Posted 2:29 PM by melanie

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Help I'm trapped inside of a poem; no really, I think I am going to put this one to rest, for now. I may work on it later.1-5-03

(this is a piece that I continue to work on, it grows, evolves, and changes daily)

Reflections


Ed and I boarded the Ferry that takes passengers from Port Clinton, Ohio to Put-n-Bay Island, a tourist destination on Lake Erie

I sat at the back of the boat on a metal bench, I propped my feet up on the rail, and surveyed the immediate area

From my two story vantage point, I could see a grocery store and a seafood restaurant where we had just eaten fried walleye filets

across from me was the garage that Ed's great grandfather John had owned; the parking lot still had the old man's name etched on the brick wall

and then I looked at the harbor with its sailing vessels, mahogany cabin cruisers, fishing boats, and small black and white dwarf lighthouse

A diverse crowd begins to gather on the deck, a whole group of corporate kids (middle aged business men and their underlings)

in their matching red company blazers, around 20 of them, laughing, leering, stumbling, intoxicated, flirting and chatting with all the women.

grandmas, grandpas, and teenagers, in Hawaiian shirts, tank tops, blue jean shorts, straw hats, flip flops and tennis shoes, all laughing and going to get drunk.

The ferry powered up and began moving across Lake Erie's, grayish-white wave tossed waters; I stared at the whisps of cloud against a blue sky

and the disappearing, storm faded, old city buildings of downtown Port Clinton and the docks and pylons alternating with the wake of the boat

I wondered why he’d ever left a place so beautiful, then I thought about a time when he and I lived in Louisiana at Head of Island on the Amite river.

He was exasperated with me as I tried to direct him in the proper boarding of a Batto as we piled in to go to Lake Marepaus to fish for our dinner.

He was so much fun; he woke up every morning and stood at the end of our pier in his undershorts and sang the Banana Boat song at the top of his lungs.

Our neighbor across the river was a chef from Detroit who cooked Cajun food at a local hotel and he would come outside and sing with him.

I would listen to their voices mingling with the fog and the sound of splashes as they checked trot lines and hauled in our meals for the day.

I turned and stared at the sun, closed my eyes for a minute, and let the wind blow at my hair, beating against my forehead in a wild pattern

Ed tapped my arm and hugged me, placing his chin in the curve of my neck, before he took his Harachi clad feet up the metal steps to the next deck

to talk with a pretty brown, wavy haired, dark eyed, girl of sixteen who was all dressed in freckles, laughter, and a white halter top sundress.

I looked back at the Victorian style, prohibition era, summer homes with their gazebos and the ivy crawling lattice work and the red and yellow rose bushes.

and the wild grasses of the islands dotted with red cardinal flowers, orange trumpet creepers, white bone-set flowers, and acres of hardwood;

cottonwood, green ash, juniper, dogwood, oak, maple, and elm, growing along and beyond the rocky banks of the meandering shoreline as we sped past;

I felt the misty foam touch my face like early morning dew and I looked in the distance at the faint bluish purple traces of the Canadian shore.

It occurred to me that I was lucky to be there. That if I had never believed in Ric, or his music, or his poetry, or his life song

I would not have a curly headed teenage son who laughs, cries, sings, and shouts with the perfect timing of his musician father

I can hear his father’s voice echo in the many mansions of his mind like a haunting melody in the dance of his footsteps, his life, and in his voice.

I thought about our ferry ride and I stared deep into the shimmering blue-gray waters of Lake Erie; the wind continued to blow my hair in a carefree way.


I imagined his soul in the moist breeze on the ends of my eyelashes

I imagined his soul through the vibration of the motor on the pads of my feet

I imagined his soul smiling inside me like a sated feeling in the bottom of my stomach

I imagined his soul in the waves that rocked the ferry and moved my shoulders back and forth

I imagined his soul in the rhythm of my heart as it beat faster when the boat picked up speed

I imagined his soul like a dolphin dancing in the waves splashing along behind us in the lake

I imagined his soul on the tip of my tongue like something I’d forgotten to say; the last time I saw him hair damp in the rain

I imagined his soul in the refracting, shifting, and changing beams of sunlight that rippled and sparkled on the water

I imagined his soul laughing in the green tree tops of the hardwoods and pine growing along the gray craggy cliffs

I imagined his soul flying with the sea gulls swooping down to the frothy swirling water up to the clouds and finally free

I imagined his soul singing with the birds; I could hear his strong sad life song enduring in their cries, and chest beat of wings

I imagined his soul in the steady damp breeze that tousled my hair and blew at my dress and touched every inch of my skin

I imagined his soul in the rustling of clothing and footsteps and in a dozen different conversations in the crowd around me

I imagined his soul in the eyes of our son as he smiled at me and leaned over the rail to feel the foam-born splash of water

I imagined his soul in the gusts that billowed and powered the sails of a passing ship

I had a long friendly talk with him and in my head

I talked to the sky and the lake and the wake of the boat and the seagulls trailing along

I talked to the houses that lined the shores and sail boats docked in the harbor.

I talked to the clouds, and the sun, and the spirit that was Ric

I said thank you to Ric and thank you to God

Thank you for giving me this day, thank you for this healthy son

Thank you for the chance to be here

Thank you for the chance to see what you saw when you were growing up

Thank you for the chance to meet your family and your friends

then I knew, it was so obvious, that I almost missed it.

God is easy to see, so easy that sometimes we overlook the blessings that are abundant in our lives.

Our trek, our journey, our visit, our pilgrimage to Port Clinton and to Lake Erie

to visit the grave of my son‘s father was all meant to be

He was the only man I ever really loved,

I love you Ric and I will always love you.

Mel Zetzer

Posted 12:03 PM by melanie

RIALTO

We left Rialto, California with $200 dollars; two loaves of French bread and 3 pounds of sharp cheddar. We thought that we had enough money for gas to make the drive to Baton Rouge, and we could sleep on the road and maybe pinch pennies to buy coffee. My friend Renee was waiting for us back in Louisiana; she said we could stay with her as long as we needed.

Our car was loaded down with musical equipment. We had Ric’s CB 700 drums and a set of Zildjian cymbals crammed into the backseat. I was three months pregnant. It was early March and at night we wore two sets of clothes and wrapped ourselves in indian blankets because we had no heat. We didn’t care. We were happy, stupid, and free.

When we got hungry we tore into the French bread and cheese and fed it to each other, we listened to the radio, or talked, or Ric would pull out his guitar and sing, and make up funny verses to go with pop songs that usually had something to do with one legged syphilitic prostitutes or fat men who couldn’t make it through the door of the pay bathroom at the airport.

We listened to ourselves talking at 75 miles an hour, and the rhythm of the tires on the pavement, per cussed to the wheels hitting the seems of the rebuilt highway, and every now and then, a pot hole in the road would set off a cymbal, we would hear a loud crash and it would startle us, and make us look at the shining Zildjians in the back seat, and then we would laugh, and talk and sing, even faster and stare at the bright sun beating down on the endless miles of desert, and roadside Stuckey’s signs with thirsty yellow diamond sands on either side of the black tar highway.

When we got to the mountains in New Mexico, it was 12 degrees outside, and we were freezing, the right passenger window in our car was broken , we didn’t have any heat, and there was ice on the inside of the windshield. It was about 12 o clock at night.

Ric got us a free motel room. It was a little mom and pop motel in the mountains in New Mexico. We were driving through town and we saw a sign that said, “Praise The Lord/ Vacancies.”

We pulled into the drive and Ric spied a picture of Jesus through a window hanging on the wall of the lobby.

So he walked in and said in his best mid westerner accented DJ/gospel preacher voice, “Praise the Lord. I think I found the right place. Could you offer some humble travelers Godly assistance?”

The owner was a little old lady, maybe about 70, she had gray hair in a prim bun, and big over size reading glasses, and she was embroidering something. I think it was the second part of a collection of the entire Psalms, she had the other verses hanging on her wall, next to a picture of an auburn haired blue eyed praying Jesus with little lambs and cherubs and harps.

She said, “ Well praise the Lord the son we don’t usually give our rooms away.”

Ric, looked at her and said, “I understand that, Mam, but you see my wife is pregnant” and he patted my belly for emphasis.

She relented, and we repented, and she gave us a cozy little room with a view of mountains, and told us we could stay until check out the next day at noon.

We snuggled down into the soft mattress, and she called our room to make sure the sheets were clean and the heat was on, and we said in chorus “Yes, Mam and Praise the Lord”

We giggled, turned off the lamp, and proceeded to “Praise the Lord” all night long to the muted neon light blinking through the soft beige curtains.

Posted 6:10 PM by melanie

Try To Catch a Falling Star

My son’s great grandfather John was a gangster pilot
He was the flying Zetzer of Port Clinton, Ohio.

A very brave Rumrunner
Who once flew the last member

Of Ma Barker’s gang from Ohio to Arkansas
While on the run from J Edgar Hoover.

50 years later in a honkytonk in Hot Springs.
I met his grandson Ric Zetzer
He was 6’1, 24 years old, with long blonde curls.

