deepundergroundpoetry.com
Pool Route
As is my way, I had come through the gate Indian quiet.
And there he was. Ass backin' out of my truck's passenger door.
Saw me, dropped stolen stuff and came up with a piece.
I'm thinkin' "Go ahead, get one off. It'll read better in the report" as I'm lookin' at the red dot that's halfway between chin and navel on his white t shirt.
My hand had seen that it couldn't see his and unholstered. Squeezin' the semi-auto's grip was activatin' the Crimson Trace laser.
My mind was watchin' his eyes. Inside I wasn't much carin' how things went.
One less jerk in the world-so what.
One less old guy-who cares.
But training is training and reflex is faster than thought.
So here we be. A Lauderdale alley standoff.
Two heartbeats.
Maybe he registers the size of the hole.
.45 trumps a 9, eh cuz?
Maybe he figures another time.
I don't know.
He stepped back.
I stood still.
He turned and ran.
I reholstered into concealment and checked my watch.
Not too late for a good start on today's work.
Hope it don't rain. That always makes driving dangerous.
And there he was. Ass backin' out of my truck's passenger door.
Saw me, dropped stolen stuff and came up with a piece.
I'm thinkin' "Go ahead, get one off. It'll read better in the report" as I'm lookin' at the red dot that's halfway between chin and navel on his white t shirt.
My hand had seen that it couldn't see his and unholstered. Squeezin' the semi-auto's grip was activatin' the Crimson Trace laser.
My mind was watchin' his eyes. Inside I wasn't much carin' how things went.
One less jerk in the world-so what.
One less old guy-who cares.
But training is training and reflex is faster than thought.
So here we be. A Lauderdale alley standoff.
Two heartbeats.
Maybe he registers the size of the hole.
.45 trumps a 9, eh cuz?
Maybe he figures another time.
I don't know.
He stepped back.
I stood still.
He turned and ran.
I reholstered into concealment and checked my watch.
Not too late for a good start on today's work.
Hope it don't rain. That always makes driving dangerous.
Published 22nd Mar 2013
All writing remains the property of the author. Don't use it for any purpose without their permission.
likes 3
reading list entries 1
comments 8
reads 862
Commenting Preference:
The author encourages honest critique.
Anonymous
22nd Mar 2013 2:00pm
Quite an encounter, I like how you express it here and the nonchalant ending is a great touch.
Welcome to DUP :-)
Welcome to DUP :-)
22nd Mar 2013 3:34pm
22nd Mar 2013 6:20pm
Wow Nick,I 'really' dig the way you lay it 'all' out, how your lines of creative perception, intuition & wording, so interestingly interweave in such unexpected, yet uniquely stylized, yet 'classic' ways; a lot of resonance here...(reflective of film noir, 'Dragnet', Bogart-like inner dialog & Cohen Brothers films!) Every successive line of your wording & the scenarios you are painting out in the storylines of this (& many other of your poems & pieces) consistently hold my attention & compell it onward, like watching a really good, engrossing movie (or short film); I never know where each ride is going to take me & that is the mark of a truly gifted writer (in my book) in any format. Then there is there is the way you tie it all up so remarkably well; I especially love the way you so smoothly & calmly shifted gears here, on all the built up tension toward the ending of this latest vicarious, lucid adventure, by going from the extreme, focused alertness & razor sharp details & potentially fatal consequences of the encounter at hand, so effortlessly into your main character's seemingly, equally cool headed concern for another much less 'immediate danger', in his (& your) non-phased, cool-as-a-cucumber transition of thought & concern, into:
"I reholstered into concealment and checked my watch.
Not too late for a good start on today's work.
Hope it don't rain. That always makes driving dangerous."
- That to me is a 'PERFECT' ending!!!
I'm definitely a big fan of your work,(so far), as it never seems to fail in entertaining me, intriguing & impressing me!...
"I reholstered into concealment and checked my watch.
Not too late for a good start on today's work.
Hope it don't rain. That always makes driving dangerous."
- That to me is a 'PERFECT' ending!!!
I'm definitely a big fan of your work,(so far), as it never seems to fail in entertaining me, intriguing & impressing me!...
Thanks for your comments, OIN (you really gotta do a piece that tells about your handle).
Y'all ever hear of a fella goes by the name of Frank Castle?
Y'all ever hear of a fella goes by the name of Frank Castle?
24th Mar 2013 10:24pm
'OyateInyanNajin', is Lakota for 'Stands the Stone People', which brokendown is:
Oyate - People,
Inyan - Stone(s)
Najin - Stands... (they don't use words like 'the') & in their spoken sentence structure, many of the words are connected & combined in a seemingly out of order sequencing, very much unlike English spoken sentence structure.
