So I'm working on my second zine. It's going to be a lot more artistic than the last one and dedicated mostly to poetry. I may include a few stream of consciousness rants. I only promise that it will include lot's of references to red wine, coffee, my wife, and my cats. Also, it will be self depreciating and only 12 people will read it.
It will be called
If I Could Sing This Would Be A Record Label Publishing Presents #2:
The Cable Knit Commute
Here's a possible inclusion that has yet to be proofread. It was written in one sitting thinking back on middle school...
I Never Learned to Skateboard
I never learned to skateboard, instead I learned to rollerblade…not roller skate, that would still be cool, I could be in the roller derby crowd. I used to have three street hockey sticks and I lost countless street balls, street pucks, and tennis balls down the gutter. I remember making a middle school assault on my neighborhood tennis courts after they banned us from playing hockey there, but I still never learned to skateboard. I didn’t like the kids in my neighborhood that skateboarded. One time one of them kicked me in the balls after getting off the school bus. I ran away and made it into a stranger’s backyard before I started to cry, told my mom and then pulled on my Rollerblade brand roller blades with custom bearings. I put on my wrist guards and helmet, no knee pads ‘cause only wusses wore knee pads and my knees were scabbed over so much that they were well padded, and pretended to be Megaman. Dr. Wiley was going to pay for the Skateboard Kids kicking my geeky straight-A gifted classes self in balls. I blazed out the driveway. My mother said I skated like a ballerina. It was the only place I had any sort of coordination going for me and did laps of every cul-de-sac in the neighborhood to get rid of my angst at the world. My rollerblades were my punching bag. I even took street hockey classes from the minor league hockey team, the South Carolina Stingrays in an old Wal-Mart warehouse, it’s my favorite childhood picture…Then it happened, I could show up the skateboarders. On a standard brooding skate around the block I passed their ramps and rails all set up in the middle of the road. Normal taunts ensued, insulting my sexuality (nothing yet cause I didn’t kiss anyone till seventeen) and the fact that I thought Hootie and the Blowfish were cool. Something was different though, that day, my chest got a little harrier and my voice got a little deeper. I decided to jump. I raced with the grace of an Olympic Ice Dancer towards their biggest ramp as unsure scrawny skateboarders jumped out of the way. I went up and out, somewhere around twelve to fifteen feet if their sidewalk chalk markings were right on the road. I landed but was going so fast that I slammed face first into the street. I had forgotten my wrist guards and knew I had just broken something in my hand but before the first tears could shed, I jumped to my wheels and kept going, only to stop five minutes later in flood drain off pit the construction crews had made behind the sign introducing our subdivision as the Retreat. Ironic, as it was the one day I didn’t. A few days later, I took a helmet to the forearm in football practice and claimed that was where I got hurt, ‘cause rollerblade injuries weren’t cool and I got a blue cast all the way up my arm, then I moved away, closeting my rollerblades, only occasionally returning to them, now upgrading to the often more convenient mountain bike that didn’t make me any cooler but certainly didn’t add insult to the already clumsy and geeky. It was forest green and awesome, until I broke my seat and balls on it while trying to ride down muddy hills and to jump ditches…all that said, I never learned to ride a skateboard and I don’t even own rollerblades anymore. Screw the skateboard, I need some new blades.
visit http://www.rollerblade.com/site/home.php?site=2&lang=1 and buy a pair. I might soon.
Peace, coming later today will be my top ten albums of 2009. It's going to be an odd list I'm sure.
"It's the troubled kids that write the best poetry."
Beans on Toast
(A british folkish singer like Billy Bragg who's stuff is free online, find it and love it)
Enjoy and Merry Pagan Holidays!
Love,
Bob Fantastic
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