He was gorgeous and he carried around a guitar
He could sing and play like Buddy Holly.
And he knew the words to every Elvis song.

Ric was like the first sip of beer on a cool keg
And I still Savor that very first taste.

We stayed together for three years.
On the road from Arkansas to California and then Louisiana.

I still miss him

I made the first drive to his hometown, this year
Port Clinton, Ohio.

We went to see Ric’s grave and I had to introduce my son
To a cold piece of marble as his father.

He was the grandson of the grandest old man
Someone who once towered over the sky

Both had brilliant lifetimes like meteors.

Their polished stones are grounded to the earth

John’s has an airplane’s on it.

Eddie and I pushed back the stone on Ric’s grave
and we left our armbands from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
and a picture of Eddie smiling.

We fell in love with a picture of Ric’s father
I never met Robert Zetzer, John’s son
He died before I met Ric.

We named our son after him
Now I have his portrait
And I loose myself inside of his Brown eyes.

I’ve had the most beautiful man in the world
With me for years.

He is my child and theirs, too.

So much a part of them and so like them
He is every bit as handsome and charming as his father.

My son Eddie Robert could melt ice with his gaze.

I didn’t know it was going to happen
Falling stars are like that.

They grant wishes and dazzle you

They make the sun and the moon seem unimportant.

They never leave your memory for your whole lifetime

You only get to see them for a little while

And then they disappear leaving silver traces on the clouds.

A plume of smoke and a bright, bright, bright, light.

Mel Zetzer (for Ric, John, and Robert Zetzer) 2002

I said a while back that I had some of Ric's poetry. Here’s one. He wrote this one in jail.

Trip Through the Lair

I write a million letters
I never get replies
There are few familiar faces
in this little world of lies.

Shadows dim of strangers
And long forgotten fears
Once considered dangerous
over many, many, years.

I'm another screaming metaphor
Running in the night
With Armageddon's door ajar
And God's eternal light.

Silver rings of Purgatory
Set inside a rock
The years blend together differently
My God unplug this clock

A martyr played the odds again
I never won a hand
Now I’m a stationary traveler
In never, never, land

R Zetzer 1960-1994

Posted 5:22 PM by melanie

Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;
or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

(My very favorite part of the Bill of Rights)

Posted 6:09 AM by melanie

About The Poisoned Ink Well

I'm changing the name of my journal to fit my conditions and my lifestyle.

Posted 5:39 PM by melanie

For Marie and Renee

If I have to consider the death of my father, then it would be impossible, not to remember the death of my other mother (a lady who helped raise me) due to breast cancer. She died about a month after he passed away. I received the call and news of my father’s death while visiting her daughter, who was my best friend. We were having coffee and her mother was talking to me about the clothes she had chosen to wear for her own funeral. We were shocked, it was so unexpected to hear the news of his demise as we prepared for her death.

My friend was working tirelessly doing all the nursing care for her mother. It was one more cancer death in a family already scarred by their time in the Delta Region with one person after the next dying for what seemed like a death every year. I attended many more funerals than weddings in Louisiana in my youth and I used to keep my wardrobe of dark dresses at the cleaners, always ready for these occasions. (People raised in Louisiana know what I am talking about)


We were both in our early twenties when her mother passed away in 1986. Her Mom was wearing the blue chiffon she had picked out and all of the pink and yellow roses and carnations were arranged exactly the way that she’d asked.

She said it stormed at every family funeral, and I remember during her mother‘s funeral, we were sitting next to each other under the velvet canopy, and we heard a clap of thunder, and then an abrupt down pour began, it was so fast that everyone standing on the outside rushed in at the same time.

She looked at me, with her big brown eyes, and grabbed my arm, and smiled in a tired, half hearted way, and whispered in my ear “ I knew something was wrong and I just couldn’t figure out what it was. I thought that we had forgotten to do something. But that’s what it was. It wasn‘t raining. I’m kind of relieved. We‘ve never had a funeral without rain” I smiled at her and hugged her.

Around us everyone was leaning in and huddled together, in a damp mass.

She lost her father to brain cancer, her mother to breast cancer, one of her grandmother’s to lung cancer, and another grandfather to cancer. They lived next to a canal in the city where they dumped lots of pesticides and chemicals. At one time, there was a City Parish Nursery just across the ditch from them. She lost almost her whole family in ten years time. Already by the age of 11 they had found a benign tumor on her breast.

Now she is busy raising her own four boys, with very little help or support. I think she was trying to replace all of the people she had lost over the years.

Her family would have loved to have helped her, but most of them are situated, quite different, these days. You can find them, anytime, down the block from Cortana mall, on a cozy side street, under some trees, next to a lake, and six feet down.

Posted 1:43 PM by melanie

And later after I had my dream, I was sweeping the hardwood floors in my parent's house, and out of the corner of my eyes, I watched as the Challenger exploded on the screen of the color TV, and I stopped and marveled for a moment at being witness to their deaths, as I swept out cobwebs and dust, and then Reagan came on, and we cooked macaroni and cheese for dinner, and we sat on the couch, and propped our feet up on the brass and glass coffee table, at the center of my known universe, and we ate quietly, and watched and listened as that president gave us, yet another one of his cliché laden speeches.

The national and global stage looked so tiny to us, that year, inside of that 19 inch box, with it's exploding spaceships and doddering, old, gray haired presidents, as we gave away clothes (suits, ties, and dresses), put their favorite memento's in boxes, and boarded up our parent's houses for the final time and said good bye to each other.

Posted 12:53 PM by melanie

I can remember a time in between those funerals when me and some friends went out and we lay in the high grass and dry mud of the Mississippi River Levy (before the casinos) and we smoked weed and watched the tug boats and traffic on the bridge and I thought about doing a slow dive into the murky waters (climbing to the highest girders of the bridge and doing a swan dive into the river) and I stood up and threw chunks of dirt instead, aiming for the barges, that lumbered up and down the river like slow moving dinosaurs; and we talked about life, and friends, and family, and we vowed not to have funerals at all (for ourselves), “ they were just a waste of time and money” and we returned home and drank Yagermiester out of the bottle and sat on the back porch and ate homemade pecan pie, and I fell asleep in a chair, and I dreamed about nuclear war. I watched as the bomb dropped over the water, and in my sleep, I could feel the impact, and I could feel myself burning, and I closed my eyes tight, and I prayed in my dream, and I felt the red heat searing against my lids, and I awoke to the afternoon sun shining in my face.

{Please, excuse the suicidal ideation. I like to call it whimsy and as a side note; I have had friends who worked on the river and they said that whenever they saw a jumper that they would motion them down and yell "JUMP YA DUMBASS" at the top of their lungs, so no way way could I ever face the indignity of going over the bridge; it would make some people in that town, too happy!}

Posted 7:43 AM by melanie

The Day before Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving Day, and The Day After Thanksgiving 1970 for my brother Alan

The last time I saw my favorite brother alive was 32 years ago today. He was 17 and it was the day before Thanksgiving 1970. I was playing in the front yard with my best friend, Renea. He came riding up on a borrowed motorcycle. He was wearing a blue jean jacket that afternoon and he had soft red brown hair that fell in loose curls around his shoulders. He was 5’9, with a slender build and he had lovely hazel eyes and they looked so blue to me that day as the leaves fell from the hickory nut and oak trees in my parents front yard.

We wanted him to take us for a ride, but he said, he was too busy, and he promised to return. I didn’t know if he would or not, I didn’t get to see him very often in those years. He’d spent the previous summer attending Rock Festivals in Atlanta and other places and was always headed out on the road for another adventure.

He didn’t show up on Thanksgiving morning and we went to my Aunt’s house and our Thanksgiving was like most other families, with a few drunks, many different kinds of pies, and lots of turkey and all of us children playing the instant games of cousin friends. We ate and played hide and seek until the sun set and our weary parents, firmly planted us in different cars to return to our homes with the food, covered in tin foil plates, and the smell of pumpkin spice, intermingled with the new plastic scent of our mother’s sedans.


My father put the meal away in the freezer and made sure that he fixed my brother and his friend’s each a plate of food for whenever they wanted to eat it. I hoped so badly to see him again, I was eager for a chance to be his special girlfriend and ride on the back of his bike clutching his waist as we breezed through the streets of Baton Rouge.

The next day my parents awoke early and my dad had the day off and he and my mother started painting a spare room and doing the things that people do over long holiday weekends in the suburbs. I played with my dolls and listened to Credence Clearwater on the AM radio in my bedroom. The phone rang and it was the hospital and everyone started running. I was left at my friend Renea's house and we wondered if he’d still take us for a ride once he got back from the hospital with stitches or a cast or if the motorcycle was still running. There was no thought of death in our Barbie doll lives with plastic babies and bubbles and playing beauty shop.

The phone call came and my parents picked me up from my friend Renea's and brought me to our house. I was sleeping in my bedroom and I heard my father crying and I walked into the kitchen and he was standing over one of those tin foil plates that he’d put away for my brother. His tears were falling on the frozen turkey and the stuffing was becoming damp. My father had a bewildered look on his face when he turned and saw me standing there.

