The Sophist

2014-04-22 12:00 am

The Ninety Nine Percent?
Represent yourself and fuck majority,
Fuck sitting in a tent,
Fuck sitting in an era,
Where lives are fucking spent,
In jails within America,
The Other One Percent.
They rot while you prepare,
Let it die,
And try again.
Go get high,
And find a pet,
In the whole world's seven bil',
The Land of Free's three fifty mil',
The Liberated Five percent,
Something there disturbs me still,
In jails there's ten times seven mil'.
Metal barring concrete tents,
The Captive;
Occupying One Percent.

Gord

2014-04-18 12:00 am

A hundred and ten, live.
Sundries of men, dead.
Sun dried in a tent,
Limbs sundered and spent.
A disunion to the dissection.
A preparation for misunderstanding.
A sun song sung, 
So sundrily that the people run,
From open pasture to the sunken,
Then a tsunami wave blocks the son.
From the pasture the bell is wrung.
Sons of god in hell, soaked asunder.

Dusti Rodes

2014-03-04 12:00 am

From ‘Blowin’ the Blues'

#When a woman gets the blues, she hangs her head and cries, when a man gets the blues, he boards a train and rides ... # (traditional blues song, author unknown)

Down in the Deep South, it can take three days to even SEE a train going through a station. Let alone have one stop there.

I guess his story started on that fateful night back in sixty-three. Someone had just killed Kennedy. John F, that is. He was shot while driving in a motor cavalcade down in Dallas. It sparked off a whole lot of conspiracy theories for decades to come. Even after the death of J.Edgar. Maybe he took the truth to the grave with him! Who knows?
I never really knew him then; I was but a little picca ninny on my momma’s knee, down on the plantation.  Barely finished suckling on her teaties. Papa said he was ‘nothing but a no-good nigre,’ and wouldn’t mount to a pile of beans. Just goes to show how wrong some people can be.

Sometimes Life can deal people a low card.
With him it had thrown away the rest of the pack and was only using a deck of deuces and threes with an occasional four. And it wasn't shuffling them, too well or too often.

He was what the white folk call 'coloured' not 'Black'. A mulatto and an albino one to boot. It was probably down to the unfortunate circumstances of his conception. His mother was 'Red' from Rhode Island. An 'easy lay' or so they say. But that was no good reason for her being gang-raped on the streets of Harlem now, was it?
His startling appearance often provoked a strange reaction in most people. Raised eyebrows, spinal shudder and shoulder shrug of revulsion, or a sharp intake of breath on initial sighting were common.

Standing a shade under seven feet, even with the stooping shoulders and strange way of holding his head slightly forward and lent to the left. Developed from years of attempting to listen with his good ear to what lesser sized folk were trying to tell him. His two hundred and sixty pound plus of bone and sinew barely covered by his leathery weather-wizened skin that had been exposed to the extremes of the elements for far too long. 
Long days of toiling at whatever work he could get. Bitterly cold nights spent in any shelter he could find. There wasn't any fat on that frame. Thirty-seven years of constant shortage of food had seen to that.
Cody Jarrel, cut a vision once seen, that few would forget easily. If ever....

Cody sat slowly drinking the dregs from the bottom of the empty bottles left by paying patrons of the bar.
He shuddered so violently, it wracked his frame to it's very core.
Sheltering on the back-stoop of the Shanty Shack, from the rain that had been incessant in its task of soaking him while he tried to seek some sleep to rest his weary body throughout last night.
It had succeeded, so he let out another shiver that clinked his spine.
Down in the doldrums, yet again, the future was looking real bad for him. And little did he realise it then, but it was going to get even worse before it could get better. Much worse.


