"The Medium Kind of Good", "The Education That We Got", & "Indie Lit Endless Rap Boogie" by By Steve Passey

The Medium Kind of Good

Since I gave up on the writing

and the art

and the film-school dreams

and I thought – I got to get me a real job – and I didn’t think

I could hold this one down but here I am,

and I bought my first good used car.

I did call back seven minutes after you left your message,

but it was a tight window I guess,

and you were gone.

I want to stop where I am standing,

and I want you to hear,

that it’s a medium kind of good

and an empty kind of year

but I’ve got benefits

and I’ve got gas

and I have stopped

thinking much about anything else

it’s been that kind of year.

The Education That We Got

The nun was the worst, breaking yardsticks and pointers across our eight-year-old shoulders for laughing on those days when we dared to laugh and the priest was not a bad man but there were sixty of us boys and forty little girls and it was too much for him too and we had nowhere to go and nowhere to turn and prayer did not help and relief, if we had it, was in our dreams where we ran and ran and if we were lucky we were lucid and then, with our feet bare and our backs bruised we jumped in great long leaps and astounding bounds and sometimes even flew.

Indie Lit Endless Rap Boogie

A guy emailed me and said he was a friend of yours and

could I help him get reviews for his book?

I can’t, no, but I would if I could.

I have been seeing a woman,

smarter than I am by half, and

I am giving myself the benefit of the doubt.

She’s on the board of a big literary festival.

Coscto fiction, but,

they’re bringing in George Saunders this year.

I like George Saunders.

You are a writer, she asked?

Nah, I said, that’s another guy with the same name.

Soon enough, she’ll find out, and she’ll be gone.

I am not ashamed of what I wrote, not at all, but

I have lots of things to hide.

Muscle memory, as they say.

I’ve dated on-line.

I should write about that,

again.

I got a guy trying to sell me a set of drums.

He was in a country band twenty years ago – they toured.

CCMA awards – all of it – and parking lots fights between members

because the tour bus is rented and you pay for damages to it.

They fought on cocaine and stayed awake on cocaine

because you are dead on your feet on stage without cocaine

and then when you don’t have cocaine

you hate each and every one of the other people on the bus.

That is artistic validation the proof of which is in the keloid scars.

They quit when they were offered $2,500 and

a buffet pass to open for someone getting $800,000.

It would have been five-hour drive, one way.

Fuck that, he said. Fuck all of it.

But you need to buy these drums.

You got $2,500 I said,

mentally thinking about writing and

knee pads and $2,500.

$2,500?

I would buy those drums.

Not a country music guy though.

Somehow it became all about the ritual pandering to

a thin and venal kind of conservatism.

You think Johnny Cash would have kissed any politician’s ring?

Dolly?

Now these trust fund kids have their good looks

and their trust fund money

and someone to iron their jeans

while they buy a lifted F350 and

wave the flag and sing other people’s songs

secure in the knowledge that those fucking liberal writers

got capped at $2,500 and order was maintained.

No disrespect to Ford F350’s though. I fuckin’ love them.

And another thing: Ludwig drums – the acrylics- are absurdly expensive these days, even used.