He looked at me and he said in a quiet voice while shaking the tears from his eyes (it was the first time that I’d ever seen him cry) “he’ll never get to eat it now,” as he sobbed and dropped the plate on the floor and crumpled down besides the freezer and I walked over and he rocked me and held me in his arms, kissing me, and running his fingers through my long hair while hugging my head.

Posted 8:44 PM by melanie

A.P.B.




My baby and I were sleeping when he came in drunk looking for the car keys. His eyes were wild and he looked like he had been doing crank, crack or some other disgusting toxin. He came in and he pulled me out of bed to help him find his keys, but we couldn't locate them. He got angrier and angrier at me and he was yelling and calling me a "fucking cunt."

He picked up a shotgun that was sitting in the corner by the front door and he ran at me with it. He held it over his head and he backed me in to a corner with the blunt end. I was on my knees, and I was covering my head with my hands, and he acted like he was going to bludgeon me to death with it. I begged him not to kill me and I told him that I didn't hide the keys.

After awhile he let me get up and he kept demanding the keys. We looked for them as he carried the shotgun waist level and held it on me the entire time as we searched through the house. I was crying, and I was sober, I had just woke up, and it was 6am. I hadn’t even had my coffee, yet. He started getting madder and madder because he thought I was hiding the keys, but I wasn’t and I didn’t know where they were.

He aimed the shotgun, and he held it on me, and then all at once, he threw it off safety, and he cocked it, and he pointed it at me again. I thought, oh fuck, this is it, I'm dead. He was going to shoot me. The baby was still asleep in the next room. I wanted so badly to get the baby, but I was afraid that he would shoot both of us.

He started running across the room towards me and I had to think fast. I thought if I went out the front entrance and into our courtyard, someone would see him from the hotel next door, and then if he shot me in the back,he would have to keep on running and the baby would be safe. I really wanted to get my baby out of there, but I couldn't.

I ran out the door and he followed me and I could feel the butt of the rifle close to the small of my back. When I hit the bottom steps, he turned around and ran back into the house. He grabbed the baby out of his bed and held him up by his leg and pointed the gun at him and he told me to get the keys or he was going to “kill the kid” or “kill the little bastard” as he called him because "he wasn’t his son and he didn't care if the little motherfucker died."


He held the baby up high by his ankle, so that I could see the shotgun aimed at his head. The baby started crying and it was pissing him off. I was so scared and I didn’t know what to do. I ran and I grabbed my Mother who lived the down the street. We wanted to call the police but we were afraid that, that would only escalate things. We finally talked him into handing us the baby back.

I was still afraid to call the cops because we thought he would kill us all. I waited an hour and I snuck back over to the house and I peered into the window and I could see him passed out on the bed. He was snoring loudly and the shotgun was laying on the floor. I eased open the window and I climbed into the room and I retrieved the shotgun. ( I was determined that, if he was going to kill me, it wouldn't be with that gun) I noticed the keys on the floor under the bed and I got them too. I took his shotgun to the pawnshop and I pawned it and I used the money to buy gas for my car, so that my son and I could leave him forever. We sped out of town with out looking back.

Posted 7:54 AM by melanie

I hate the people that run my hometown, but not the people who live there. I miss my home, but you can't live there and be yourself or be poor or be happy because they will not allow certain kinds of folks in that area. If you try and stay and make it and you aren't wealthy then you go to jail, it is against the law to be poor in Baton Rouge. That's a shame because some of us are happy being ourselves, some of us don't share their views of life or money, some of us aren't as greedy as the people in power. Last one out turn out the lights.

Posted 8:48 AM by melanie

I have one more thing to say on this rainy Monday morning

Please, Please, PLEASE, don't let them bury me in Baton Rouge.

Posted 7:06 PM by melanie

When I was injured recently in Louisiana my head hit the steering wheel and I needed stitches, on the stretcher on the way to the hospital, my cousin Stacy who was at the scene and is an accountant at a leading home healthcare agency in the city, insisted that I request a plastic surgeon to stitch up my face. My aunt and my mother, who were also at the scene, agreed with Stacy.

When I arrived at Our Lady of the Lake hospital the attending physician who was not a plastic surgeon, Dr Morrilton (a very nice man) called in, I think every plastic surgeon in town, including the one on call and I was turned down by the whole list. One question sufficed to bring about the negative replies and that was who my carrier was for my insurance and when they found out that I was not covered each one said no.

He finally located one at Summit Hospital’s emergency room and when I arrived there by Taxi I was not treated or seen (triaged) when they found out that I didn‘t have health insurance. (I was escorted out by security) and had to return back to OLOL hospital, where after many hours, I was finally stitched up by a nurse practitioner (I‘d like to thank her, for coming through for me). I am still recovering from my many injuries including a concussion or I would have spoken of this sooner.

To every plastic surgeon in the city of Baton Rouge, and the staff at Summit Hospital, who refused to help me (all of you). I want to thank all you cold BASTARDS to the bottom of my heart.


(I still have ALL the original records, I had them make copies as I left the hospital [OLOL].)

Posted 9:00 AM by melanie

I guess one of my goals in writing is to be brutally honest and truthful even at my own expense. I want to expose every raw emotion and human frailty, mostly my own. If the reader laughs when perhaps they feel they shouldn’t then my answer would be an affirmative. Go for it. I’m smiling at the ignorance of living in the here and now and that’s the way it should be. If someone becomes offended then I think they should be. Hate me, revile me, whatever, but understand my primary concern is to push the First Amendment as hard as I can. To beat on it as though it were a large stone monument seemingly oblivious to the pounding of my furious tiny fist. Like a door meant only for the elite, but open to us all with an awareness that any of us can be knocked over with the flick of some twit's wrist as an obvious irritant, an inflamed pulsing vein on the ass of the Supreme Court, not even important enough to be considered, merely another screaming voice in the cacophony with all the joy and pleasure (I get off on this. I’m weird) and as rambunctious as I can still muster. A crowd scene, if you will, in the privacy of my own room, hitting on flies and stomping on roaches as I write. I do it because I can and because I am curious and want to see how far I can take it within my own set of strictures and morals, yet never backing away from what I see to be real even if its not a part of the cultural mores of the day. Even if you hate me then I’ve had some effect and achieved some measure of promoting our baser primal urges that take us finally back to what it is to be human.

(REPOSTED)



MY Thoughts on War With Iraq


To question the ethics and morality of our leaders is not un-American, but American to the core. We have a right to do this. It is what our country is based on.
And just because you don't support military action does not mean that you don't support the individual soldiers and their families. I'd like to see them all safe at home.



(Direct Descendant of Matthew Davis, soldier in the American Revolution, Halifax, NC)


[ I want to explain what I meant by the flick of some twit's wrist. I am talking about Osama (or whoever ordered it) and the twin towers and I am talking about Al Gore and the election and I am talking about those of us on a street level, us little people who are knocked over daily, by other little people like ourselves. I have no delusions of grandeur, or omnipotence, and I don't think anyone who breathes, or has a beating heart, or who is human, should either, we are all of us ruled by the same universal constant. I follow only God and no one on this earth and that is what I believe and I don't care who doesn't share my faith. I have my belief system worked out by this age and that's who I am. Left wing loony liberal writers like me believe in God and our country, too, even if we don't support the war machine or those who finance it.]

Posted 5:38 PM by melanie

My Father’s Funeral in Baton Rouge December 1985 (True Story)


Brass handles
Pine, burnished, stained, shine, glowing
Your face looked like
One last peaceful spring day.


They saw your obituary
They had no respect for you
Jack booted feet crashing on green shag carpet
With eyes so much deader then yours
Yours are closed in sleep.


People were there to honor you
Family, friends, colleagues,
Sisters, Aunts, Cousins, Uncles
You were wearing your favorite tuxedo.
They were wearing uniforms
City, State, and Parish
Storm troopers
Shotguns cocked and ready
Holsters empty, guns drawn.


They came into the funeral home
They looked you at laying there.


They shouted at my mother
My mother fainted and fell on the floor
She hit her head
We got her up and gave her some water
They didn’t offer to call an ambulance for her
They yelled at her some more.


They threatened to arrest everybody
They didn't arrest anybody.
They left after hours
We all wept some more
The same expression was your face before and after.


We buried you the next day
The club showed up to see you off
I was so proud of them
Three 1955 T-Bird convertibles
(You bought yours brand new)
Red, yellow, and black with their tops down
Followed your hearse


Winding slowly down Florida Boulevard
To Greenoaks Memorial Graveyard
Traffic stopped in Baton Rouge on that day.
People smiled and waved at the procession as it passed.
It looked more like a Parade.


Mel



(It has taken me so long to write about this. You know the police raiding the funeral really happened, we filed reports with internal affairs with no results and my mother talked to the Sheriff who denied that it happened. To this day they have never said they were sorry. If you had known my father Eddie B. you would have known one of the nicest, funniest, sweetest, gentlest men that ever lived and they can't change that. He is, he was, and he always will be my favorite man on earth.It did happen and there were many, many witnesses, there were two other wakes going on at the same time so it wasn't only our family that witnessed this. They came in armed and ready for trouble, it was miracle that they left without harming anyone. I don't talk about this because as you can understand I am terrified of the police force. )






Just think reader (if there are any) if the establishment in Baton Rouge ever reads this Blog, they are going to kill me, Hahahahahahahahah walks off laughing like a lunatic into the night.