Dusti Rodes (2007)

Dusti Rodes

2014-03-04 12:00 am

In the Wind

The lonely nights. They were the worst part. The long hours spent building the bike. Burning the midnight oil until the cold light of dawn took over the illuminations.
He sat, oil-stained mug in his grease-decked ham of a fist. Java's best, steaming, burning his throat raw with every lug. Was this his thirteenth or fourteenth today? He couldn't remember now. The massive doses of caffeine failing in their allotted task of feigning off fatigue; the accumulated grounds covering the mug bottom in a remnant of Mississippi mud, deep, from down in the Deltas. The first finger and thumb of his free hand were deftly putting the finishing touches to the joint he was rolling. It was a little art he'd picked up during his frequent stays at Her Majesty's Pleasure at various establishments around the country. His makings lay strewn over the old table that served as totem-factotum to his needs. Diner, workbench, even pillow on multiple occasions over recent months. He raised the cigarette to his lips, and with a single action that comes with years of practise, sealed it with his saliva. With it now ensconced in his mouth, he reached for the lighter, lit it, and took a deep toke. The sweet smell permeated his flaring nostrils, while he drew down the smoke deep into his lungs. As he exhaled, his heavy eyelids closed momentarily. The necessary effort required to open them again proving too much in his tired state, he allowed his mind to wander.
Where had it all started? When was it now? Pour quoi? The combination of drugs and fatigue was fast inducing sleep, which only served to confuse the thought processes he was desperately trying to assimilate to no avail it seemed.
The auto-jumble sale in Birmingham, that was it!
That's where he'd first seen the bike, and realised its potential. An ex-WD combo. A 1948 six hundred cc, single cylindered side valve, from the Birmingham Small Arms company. With a camouflage green paint job. 'Distinctive', the vendor had called it. Hardly Milwaukee Iron, but beggars can't be choosers, can they? He'd only paid two hundred quid for the lot. And the seller had thrown in set of front suspension springer forks from a 1949, M20. The 500cc model that the dispatch riders normally used in the wartime. They were standard equipment on both the combination and solo set-ups. And they were chromed already! Save him a fortune that would. He'd altered the rake on the steering to an inch and three quarters over stock. That'll give him that low-rider effect he wanted. Just like Peter Fonda's in the film.


Dusti Rodes (2007)

Dusti Rodes

2014-03-04 12:00 am

From 'Fixin' Fences & Paintin Pickets


It’s all very well having a south-facing postage stamp sized front yard. Picturesquely encompassed by a white picket fence. But that makes the prairie outback a north facing wilderness that requires a multitude of feather-board panels six feet high by eight feet wide to prevent range wars with my neighbours. And after nigh on nine years now, they need painting.
There's only one thing really wrong with this place in my opinion. The layout of the land.
It's They say that there is something therapeutic about hand-painting fence panelling with a four inch brush. Long stroke up, long stroke down. Never side to side. Time spent alone with your thoughts. Having the opportunity to be able to meditate and commune with Nature. Well, after nearly three days of trying I for one haven't found what it is yet!
Having spent most of the day sorting out the two compost bins, causing friends and family to hastily stand upwind of me whilst in conversation, I finally started my self-appointed task late Saturday afternoon. At the time the warmth of the Spring sun made the job a pleasant one, and even aided the drying process!
But Sunday ... well, that was a whole different ball game!
As I have said, the back area is North-facing. At this time of the year the sun doesn't get to most of it till much later in the day. so while to all intent and purposes Sunday's weather was beautiful, I spent most of my time shivering in the shade. And as for yesterday, Monday to you mere mortals, it was that cold all day that the brass monkey that had kindly offered to give me a hand had to have two emergency welding repair jobs!
Come about three o'clock when I finally finished painting the interior of the fencing, all I was fit for was getting to a HOT shower in order to stave off hypothermia which I am sure had started to set in previously! When I was telling a friend about how bitter the weather here had become, she aptly described me as a 'human icicle'.
All I've got to do now is start on doing the outside of the fence!
Oh, Happy days!

