Humming a tune?

Cab stuff by Don Cole

1. I came on her face with the meter running
2. I'll slow down to 10 mph for you
3. Ripe stripper bill
4. The customers ass takes the grease spot
5. Don't take off your shoes, just pull your shorts down
6. Puke blues
7. Chili for the passenger
8. High flag the dick head
9. Red south, red port
10. Ran over a foot but didn't lose traction
11. I flagged the women who robbed Eagle 15
12. Dispatcher in the trunk

A couple stars.

by Don Cole

Oblivion waits in the light up the road. My grandmother Witcher first showed me Orion as we waited for the paperwork to be finalized letting my mother out of a lunatic asylum. It was 1966 in a dead winter night and we stood outside of a Chinese restaurant in Denver, Colorado. Bare elms stared back at us from some random park across the street. Thin ice crackled under our feet, with little snow, but we were standing knee deep in family treachery. (The photo is from "Wunder" photos on the Underground weather service.)

New prose by Don Cole.

On last Friday night (Halloween) in the Fairbanks cab biz:

I have mixed feelings here. Friday I had 3 pukers, was delayed an hour and 15 minutes with a starter going down, and lost my brakes completely. Thought I was going to die on the last one. Here is a gem though. Friday while sitting in front of the Golden Nugget I was approached by a guy on the driver's side. He asked me if I wanted to have some glossy postcard-sized flyers concerning porn star superstars. My gut told me he would move on quicker if I took them so I did. He told me they were coming to the Castle. "Is the Castle open now?" I asked. "It's the other Castle (sex toys, ed.) by the Bentley Mall. I figure if a lot of people go, there will be more porn star superstars coming up here so be sure to go." "I will eagerly attend," says I. He walked south.

Prose by Don Cole.

Loopy with a taxi

They reeled with puke jumping at their throats. They chased dope. Hot after vaginas and penis they flocked in a storm. I drove them to jumping off points for ever more worthless paper. They came back to me soiled and I returned them to their crumbling nests.

New prose by Don Cole.

Driving?

I use to drive 5 or 6 days a week and work all the holidays. I found 1 in 5 are good and the escapees from the family ratio is way too high. I listened on and on to that shit. Some of it was even mine. I slept in a tent in the summer never paying rent, saving for a trip. Janet and I where on the way to fuck in my tent at Eagle Cab the night they were raided. I came around the Front St. corner and kept right on going. The King Cab drivers did loops around the block and heckled Don in his handcuffs. As it turned out he was just warming up to running them into the ground. The next day I pulled into Midtown to drop off and the the little kids ran out and sang "Bad boys, bad boys, what ya gonna do?"

New prose by Don Cole.

The little welder put a burn on me

The taxi god of short change got ahold me last night about 11. He stayed through my last ride, giving me a little hope now and then. I trashed around best I could. I screamed at people in parking lots. "Your gonna flop on a rubber mattress tonight motherfucker, I am calling the cops." (that one got me 20 of 27.) I bluffed, sighed, lied, shook my head, and I even brought out the "I am about to go fucking postal." look and line. Still short, I did manage to milk tucked crumpled bills, coins ripe from crotch, and a few trashy items off un-giving bodies. Still, "Get out.", rang hollow. The taxi god laughed and slapped me and directed me to another "God damn you.". In the end there was only mercy to offer, best I could manage anyway. Some old bastard with a broken arm got in my cab on 26th. (one house over from the 20 of 27 shit heal I left at Mcdonalds, can you believe it? I thought the call was him and drove over there like a madman to resume the argument.) He asked if 8 bucks would get him to 1st Badger. So this old guy looks at me for the answer and I said "Yeah, fuck it." I didn't let him talk though. I spewed horse shit concerning the shitty world all the way to Sirlin Dr..50 bones short, I bet, when the cow got home...... The following is a report from the "twisted ride of the night" ride. It was a bingo flag to 1902 MaryAnn. The guy was way big with fucked up hips and cheap metal cane. After he gave the destination he says "Some gal killed herself, she worked at the Big I. How did she do it?" " I don't know." says I. He comes back. "I was in the village, when a old guy blew the top of his head off with a 30/30. It was in 51. My cousin and I took big spoons and spooned his brains into a tin. My cousin said " "Hey, you want a bite?" " (the man tried not to laugh here but did.) I said shut up cousin, show some respect. That old man read the Bible too much and he was stingy. That Bible can mess your mind if you read it too much alone and he was stingy. He did it right though. He powdered his cabin with flour, you see." Flour?" I searched. "Yeah, flour. So the investigators could see his foot prints and splatter and not blame someone who was not there. The side of the skull is about this thick." (he used his fingers to show a little less than two inches. He said it twice and showed me as though it was important that I know how thick a fresh skull wall was.)