POOR ME, POOR ME, POUR ME ANOTHER.



Just a minute, reader as I collect my thoughts and pick up the stones cast at me by one of the very best law firms (that money can buy) in the capital city of that state.

Let us just for moment imagine the State Capital Building in Louisiana, built by Huey Long to be the tallest in the nation as one very large glass house. A very tall drink, if you will, half full of scoundrels and oil men, and half empty of good law abiding citizens of that state.


Notorious alcoholics and womanizers that they are, Louisiana politicians are not so different from those in other places, perhaps it’s the extremes and the mania of carnival that brings out the horniness in all the whore mongers and if you happened by T.D.'s lounge at the Hilton you could have sat next to any of them.

Posted 3:06 PM by melanie

My thoughts before Yet another Louisiana Election


I had said in an earlier blog that the problem with Louisiana politicians is that they depend on a segment of the population with criminal ties, (that being a large group of prostitutes, drug dealers, and con artist, gamblers, or what have you) that have for years made it their business to be in the right and left hand pockets of our esteemed elected officials at the state capital.

Consider the average member of the electorate in Louisiana as someone with poor education and job opportunities and couple that with our lawmakers for profit motive for imprisoning it’s own citizens in paying facilities (They used to call them the poor houses in Dickens days)

Then let us consider the average dead voters in a typical Louisiana election, those being people who have already died of some horrible cancer or disease caused by their exposure to the chemicals that are dumped, made, and processed in that state, yet they still vote for their favorite Louisiana politician, that being the one who (allowed the industries in) and probably caused their deaths, anyway.

Now, readers I am back again to the same proposition, as I consider my long ago ties to that group of men, whom I know haven’t changed one wit with time, whether they fly under this banner, or that one; always using the winds of change as a barometer to decide issues left or right. (We have all seen them do this by sticking their middle finger up their anal orifice and then holding it up to the wind (the populace) to see which side the feces dries on first)

It smells like there might be a right wind blowing in Louisiana this year!



This isn't me talking, it's those damn pesky little voices in my head, and damn them, they learned to type and spell, too.




{{{I will close this chapter for now as I intend to write more in private. If the gossips of Baton Rouge wish to speak then let them. I can no longer live there or even feel free in my associations in that town. I loved one man in my entire life and lost him due to similar circumstances in his background. If it is true that misery loves company, then my only company is my pen and my bitter memories of my time in Louisiana.}}}}

Posted 12:29 PM by melanie

Enough of this, reader and know that whatever kind of woman I have become, I do owe to it all to the auspices of the Louisiana Legislature. So ask those noble men of Baton Rouge what they think of me, raised as I was since being a very young lady at the knee of most of those great and esteemed gentlemen.

Smile for the camera, flash, clique.

Imagine me, an idealistic powder puff of a young, (a very young woman) thrown into the midst of the power brokers of the state. Now, coming from a good family and having a formidable parentage did not stop the invitations, but I have always known the difference between teasing and sleazy even if those good men of our state ship did not.

Posted 10:09 PM by melanie

I would be disingenuous by suggesting that I ever expected help or niceties from the men that rule Baton Rouge and the state of Louisiana.

It is true that we did many good things while working with our women’s groups (humble though we were) holding dinners, parties, or arranging yet another casino night to benefit the social cause of the moment, while our governor showed off his considerable skills at dealing cards.

How many times while attending some function, at the governor’s mansion, or the capital, did I personally witness some inopportune moment when the mayor, or one of our good representatives, was left with a lull conversation that would allow some poor per functionary to go with symbolic hat in hand to ask for a favor, maybe for a sick child, or a serviceman, or maybe for themselves.

The cornered politician would break in an all to familiar sweat, turning pale as his eyes darted wildly back and forth, trapped like animal with the worst kind of constituent, and that being one lacking the necessary social skills to know when a bribe is required for their humble request to be granted.

Oh how they would tremble and their bodies would jerk looking for any opening and at these times even I (being a petite teenager not lacking in looks) was seen as an agent of rescue for the noble gent waylaid by an opportunity seeker, and oh heavens, not even an important one. At these times my hand was clasped and I was even hugged with mumbled words in the ear, that meant nothing to me, as they brushed past hugging my shoulders in gratitude, while jumping a hedge or a coffee table to freedom.

Posted 1:24 PM by melanie

The best and absolutely the worst thing that my parents ever did to me was exposing me to that crowd (the politicians) at such a hopelessly young age. I was 14 or 15 when I started attending functions around the Governor's Mansion and the Capital. I was naïve, lacking in poise, maturity, and without ambition, or political aspirations. I told everyone that I was 19 and if I seemed dumb it is only because I was so young and I admired them and the power and influence of their words and the way they could work a crowd.

There were many good things. I liked the speeches, just to hear any of the surviving Long's speak or watch Edwin Edwards stir up a labor crowd was like listening to good gospel music.

Between, you and me, reader, I think that if I had never met any of them, or been exposed to their way of doing business, I would have been better off in life. Certainly they never helped me or hurt me, and after my father passed away, I was just another whore to them.

Posted 11:45 AM by melanie

If much of what I write appears to be fictional then perhaps you should go back to reading the official state press reports of the era, if however you are curious keep reading.

Posted 3:13 AM by melanie

To the rich and corrupt political bosses of that town let me state my rules of engagement and my reasons for doing so. I lay upon the table my humble sword in the form of a pen. I will not use any real names but will make fitting descriptions of all whom I have encountered and who have displeased me.

I wanted just one thing in life and from my former associates and it was not too much to ask. That was to be treated with respect and a chance to receive adequate healthcare following an injury. I wanted my child to be educated even in the substandard manner that Louisiana educates. Instead we were put out of hospitals and schools in that state. I was placed somewhere below human dignity and continue to be treated and talked to as an animal by the ‘good’ men of that town.

You don’t know what I saw all those years ago. You don’t know what I know. If you failed to detect the slightest bit of intelligence in my countenance hiding as it was behind the fluff, then I pity you and you are the one I intend to expose. I will not be so blatant as to talk of lucrative criminal enterprises (but be aware I do know of them) I only intend to return in kind the sort of treatment that my son and I received at your hands. If you were nice to me then you have no fear and by nice I do mean respectful.

Posted 5:01 PM by melanie

Let me soften this blow. In Louisiana it is very difficult to find a member of the electorate that is lucky enough to have been provided with an ample public education or has been able to avoid that state’s draconian criminal justice system. And lets just say that everyone knows that all the snakes generally gather together in certain spots on the river and if the river happens to be the Mississippi and their nest is the state capital in Louisiana then who can blame them since those kind generally seem to enjoy each others company.

{{{{{Mad, thinks I'm being, too rough and maybe I am, but stop building for profit prisons (you might end up in one) and never vote away money from handicapped children (I worked as a nurse in your state and I know first hand what your cut backs have done to children and their families) and please quit siding with the chemical companies (We've all attended too many funerals to thanks to them)}}}}}


[Also, let me add that I feel quite qualified in my own aspirations coming from a good family that traces it’s heritage back to the start of this country and the American Revolution. I do own quite few oil paintings with scenic views of Baton Rouge dating back to the 1940’s and 1950's painted by my Grandmother. (A collection of her oils of Swamp Scenes appeared briefly at the Smithsonian as part of a traveling exhibition of Louisiana primitive art.) My grandmother E A H B was a well known beauty of that era sporting auburn hair and she spent quite a bit of time painting and sculpting while living on Chimes Street just outside the gates LSU of during that period. She also worked in the administration of OK Allen.]

Posted 4:39 PM by melanie

When the leaders in a particular area surround themselves with nothing but prostitutes, drug dealers, and convicts, (and not even educated criminals, I mean we are talking, dumb as shit, illiterate, crooks) and then depend on said creatures for their ear to the ground and a knowledge of what is going on with the electorate then believe me they get a lot of misinformation. I do mean Democrat as well as Republicans.

I grew up around the Louisiana legislature, so I do know what they are like.



[I worked in most of the campaigns of the mid 1970’s through the 1980‘s. I started when I was around 14 years old. My parents were die hard Democrats. My father, Edward B. Sr., went to college in Ruston, LA and did his post Graduate work at LSU (he was boyhood friends with many of the establishment of the town including the Coroner of Baton Rouge for many years, Hypolite Landry) he was an engineer in Baton Rouge employed mostly as a planner, a scheduler, and saftey specialist at the plants, but he also worked as an Architect and designer. My mom, Mad Love, liked to organize benefits, fundraisers, and stuff like that, always for the Democratic Party or any prominent Feminist 0rganization. We lobbied at the state capital for things like Sex Education and Equal Rights. I worked in every Democratic campaign of that era and knew most the good Republicans, too.]