Dusti Rodes (2007)

Dusti Rodes

2014-03-04 12:00 am

Jazz Duellin'


"Some people spend their whole lives, and not hear the sounds stored insides 'em. Forgits the notes, jist plays the music.
We's alls gots 'em. Black notes, white notes, notes that's been done stretched, even bent ones. Theys orl ins there.
It's hows youse use 'em, that's the trick! Whethers you beats 'em, till they is blue; or you coaxes them out gently likes fine wine from a bottle, it's up to youse. Some folks puts 'em in orders that mosts don't even finks of! And that's olrights too. It's up to youse. Jist gotta finds your own ways o' makin' 'em sounds... It's orls I kin tells yer..."


He hadn't played the piano in a long time.
Disillusioned, downed by the drugs,
That ran riot in the community and company that he kept.
He had drifted away.
Somewhere. Anywhere.
But there.
Harlem could frighten even the strongest of souls.
And he'd never claimed to be that.

They called him Cajun.
A remnant of time spent in New Orleans.
The honky-tonks, the seedy bars and the backroom bordellos,
That he had often frequented while down there,
In what seemed now like a hundred life-times ago.

But he was back in the old neighbourhood.
He'd come for the funeral.
One of only a few true people,
He could call friend.
Word spread like wildfire, as it does in these times,
That he was back in town.

At the graveside some of the old crew ambled over to him.
Asking the usual stuff.
How's he doing and the like.
Told him they were holding the wake at Creole's Place that night.
And would be sure pleased to see him there;
The brother being a friend and all.

When he walked into the Place that night,
He was greeted by a sight he had almost forgotten.
The air was thick with the smell of stale beer,
Rotgut rye whiskey and weed joints.
The lights, they were turned down real low.
But people saw him standing there,
And still took the time to say hello.

He hadn't even been nowhere near a piano,
In a long while.
They had seen to that.
Six years in the slammer cramps a man's style.
Lithe fingers, gone fat.
The used-to-be so supple sinews now taunt.
He flexed 'em.
They fought back.

The spotlight on the stage area,
Reminded him of those damned searchlights,
That had sent their searing shafts of light skyward.
Cutting into the darkness outside his cell,
Night after night.
Robbing him of the only escape available,
To the inmates of the hell-hole.
Where he had been incarcerated .... Sleep.

Creole, the 'Fatman', on bass fiddle,
'Bleedin' Lips' Murphy, blowing blues horn.
'Skins'Duval, up there on drums.
The Fatman called out, coaxing for him to come up on the stage.

Most folk never really hear the sounds inside them.
But some can't help but create,
The music they were born to make.
Cajun was one of those.
He hears the roar rising from the void within.
Like a volcano.

Molten music,
Stirring deep in the depths
Of his frame.
That must come to the surface,
Like lava, straining to escape the confines.

A piano is made of wood 'n' wires.
Hammers big and small.
Ivory keys that need gentle,
Or sometimes even firm coaxing;
To give their best or better.
To some, it's just a piano,
A boxful of sounds.
A mechanism for making music.
For others, like Cajun,
It's an extension of the soul.

The drums, they spoke something.
Grumbled, mumbled low.
Real low.
The fiddle responded with a taunt strain.
The horn blew for all it's worth.
The note long and very low down.
Somewhere deep, deep in the depths.
They were having a conversation,
Wanting Cajun to join in.
To leave the safety of the shoreline,
And strike out for the deep water.

Then Creole started beating the box,
With his waxed bow.
Stacking the blues.
Coaxing, urging, Cajun to take up the thread.
Waiting for him to do things on the keys,
That showed he was wading in the water with them.
And Cajun answered them all.
With authority.

The dialogue became a monologue.
The piano was doing the talking now.
All everybody could do was but listen.
In awe.
The riffs and licks spoke with an urgency.
They told of places,
That none of the others had ever been to.
Describing pain, that few else had ever felt.
Diving to depths of despair,
Unplumbed by mere mortals.

But Cajun had been there.
Seen the sights.
And he was telling everyone.
That which he had experienced.
Reliving the roller coaster ride,
That his life had been so far.
And he took all those,
Gathered there, that night.
On the journey.


Dusti Rodes (2007)