Thursday, February 2, 2017

New York Movie


They watch but they don't know.
My white knuckles cut off digging
Garroted throats and bulged blue eyes.
Popping out of heads, reddened with the strain of this squinting sight.
An audience to this fresh hell. 
They don’t know of the nostalgia I feel.
  The roller coaster rides down the back country roads.
 My squeals like the tires,
 one hand on the wheel,
one hand on my thigh,
somehow you could still ride that pick up into submission.
  And then laying there in the bed of the pickup,
 naked before the stars,
 I saw you so clearly.
 Laying there on the side of a road,
 too tired to move,
wet from the sweat and early morning dew.
 Should I tell our son of this nostalgia?

Wednesday, February 1, 2017

President Elect



"Ask not what your country can do for you..."
Ask for an old piece of grandma's dried up, spongy, coconut cake,
Falling apart as you try to grasp tighter.
Ask for the shining
Just waxed
 Boat sized
Convertible
American made
Bought
 Sold
Assembled
Mass produced
Edged and trimmed in chrome,
Cruising down red clay streets, kicking up old Dallas dust.
Ask for those colors, red, white, and blue
But not just those
The whole spectrum
The balance of it all
And ask for that man with that winning smile
Who unites them all
The once and future King
Whose brain is missing like
The crumbs of that cake
 Mere nostalgia now

Monday, March 2, 2015


…A continuation of the untitled buddy comedy that I began writing on June 8th 2014

               
               This was not happening.  My heart was pounding in my throat, as my knees trembled, shaking the yellow flowered shower curtain that I held around my waist covering my lower half.  The shower curtain made sense it was an object I knew well, one that was real.  That; was comforting.  But as I stood there naked and staring at the little green man who had somehow just forced his way out of my anus, I was forced to concede that reality may have just left the room and went for a quick walk around the block.  “Listen Slick you may want to sit down…Ya dig… yous whiter than white big fella and ya don’t look to sturdy neither…”  The little green man said as his bulbous yellow eyes peered at me over his wayfarers.  This could not be.  This should not be, I thought.  Things like this do not happen.  Strange little green hep cats just don’t climb out of a person.  I concluded this wasn’t happening, and that this must be some sort of figment of my imagination.  I don’t know why, but when I finally had enough air in my lungs to speak, I informed the green man of my thoughts on his existence or lack-there-of.  “You must be some kind of hallucination.”  I said to which the little green dude said, “Listen pal I am as real as it comes, dig the sunglasses man, ya know I keep it real.  Ya better believe it baby.  Shit.”  He laughed nervously as my eyes stayed affixed to this apparition.  “Sit down brotha man, before ya fall down.”  I sat.  What else could I do?

                A few hours later, the man had coerced me into leaving the bathroom and entering the kitchen.  Where he, or it rather; asked me if it was cool if he made some food.  My non-committal blank stare was taken as a yes, and he went to work on making us some eggs.  He began to hum the song “Low Rider” as he cracked a beer, and two eggs.  The sizzle of the frying pan awoke me from a dream-like state, and I suddenly became aware that all I was wearing was the yellow shower curtain.  The curtain had lost the ability to make me feel safe, and was now just a reminder of how truly vulnerable I was.  I made a tentative squeak, and then said “Uh little man, I am going to go get dressed, do you mind?”  “This is Su casa homey, do what ya gotta, eggs’ll be ready in a minute, you like ‘em sunny?”  “Whatever” I said and went into the bedroom.