Posted 3:00 PM by melanie

Let me rephrase my intent from the start of this blog. (The very first entry) I see writing as an art form much like my grandmother's swamp scenes. I enjoy picaresque vignettes and appreciate the synecdoche of all things. This last screwing that I got courtesy of the Baton Rouge scene has given me something besides the rug burn (on the proverbial red carpets) and that is the freedom to express myself on subjects and people that I (being the loyal little liberal faithful that I once was) had formally considered taboo, always going after only the most onerous and obvious targets/subjects (translation right wing nuts). From now on no one and nothing is off limits in my work.

Problems With Punctuation or Remembrances of Former Nazi’s

I remember when I was a child of nine
In the mid 1970’s in southern Louisiana
Waiting for my mother outside the A&P grocery.
I leaned on the newspaper machines
As I watched a mustached man in a brown suit
Who was stalking back and forth in front of the store.
He was trying to get people to talk to him.
He looked miserable on this day
He kept nervously tugging on his collar
And he swallowed in between every word.
He was being politely ignored,
He was an embarrassment to us even back then
We in our new yet somewhat ill fitting suits of seventies southern liberalism
walked proudly past him….. No rebuff needed.
I guess because no else would talk to him
he approached me.
Perhaps hoping that a child would be more open minded.
He stood in front of me,
His shoulders hunched, his knees bent , and his chin thrust forward
So he could be at my level.
His body formed a question mark on my mind.
To me he was just another stranger,
So if he offered candy I was prepared to run away.
Instead he thrust some leaflets in my face.
(My mother warned me about perverts showing little girls
Pictures of people having intercourse)
I was curious so I leaned over just to get a peek.
But instead of pornography he handed my leaflets
About his white racist platform.
Now he had me backed up against the wall
in between the newspaper machines.
I was stuck and I couldn’t run away.
I had the New Orleans Times Picayune to the left of me
And the Baton Rouge State Times to the right
And David Duke hunched over me
Like a giant question mark.
Just then my mother approached and saw I was trapped.
I recognized the fierce look in my mother’s eyes.
I shrank back knowing the penalty for talking to strangers.
My mother’s eyes bore down on David Duke
Still not recognizing him.
Mr. Duke did not seem to see this feral look on my mothers face.
He stood no longer in a questionable position.
Shoulders back, chin up, back straight,
His body seemed to form an exclamation point.
His pale iridescent skin beamed brightly in the sun.
My mother thrust her hands in between the newspaper machines
Hoping to retrieve me from my hapless position.
But Mr. Duke misunderstood my mother’s intentions.
He thought she meant to shake his hand.
So he began pumping her hand vigorously.
He said he was David Duke of the white people’s party.
He said I was a perfect representative of all he wanted to protect.
I stood behind them shaking, my body curled up
Like a little comma in Mr. Duke’s agitated quotations.
As we walked away my mother crumpled Mr. Duke’s literature
And dropped it on the pavement
Where it lay like a period between him and me.
My mother was visibly shaken,
But as she held me close to her body I felt her begin to relax.
Our neighborhood was still safe,
Her baby wasn’t accosted by a pervert
Only by an over zealous neo-nazi.

by Mel ( among my many other aliases) 1991














Fallacies that I see are that men are chivalrous in the Southern US. Believe me they aren’t. Most of the men I have known including the white collar criminal types (translation: lawyers and business men) would just as soon have you killed or done in (however) as to look at you.

When my pussy became 35 years old it apparently had outlived its usefulness to that type (not that I would have fucked any of the old geezers, anyway, only in their dreams)

Unbeknownst to them I had found a lot of productive and useful things to do in life that had nothing to do with the color of my hair, how wide I could spread my thighs, or if I could bend all the way backwards and grab my ankles.

I have employers that valued me chiefly for honesty, work ethic, dependability, and intelligence, but man don’t tell that to the assholes in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Their books have no covers, even when they throw them at you.





It's that time of the year again. This is the time when I would be bottling gallons and gallons (up 50 fifths) of Kahlua for family and friends, but I quit drinking. This doesn't mean that you have to, so here is my most favorite recipe. If you want use flavored coffees (I ususally do) you can make hazel nut or french vanilla. (Hah and you thought I was a bitch when I was drinking, I am alot more to handle sober)

Kahlua

Recipe By :
Serving Size : 1 Preparation Time :0:00
Categories : Alcohol Beverages
Coffee

Amount Measure Ingredient -- Preparation Method
-------- ------------ --------------------------------
1 quart 100 proof vodka
5 cups Coffee
1 1/2 cups Brown sugar
1 1/2 cups White sugar
2 Vanilla beans

Bring to a simmer. Bottle and set for two weeks.





Ok, here is how we do it. I hate to throw this recipe out, without giving you my years of experience.
So here are some helpful hints.

One gallon of vodka will make four fifths.
Fill the bottles half full with your vodka.
I usually collect bottles from friendly bartenders in my area (god they’re going to miss me this year)
I boil the empty bottles to sterilize and remove the labels.
Then make your own labels (remember put Mel’s Kahlua on them)
anyways
Make your coffee at twice it’s usual strength
then boil the coffee, sugar, and vanilla (if you can’t find the beans at a specialty shop vanilla extract works just fine, about one cap per fifth.)
Boil for about 15 minutes stirring frequently and don’t scorch.
Then let it cool before adding it to your vodka in your fifths
(if you don’t let it cool, you will loose your alcohol and we don’t want that to happen, do we? Nooooooooooooooooo).

And yes, tasting as we prepare it is alright. Invite some friends over and you can blame me if you wake up two days later in a strange man’s bed, but don‘t blame me if you end up in jail.

Store bottles in a cool dry place. Give as Christmas gifts with instructions to open on New Years Day and make sure that you’re invited to every, (and I can’t stress this, enough) unscrewing.

Posted 11:40 AM by melanie

Before Ohio


The delusion is that we have any life at all
That any of us are different
That we really have any control
Over anything
We are just holding up bags of skin
For a short, short time, animated, real life
We don’t own ourselves or our lives
We don’t belong to ourselves
I was thinking about OHIO
No I was really thinking about life


I have come to one conclusion though
After being held down beaten twisted turned bruised and injured one more time
I DON’T LIKE MEN
I DON’T LIKE THEM
I don’t need a relationship or want one
I don’t want to fuck
I don’t want to touch
I don’t want to be touched
I don’t want men any where near me at all
Right now
To think of men as anything except brute force

at this point in my life I would be disingenuous to even

Go for a quickie
Hot sweaty sunny
Lunchtime
Romp
Between the thrust glancing at the clock on the wall to see
Between the sheets
Between paychecks



The timing is so important
Wasn’t it 12:45?
Hurry, hurry, hurry,
Living life by a Time Clock
Muscular men, big shoulders, rough hands,
Inked initials on a time card
Another woman’s name on your arm
Push it in

Sex in between
Another notch on your barrel
Mel





Pain (Life without pain medication)


It makes you draw further and further within
Hoping to disappear in soft flickering candle light
The purr of electric fans and the TV on just for the murmurs
If everyday could be
Like this
To the point of
No
No I am not home
No I’m not going anywhere
No
Leave me alone
Alone

Loud noises are not allowed
No bright lights
No anger
Everything boring moving slow
And
No
I’m not home
Go away
Please
\
Quiet static fills the air like happy voices
I do not want people around
I don’t trust
I don’t like

I am too old for this

I think about a cabin
Somewhere away from
Everybody
I could be a hermit

Complicated people fill my day
Litter my drive
I hate apartments
Arguments
Crack, crank, and god knows what else
I don’t want to know them
Why do they want to know me?

Posted 12:14 PM by melanie

Hitting on Buddha

I used to have a bong shaped like a buddha,
with a bowl in his belly,
& a hole in the back of his head,
that you could draw from
as long as you put your finger
over the carburater in his big toe.

In Buddha
I smoked red bud,
with tiny red hairs.
sensimillia,
with only two seeds per quarter pound.
skunky stuff,
thick and tightly packed,
just a pinch
in Buddha was all it took.

The thing, I liked the most,
about my Buddha bong,

other than hitting on his head,
was
you could fill him up with wine,
Strawberry Boones Farm
was preferred.
Then
when you ran out of weed,
you could drink of Buddha, too.
Like a spring
coming from a rock.

For twelve years,
I took Buddha,
where ever I went,

to the high desert in San Bernardino, California,
to the swamplands in Florida,
to urban centers like New York City,
Boston, Chicago, L.A.,
from one side of this country,
to the other.
I even took Buddha,
with me to Boulder, Colorado.

One day, Buddha
and I,
grew weary.
I got sick,
and developed a hacking cough.

I could no longer draw from god.

I lost the spirit,
I lost the faith,
I lost the numbers to my dealers,
when I lost my wallet,
back in Boulder, Colorado.

So I gave Buddha
away,
to my best friend Gary,
in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
He still has Buddha.
He keeps him in the bottom drawer,
of his black, lacquered, night stand,
wrapped in tissue,
next to the a box of sex toys.
He and his wife,
still hit on Buddha,
in between visits,
to the methadone clinic,
in downtown New Orleans.