I chose this as my handle on DUP, as a convenient
derivative of my email address, whose first part is 'standsthestones' (followed by @ & my server) & because it's another facet of my creative work as an artist; I've been balancing stones wherever I go (all over the western hemisphere)for the past 32 years. It is something that I just intuitvely thought of & tried doing & succeded, on a Southern California beach, after a good, long, morning surf, when I came in to shore & laid down on a beautiful cobblestone & sand beach & noticed all the amazingly shaped boulders & various shapes & sizes & countless other ocean wave-worn stones laying everywhere around me.
To succeed, I had to learn how to completely still my mind along with my breath & more deeply focus, feel & listen to the stones I was balancing. So, it became a very compulsively
addictive & rewarding activity & discipline for me, in the sense that I found a free way in which to go into a deepened meditation (stilling the monkey mind!), for anywhere from 10 minutes, up to as long as 7 hours, which afterwards always left (& still leaves) me filled with a profound sense & feeling of balanced centeredness & wonderful, boundless, inner & outer peace & which also at the same time, creates something of unexpected (& improbable) natural beauty & serenity, which seems to have a consistently, positive, calming (peace inducing)& even 'healing' resonance on the many thousands of people over the years, who have come across my sone balancing play, in both urban & natural, wilderness areas... (it's the best way I've found thus far, as a naturally creative being, to effectively share my 'light', with untold #'s of people, because, quite often after I've balanced an outdoor 'gallery' of 13 or 60 or 150 seperate balanced stone formations, I've gone away & come back by the same area a week or two later & been amazed & thrilled to see that either they are all still standing, or most still are!(despite wind, rain & curious people who go up & touch them, thinking they 'must' be glued or have a steel rod through them, only to quickly discover, they are only very delicately balanced. This happens even in very busy, downtown, heavily touristed areas I've lived in in the past & live in now, where many thousands of people pass by them every day.
So to come by a day or a week or two later & still find them mostly all standing, is quite an excitable surprise, which always amazes me, in wondering, just how many people may have seen them & what their thoughts, feelings & inner
reflections may have been?
I have written about my stone balancing in numerous poems over the years & I imagine I'll post some someday (in a different category), but something happened on my laptop two days ago, I was working away & my little finger on my right hand accidentally touched some unknown key-stroke or combination of keys, which led to an 'ALERT!' window notice popping up informing me that my Microsoft Word program was being uninstalled & it did!!! I went into my docs, where I keep my entire life's archives of chronologically organized folders (from 1970 to 2013), full of over 3,000 of my poems, ALL filed in MS Word format! So, terrified at what it looked like I may have actually done, I opened up a folder & clicked on one of my MS Word filed poems & it would not open & still would not open any of them
after many more tries with other folders & many other poems! So ever since then, I've only been able to copy the texts of some of my older poems, which are still filed in the old 'text document'
format & then paste them onto DUP for submission & sharing; Frustrating & I don't have a current back-up copy of them, nor can I afford to order or go buy a new (current) MS WORD software disc to reinstall, so this present dilema has completely thrown a wrench into the gears of my previous momentum & excited enthusiasm in participating as a new (7 days now) member of DUP... Hopefully I'll be able to figure out, trouble-shoot, or find some helpful solution to my current, major problem here, from a few of my more computer savy, local friends?
In response to your previous comment's
suggestion that I post some poem that might give some insight or explain my handle to DUP members & readers, I changed my profile pic yesterday to a pic of one of my balanced stones, atop a boulder overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. Until I can get my MS WORD back online here, I will continue to change my profile pic (every few days)
into different pics of my balanced stones & then, if & when I do regain my ability to open my MS WORD poetry files, I'll see if I can dig up any poems regarding my stone balancing?
Thanks for your suggestion Nick, you asked & wanted to know, but because I couldn't open & post any of my poems about my stone balancing here, I was left with no other choice than to respond to you with this copiously over-detailed,
written explanation/answer!... (sorry about that/this!)
p.s. - I did a YouTube search on Frank Castle & got a lot of video stuff about him (or his character), but I had never heard of nor seen anything about him before your mention of his name here on DU... was that just a general question for DU readers you posted in you comment to me, or is there some other specific relevance, connection or reference regarding Frank Castle you'd care to clue me in on in relation to me?!?... (- curious now...!?)
- O.N.I.
Oyate - People,
Inyan - Stone(s)
Najin - Stands... (they don't use words like 'the') & in their spoken sentence structure, many of the words are connected & combined in a seemingly out of order sequencing, very much unlike English spoken sentence structure.
I chose this as my handle on DUP, as a convenient
derivative of my email address, whose first part is 'standsthestones' (followed by @ & my server) & because it's another facet of my creative work as an artist; I've been balancing stones wherever I go (all over the western hemisphere)for the past 32 years. It is something that I just intuitvely thought of & tried doing & succeded, on a Southern California beach, after a good, long, morning surf, when I came in to shore & laid down on a beautiful cobblestone & sand beach & noticed all the amazingly shaped boulders & various shapes & sizes & countless other ocean wave-worn stones laying everywhere around me.
