seen, a lineage that carries on in spite of a sad history of repression. I love the way their large family, four girls, two older brothers, mother and father, carried on in their Muslim traditions in the midst now of living in this the modern American society. I was inspired by their obvious love for each other as a family and I’ll say this, the beauty of the Afghan woman is ….Anyway, the two middle sisters came to me early on and they had two paintings that they had done. I think one painted the pizza pie and one painted the cat. They wanted to see if I wanted to buy them. I really did like the cat, it was amateurish but yet…there was something there and hey, what’s five dollars for a piece of original art, acrylic on canvas? The other, naw, but both were pretty good. Ya start somewhere. I’ve still got the cat. It’s a sort of a centerpiece, people comment on it, how like what a great painting it is. I think so too.

 

Have ‘Ya?

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Have ‘Ya?

Have ‘Ya?

By John Curran

 

Have ‘ya ever seen the workers in the California fields?

Fields that stretch in places as far as the eye can see,

that go on for a hundred miles, two hundred. Vast.

It feeds a nation.

The workers there bent over

to the task.

It must be hard on the back,

after a while.

They’re Mexican though….

It must be damn hot in the summer sun,

Not much shade.

They’re Mexican though….

So,

Have ‘ya ever seen?

Illegal

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Illegal

Illegal

 

By John Curran

Well, it looked like my chimp Charley was leading the charge, as he’d just slipped his leash and was racing on ahead toward where all the people were already gathering on the Courthouse lawn. It was the Protest, and me and my people were following up behind, me pushing Dave in his wheelchair and Darlene and Vajra carrying the signs and cowbells.

I was trying to keep an eye on Charley, my chimp. He’s a pretty good chimp, but he’s a chimp, in a world of humans. But like I said, he’s a cool chimp. I see him over there. He’s gone right over to that shady patch of lawn where two weeks before me ‘n some other fellas had had a drum circle going. That had been at Protest 2. We were now at Protest 3, and it must be said that at Protest 2 we had sat right there where Charley was now and we banged on our bongos and everything had been fine.

Charley hadn’t been at Protest 2, we’d left him at the ranch, he’d thought he was in love with the neighbor chimp. Now he knew better but that’s another story. Now he was here with us and amazingly enough having gone on ahead with my bongo and his bag full of ping pong balls and was now sitting in the very spot where we’d sat for our bongo party.

And then I saw it all. Charley hadn’t been there ten seconds when up walks this uniformed big white dude acting like Security, saying no one was allowed there buddy, you gotta go in front of the wall like everybody else was suddenly being told they had to do. Well, Charley wasn’t having it and went into full on bad chimp mode. He’s a pretty good actor Charley is and when he puts on this one I gotta say, he’s pretty damn convincing. Anyway you shoulda seen that Security guy step back one time and back his big butt slowly, away from Charley. If he’d had a gun he probably woulda’ drawn it.

Anyway, he hooks up with some other ‘Security’ guys down at the far end ‘n they all come up in a bunch but by that time Charley’s gone right up the nearest tree and he’s throwing ping pong balls down on these guys. I decide at this point I better step in here and declare myself. Well, they told me I could probably be charged. I said, “yeah, I know,” that much I know. They were really kinda’ alright though, we all had a laugh, and Charley came down and acted like he was sorry. Very convincing too, was Charley.

And later, nine days exactly, it was reported in our local newspaper that what the ‘Security’ had been doing telling people (and chimps) that they couldn’t sit on the Courthouse grass had been illegal. I showed it to Charley and he just laughed; as if he had known it all along. Pretty convincing ‘n, I ain’t lying, maybe sometimes even a little scary, in that way. I mean, what is really going on, Charley?

 

Truth

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Truth

Truth

Editor: Another new writer joins the calamitypolitics.com family. Welcome, John Curran. In this piece John asks the same question that many are asking, is the lie going to win out over truth?

By John Curran

What I know is the truth. Now, Heavy D, saying something like that, if you’ve lived, and,  if you really think about it, is quite a statement. It’s like bragging on yourself or something. There are many ways to look at it, to consider a statement like that. Well, I do know it damn it, this blessing and this curse, and, I have known it all my life. Many times during that period I have had to shortchange that knowledge, play the game as were, the fake game, just to get on down the road. Yeah man we all know what that statement entails, just to get on down the road. We play it all the time-this charade, it’s number 1, the new monopoly. And the trick, the way I see it, is to never lose sight of what it actually is, it being often in fact so far from any Truth that it is a joke, an inside sort of job, that a lot of folks get lost in and never come out. One gets too deep, too comfy. It, so to speak, works. It’s when it doesn’t work that is when you can see a lot more clearly just what it really is, the real Hurly Burly and if ya like it Baby, like it really really is, then this becomes the funniest joke of all, the recognition, the admission of what really is Truth. It’s hard to look at. Truth hurts. So get on with that lie. It can be very effective. It can paint a picture that is so horrible that it could, metaphorically speaking of course, incite actual mob violence. Or, does that seem too strange, to be real; too strange to give credence to? Beware, I kid you not. So, the Truth, when it’s all ya got to save your ass, ya finally realize, this is one damn thing we just cannot lose.