Mel

Written in 1996 at UALR in Dr Js' workshop in response to "I didn't inhale" (I sure as Hell did, every time I got a chance)
And I Never, Ever, Edited BAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHBAHAHA (I've got swampland in Florida or would you prefer the Brooklyn Bridge?)

Posted 8:18 PM by melanie

STILL, STEAL, STEEL:

Two hours of oral sex versus 15 years or more of nightmares. I got raped a long time ago. It was a stupid situation. My friend and I were set up. She was lucky enough to pass out and they wanted someone awake and alert for their fun.

I was 15 and I can still replay it in my head. Four grown men did this to me. I can still feel the fear and taste the bile in my throat and I can still see the knife. I can’t remember what the men looked like but I could identify that knife to this day. It wasn’t penetration, it was forced oral sex.

When I remember the incident or something brings it to my attention, I ritualistically vow to myself that it will never happen again. This time I’ll kill them. I’ll injure them. They will loose an appendage. I tell myself that I am old and mean and the next one better watch out.

Wait a minute. I’m not violent. I don’t hurt people. Why should I feel like this, this was 20 years ago, and I still think about it. Tears still come to my eyes and I don’t trust men and I don’t trust myself.

They could have killed me.

Years later a bunch of tornadoes swept through the town where this attack took place and people died and I remember thinking and praying, “Dear God, please let these men be in the path of those storms.” and then I stopped myself and felt guilty, guilty at wanting justice so bad that I could watch a weather report and pray, I mean really pray, that one of their houses was one of the ones destroyed and hoping beyond all hope that they died and that they suffered.

The tornadoes were a wake up call for me 15 years later and I still can’t come to terms with something that happened when I was 15 and stupid and young and dumb and I hate myself. I hate myself for putting myself in a situation like that. They were strangers, my friend and I were drinking and we were going to get high with them at the time. I guess we deserved it and we didn’t report it. My friend didn’t wake up till after the assault and they didn’t bother her, I guess they wanted someone who was aware of the fun they were having.

I still feel revulsion, I still feel violated, I still feel responsible, I still feel hurt and sad.

It lasted less than two hours, 20 years ago and I still can’t get the taste out of my mouth, I still can feel the knife at my throat, and it never ends, never.

I got lifetime of feeling like this .

They got nothing.

Posted 6:24 AM by melanie

One more thing, to the elitist bitches that live in Baton Rouge, proceed cautiously to your glass houses, as the rock throwing and mud slinging will begin, shortly. The villagers are gathering outside your stately mansions and another Huey Long ain’t far behind.


{{{{{{{Understand that dignity is an important part of my nursing and theme of my existence. I don't believe in Karma because if there were Karma then I would have received the same competent care that I have provided to others, but then I have to admit since giving birth to my son at Earl K. Long (before I became a nurse) that I have always used their poor standards of providing health care as an example of how not behave towards my patients. After tending numerous births in another state I realized that it was not normal for the nursing staff to curse at you while in labor ( to the staff on duty at Earl K Long in 1987; I am not a fucking bitch (your words) and I will never shut the fuck up). If Baton Rouge produces snipers, taliban members, and serial killers then maybe, just maybe, they need to look at the way they treat women, children, minorities, and members of the working class.}}}}}}}}

Posted 5:50 AM by melanie

One of the most devastating things that has happened to me in recent memory has been the outright bald faced attacks on my reputation which I know to some is practically nonexistent, anyway. I spent 10 years struggling, working, scrubbing toilets, and wiping asses only to be told that I had never worked. I was called names and was sneered at by people claiming to represent me.

Growing up the hard way is still growing up. Years of being the sole support of a child and of attending school and professional conferences and having references and documentation as to my where about didn’t seem to matter.

I spent my time engaged in work, school, raising my son, or engaged in my favorite past time of constantly work shopping and going to readings and concerts, but that didn’t stop them from imagining something quite different. If you think you know someone at 17 then trust me by the time most of us, and I know not all of us, reach 35, we have gone through some growth processes.

If I spent my time well, while nine out of ten didn’t, then don’t fault me for it. If my loves were real, if my maternal instinct was real, if my time I spent nursing and at college was real, and if it makes you angry that a nothing like me, someone who should probably have given up, Oded, or been sent to prison decades ago to prove you right, then I want you to know that:

I did it to piss you off, I did it to prove you wrong, I did it because THE BEST REVENGE IS TO LIVE WELL and I will continue to improve, to further my education, and I will never, ever give up.

Posted 4:58 AM by melanie

@}---------------
I found this one last year in a family bible. I didn’t know that he had written it. It was written on the back of a letter ( I had never turned the letter over or seen it until then) with an envelope postmarked Denver in 1991. I tried to get in touch with him in 2001 after I read this poem and I found out that he had died of a heart attack in 1994. He was only 33. He wrote it to me and our son.


NO more Games or Realization Finally-
(A Prayer)

Realization, Finally!

There I was out on the road
Lonely and cold with nowhere to go
Then came trouble
I went out with ones I thought were my friends
Said the fun never ends
I don’t know where it began
And my Mamma said
“Jesus died on that tree for you and for me
So that we could be free and live eternally”
Now I’ve had a rough time
All through my life
I got in fights with my wife
Who gave me a son
Such a beautiful one
And that’s when I began
To know what love Is
This next part might not all rhyme
But I’ve decided it’s time
To put God in my life
And I pray that my son and my wife
Are together and safe
Wherever they may be
And that they may find God, too
And I pray that we get back together
And be a real family
Soon.

R. Zetzer (03-1961) to (09-1994)

Posted 4:14 AM by melanie

I said a while back that I had some of Ric’s poetry. Here’s one. He wrote this one in jail. His Mother said there are more verses to it. This is what I have. Most of what he wrote had music, too. Unfortunately, I don’t have that.

Trip Through the Lair

I write a million letters
I never get replies
There are few familiar faces
in this little world of lies.

Shadows dim of strangers
And long forgotten fears
Once considered dangerous
over many, many years.



Silver rings of Purgatory
Set inside a rock
The years blend together differently
My God unplug this clock

Another screaming metaphor
Running in the night
With Armageddon's door ajar
And God's eternal light.


A martyr played the odds again
I never won a hand
Now I’m a stationary traveler
In never, never land.

R. Zetzer ( 03-1961) to (09-1994)

Posted 4:33 AM by melanie

I found this on the net about R's Grandfather, Ed (my son's) Great Grandfather, John Zetzer. It's seems funny that I met R at a nightclub just outside of Hot Springs. I have friends that are pilots and I drive by the airport all the time. When we went to Port Clinton this summer R's brother showed us the Garage where they cut up the car. Actually it wound up in a river and not in the lake.
********************************************************************************************************************************************************







All about Alvin Karpis and the Barker Gang by Richard Kudish.htm


After the raid, searching for Karpis and Hunter, they did an enormous amount of canvassing at local tourist camps in the area, interviewing people in Hot Springs, and listing the damages they inflicted upon the house. It must have been galling. The agents conducted an extensive investigation at the Hot Springs airport interviewing the airport authorities and others about the private plane flights of Karpis and Hunter. The Bureau had also grilled Zetzer, the pilot from Cleveland who had flown the fugitives from Ohio to Hot Springs after the train robbery.



“The postal people got in on the act, and it didn’t take them long to trace the money back to Ohio. They grilled Burrhead, and he told them about Brock and the train robbery. They got their hands on Brock, and he really sang. He confessed to them about Edith Barry’s whorehouse in Toledo, about how it was a traditional hideout, and all the details of the train heist, including the part about my plane trip from Ohio to Hot Springs. That information brought the postal cops and the FBI into Arkansas in greater numbers than ever before.”
However, Karpis paid the pilot of the small plane used in the getaway, a man named Zetzer, to cut apart the car with torches and then sink it in Lake Erie. Zetzer was known as a “crackerjack” pilot, and he smuggled liquor in from Canada during Prohibition. The FBI memos during this stage often have the fugitives’ cars identified and Karpis is just as often trading in the car and buying a new one, or abandoning the vehicle. Sometimes doing so in a rural area, with the motor running, so when found without gas lawmen might conclude they were on foot in the vicinity.

Posted 5:15 AM by melanie

Posted 5:15 AM by melanie
You know, it has occurred to me today, as I think of the passing of my friend that some people assume that because you may choose to live in the country and work withthe elderly and that you do this because you couldn’t hack it anywhere else and that’s not true.I like working with elderly, although I prefer working with one patient at a time and one of the most enjoyable things that I may do on the job is walking with an elderly lady and perusing flowers and learning the names of every wild flower and variety of herb in her garden. The fact that she may have Alzheimer’s does not lesson the wisdom or the truth of her nature walk, as I become someone who learn and not just a caretaker.Some of us would rather work in a way that allows us to stop and smell the roses, to quote a favorite cliché.I have watched the guys behind the garbage truck. They run, grab, and dump, whistling in between stops, oblivious of the traffic behind them with a soda, and they don’t seem unhappy. Reminding you that no matter what life brings you, it is always what you make it. Your attitude makes up your happiness.

Posted 11:08 AM by melanie

RITALIN
(for eddie)

You are a ship
trapped in a medicine bottle.
Your sails will never catch the wind under glass,
stiff riggings,
no salt air.