                I looked around the bedroom.  The queen size bed, that had felt so huge since Vicky had left, wasn’t made.  In truth it hadn’t been made in weeks.  Three weeks she had been gone.  I found my jeans on the floor and pulled them on.  I smelled the black tee-shirt hanging over the desk chair before putting it on.  It still had one more use in it before it needed to be laundered.  Once dressed, I stood and breathed and listened to the sounds of a little green man cooking eggs and humming to himself, from the other room.  A little green man that had come from…  Thinking about it made me queasy.  Fight or flight.  I was never much of a fighter, Vicky had left and I hadn’t said a word.  But, I stayed didn’t I?  I stayed in our place, she had fled, when it got tough.  I looked to the window with the red drapes that Vicky had picked out.  I went to it and opened it, the night air rushed in.  If I climbed out and down to the street I could run and keep running and put this apartment, and Vicky’s Drapes, and this little Green hipster far behind me.  But, why should I run?  This was my place.  This was mine.  Who was he?  Who was this intruder?  A more basic instinct took over and I began to search the room for a weapon.  Under the bed I found my old aluminum teeball bat.  It may have been small but it was easily wielded, and made sturdy.  If the composition of the little green man’s head was similar to that of a humans, one good hit could incapacitate, a few could kill.

…To Be Continued…

Sunday, December 7, 2014

I am not a Writer

     The one thing that I have learned from my class in Nature Writing is, I am not a “writer.”  I am not an artist.  I am not compelled to write.  There is no creative passion spewing forth from the center of my being.  There is no drive, no constant wish to do better, to learn by doing.  I mostly would just like to drink a few beers and go to sleep.  Writer’s write daily.  They use it as a tool.  They write to find solace.  I find no solace.  The worst part is how bipolar writing daily makes me feel.  One day I will be saying how much I hate everything and that the world is a terrible and gloomy place.  Then the next day I am writing about how there is hope, and I just need to find that one thing that I can do to make the world better.  It makes me realize just how incredibly selfish I am.  And how much of a jerk I am.  For instance a lot of my daily writing in my nature class centered around one person in my class.  I was super annoyed by this person.  I would write things like “GAH WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THIS GIRL?”  It turns out she has asperger’s.  And I am this shitty guy silently judging her for interrupting class with outbursts, and needing everything repeated 1000 times.  I am a shithead.  I am supposed to be this supportive creative part of this learning community, and I am too busy hating people for their faults that they can’t control.  Silently, hating.  I am not a writer.  I am a product of a generation that constantly thinks the world is about to end, so there is no reason to put any hard work into anything.  No reason for this struggle, so why bother.  I have noticed that when I write now, I say the same thing 4 or 5 times.  You could sum up everything I ever try to say with one sentence.  If I was writer I could do that, but I am not.  I am not a writer.  On my way into my first day of my Nature Writing class, I saw a bumble bee the size of my thumb with its stinger stuck in a locust or cicada or whatever they are called.  They writhed on the ground making buzzing noises.  They were both going to die.  The bumble bee thought it would be a good idea to sting, and now he was stuck.  The locust thought it would be a good idea to piss off the bumble bee, and now he was stuck.  How incredibly insignificant this all was, didn’t stop me from watching the two insects fight for their lives on the sidewalk.  I watched, because that is what I do.  I watch.  I am a watcher.  Watching the pointless events happen around me.  I am a watcher.  If the Bumble bee hadn’t stung the Locust, would they still be alive?  No, their death was inevitable.  But, maybe they could’ve had a few more days.  A few more days to pollenate flowers, a few more days of buzzing.  A few more days to float around and watch.  Watching is important.  I watch.  I open my eyes and watch.  I watch with eyes, selfish, biased, ignorant eyes.  But, I watch, and I will never stop watching.

Sunday, September 21, 2014

Let Go


                The other night I had a dream.  I was dangling from a ladder attached to a metal catwalk, bolted to a mountainside.  Below me was an endless drop, and a tiny metal platform that my mother was standing on.  The rungs of the ladder were just far enough apart to make climbing down impossible.  I was holding on for dear life.  My knuckles turning white as I gripped the cold metal.  My palms were sweaty, I looked down and the shock of it made it hard to breathe.  I tried to pull myself up higher, but my arms were too weak.  The platform beneath me was just far enough of a fall to be dangerous.  Then my Mom yelled up at me, “ Climb down you pansy… LET GO!”