To succeed, I had to learn how to completely still my mind along with my breath & more deeply focus, feel & listen to the stones I was balancing. So, it became a very compulsively
addictive & rewarding activity & discipline for me, in the sense that I found a free way in which to go into a deepened meditation (stilling the monkey mind!), for anywhere from 10 minutes, up to as long as 7 hours, which afterwards always left (& still leaves) me filled with a profound sense & feeling of balanced centeredness & wonderful, boundless, inner & outer peace & which also at the same time, creates something of unexpected (& improbable) natural beauty & serenity, which seems to have a consistently, positive, calming (peace inducing)& even 'healing' resonance on the many thousands of people over the years, who have come across my sone balancing play, in both urban & natural, wilderness areas... (it's the best way I've found thus far, as a naturally creative being, to effectively share my 'light', with untold #'s of people, because, quite often after I've balanced an outdoor 'gallery' of 13 or 60 or 150 seperate balanced stone formations, I've gone away & come back by the same area a week or two later & been amazed & thrilled to see that either they are all still standing, or most still are!(despite wind, rain & curious people who go up & touch them, thinking they 'must' be glued or have a steel rod through them, only to quickly discover, they are only very delicately balanced. This happens even in very busy, downtown, heavily touristed areas I've lived in in the past & live in now, where many thousands of people pass by them every day.
So to come by a day or a week or two later & still find them mostly all standing, is quite an excitable surprise, which always amazes me, in wondering, just how many people may have seen them & what their thoughts, feelings & inner
reflections may have been?
I have written about my stone balancing in numerous poems over the years & I imagine I'll post some someday (in a different category), but something happened on my laptop two days ago, I was working away & my little finger on my right hand accidentally touched some unknown key-stroke or combination of keys, which led to an 'ALERT!' window notice popping up informing me that my Microsoft Word program was being uninstalled & it did!!! I went into my docs, where I keep my entire life's archives of chronologically organized folders (from 1970 to 2013), full of over 3,000 of my poems, ALL filed in MS Word format! So, terrified at what it looked like I may have actually done, I opened up a folder & clicked on one of my MS Word filed poems & it would not open & still would not open any of them
after many more tries with other folders & many other poems! So ever since then, I've only been able to copy the texts of some of my older poems, which are still filed in the old 'text document'
format & then paste them onto DUP for submission & sharing; Frustrating & I don't have a current back-up copy of them, nor can I afford to order or go buy a new (current) MS WORD software disc to reinstall, so this present dilema has completely thrown a wrench into the gears of my previous momentum & excited enthusiasm in participating as a new (7 days now) member of DUP... Hopefully I'll be able to figure out, trouble-shoot, or find some helpful solution to my current, major problem here, from a few of my more computer savy, local friends?
In response to your previous comment's
suggestion that I post some poem that might give some insight or explain my handle to DUP members & readers, I changed my profile pic yesterday to a pic of one of my balanced stones, atop a boulder overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. Until I can get my MS WORD back online here, I will continue to change my profile pic (every few days)
into different pics of my balanced stones & then, if & when I do regain my ability to open my MS WORD poetry files, I'll see if I can dig up any poems regarding my stone balancing?
Thanks for your suggestion Nick, you asked & wanted to know, but because I couldn't open & post any of my poems about my stone balancing here, I was left with no other choice than to respond to you with this copiously over-detailed,
written explanation/answer!... (sorry about that/this!)
p.s. - I did a YouTube search on Frank Castle & got a lot of video stuff about him (or his character), but I had never heard of nor seen anything about him before your mention of his name here on DU... was that just a general question for DU readers you posted in you comment to me, or is there some other specific relevance, connection or reference regarding Frank Castle you'd care to clue me in on in relation to me?!?... (- curious now...!?)
- O.N.I.
25th Mar 2013 00:12am
Sorry to read about your electric issue. Good luck towards successful resolution.
All my stuff is originally scribbled on paper.
One of the scraps has "Bar Talk" as a title. When I find it (hey, there's only two rooms in this shack and I know it's here. Somewhere.) I will post the gag.
The guy in it is named Frank.
Now that you are apprised of the Castle character you can enjoy my interpretation of that persona in action.
Okay- now I'm gonna go lookin' for Bar Talk.
And I thought your name looked like The People's lingo.
Okay, o.k.- I'm goin' and lookin'.
All my stuff is originally scribbled on paper.
One of the scraps has "Bar Talk" as a title. When I find it (hey, there's only two rooms in this shack and I know it's here. Somewhere.) I will post the gag.
The guy in it is named Frank.
Now that you are apprised of the Castle character you can enjoy my interpretation of that persona in action.
Okay- now I'm gonna go lookin' for Bar Talk.
And I thought your name looked like The People's lingo.
Okay, o.k.- I'm goin' and lookin'.
26th Mar 2013 2:25am
26th Mar 2013 2:27am