Placed on a shelf.
They put a
a plastic
childproof cap
on your daydreams.

For a dollar a day.
You are time released to go off
when you reach age eighteen.

Mel (1996)

Posted 9:02 AM by melanie

Once again I must warn you how easily fiction weaves in with autobiographical material which by it’s very nature is often misleading or biased or as a former instructor, Dr J taught me, “for a work to truly be autobiography and nonfiction, then a life story would have to last a lifetime and none of us have time for that.”

Posted 8:43 PM by melanie

So we made the national spotlight, again.

I say a lot negative things about Baton Rouge.

I am bitter about my childhood, and about being made an object, even to this day, of ridicule and scorn over something that I could not help and something that I cannot change.

The town itself isn’t responsible for this. It’s sad to say that it could have happened anywhere and does. I am nothing special. Children are cruel and often grow into crueler adults. That’s just the way it is.

There are certain things that I think about when the name Baton Rouge is mentioned, like the rolling green lawns of the State Capital grounds and a childhood spent climbing in the branches of it’s oak trees and playing hide seek in the bushes and picking illegal flowers from the gardens. The smell and taste of crawfish boiling at the Country Corner on Perkins Road. Dancing in the streets with a bass playing blind friend named Joel while listening to Marcia Ball. The way we all gather peacefully into a multi cultural, multi racial, and multi class, group when we hold a festival and how everyone smiles and chats and dances and eats. It’s not such a bad place, at least the people aren’t all bad.

Posted 6:59 AM by melanie

My crack is the Internet. My dealer picks up his cut once a month. People sometimes have misconceptions about me or over assume too much. I find that my keyboard is a very convenient drug delivery system. If the keys should start smoking when I am on a roll then don‘t worry reader there is a fire extinguisher present at all sessions.





Did I mention that he was a drummer (he could also play the piano, the guitar, and any instrument he looked at) and a very good one. He said he had perfect timing, certainly when he was a club DJ in Baton Rouge at the Texas Dance Hall for the two years he worked there he was one of the best. He could go from dance to country and back again.

When we lived in San Bernardino he would spin records at a club in Rialto and whatever band that played that week would let him sit in for a session on the drums.

We made awesome friends the short time we spent in San Berdo with likes of Buddy Reed, a friend of the legendary Muddy Waters (for the uninitiated the West Coast has an awesome blues scene) Donna Justice who had the most pure blues voice on a woman I ever heard. I went with her when she sang with Rod Piazzo at the Sunset Club who has the best blues band anywhere.

I got pregnant and wanted to come home to Baton Rouge where we met Mark and Mike Rogers the owners of Texas Club and Ric’s friends. Our best day there was my due date with Ed. It was also the day Johnny Winter came town and needless to say baby had to wait to be born.

Posted 4:14 PM by melanie

This year when I took him to meet his father’s family for the first time and they welcomed and made him feel special, even with sadness of visiting Ric’s grave, I saw in my son’s eyes that same look of innocent joy and happiness that I saw in his very first smile. It's the naive, joyous kind of happiness that we all loose as we grow older. I am so glad I got to see it in his eyes one more time. I hope he never looses it.

Posted 9:12 AM by melanie

Now, I’m blogging again and I am tired of talking about Ric, not really tired, as in, bored, but tired as in, it’s too much emotional baggage right now. It’s more than I am prepared to handle. You can put your feelings behind you and they still come with you. I didn’t know this. Chalk it up to experience.


(We traveled a thousand miles
To visit a hometown
that wasn’t mine
To take my son to visit the grave
of a father that he never really knew)


After Ohio for Ric


Before we left Port Clinton.
Ed and I went to Ric’s grave.
We pushed back the stone
and left our armbands
from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,
a picture of Ed smiling with his new found cousins
and a bunch of Mardi Gras beads
from a New Orleans parade
Ed wrote on the side of the tombstone,
“Daddy I love you“.
It felt strange to leave him there
it was sooo unRiclike
to be reduced to a formal name
on a gray piece of stone,
I was glad we jazzed it up for him.

Mel Zetzer

Posted 9:06 PM by melanie

We named our son after both of his grandfathers. Both died before he was born and we thought that if we gave him their names then he could always have them with him. I had never seen a picture of Ric’s father, and until recently, although I have heard stories about him and even heard a tape of him telling a joke. He was a part time DJ (yes, he loved music as much as Ric) who owned the Bowling Alley in Ric's hometown and he was a big Elvis fan (I saw pictures of Ric and his brother outside of the gates of Graceland, taken before Elvis died) and now I have a picture of him on my wall for Ed.

It’s funny but in the picture he is a smiling young man with the same beguiling eyes that made me fall for his son. I never met him and I’ll never see Ric alive again, but you know they are so much a part of my life, now.

Ed’s grandmother was the sweetest lady and reminded me so much of my own mother, her age and even her furniture and style of decorating was a lot like my family ( she had lots of antiques and tons of pictures and china with gold edged bowls and depression ware) I think it was no accident that Ric and I got along so well.

Father’s are important, even if they are not around, and for anyone to think that they aren't is unrealistic.

Hindsight is like watching a news reel and knowing what will happen next and wanting to change it and knowing you could fix everything, but being helpless to affect the outcome.

I want so badly to fix things. I know what I could do now to make it different. I have maturity on my side. I didn’t have it then. I was dumb and young and he started drinking and I was scared. I didn’t know what to do. I thought he would come to his senses, maybe go to AA (I think he would have, had he lived) He was so smart and funny and talented and he had worked hard all his life.

He didn’t live long enough to make things right. I don’t know how to explain this, but days turned into months, months into years, and I got really busy . I got my Nursing license and continued in college. I was busy and I literally ran from place to place, meeting to meeting, job to job, sometimes I was so tired I couldn’t even eat dinner without falling asleep in the middle of it.

I just didn’t notice time passing, if I had, then I know I would have realized that he should have shown up by now. I never went after him for support. I didn’t want him to go jail and I knew if he could have sent us money, then he would have, and anyway I was making it without him. Now, I wonder, if I had been more diligent and made him pay support, would that would have saved him?

His heart gave out because he was drinking and his roommate had kicked him out (he was sleeping in a car) and he got pneumonia and he died. He was so far away from his family in Ohio and so far away from me. It happened all the way out in California. Those people didn’t know him or love him like his family. Here I am a nurse, and I didn’t even know it was taking place. I would have liked the chance to nurse him back to health. I feel responsible for this. I feel bad, like if I had kicked his butt and made him do what was right way back then, then maybe he would be alive. Maybe………………………………......

(I am being self indulgent right now and I know it. I just can’t get this idea out of head. I am no angel and I’ve had my problems too, maybe I was too hard on him or maybe I was not hard enough. I wish I could roll that reel back and make things different)

It isn't all sad. I met his family and they were wonderful. Ed and I moved a lot and they didn't know how to get in touch with us when he died.

Last year I was going through a box of books, and in a family bible that belonged to my mother I found and poem and a letter that R had snuck in somehow.He wrote it Shortly after Ed was born. I didn't know it was in there and I had never read the message or the poem.

It was so loving and sweet that I started going through the process of trying to find him, never expecting to find out that he had died.

I'll share that later. I feel sad right now.

Posted 3:02 PM by melanie

This is about genes, DNA, and the powerful pull of heredity. I had never met any member of Ric’s family and knew them only through brief phone conversations after Ed’s birth and what I remembered that Ric had said about them.

It was a surreal experience for us all when Ed and I came to Port Clinton. It was very comfortable with no awkward moments or lulls in the conversation. I had already come to know them through raising Ed and they were instantly taken with us after meeting him.

His Mother wrote me after our visit that it was the most amazing event in her life. We were never strangers. So many quirks, habits, and personality traits that I had become used to over the years were the embodiment of their family.

My son is 15 and I hadn’t spoken to them in at least 13 years. I haven’t spoken to Ric since about a year and half before his death 1994.

I want to say more. It is hard to explain, but we knew each other. It was incredible.

I learned so much about my son in this visit. I’ll come back to this later when the words come to me. It was awe-inspiring.

[The tale of the family is a whole other story, complete with a gangster grandfather (John Zetzer, a pilot who helped Karpis escape Hoover back in the 1930's) we got a tour of the old hideouts.]

Posted 5:24 PM by melanie

I guess what I want to talk about is Ric, my son’s father. How we met; what happened and why we didn’t stay together. I am not sure about any of this.

My father had died and I needed a friend when I met Ric. I had one of those disagreeably, dysfunctional, eccentric (never say crazy, darlin) southern families. We had Azalea bushes, instead of picket fences, and our grass in typical Louisiana fashion was greener than the grass in most other places.

My oldest brother died a James Dean death, on a borrowed motorcycle, clad in black leather at 17 years old, complete with a long line of weeping teenage girlfriends. I was only seven, so I never really got to know him. My other older brother, who is now doing a long stretch in prison, was 12 and he took full advantage of the death of my oldest brother and could pummel me into submission without my bodyguard around, anymore. I don’t want to bore you or traumatize you with the excruciating details of this right now.