               I was watching a TV show the other day, there was a man in rehab and he was told to ‘Let go and Let God’.  This expression pissed me off.  No one can ‘let’ God do anything.  If God exists and he is some kind of omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, creator entity, then there is no letting him do anything.  The truth is if there is a God, he is some kind of voyeur.  A perverted, tabloid journalist junkie who apparently loves watching people when they are at their most vulnerable.  Just waiting in the wings to hack your email, but in his case he doesn’t need to, because he sees all.  He sees all and does nothing.  And of course we were made in his image which is why human beings are disgusting pathetic, self- gratifying people.  We are all hoping against hope that there is another car accident, or natural disaster, or celeb sex scandal, so we have something to watch.  So, we can sit and watch and not do anything.  Just soak in the horror to make ourselves feel better.   
                I don’t know what the dream meant.  Maybe it means I feel like I am on the edge of something.  With no safety net, no parachute, and no one to catch me.  Maybe it means that I need to take a risk, a leap of faith.  Maybe I am just afraid of heights and my mother’s judgement.  I guess maybe all us of need to let go.  To let life happen.  To move forward, and keep moving forward.  We don’t need to let go and let God.  We need to let go and let ourselves be.  Be what we truly want to be.  Get off the sidelines.  Stop watching and do.  It may be sappy and trite and contrived and clichéd.  I for one have hope that when I let go of the ladder the fall won’t hurt because I know I made a choice.  Maybe not the ‘right’ choice, but a choice nonetheless.  Choice is what it is all about.

Saturday, August 23, 2014

Another Post About Going Back To School

     Shakespeare in context.  There are theatre majors in this class.  I "SEE" a few english majors that I recognize from other classes, but I can "HEAR" the theatre majors.  They have said the word "CRAFT" a few times.  This may kill me.  I, myself, am a performer who hates other performers.  A wanna'be writer.  A girl enters stage right and screams "Beckah!!!"  then laughs and says to the rest of us, quietly ignoring her, "What an entrance?"  Yet again I am faced with the fact that I am too old for this.  I don't have time to make mistakes anymore, these kids have eight to ten years to get where I am right now.  Which, come to think of it, is only four feet away.  It has taken me a decade to move four feet.  That is a depressing thought.  A snail's pace, a sloth's pace, like Chinese water torture.  A persistent, slow, pointless drop drop drop of water slowing eroding a hole in my brain.  My brain a floating hunk of trash in an ocean of jellyfish.  It doesn't even stir with the constant stinging.  I am starting to sound like Hamlet.  At least my dad is still around.  There is always something rotten in Denmark, or Richmond, or wherever you are...that is even more dramatic than these young theatre majors.  These young beautiful people who are all going to make it on Broadway, or in Hollywood, and really just piss me off.  My professor just made a Mr. Bill reference and I am the only one who laughed.  OHHH NOOOOO!!!!!

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Reviews

Some Reviews of My Future Hypothetical Comedy Shows:


"Joe Coleburn You won't know when the jokes begin...or end!!"

"Joe Coleburn the one thing you can say is... He's likeable!!!"

"Joe Coleburn he WILL make apologies!!!"
"Joe Coleburn he takes comedy to a  level that you won't understand, and honestly don't want to!!"

"Joe Coleburn he once ate a bagel off the ground!!"

"Come see Joe Coleburn he asks the tough questions like ' What is the deal with observational humor?' !!!"

"Joe Coleburn... believable..."

"Joe Coleburn...Too Long... Too chubby...Too drunk..."

"Joe Coleburn ain't nothing like him, and there shouldn't be."

"Joe Coleburn umm it was ok, a little slow at first, but I mean it was good.  The beers there were good, I am not much into live comedy.  Did you see the cat video the other day.  Ya know the one with the two cats dancing to 'Turn Down For What', that shit is hilarious.  Totally the bomb."