New prose by Don Cole.

Thanks, Don!

less a flight than a free fall

A friend of mine works up north. I crunch over in the wee hours to feed the pigeons when he is out of town. The ice has almost given up now. I walk along looking at it amazed by all the things locked up in it, coming free now. Oil, transmission fluid, puke, plastic, piss, rings, coin, dog shit, it all feeds into the ice and bleeds out. Some folk from the lower 48 may imagine a pristine snow scape up here but I feel as though I am walking on the a frozen lining of phlegm in a giant smokers lung. The pigeons are not my friend's birds but rather they are refugees of the greater Fairbanks area. The flock that feeds on the street behind his house number about forty five. Last winter they were around fifteen but we fed them you see. The cold robs them of calories, calories we replace with shitty corn. Some people get angry about this and I don't blame them. Each pigeon produces somewhere in the squat of twenty six pounds of waist a year. One man followed me as I stretched out a path of cracked corn and told me the pigeon is the most diseased bird there is. I don't doubt it. I also don't give a full diaper rat's ass. I imagine I will see a hundred and fifty birds next fall staring stupidly down at me from the wires. I will stare stupidly back wishing I could see the mini-universes of germs and bacteria riving from their round heads. Its true that those of us, Dan and I and the people who have joined our feeding ground, have created a J-curve population increase rate that will crash sooner rather than later. But this is a rate that we bald monkeys are on also. After the cat's ass there will be no order here. Sure, we cling to our facts, theology, technology and such so as to throw it like scat at the critters we are burning off this spinning cheese rock. But now I froth. So far I have heard two theories on the origins of the Fairbanks pigeon. One is that a doctor brought them up and released as death closed in. Perhaps he gazed, the morphine coursing, as they flew seemingly backwards into the clouds. The other is that army officers brought them up here to shoot. Could be the was tobacco spit, the hands shook, and they were flown up from their Georgia roots to fly a death gauntlet. What ever the case I feed them in spite of order and crunch back home.

New prose from Don Cole.

Thanks, Don.

A rascal with a torrent

I am starting to get paranoid over here. It's just too easy. Sure, I am one of the many turtles, millions indeed. Many turtles die young though. There are 61 songs on the new Tom Waits cd. Any time now he will come through my door with the devil wearing a mole hair vest. He will spit in my eye and slap me while the devil goes into my brains with his fingers. Then will come the lawyers. They will drag me in front of ole Judge Hawthorn with his old mahogany knot pipe and the pearl topped hat pin he uses to stir it. The judgement said they will pack my ears with potters clay, throw a mill stone around my neck, and whip along the sewer with my pork pie hat set afire.

Picking up my brain trash

Sunday morning I slimed out of my cab a burnt mess. The town had took me into her soiled crack and wiped me through to gape at the false dawn, stinking. "She is dead. You loved her, I loved her but she hung herself. Twenty-fore and she hung herself. I guess she didn't want a life anymore. We burnt her clothes because that's what we do." A man said that to his wife about their daughter in my cab. I didn't make much Saturday but I got that. Pure icy gold.