After the death of my dad, our anchor, we all (my family) drifted between Louisiana and Arkansas (we had property in both states) and my other brother (the one who lived) started taking advantage of my mother. He was stealing money, checks, and stuff like that and my Mom wouldn’t listen to me, and the people we knew didn’t know the scope of it (they wouldn't listen to me either). He was very abusive with her and she would lie and hide it. I couldn’t stand to watch it.

I was 18 and I had the world by my tail (didn't know it at the time,sigh) like most people at 18 do. My Dad always had said that 'I was like a sore tail bob cat when I was mad' and he’d warn all my boyfriends, that he wasn't worried about me with them, he was more worried about them with me. Ric never met my father so he wasn’t forewarned.

One night about a year after my father died, my Mom and me went out dancing at a honky-tonk on the edge of Hot Springs called the Rhinestone. Ric was the club DJ. He was about 6’1, 24 years old, and he looked like the blonde guy from the Dukes of Hazard. He was gorgeous and he carried around a guitar and could sing and play like Buddy Holly. I was in love; I mean, big time IN LOVE. Of course he didn’t have any money, or a car, or anything like that, but you know, you don’t let things like that stop you when you are that young. He had the bluest eyes and the curliest blonde hair and he knew me, every inch. He was from Ohio and he knew so much and he seemed so worldly to me (Hell he‘d even lived in Cleveland). He knew the words to every Elvis song and could sing them, too. What else could a lonely girl from Baton Rouge want in a fellow?




I digress, I still can't believe he is dead. He was so alive. He was 33 and he died. I really, really thought I'd see him, again. He had had his problems, but he was basically a good guy. He loved. He loved everything. He loved his music and his DJ name was Rock and Roll Ric or Rockin Ricky. He was on the radio for awhile here in Hot Springs when our son was still a baby.

He didn't seem like the kind of person you could think of as dead, but you know then again, in retrospect, he didn't seem like the kind of person who would ever get old, either.

It feels weird to be old with a ghost sitting on my shoulder. I have a picture on my wall, now. It's a blown up snap shot. Ric's mom gave it to me. They said it was in his wallet when they went to identify the body. He's holding our son and they are both staring at the camera and he has tears in his eyes (Ric) and he's biting his lip to keep from crying. I remember taking it and remember him crying. Now, he stares at me in this photograph, holding his baby son, a son he never got to know, a son he never saw again after the age of three and I wonder what makes things like this happen. W*H*Y does it have to be like this? Now I'm crying, so I have to go. I'll be back later to talk to myself, again.

Damn, I love life, and I hate at the same time.



Added on 12-10-02 More of my thoughts

[ I drive by the club where he used to work every night. It is ironic, but I was once kicked off the dance floor of this club for dancing to risqué. Ric played Jerry Lee Lewis Whole Lotta Shaking Going On for me and we shook it, he left the DJ booth and we danced and then we got down. I’m from Louisiana, so I didn’t know that I was doing anything unusual, but when we started shaking and shimmying, lower and lower (one of my boobs mighta gotten loose for a minute) and then owner came over and pulled me off the dance floor and said “We don’t allow that kinda dancin in here Missy”

What’s ironic about the story? This was years ago and it is now a Strip Club and every time I drive by, I think about the night I was too much for the place (much to much). Bet I wouldn't be now.]

Posted 4:05 PM by melanie

I had a difficult time this summer. I found out that my son's father had passed away at the young age of 33. He died in 1994 and no one knew how to get in touch with us. These next pieces are just my attempt to make some sense out of everything that happened. Please bear with me. I know it needs some work. The first one is one I wrote after I found out he had died and the following is about my trip with my son to his hometown to meet the family and visit his grave. More will follow. I need to get this out. I have some poetry that he wrote (Ric) as well and I will publish it on following days. He was a talented poet, songwriter, singer and bottle washer. This is all I can do for him. (with love)

To Rick

I should have married you that day.
We broke down on the way to Vegas in Victorville, California.
To me it was a sign
that things might go
wrong and not be right.
And years later it never was
meant to be
and it is now
something that never happened.

Years separate
miles of pavement in hot July sun
baking the desert
and gentle rolling hills rising from interstate overpasses.


The green charger
mint car
over heated
and stopped us
That night we made love
on the roof
of an old building
On Ave E in
San Bernardino.
The next day we sat on the steps and watched
the Thunderbirds roar overhead.
Nights later, we lay in the sand in the high desert
And watched falling stars.

We had a son and drifted apart.

Years went by.

Alone in layers of abandoned clothing
You wore yourself for the last time
Next to the tracks
With a bunch of vagrants,
In a lonely hospital room
Where know one knew you.



Mel for R. Zetzer/Rock and Roll Ric (02-20-2002)


Thoughts on the trip to Port Clinton.

Ed and I rode the Jet express from Port Clinton to Put-n-Bay as the boat sliced across the waters and I stared at the horizon alternating with the wake of the boat on Lake Erie, the sun was in my eyes and the wind blew my hair beating against my cheeks in a wild pattern, Ed, tapped me on the shoulder and hugged me, before darting up the stairs to talk to a pretty redheaded girl of sixteen, I looked back at the water and the houses that lined the banks of the tiny islands as we sped past, I felt the spray of the water and looked at the faint traces of the Canadian shore and it occurred to me how lucky I was to be there. That if I had never had a ‘Ric’ in my life that I would not have a laughing teenage son one deck above me, that I never would have ridden a ferry, or stared at the blue waters of Lake Erie; the wind continued to blow my hair in a carefree way and I talked the sky, and the lake, and the wake of the boat, and the seagulls trailing along, and the houses that lined the shores, and boats docked in the harbor. I spoke to the sky and the spirit that was Ric and I said, "Thank You, thank you so much for giving me all of this beauty and this healthy son and the chance to be here on your turf" and then I knew that it was all meant to be, it was so obvious, that I almost missed it. God is easy to see, so easy that sometimes we overlook the blessings that are abundant in our lives. My trek, my journey, my visit, my pilgrimage to Port Clinton to Lake
Erie. It was all there and so was he. I love you Ric. I love you Ed and I will always love you both, always.

another version
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My first real attempt at poetry (Ginsberg liked this one) from years back (1992) from my workshop experience at LSU with Andrei and the gang. (nice people) I have been doing alot of soul searching since then.

Your Dick

Your dick was so fine.
Your dick was circumcised.
Your dick was a gun without a holster.
Your dick had a Star of David painted on the end.
Your dick was Jewish.
Your dick was a fine old
Cadillac surrounded by today’s subcompacts.
Your dick was a collector’s item.
Your dick was an Edsel.
Your dick.

I brushed your dick off my teeth this morning
puckering as I tasted your lemon.
I spit your dick down my drain
frothy and white with my toothpaste.
I washed your dick off the insides off my thighs.
Your dick was still sticky in my jeans.
Your dick was on my hand towel in my bathroom.
Your dick was on my bathroom rug.
I spent all my quarters for laundry money
just trying to wash away your dick.

I tried to replace your dick on my clit.
I licked my fingers while masturbating,
and I still tasted you guessed it
Your dick.

I douched and then your dick tasted like vinegar on my fingers.

I washed and washed my hands
trying to wash away the smell of your dick.
I will not be making meatloaf tonight.

Your dick is shaped like my Christmas tree
thick at the bottom with a star on the top.
I decorated your dick with Christmas balls.

what do I need with penis envy?
everything in my house is your dick.

Your dick is my neighbor
I only say hi to on odd occasions.
Your dick left my building without telling me.
Your dick still owes me rent.
Your goddamned dick.

Your dick was crafty your dick knew my score.
Your dick wasn't a virgin.
Your dick was the key to my backdoor.
Your dick.
Your dick.
Your dick.
Your goddamned dick.

melanie


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First Post
A Stoner thought at 10 PM on a Friday (hiccupp) Night.


I guess one of my goals in writing is to be brutally honest and truthful even at my own expense. I want to expose every raw emotion and human frailty, mostly my own. If the reader laughs when perhaps they feel they shouldn’t then my answer would be an affirmative. Go for it. I’m smiling at the ignorance of living in the here and now and that’s the way it should be. If someone becomes offended then I think they should be. Hate me, revile me, whatever, but understand my primary concern is to push the First Amendment as hard as I can. To bang at it as though it were a large stone tablet seemingly oblivious to the pounding of my furious tiny fist. Like a door meant only for the elite, but open to us all with an awareness that any of us can be knocked over with the flick of some twit's wrist as an obvious irritant, an inflamed pulsing vein on the ass of the Supreme Court, not even important enough to be considered, merely another screaming voice in the cacophony with all the joy and pleasure (I get off on this. I’m weird) and as rambunctious as I can still muster. A crowd scene, if you will, in the privacy of my own room, hitting on flies and stomping on roaches as I write. I do it because I can and because I am curious and want to see how far I can take it within my own set of strictures and morals, yet never backing away from what I see to be real even if its not a part of the cultural mores of the day. Even if you hate me then I’ve had some effect and achieved some measure of promoting our baser primal urges that take us finally back to what it is to be human.